Gringa on the Go

England

May 8 through June 8, 2018

We flew from Madrid to London on May 8. After claiming our luggage, we worked our way down to the “Tube”, the London subway system that connects Heathrow to major destinations in and around London. The cheapest way to get around London is to buy an Oyster card that can be used on all public transit. With two Oyster cards, we were on our way. An hour or so later we changed to another Tube line, then to a train line which took us within a few blocks of our apartment. London is a big city.

Clockwise from top left: Tower Bridge, Winchester Cathedral, bronze lion Trafalgar Square, and Westminster Abbey

We enjoyed the most famous sites, but our favorite places are less well known, including the museum and observatory in Greenwich Park. The spectacular dolphin sun dial greets you near the entrance. The space between the shadows of the dolphin flukes indicates the time. The museum has exhibits on telescopes, astronomy, and time pieces and links the history of all the different people, discoveries, and instruments that went into establishing the prime meridian and ocean navigation that enabled ocean travel to North America and beyond.

giant ship in a bottle - Maritime Museum

Dolphin Sun Dial: time is at the space between the dolphin flukes

The observatory is centered on the prime meridian, but my cell phone, the most modern navigation tool, shows the actual meridian to be about 100 meters (0.0015 degrees) to the east of the meridian line (zero degrees, zero minutes, and zero seconds). GPS receivers are based on geodetic longitude, calculations of coordinates for a reference elipse relative to the Earth’s center mass. The prime meridian is based on astronomical measurements - a position on Earth’s surface relative to the stars and planets. Hence, they are not exactly equal but I think I’ll be able to live with the difference and knowing I’m never exactly where I am.

Instruments used by Haley and others for astronomical measurements; lining up on the Prime Meridian; the latitude and longitude below the photo are from my cell phone

From London, we headed to Bath, named for the hot springs where the Romans constructed baths a long time ago.

Roman Baths

As well as visiting the Roman baths, we enjoyed walking along the canal constructed to connect Bath and other cities to London. Barges transported goods between the country and the city, including rocks for building the cathedrals and palaces in London. Today, the canals are still in use, but mostly for recreation. You can rent a long boat and travel between Bristol, Bath, and other cities. Periodically, the boats pass through locks, the hand operation of the locks has not changed much in well over 200 years. Anita and I considered becoming lock masters, but the folks on the boats seemed to enjoy the task themselves.

Long boats passing through the locks on the canal

As well as the long boat canal and locks, the River Avon passes through the center of Bath. Anita and I rented a beautiful wooden row boat and spent a day paddling the river, one of our favorite experiences in England.

Rowing our precious boat on the River Avon

Most of the bird species in Europe have been new to me, but several are the same (house sparrow, common starling) or similar to our own. The European robin, a fly catcher and not a thrush like our robin, is very friendly and often seen in parks and gardens. The blackbird (a thrush) is very similar in behavior and shape to our robin. Even its song is somewhat robin-like. The crows pretty much look and behave like our crows and the coots are, well, coots.

Clockwise from top left: European robin, blackbird, rook, and coot

If you visit England, I would definitely recommend April-May. The gardens and country side are abloom with flowers. Forests are carpeted with bluebells and wild garlic, and bright yellow fields of rapeseed light-up the hills.

One of many gardens, blue bells (lavender) and wild garlic (white) in the forest

We debated visiting Stonehenge, mostly because it has received so much publicity as a tourist stop. We were glad we decided to go. We signed up for a private bus that took us to Stonehenge, arranged the entry tickets, and then basically gave us 4 hours to see and do what we wanted. It is a beautiful location, with trails through hills of wildflowers as well as the Stonehenge rocks. They have located the quarry for the source of the lintel stones, but they are not sure how they transported such heavy stones over hundreds of miles when all they had was human muscle power.

Stonehenge

We moved on to Lyme Regis by train and arrived on the Jurassic coast. The town is most famous for fossils, especially ammonites, and Mary Anning, the most famous of the fossil hunters active in Lyme Regis during the early 1800s.

Clockwise from top left: ammonite pavement, location appropriate street lamps, individual ammonite, many ammonites in a beach rock

Although fossils and beaches are the main attraction for mostly English vacationers, we loved the surrounding countryside and the occasional old mill. There is a restored and active mill in Lyme Regis, where they grind flour to sell. We enjoyed the cookies and breads made from the flour.

Old Mill

One of the stories told during the mill tour was the origin of the saying: “Show your mettle”. A long time ago, there were flour mills throughout the English countryside. The mills all operated basically the same way, with two large circular stones, one turning on top of the other and grinding grain to flour. Stone dressers maintained the stones for efficient grinding and used metal tools to shape the surface of the stones. Not all stone dressers, however, were equally good and they lacked internet searches for finding the best. When a stone dresser showed up at your mill to maintain your stone, the first interchange was: “Show me your metal.” The good stone dresser would promptly role up his sleeves and reveal the scars from years of dressing stones. You might think ‘mettle’ is a different word than ‘metal’, but until the end of the 17th century, the spelling was interchangeable.

"Then she shewes the metal she is made of."
"To try the spirit of men, of what mettle they are made of."

Who knew?

Clockwise from upper left: the water wheel in action, gears working inside the mill, collecting the flour, extra mill stones (about 5 feet in diameter)

On to food. We found the food to be really good, including fish (fish and chips, whitebait, cod, plaice, and more), pasties, mash and bangers, and especially the cheddar cheese. We were told not to miss trying “cream tea”, which consists of tea, a couple of scones, fruit preserves, and clotted cream. Be forewarned, all clotted cream is not created equal. We finally hit upon a place, far from the tourist centers, where the clotted cream was something to write home about. Most of it is like unsalted butter, but the really good stuff is like the difference between canned whipped cream and fresh whipped cream. Wow!

Clockwise from upper left: bangers and mash, pastie and chips, Warren's bakery, and plaice with asparagus

One of the gems of Lyme Regis is the aquarium located on the Cob. It is small, but has great information about construction of the Cob, fishing off Cornwall, and local fish. Our favorite fish included the top knot, a flounder that can suction to the glass sides of the tank (and undersides of rocks), and the bearded rockling that has a constantly vibrating dorsal fin (sorry, I haven’t learned to attach video). The owner of the aquarium has trained an entire tank of mullet to play soccer and come when called. He has worked with the fish for over 10 years (winters are long in Lyme Regis).

Clockwise from upper left: top knot flounder, bearded rockling, the aquarium on the "Cob", and the famous trained mullet

Our last stay in England was Falmouth, near the southwestern tip and known for boat-filled harbors, castles (Henry VIII), light houses, and scenic coastal paths.

One of many boat-filled harbors and local ferries

A castle at St. Mawes; light house on the point

Place (that is its name, quite a place)

Along the spectacular Cornwall coast

We visited several places by bus, an interesting experience in England. We loved the front seat on the upper deck of the double decker bus, much like flying. Most interesting are the narrow roads, with vegetation often touching both sides of the bus. They are use to having to back to a wide spot and let others pass. We never had a close call. If Bill and Susan lived in England, the paint on the sides of their pickup would be long gone.

On the bus, from left: a narrow road, on the top deck, another narrow road

We visited the Eden Project near Falmouth, an old clay quarry converted to gardens and giant dome greenhouses, one with tropical plants and another with temperate plants. The purpose of the project is primarily environmental education, but also tourism. They have some nice sculptures, including the worlds largest ceramic sculpture of a blue-green bacteria and a giant seed. The blue-green sculpture produces giant smoke rings that we spent a good half-hour watching (we are easily entertained). The giant seed is from a single block of granite, weighs 70 tonnes, and took 2 years to carve the 1,800 nodes in Fibonacci spirals.

The greenhouses, outside and inside

Clockwise from top left: blue-green bacteria sculpture, smoke rings, Anita taunts a giant spider, the Seed sculpture

We enjoyed finding signs that showed differences in the use of the English language and a different sense of humor. Maybe my cousin Carol can appreciate golf balls hit in all directions, but I didn’t know a trail could founder, and we stayed well away from Pendennis Castle during the hours of 12 to 4 p.m. And how would you like to send your kids to the Crypt Pre-School?

Fly tipping is dumping your garbage in a stream and ‘mind the gap’ is self explanatory when exiting trains and subways.

Possibly not intended to be humorous was the sign at the bottom of the stairs that we walked up to get from the lower part of Falmouth to our apartment. At the top of the stairs (called Jacobs Ladder) is an inn of the same name. The inn was always busy serving ale and local brews, especially in the evening. At the bottom of the very steep stairs (over 200 large steps in all) was a church. The sign on the side of church may be a message to patrons of the inn that perhaps drank a bit much: “God brings beauty out of brokenness”.

the impressive stairway: Jacobs Ladder

Our stay in Falmouth sadly came to an end, with its beautiful coast (including tortured rock) and, of course, Nessie lives!, if not in Scotland, at least in Falmouth.