10 May 2010
I really ought to write in this more frequently, I'm probably going to forget things. The day before yesterday was spent mostly driving, which was fine with me because honestly I wasn't feeling so well; another day of mostly walking would not have been welcome. We started by visiting Jane Austen's home church in the town of Stephensomethingorother. It was a very old church, small but all made of stone and with bells. Nothing special in Britain apparently, but very impressive when you're used to churches that are actually repurposed old schools and look roughly like any other building. It had a graveyard around it with some stones completely worn to illegibility, and many of the flagstones inside had old important people buried beneath them. It's been in the same in all the old churches here I've been in; the sheer weight of history is incredible. The people in the church, incidentally, were extremely friendly and showed us all around the place even though we showed up just a few minutes before their service was set to start.
Next we spent a great deal of time touring the southwestern countryside of England, "Hardy Country" as we call it, since it was where Thomas Hardy lived and set all of his novels. Extremely pretty landscape, very green fields with pretty trees. The landscape is very tame here. There are rows of bushes or trees around many of the roads and the groves of trees look like there were planted or allowed to remain rather than like they are natural. The forests here were cleared for farmland and much of the truly fertile land ruined millenia ago, apparently, leaving lots and lots of pasture for grazing. The architecture in the little towns we've passed through has been fascinating as well, with lots of brick and stone and flintstone construction. Actually it's not the stone that's so impressive (Calgary has plenty of stone walls and houses, though not a lot of brick) but the age and the look of the stuff. Our stone construction here looks very new and very strictly decorative. Here it's old stone with vines and moss growing unchecked, and a very utilitarian look to it. On the other hand, there's an awful lot of stone here. The central areas of some of the cities towns seem to be completely paved and there are places where you could walk for a while without actually seeing any plant life beyond the moss. Also on the other hand, BP presence >.> We just stopped at one of their gas stations to refuel and a number of the Tate art exhibits were apparently sponsored by them.
Where was I? Oh, right, Hardy. We stopped at Hardy's cottage, where he grew up. It's a very nice little cottage in the middle of some extremely pretty woods. The doorframes were very small and there was one stairway so steep it was essentially a ladder. We were told that the low ceilings and doorframes I had to duck under were simply the architectural vernacular at the time, allowing the builders to worry less about doorframes sagging and walls collapsing, rather than because people were really short. I bet they banged their heads a lot.
We moved on to Max Gate, the house Hardy designed (his day job was as an architect) and lived for most of his life. It had a very large yard with lots of trees and plants and a pet cemetery, which included his dog Wessex which apparently was something of a terror and bit many important literary and historical figures. The house itself was interesting but very empty of furniture and such, and while it was neat to look at the rooms it didn't feel nearly as much like an old house.
Then, more driving. A lot more driving. Then we saw a huge naked guy on the side of a hill O.o The Cerne Giant, if you care to look up a picture or something. Those are chalk hills, so by cutting up the turf and grinding the chalk beneath its possible to create enormous figures on the sides of the hills; there are three such figures scattered around, I think. One of the others is a big white horse.
Oh, at some point in there we visited a sacred spring supposed to cure infertility or something silly like that. A few people drank from it, I decided not to. There were a whole bunch of ribbons tied to a tree just above it, which was pretty cool.
The next day we got up extremely early (5, 5:45 departure time) in hopes of catching sunset in Stonehenge. The sun was firmly entrenched above the horizon before we even got outside, but it was still a pleasantly misty and mysterious (and a bit cold) English morning when we got there. The circle is, essentially, a bunch of big rocks with a road running right next to them and a gift shop just on the other side; the site could be fairly described as tacky. The history behind the thing, which is a calendar, a burial ground and a temple all at once, however, is fascinating, and we got a very neat lecture on landscape as it figures into literature while we were there. We also got to walk in among the rocks, though not to touch them, which was neat.
We stopped in Salisbury for a bit, and visited Winchester Cathedral as well, and some where in there I picked up an enormous hardcover copy of Jonathon Strange & Mr Norrel for three pounds, which was awesome because I love that book; I've been rereading it on the bus trips since (except for the bits where I've been obliged to catch up on two days worth of travellog.) The Cathedral was enormous and exceptionally impressive and very interesting historically but didn't feel very... historical, I suppose. It is difficult or maybe impossible to recouncil the vast amounts of money various officials spent on building monuments to themselves with actual Christian values, and honestly the huge building felt more imposing than anything else. I understand that in medieval times Cathedrals were typically painted in gaudy primary colours; that might improve the situation somewhat. At least it would seem a bit more honest.
Jane Austen was also buried under a memorial flagstone in the Cathedral. The stone itself made no mention of her writing, though it contained high praise of her from her family, because she was never that famous in her own lifetime. A little plaque on the wall was added later.
I should talk a bit about our accommodations for the past two days, I suppose. We stayed at the Poacher's Inn at the amusingly named town of Piddletrenthide, apparently named in a mismash of languages: piddle for small stream (or piss) trent for thirty (in french) and hide for a measure of distance, hence, thirty hides on the river Piddle. The inn itself was very nice, with lots of good food (breakfast and supper were included in our accommodations) and extremely comfortable beds. The only downside was that the wireless router was pathetic with a range of about ten feet, so I had to do all my internet things in a lil chair in the reception room rather than in my extremely comfortable bed.
We left at nine today have have been driving since I started writing this. Not sure where we're headed next.
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