'I cannot live without my soul!'

I thought I'd be much better at recording my travels here, but life has just been so busy lately that I fear I've fallen quite behind. So here's part I of an overdue update.

The weekend of November 4-6, I had my visitors in London! Kassey Sikora, a fellow AU escapee, came down with her friend Hannah to see London before heading on to Paris. We basically filled the two days they were here with as much as possible of the London sites. Some of the highlights are below:

Trafalgar Square

The Tower of London

While not a 'site' yet, My Old Dutch restaurant on High Holborn has the BEST pancakes ever. Easily one of the best meals I've had since coming here. Delicious.

Kassey and Hannah at the British Museum

221b Baker Street... We all know who lives here. :)

Hyde Park on a beautiful fall day

Buckingham Palace

In addition to our tourist destinations, we made sure to attend a celebration for Bonfire Night / Guy Fawkes Night in London. While the big Lord Mayor's Show was the weekend after (which I was unable to attend due to being in Scotland), we did find a decent gathering in Southward in the south of London. While the fireworks weren't anything special and there was no bonfire to be spotted, it was a nice evening just to be out with the crowds. While Bonfire Night no longer has it's blatantly anti-Catholic sentiment, the British do still love an excuse for pyrotechnics and mulled wine. Who can blame them?

After my visitors departed on Sunday (November 6), I had a day of rest before leaving for my reading week adventures. I left London by coach on Monday to go up to Ormskirk, where Kassey is studying at Edge Hill University. After a quick drink to recover from my 7-hour coach trip, I met Kassey there, just returned from Paris. On Monday, we decided to do the 3-hr train ride and half-hour bus ride out to Haworth, where the Bronte family parsonage is. Haworth is one of the places where the moment you step down from the bus, you can tell it has basically been untouched by time. The town itself is tiny, the main street is still cobblestones, and the shops are small but stocked full of merchandise. We trekked up the main street to reach the church (St. Micheal and All Angels) where the Bronte girls' father was parson.

Haworth

Where we ate lunch (scroll down to see what we had).

The church in Haworth

The Bronte Family vault, where Emily and Charlotte Bronte are buried.

The kissing gate.

Eerie churchyard.

The Parsonage

The parsonage has been preserved rather well and now houses a museum dedicated to the lives and works of the Bronte family. The quietness sadness of their lives seems to be quite at odds with the powerful, overwhelming passion found in their novels. Visiting their home did not really answer my inquiries of how they managed to imagine the grand, Gothic tales they've told, but walking out onto the moors brought some degree of understanding. The landscape in that part of the country is so wild, so rugged, so isolated that one cannot help by having some vague, dark dreams about struggle and tragedy and human nature. The atmosphere of the place - perfect on the day of my visit in that it was cold, damp, and oppressively gray - is particularly powerful.

'And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!'

-Wuthering Heights

To merely stand there, looking over the decaying earth was an experience. The mud and marshy grass cling to you and seem to entangle you among the hills. Rocks lay bare to the elements and have been polished smooth by centuries of rain and wind. The only signs of modern life, sadly apparent, are the telephone lines. But really it's just you there, on the earth alone... just like Heathcliff or Jane Eyre. The soul seems to expand and experience both wretchedness and ecstasy at once. I cannot fully describe what it's like there to you here, but know that out on those moors, I felt alive and larger than myself and beyond the trivial concerns that tend to overwhelm and spoil.

An incident to break up the beauty: See that patch of mud near the top of the hill? Guess who took a nice spill there, ruining a nice pair of white gloves and getting mud on her coat? Miss Grace, here.

The cold finally got to us (Kassey and I), so we left the moors in search of food and warmth and humanity. We stopped at the Villette Coffee House for a good, full English breakfast of fried egg, stewed tomatoes, sausage, bacon, toast, and coffee.

I returned to Ormskirk for the night and took a nice walk through the little town in the morning. The population there is largely university students or retirees, so the make-up of the town center is interesting. I was delighted to see Christmas decorations going up and I imagine the town is very cute during the holidays.

So that brings us to Wednesday, November 9th. I departed from Liverpool on a train bound for Edinburgh... But my visit to Scotland shall have to be told another day.