We have been to Britain a number of times since 1975, each visit separated by many years. The country has changed a lot. The southern part of the country seems more modern and international than previously – there’s no sign of the frayed drabness of the Seventies. Doug met Paul and Michele
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| Paul striking a heroic pose on his steed |
White, our hosts in Hampshire, during his Junior Year Abroad at the University of Wales in 1978-1979. We’ve always been honored by their friendship, their tremendous positive outlook (and their patience with Americans!) Their sons Isaac, 18 and Ben, 21 have all the positive characteristics of their parents and it will be a pleasure to see what they decide to do with their lives.
Paul and Michele's house in Ringwood is a short drive from Queen Mary II's berth in Southampton. We dropped all our gear in our guest rooms and went out immediately for a long mountain bike ride into the New Forest.
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| Jenny and Michele deciding what's what |
By coincidence (surely!) we soon came to a fine pub where we felt compelled to pause for refreshment. We sat outside on a fine afternoon and enjoyed a pint of good local ale. There’s no better welcome to Britain than that. Except another pub a few miles on through the forest!
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| Isaac, our enthusiastic host and Very Fine Fellow |
The New Forest is a national park within walking distance of Paul and Michele’s house. It has existed as a preserve since 1087 when William I (you know, The Conqueror) decided the area would make a good hunting retreat. Prior to that, according to Wikipedia, the area was known to the Romans as the Forest of Spinaii and to the Anglo-Saxons as the Great Ytene Forest. “Ytene” meant “Juten” in reference to the area’s settlement by the Anglo-Saxon Jutes from the area known today as Jutland in Denmark. In the forest we passed what is thought to be the remains of a royal enclosure, or regular campsite, where William came to hunt. Though it’s nice to think of all those millennia of conservation-minded people caring for the Forest, in reality the soils are so poor there wasn’t much else to do with the land.
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| House in the New Forest |
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| Kate loved our bike rides |
The New Forest is as much open meadows covered with heather as it is forest. The land is gently rolling and perfect for walks, horseback riding and mountain biking. The woodlands have traditionally been managed for timber but are being restored in several places to the original mix of hardwoods for improved habitat. On one of the days we biked we saw the brilliant carpet of heather glowing under a dark grey sky as if the flowers were lit by a black light. It was marvelous to see the heather in such extravagant bloom.
Our two weeks with the Whites quickly settled into a mix of visits to historic sites and rest days of journeys into the Forest or hikes along the chalk cliffs of Hampshire and Dorset. Almost every day ended with a feast that Michele seemed to conjure effortlessly. We hope our hosts were as comfortable with us as we were with them! Our visit was relaxed and perfect.
Our first full day after arrival we drove to Bath to see the Roman baths and some of the magnificent Georgian and Palladian architecture that surrounds them. Each time we have visited Bath we have seen new aspects of the archaeological dig and new interpretations of what’s been found. As previously, we were struck by the worn steps of the temple of Minerva (Athena), patron of the baths, and by the striking bronze bust of the goddess herself that was found among the ruins. Another favorite is the selection of requests Romans wrote on small lead sheets and tossed into the sacred spring for the gods’ review. The faithful wanted everything from good luck on upcoming journeys to the gods' revenge upon personal enemies. The requests seem very familiar in their tone and bring the people of that period to life.
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| Minerva! |
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| The Roman plumbing still works - Bath |
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| Visiting a sculptor's workshop in Bath |
England’s history is as layered as the sediments in the Grand Canyon. Centuries of relative stability would suddenly end, wrenching into new eras. The 400 years of Roman occupation following Caesar’s invasion in 54 ACE is sandwiched between two essentially prehistoric periods – that of the Celtic Britons prior, and that of the Angles and Saxons after the Romans withdrew. You can’t help feeling a bit sorry for the "original" Celtic Britons who themselves were settlers from the Continent after the ice sheets withdrew. They were either absorbed by the Romans or pushed into present-day Cornwall , Wales and the Lake District of North England, where their descendants can still can be seen as sometimes darker and shorter than other English people.
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| King Paul I enthroned at Winchester |
When the Western Roman Empire collapsed in 449, the Romans were soon replaced by colonizing Angles and Saxons sailing over from what is now Belgium, Holland and Denmark. These new invaders hadn’t had any exposure to Roman culture and certainly had no interest in baths. They thought the Roman buildings, bridges and roads they encountered had been built by giants. Before they could get fully settled in the eastern part of the island, the Angles and Saxons were pressured in turn by raids from their even less-civilized cousins the Vikings, who ravaged the coasts of Europe and later took over large portions of northeast Britain.
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| Great Hall at Winchester w/ Round Table on the wall |
The Vikings, or Norsemen, spent so much time raiding the northern coast of what is now France that the Frankish king made a deal with them to create Normandy, their own duchy, if they would stop being so belligerent . They happily accepted but continued raiding along the coast. When William, Duke of Normandy, landed in England he was really going to war against his Scandinavian cousins.
William’s invasion has never been successfully repeated. The most significant efforts were the Spanish Armadas during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and World War II. Until the French finally drove the English out of France at the end of the Hundred Years’ War in 1453, the kingdoms of England and France draped across the Channel. They were based more on feudal relationships than on geography.
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| Norman transept with view of newer Gothic beyond at Winchester Cathedral |
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| One of six chests containing bones of Saxon kings - Winchester |
When we went to Winchester we were taken aback by the depth of its history as the long-time capital of England. The castle is mostly gone but the beautiful timbered Great Hall remains, having been a center of English law from the time of William until just recently when the courtrooms were moved to a modern, laughably boring facility next door. Henry II’s version of King Arthur’s Round Table hangs above where kings and judges heard petitioners for over 800 years. Henry II was a great lover of the troubadours and the romantic tales of the 12
th century. He had the table built as a way of celebrating Arthurian tradition and appropriating some of its mystique for his own reign. When the greatest appropriator of all the Henrys, Henry the Eighth came along, he couldn’t resist painting the Round Table with a Tudor Rose and his own face as Arthur’s.
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| Michele kept smiling no matter what |
Paul and Michele set up a Shakespeare play at Stratford-upon-Avon. Thanks to Michele, we were able to get tickets for Macbeth, performed by the RSC. Wow! Not only was it spine-tingling to see the play in Shakespeare’s home town, it was a very good production. We recognized several of the actors from movies such as "A Knight's Tale" and "Prince of Persia".
Oxford the next day was a real pleasure. Thank goodness Paul and Michele were willing to drive! British drivers are clearly better trained than Americans, but there are a lot of them. The traffic was intense. Nine dollar gas doesn’t seem to keep people off the road.
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| Oxford student dive bar for 800 years or so |
The University makes up almost the whole of central Oxford. We were loath to spend $10 a person to enter each of the colleges, so we peeked through the gates at the gardens and enjoyed the splendid gold-colored stone buildings. The streets were thronged. At one point Kate got a little too enthusiastic about looking into one college. She got her head stuck between the bars of the gate just as an elderly couple arrived wanting to go through. We freed her and had a good laugh, teasing Kate that Oxford didn’t admit students who failed this basic intelligence test. As always she was a great sport and laughed as hard as we did.
When Paul wasn’t feeling well one day Michele took us to Salisbury and Stonehenge. The cathedral is looking very spiff after a major overhaul. Much of the original painting has been restored, giving the interior warmth and energy it was missing after being whitewashed by some stuffy bishop in the 1700’s. We also liked the energy shown by the cathedral community in the art installation and presentations about the cathedral community's human rights activities around the world. This kind of vitality is critical if the Anglican Church is going to survive in its homeland. At present, less than 20% of the English attend church of any kind.
Salisbury Cathedral is home to one of four remaining copies of Magna Carta, the foundation document for all the constitutions to follow. Old King John really was a rat - he asked the Pope to rescind it shortly after signing, and the Pope agreed. It is written beautifully in Latin shorthand on vellum, the skin of a calf’s belly. The script compresses at the bottom where the scribe realized he didn’t have enough room to keep everything to one page. Magna Carta is displayed in a very accessible case making for easy viewing. A cheerful elderly lady guards it and is happy to tell stories about King John's perfidy and Magna Carta's eventual triumph. We were all impressed. Salisbury town is beautiful as well. Many medieval buildings complement the cathedral.
Stonehenge is just up the road. Like all other major attractions in Britain, it now charges a steep entry fee. We were able to get a good look from outside the fence. All the stones seem back in order after Clark Griswold knocked them over in "National Lampoon's European Vacation." The stones, at once kind of silly in their position at a fork in the road with lots of traffic zooming by, are also enigmatic as a reminder of the length of human habitation in England. In 8,000 years the English have been pretty good stewards of the land. We also took a look at the archaeological work that's radiating from the henge to the surrounding fields and includes many burial mounds, a broad processional avenue and several straight intersecting lines about a mile long. We had not known that some of the largest stones, weighing up to 65 tons, were brought from a quarry in Wales 3,000 years ago. The trip involved crossing the Severn River which was no small feat.
On our “down” days we hiked the coast at Christchurch, Durdle Door, Lulworth and some other small towns nestled in the green hills near the sea. The weather held beautifully for us and we got to see where the Olympic sailing events will be held near Weymouth. The south coast has a wealth of beautiful hikes. One evening we all drove to Bournemouth to see fireworks over the harbor.
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| A walk along the coast, Dorset |
One of our days ended at Corfe Castle. This Norman stronghold was ordered blown up by Parliament during the English Civil War in the 1640's. They must have used some serious gunpowder and undermining because huge chunks of the walls and keep lie on their side. Enough remains in tale and stone to be an exciting place to explore for 13 year-olds of every age. The dark shadow of King John extends here, too. When Maud of Braose angered him, he had her and her son walled up in the dungeon of Corfe Castle, where they eventually died in the cold darkness.
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| Kate emerging from "murder hole" at Corfe |
On a more cheerful note, we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary on August 16th with a lovely bike ride through the New Forest and with Champagne and a fine dinner with Paul, Michele and Isaac. Our entire visit with them was simply smashing. We can’t wait to reciprocate when they come to visit us in the US!
All too soon we had to pack up our gear and hit the road. Since British Rail was privatized, it’s become prohibitively expensive to take the train on most routes. Luckily the bus system has expanded to take up the slack. In the drizzle of an early morning on August 18 we said a sad goodbye to Paul and Michele and caught an early morning bus from Bournemouth to Ipswich.
Tony, Wendy and Verity Poulston were our next hosts in the little village of Felixstowe in Suffolk on the east coast of England. Their daughter Verity and Kate had shared 4
th grade at the Ashwood Waldorf School in Rockport, Maine when Tony and Wendy were in the US for a year. Tony develops computer software for predictive currency trading and Wendy performs and teaches music. We’d kept in touch and thought both Kate and Verity would enjoy some time together. They picked up right where they left off, and so did we four grownups.
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| Kate and Doug with Verity, Wendy and Tony Poulston, Kentwell |
The afternoon of our arrival we toured the waterfront in Felixstowe, which is very modern and the busiest port in Britain. As some rain moved in we stopped for a pint in an old pub by the seaside. Felixstowe is quite small considering the amount of freight that it handles. Just outside town the gently rolling countryside resumes with nice walks everywhere.
Doug was delighted to hear that the Saxon burial site of Sutton Hoo was nearby. ("Shouldn’t that be 'Hoom'"? he wondered.) In the 1920’s a local woman had decided that the amateur digs in burial mounds on her property needed some professional guidance. She hired an archaeologist to do some digging of his own. He quickly realized that he was onto a major find: a complete, undisturbed burial of what appeared to be a Saxon king from the 7
th century. The king, believed to be Raedwald, was buried in a chamber beneath a 90-foot Saxon ship. The ship was entirely decayed, but the iron nails and outline remained in the soil. Later, when we were in London, we visited the treasure at the British Museum. It includes a war helmet, a royal silver service, a king’s sword and many finely wrought gold objects.
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| Part of the Sutton Hoo treasure, British Museum |
At Sutton Hoo (Sut = South, ton=town, Hoo=hill) we walked the field where the discovery was made and got a good sense of what the land was like at the time of the burial. Getting a 90-foot oak ship up the hill from the river must have been quite a task. Researchers are working to locate the site of the royal hall which they know must be nearby.
The evening of August 19th we were treated to more Shakespeare. This time it was Twelfth Night performed by a professional company in a forest. It was an excellent production, having just the right amount of Shakespearean zaniness. The children in the audience laughed uproariously. Behind us, we heard a child excitedly explaining to his father what was happening in the play. Shakespeare would have been very pleased.
On our last day with the Poulstons we toured Kentwell, a Tudor manor
house in the Suffolk countryside. It is owned privately by a family
that has been working to restore it for decades. Much of the original
house is intact, including the kitchen. We were allowed to wander
through without supervision. It’s one of those places you immediately
want to live in, and in which you can readily imagine the life of the
original residents. Kate and Verity got a kick out of the voracious
carp that fill the moat. The fish gather in a great roiling mass
anytime a person approaches. We made up voices for them as they gaped
at us from below the bridge. A duck practically walked over the fish as
it maneuvered for any possible scraps of food.
All too soon we had to get on the train for London. Verity thought it might be fun to accompany us, so we four went ahead. Tony and Wendy would follow in a few days because they were due to pick Miriam up from her summer working in Dorset.
