York #2

We had timed our visit to York, by pure chance, to coincide with the opening of a joint exhibition on the Vikings put on by York Museum and the British Museum. So we had a slow start, pottered the 400 metres or so through the gardens and the ruined Abbey, and we were there when the doors opened​.

York does tend to go in for the entertainment experience in it's historical displays - I guess it keeps all those people who like wearing period costumes employed - but the strength of this exhibition was the richness of the collection on display.

I really liked the hoards - literally buried treasure. They show just how far the Vikings engagement with the world stretched - Arabic as well as English as well as Viking coins, and demonstrate that they were ready to deal either by currency or by weight of silver.

Another cool part of the exhibition was the use of VR. There were a number of different helmets shaped like a viking amulet on display round the corner, each with a different scene. When you put the helmet on, and viewed the scene of the Vikings encampment, with the Vikings gathered round their fires, the helmet had a distinct wood smoke smell.

The museum itself is built over and includes sections of the Abbey ruins. It is very atmospheric - a sense of the layers of history, right down to the skeleton of a chap from roman times the builders discovered when they were digging the drain for the downstairs bathrooms.

The only downside was the soundtrack - the same few bars of the March of the Valkeries can do your head in after a while, and we had to flee to Betty's Tea Rooms, a substantial establishment about the same vintage as the Majestic in Lisbon. I feared it might be a bit twee, but the food was excellent and the service really nice. We have found the people here in the shops to be very friendly and a lot less stressed than London.

  Anne wanted to look in some shops so I headed over to the Castle Museum, which I mistakenly thought might have something to do with and include entrance to the adjacent Castle.  Unfortunately not, I discovered 10 pounds later.

We explored more of the tiny streets and lanes, then headed home for a rest. The York Museum ticket is good for the whole day so I headed back to check out the rooms pre Roman York and of Roman artifacts from their occupation.

Late in the afternoon we wandered down by the Ouze - a largely different collection of narrow boats down there tonight, and explored a different corner of the city before finding our way to the Chinese restaurant we'd picked for dinner.

We were forming some unrealistically Rosey views of York as some sort of modern Utopia, but the walk home brought us back to Earth - a succession of homeless people looking wretched on chilly rainy evening, a person slumped unresponsively in a doorway while a paramedic worked away and some deadbeat looking associates watched on, some really stoned or drunk people lurching across the road arguing vociferously. We were glad to get back through the park to commune with the squirrels and the pigeons, and to hunker down for the night back in our room.

Still, while clearly not without its share of social problems York is still a lovely place. I think if I lived in the UK, somewhere round would not be too bad.

Tomorrow we are up early and off to Durham, continuing our progress northwards.

York #1

The sun rises early in London this time of year and for some reason I was wide awake about 5.30, even though we didn't need to set off till 10. At least I was well organized by then.

We had our first experience with British national rail, which was very fast efficient and perfectly on time. Only criticism would be that the overhead racks are not big enough to fit most bags so they all end up in a pile near the door. And some of the other passengers make a heck of a lot of noise.

Whatever, the train rolled into the splendid York railway station a bit after one. York station, when it opened in 1877, was the largest in the world and it is a beautiful structure still today.

Our hotel is an easy and pleasant 10 minutes walk from the station. We are right across the road from a fine.  medieval chuch, St Olaves, and a statue of the Nowegian saint gazes across at us through our window.

York is a huge and welcome change from London, there are lots of pedestrian only streets, the street scapes with mediaeval, Tudor, and architecturally sympathetic more recently buildings (William Morris would approve of them I think), are largely intact, and the pace of life is vastly more relaxed.

We went for an orientation exploration walk, through the garden past the ruins of St Mary's Abbey, said hello to the squirrels, declined the chance to view the interior of York Minster at 10 pounds a head, walked along a section of the old city walls, found our way through tiny winding streets filled with houses with crazy bowing beams and angles, then back home for a rest before dinner, and a stroll along the banks of the Ouze with it's long boats and their little chimneys smoking away in the dusk.

It seems to be a lovely city. We are looking forward to exploring further tomorrow.

Red House, Bexleyheath

A visit to the Post Office first off, to send back a book and warm weather clothes which we probably won't be needing as we head North. It was a very reassuring experience - this post office exuded an air of calm competence, a feeling of efficient utterly reliable systems that would carry our parcels unerringly to their destinations.

John picked us up at 10, and the traffic was good so we got to Bexleyheath and the Red House well before their opening time.

I think we managed to schmooze the lady at reception, telling her we'd come from Australia to see the house, as she sent the three of us off on the 11.00 tour, leaving a large group who had just appeared to. cool their heels till the next tour at 11.30.

The house itself, built for William Morris, textile designer, poet, novelist, translator and social designer, and founder of the Arts and Crafts Movement, was claimed by the National Trust to be"one of the most influential buildings in the history of domestic architecture and garden design." Not too sure about that, but it certainly is a distinctive creation.

The house was built in 1859, in a style drawing upon Morris's thinking about the use of natural materials and on his interest in medieval and gothic architecture.

The location at the time was beyond what Morris described as the "creeping sore" of London. The creeping sore has well and truly reached Bexleyheath, and the house is surrounded by suburbia. Morris become a prototype commuter, walking three miles each day to catch a train to Bloomsbury in London, making for a three to four hour a day commute. I can relate to how hard that must have been. After six years, a combination of financial pressures and the wear and tear of living in what was then a fairly remote location led to Morris and his family leaving the Red House.

A beautiful place and a lovely garden, with lots of beautiful decorative touches remaining despite bits being carted off to other museums and galleries,  but it has a sort of melancholy air - a wonderful ambitious shot at creating an ideal beautiful place that would become the heart of a new movement, but one that didn't quite come off. You certainly get a sense of the intense creative energy of the man.

After lunch in the cafe, which was the original kitchen, we drove to John's house which is a mini gallery in its own right, and spent a pleasant few hours, before he dropped us right outside a shop in Greenwich which Anne wanted to visit. It was great to have a local to give us something of a Londoner's perspective on things - it made our visit here much richer than it would otherwise have been.

So, now we are psyching ourselves up to leave tomorrow. We will be sorry to leave Greenwich.

Soane's House and the BM

Today we took it very slowly, as we will need to be up early and firing on all cylinders the next few days.

First stop was Sir John Soane's House. I found it unsettling/annoying for a number of reasons. The collection is not well organized or described, and despite forking out three pounds on the guide book, I was not much the wiser as to what most of the stuff was, where it came from, how it fitted with anything else. The house is fairly squeezy, crowded with people, and a fair chunk of the available space is taken up by an exhibition of contemporary sculptures, disturbingly anatomical life sized casts in the middle of most of the rooms. For my money I would go direct to the British Museum.

Which is exactly what we did next.

The British Museum was for us an antidote to the morning's experience. As librarians, we like stuff ordered, and the Enlightenment room, with it's splendid light filled spacious proportions and well ordered glass cabinets of well described objects, was our sort of place.

Anne had a specific shop she wanted to visit over near Hanover square, so we navigated our way there and while she shopped I visited Handel's local church, pretty much unchanged from when he worshipped there, and just down the road from the venue of the first performance of the Messiah.

The metro was hot and crowded, and we were relieved to get onto the light rail and be transported home. After resting up a bit, we collected our tickets for the train to York on Thursday, hit Sainsburys to stock up on supplies, had a chat to a chap with a Brompton folding bike, caught up on the washing, then wandered over the road to the Golden Chippy which apparently is Trip Advisor number 2 restaurant in London. Not quite sure how they manage to get so far up the ranking, but cheerful cheap and nice chips so we we're happy.

Tomorrow we are off to William Morris's Red House which should be a nice change of pace.

Avebury

This morning was cold and drizzly. John very kindly collected us and we made the long drive out of London and down the M4 to Avebury.  The outer circle is said to be the largest Neolithic stone circle in Europe. The amount of effort required to shift so many stones, some of them weighing more than 40 tons, and digging the earth works for the surrounding henge, is hard to imagine. The villagers in the 14th century started to push over the stones, probably for religious reasons, till one poor chap was flattened underneath a particularly large stone, which understandably discouraged his colleagues from further stone toppling. He was still there when archaeologists raised the stone in 1938.

The site is important for contemporary pagans, and there were a group there today communing with a fine group of four oak trees growing on the top of the henge wall.

For lunch we headed over to the Red Lion, a suitably quaint hotel in the village located within the perimeter of the outer circle and the hence. Nice to eat lunch looking out over the stones and the sheep grazing around them. After lunch we pottered around the picturesque village and visited the church of St James, where "All God's creatures are welcome .. dog treats in the purple Tupperware on the shelf." A bit funky but welcoming and with it's heart in the right place I think.

The area is rich with bronze age sites, and we passed another, even more impressive one on the way home. Silbury Hill is a huge man made mounf, which is said to have been the tallest man made structure (I guess a mound of gravel, chalk and Earth is a structure) in Europe till the middle ages. Once again, the scale of it and the effort required to build it are just stunning.

It was marvellous to see these sites and to think a bit about what it means to be human. We aren't so far away from the people who wrangled those huge stones, dug the massive henge,  and carried in the earth to build Silbury Hill.And it was lovely to get out and see some AONBs (that is, areas of outstanding natural beauty) and some of the lovely old towns on the old Bath Road, all with a genial and good humoured friend and guide. We feel very fortunate.

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Tower and Prime Meridian

We got down to the entrance to the Tower of London about 20 minutes before the doors opened, and not a moment too late as the queue already stretched right up the hill.

But we got in and Anne made a beeline for the crown Jewels display. There are some extraordinary stories behind some of those stones sitting in their splendid settings - like the Black Prince's Ruby and the Koh-i-Noor. We went round and round on the moving walkway quite a few times admiring them. I did the climb up and down the White tower while Anne enjoyed some sunshine and a chance to read the book on the Crown Jewels she'd bought from the Tower shop, then after a bit more exploring ,we headed out and down to the river and caught a cruise boat back to Greenwich. The river is lined with countless thousands of apartments, each one of which would be worth more than 1.5 million pounds. Makes the head spin to think how much money has gone into that stretch of water.

We had a nice lunch in the sun in the walled garden at the back of the Naval College buildings, then trudged up the steep Hill to the Observatory, to admire Harrison's 4 fantastically intricate chromometers in action, and to pay our respects to the Prime Meridian. Lovely views from up there too, worth the walk.

Afterwards we wandered back through the park and via some very interesting back streets back to our hotel. On the way we passed an intriguing building, a 19th century school, with two doors, one enscribed "Girls and Infants" and the other, narrower door, "Boys". Why is the boy's door narrower? Why did they need separate doors? What were the infant's doing coming here anyway? All very mysterious and a bit grim looking.

 A good day, lovely weather, and though we are tired we managed not to do too much, keeping our effort expenditure to sustainable levels.

Downtown London

After breakfast we headed out to give our Oyster cards a workout. We got from Greenwich to Leicester Square via Light Rail and two tube hops, and feel pretty smug about being able to get around now.

At Leicester Square we picked up our London Passes, which we bought in Australia using a credit we had with our local travel agent. Glad we didn't spend good money on it, as so far it has been a bit of a dud. One advertised benefit is free use of the hop on hop off buses, but the fine print tells you that you have to get a ticket for the bus from the booking office. Luckily we discovered this before we left the booking office, but we saw other not so lucky punters being turned away. The bus proved to be a draining experience. London traffic is just appallingly congested so the bus goes nowhere very slowly. The commentary is a cross between grade four and Benny Hill, and the group of German ladies behind us talked incessantly and loudly. We bailed out near the Victoria and Albert Museum, had some welcome lunch in their very nice cafe, then explored some of their dazzling collection.

After so many people, so many grand buildings and towering imposing monuments, it was strangely soothing to focus on the inticate delicacy of the collection of  minatures and gold snuff boxes.

Being a lazy peasant who had done no homework regarding the scope of the V&A, I had little idea of what was in the collection, so our visit was a series of pleasant surprise for me - around this corner a few William Blake paintings, over there some stunning Pre-Raphaelites, a wall of lovely Constable studies. Plus things I had no idea existed, like the life sized silver plated lions that are part of the Danish Royal regalia (ok these we copies, but still marvellous.)  So much to see, so little time to see it in, so few brain cells to absorb it.

We got another bus, but the traffic was unbearable after a while, so we got off and walked down to the River along the edge of St James park, which was a huge relief after the congestion and crowds.

We managed to get a little lost but found our selves at Embankment ferry terminal, so we used our Oyster cards again and got the Thames Clipper ferry back to Greenwich, much nicer and simpler than hopping from train to train, and a great view of the sights of the city.

After a beer in the sun at the Greenwich Brewery, and a Chinese meal so massive we couldn't eat half of it, and a long stump back up Greenwich high road, we made it home. Now to regenerate sufficiently so that we can get out there again tomorrow.