Scotland the Beautiful

Now for the second installment of my Reading Week travels.

After leaving Liverpool on 9 November, I met my friend Shana in Edinburgh, Scotland. As we both arrived quite late in the day - meaning 5:00pm - most of the city had closed for the day. We checked into our hostel (Castle Rock - I highly recommend), grabbed a bite to eat and some Scottish whiskey at the Castle Arms pub, and then took a stroll through the area. The center of the old city is the Royal Mile, which runs from Holyroodhouse Palace (the Queen's residence in Scotland) up the hill to Edinburgh Castle. There are a number of museums and other attractions along the Mile as well as stores stocked enough cashmere scarves to pave the Royal Mile hundreds of times in cashmere.

Edinburgh Castle, at night.

The funny thing about Edinburgh, which we learned quite early on in our stay there, is that you always seem to be going uphill. While this little fact is not much of a bother in normal walking circumstances, it is quite annoying when dragging a suitcase with you. Anyways, after our non-suitcase-laden walk, we turned in for the night. Castle Rock Hostel is HUGE, so it was a bit noisy at first but we were tired enough from traveling during the day to fall asleep easily.

The next morning, I left Shana in Edinburgh and took a train to Leuchars, and then a bus on to St. Andrews. I met Phillip Mallet, an English professor and Thomas Hardy expert at St. Andrews University, for coffee and conversation in his office at the University. I had a wonderful visit to St. Andrews and found that I loved the character of the city. Phillip took me on a walk by the ruins of the castle at St. Andrews, through the remains of St. Andrews Cathedral, down the pier stretching out over the North Sea, and to a number of buildings at the university. The company was excellent, and the grey, overcast, slightly chilly Scottish day gave the place a serious aspect perfect for discussions of history and literature and life. I was treated to lunch at a cafe where Prince William and Kate Middleton used to get coffee (how sweet is that?!) before catching the train back to Edinburgh in the afternoon. St. Andrews is another one of those places where I could definitely see myself - perhaps I'll do some postgraduate work there at the university. I also really enjoyed visiting Phillip and picking his brain a bit about topics of mutual interest, and I look forward to keeping in contact with him.

The ruins of St. Andrews Cathedral.

Back in Edinburgh, I caught up with Shana and we began our site-seeing there in the few remaining hours of daylight. We visited St. Giles church, the Writers' Museum (which had exhibits on Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns, and Robert Louis Stevenson), and the National Museum of Scotland. We then made the super tourist-y move of visiting the sites in Edinburgh connected with J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter novels. We passed by the school whose 4 towers inspired the houses of Hogwarts and crept around the Greyfriars Cemetery finding the tombstones bearing names that Rowling used in the books - Moody, McGonagall, and Tom Riddle included. We then had dinner and hot chocolate at the Elephant House, the cafe where Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. It was a very cool experience and the cafe is definitely a great place to sit and write.

The Elephant House

The Writers' Museum

The next morning, we left Edinburgh on a train bound for Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. I can honestly say that I have never been anyplace so beautiful. The city of Inverness, the River Ness, Urquhart Castle and Loch Ness - all of it was gorgeous. I had heard one never sees the sun in Scotland, yet it was sunny the whole time we were in the Highlands and we had two perfect fall days to explore and be captivated by our surroundings. After checking into the quaint student hotel in Inverness, we took a walk along the River Ness, crossing the Ness Islands and passing by Inverness Castle and a beautiful church on the banks of the river.

Along the River Ness.

We ate a late lunch at The Kitchen, a restaurant overlooking the river and the city. I then dragged Shana along to Leakey's Bookshop, the largest used bookstore in Scotland. I walked through the doors of this place and thought that I had died and gone to heaven. Seriously. 100,000 plus books, a wood-burning stove, a metal spiral staircase leading up to the loft... my dream home. Shana took a bit of a nap on the couch upstairs for an hour and a half while I meandered through the shelves and piles and stacks of books. The musty smell of pages, the heat from the fire, and creaky wooden floor made a perfect atmosphere and I could have stayed forever.

As Shana would say, 'Lindsey in her natural habitat.' So true.

After satisfying myself with a few purchases, including a copy of The African Queen (now out of print), I finally let myself be led out of my heaven-on-earth. I shall be back there, I promise you that.

Our walk then took us through the old Victorian Market in Inverness on the way back to the hostel. We then decided to attend a screening of the film 'Parked' featuring one of my favorite BBC actors Colin Morgan at the Inverness Film Festival. 'Parked' was shown on the 'screen machine' - which translates to a projector in the trailer of a semi-truck, haha. It actually felt and looked like a normal cinema inside thought, much to our relief. I quite enjoyed the film, which was a story about an older man and a young drug addict who are 'neighbors' as they both live out of their cars in a parking lot in Dublin. It was pretty comedic for the first half or so, but then turned quite dark as the kid addicted to drugs gets in over his head. If you do have a chance to see it at some point, I recommend it as an interesting film.

To cheer us up after the somewhat traumatic conclusion of the film, we went in search of some good Scottish music and beer. We found both at Hootananny's Pub.

The next morning, we took a bus from Inverness to Urquhart Castle on the shores of Loch Ness. The ruins of the castle, the sunshine on the water, the soft breeze, and the quiet in this area was so beautiful. We spent the day at the Castle, just enjoying the picturesque scenery around us.

Loch Ness

Urquhart Castle

Epic shot of me and Loch Ness

Our last hour or so at Urquhart Castle consisted of me reading some Burns poetry on a bench overlooking the Loch. The whole day was just absolutely perfect and easily my favorite moments of my year abroad thus far.

Saturday night we returned to Edinburgh. After sleeping in just a bit on Sunday, we headed out to walk the Royal Mile and explore Edinburgh Castle. Breakfast was Scottish scones and coffee. On our walk, we caught some of the Remembrance Day ceremony outside of the town hall in Edinburgh. A lone piper payed respects to the Scots who fought and died in two world wars.

After taking a peak at Holyroodhouse Palace, we walked back to Edinburgh Castle (uphill again, as is always the case it seems like in that city). We took a short tour within the Castle and then just explored on our own for a couple of hours. We finished off our visit to Scotland with some fish and chips at Deacon Brodie's tavern. (Note: Deacon Brodie was the inspiration for R.L. Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.)

Shana and I at the castle

Overlooking the city

The great hall

William Wallace in the chapel at Edinburgh Castle

Trying to load Mon Meg, the largest cannon at the castle. I don't think the Scottish artillery will want me any time soon...

Our train back to London left Edinburgh Sunday night at 5:30pm. That's when things got interesting... There was signal failure on the train line about halfway back to London and our train got delayed THREE hours. Needless to say, we were not pleased to have to sit there in the hot, noisy, cramped train car for an additional three hours besides the five and a half already required to return to London.

We updated our tickets in response to the delay.

We got back to London at 1:30am, were forced to take a cab back to campus, and then collapsed. Longest day ever. Luckily, because of the delay, the full price of our tickets will be reimbursed to us. So at least that's a perk.

So that was Scotland. I loved every moment of it (except for the train ride back, obviously). While Edinburgh was interesting, I genuinely was moved by St. Andrews and especially Inverness. The beauty and history of what I saw really touched my soul and I will remember it always. I find that I understand exactly what Burns was writing about in his poems about Scotland, that beautiful land in the north.

'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.

Salty Seas and Windy Wales

It is truly startling how different areas of the UK are when there is so little distance between them. While there are great similarities, the pace of life is often completely different. Having been outside of London before, I thought the countryside had one particular pace, attitude, demographic, standard of living, etc. Going to Wales proved me wrong.

Last week Thursday I took a coach to Swansea, the capital city of Wales. The city is on the southern coast  on the Bristol Channel. Getting there was interesting - delayed coach, a late taxi ride to the guest house, and  settling in to my room. Altogether the trip took about 6 hours and I was quite grumpy after the delays, the rain, and the sense of being plopped in somewhere unfamiliar in the dark. I made it to Leonardo's Guest House though, and checked into my sea-view little room.

Friday morning, I took a train to Carmarthen (northwest of Swansea) then a bus onwards to Laugharne (pronounced "Larne"). Note: I heard very little of the Welsh language, but lots of words and names pronounced quite differently than how I would say them.

The coast of Wales is gorgeous. Rocky, lots of little islands, coves, etc. Though it was a sunny fall day, there was a layer of fog over the water that produced some very picturesque views, even from the train.

Now, Laugharne is a tiny little village in Wales that is hardly, I'm sure, on most people's list of places to go. The reason I went was simple: Dylan Thomas. Thomas, in case you don't know, is "Wales' Favorite Son" and a fantastic, challenging, unique poet who wrote during the 1930s and 1940s. Check out "Fern Hill" or "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" if you'd like a sample of his work. Thomas grew up in Swansea, but spent much of his adult life in his beloved Laugharne, where he was given a boathouse on the coast by a patron. The boathouse and the whole area of Laugharne are for the most part unchanged since Dylan's death (1953 at the age of 39). You really feel like you can see exactly what he saw, which is quite special.

The path to the boathouse

Can you see why he loved it here?

Dylan Thomas's writing shed, 50 yards up the path from the boathouse

His desk

Writing and coffee on the terrace of the boathouse

At the boathouse

The boathouse

Walking back by the writing shed

"Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, / Time held me green and dying / Though I sang in my chains like the sea." -Fern Hill, Dylan Thomas

Laugharne Castle

After making the pilgrimage to the boathouse, I spent the rest of the morning exploring the village of Laugharne (lots of craft-y stores and such) and spent some time walking along the path by the water. 

The Three Mariners Pub

The grave of Dylan Thomas in Laugharne.

'And death shall have no dominion.

Dead men naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the west moon;

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;

Though lovers be lost love shall not;

And death shall have no dominion.'

After making my rounds through the town, I ended up back by the water. I've realized over the past few years that I love the sea. The steady beat of the waves, the crying of the birds, the wind ruffling the grass and stirring the sand, the smell of the water - it's a recipe for revival of the spirit. In Laugharne, I parked myself on a bench and read for an hour or so; I could have stayed there forever.

After the bus back to Carmarthen and the train back to Swansea, I had a few hours to kill before the start of the Dylan Thomas Festival. I explored downtown Swansea, which I wasn't impressed with. Lots of chain stores and expensive pubs. Swansea Castle stands at the center of the main plaza, but the beauty of the ruins is overshadowed by the modern buildings and shouts of teenagers with pink hair and the blaring of the big screen on the other side of the square.

Swansea Marina was a much lovelier spot, so I wandered the boardwalk before heading to the Dylan Thomas Center to hear a talk by London novelist Sarah Waters. I had known before going that Sarah Waters was a lesbian writer, but was quite surprised about how much it influenced her writing and how willing the audience was to ask her about it. I basically tuned that part of the talk out and just listened to her experiences with writing novels (her process, etc.) and the crazy adventure that is getting published.

Saturday morning, I woke up to pouring rain and hurricane-like gusts of wind. I tried to spend some time working on homework and such in my little room, but eventually worked up the courage to head outside. I took a short walk along the beach before determining that it was a futile effort.

New hair-do from the wind. Yikes.

I then attended a talk by poet and writer Matthew Hollis at the Dylan Thomas Center. He wrote a biography of the poet Edward Thomas (no relation to Dylan) called Now All Roads Lead to France. Apparently Edward Thomas was great friends with the American Poet Robert Frost, and it was Frost's poem 'The Road Not Taken' that influenced Thomas to enlist in 1917. He was killed in the war.

After a trip to the used bookstore in Swansea and a dinner at a small Italian restaurant, I returned to the Center for a night of poetry with Matthew Hollis and Simon Armitage. Both are wonderful, interesting men and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to them read some of their works. This poem by Armitage was my favorite. Here is Armitage reading 'You're Beautiful': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxcoppuQFE8.

The walk back to my guest house after the event was one of the craziest experiences I've ever had. The wind and rain were so intense, I was nearly bent double trying to walk the 2 miles back to my room. I honestly had to catch myself from falling on my face when the gusts let up - that's how far I was leaning forward against the wind. Umbrellas lay discarded all over the road. The rain drenched me through yet the wind was dried me off by the time I got to the door. My calves were burning, my mouth tasted of salt from the sea water being blown up, and my eyes stung. At reaching my room, I literally collapsed on my bed, fully clothed.

Sunday I left Wales on a noon coach and returned to London around 5:00pm. Quite a long day on the bus. I spent the rest of the night recovering, doing laundry (handwashing as usual), and that kind of thing.

Monday was Halloween, and I celebrated by going on the Jack the Ripper Tour with some friends. The tour was more factual than creepy, but the gruesomeness of his crimes was enough to churn my stomach. 

Creepy remains of a wall on the Ripper walk.

Ending the walk in Spitalfields

More about the rest of the week later. Long day today with visitors!