Beautiful Britain: A Blanket of Bluebells

Posted on May 23, 2017 by lisafindley

England is home to some of the oldest wild bluebell woods in the world, and the British get pretty excited about seeing “a blanket of bluebells.” After walking through the woods of Ashridge Estate earlier this May, I see what they mean — it’s a wonderful sight, just a layer of purplish blue spread out as far as you can see, amongst the deadwood of the forest floor and the green trees glowing in the springtime sunlight.

The English bluebell is very delicate, and if you walk on some, the crumpled leaves can’t rally and photosynthesize anymore, so the flowers die, and it can take years for them to grow back. It’s actually illegal to intentionally disturb or uproot bluebells in the United Kingdom. Since about half the world’s bluebells are found here, you can see why they’re so eager to protect the fragile flower.

Kind of looked like little bamboo shoots, but I’m not sure what they were growing here

Aldbury village

Old Tudor buildings in the village

The walk from Tring train station to the visitor center at Ashridge Estate isn’t complicated, but it’s also not very well signed, so we took a slight detour down one right-of-way path along a field of something green, rather than following the path along a different field, but that just meant we saw something a little different on our walk back to the train station.

Lovely lanes leading out from the village

Aldbury from the path to the train station

Bridgewater Monument

Aldbury from up on the ridge

The best part about all of this was that we’d been told the bluebells were past their peak and there probably wouldn’t be much to see — even the woman at the visitor center sounded doubtful that the woods were looking so good. All I can say to that is, this has got to be the most beautiful decline I’ve ever seen. The season is short, but if you’re able to get to a British wood in late April/early May, go looking for a blanket of bluebells — it’s worth all the superlatives attached to it.

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Beautiful Britain: Rochester

Posted on May 15, 2017 by lisafindley

Counting down the reasons to visit Rochester in 3, 2, 1… Rochester has England’s third-oldest Norman keep, second-oldest cathedral, and largest second-hand bookshop. I recently visited and decided that this small city in Kent on the River Medway is the perfect day trip for visitors who are basing themselves in London but want to experience the charm of a small English town as well.

The Castle

Rochester Castle

When William the Conqueror came over from France in 1066, he decided one of the ways he was going to remind the local residents that he was now in charge was by building a bunch of castles to literally tower over them. He gave a castle to one of his pals after the Conquest, but that castle was abandoned after said pal used it to stage a rebellion against William’s son, the presumptive heir to the throne. No matter; when you’ve found a good location, stick with it: William II asked the Bishop of Rochester, Gundulf, to rebuild the castle, and a few decades later, Henry I made the castle the property of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The man who held that title at the time, William de Corbeil, was, like Gundulf, also an architect, and he built the Norman keep that still stands today. So in sum: Father gave a castle to a friend, his son got a friend to rebuilt that castle, and then his other son gave that same castle to another friend. Very chummy.

Ruler of my domain

Amazing warning

A little bit of the naturally marshy land is left

Best preserved Norman keep in England or France

Rochester Castle was the site of several sieges over the next century and a half, making the strong walls of the keep (the innermost part of the castle) all the more important, as at some points all the inhabitants of the castle had to retreat to the keep to fend off attackers. During one of these sieges, in 1215, King John burned forty fat pigs underneath one corner of the keep; the resulting fire was hot enough to burn through the wooden supports beneath wall, and that portion of the keep collapsed. It was later rebuilt as a rounded tower, which was a stronger design less susceptible to sneaky pig-fire attacks.

Like many castles that were once essential to the defense of the local noble’s claims of land and power, Rochester Castle was later used for various purposes, including a prison and an illegal source of stone for other buildings. By the 19th century it was in disrepair, and the local government set it up as a park. Now it’s an English Heritage site, which means the keep is well-preserved (one of the best-preserved Norman keeps in England or France), and the grounds are a big park, with an ice cream vendor at the entrance.

The Cathedral

Gundulf was a busy man. Not only was he Bishop of Rochester, he built up the cathedral itself (while also building the castle next door). There had been a cathedral on site for over 400 years, but years of underfunding meant that what was left wasn’t much. So Gundulf built it basically from the ground up, and much of this remains today, although several fires destroyed parts of the building over the years and those sections had to be repaired. (Side note: I couldn’t help but call Gundulf “Gandalf” all day; there’s a statue of him out front with a long, flowing beard and his pointy bishop hat, and it was too good to resist.)

Rochester Cathedral

The choir

I rarely see a knight in stained glass in churches

Alarmingly non-creepy undercroft

Chevron style from the Norman period

Because Rochester is on the London-Canterbury road, several kings passed through town over the years, and they usually left small offerings at the cathedral on their way. One king who was distinctly not pleased with the place was Henry VIII, who met Anne of Cleaves for the first time in Rochester. History buffs may remember that he was “greatly disappointed” by her, because he didn’t think she was as hot as her picture. Tinder dating is always a risk, guys.

Original fresco

Magnolia flowers

The Bookshop

Excellent name

There are other bookshops in town, so they are reassuring you that you’ve chosen the one that matches the sign you saw from the train

A familiar, comforting sight

I first became interested in Rochester not because of the castle or the cathedral, but because of a sign I saw as my train passed through en route to another destination. Across the brick walls of the shop were large painted letters declaring “England’s Largest Rare & Secondhand Bookshop.” That’s how you bait a Lisa-trap, right there.

Baggins Book Bazaar was just what you’d hope: several stories, with front staircases and back staircases and a fairy door; books shelved in an orderly manner until there was no more room on the shelves, at which point the books just built themselves nests on any available surface; prominently displayed copies of books on local celebrity Charles Dickens, who lived and died very near here and featured Rochester Castle in some of his stories; friendly staff who laughed gently when I said I wouldn’t mind being “accidentally” left there overnight when they locked up.

There are many little shops in Rochester that would be fun to stop into, if you had more time than I did on my visit — including one that declared itself a “dino store,” a shop of oddities, and another bookstore — but you must at least stop into Baggins when you visit, to smell that used-book smell and smile at all the human creativity and ingenuity put into print and waiting for you to discover.

A beautiful spring day in Rochester

Rochester Cathedral from atop Rochester Castle

Beautiful Britain is the title I settled on for posts about the British adventures I’m having while living in London. It covers London and non-London locations alike.

Beautiful Britain: Nunhead Cemetery

Posted on January 16, 2017 by lisafindley

When my friend visited this past weekend, her only request for sightseeing was “one of the Magnificent Seven,” and she wasn’t talking about movies. She was referring to the 19th-century cemeteries set up in what were then the suburbs of London, and have since become part of the metropolis itself. People had been overfilling cemeteries in London proper, which meant decaying corpses oozed into the water supply, spreading disease. So new cemeteries with plenty of room were built away from the city center, in less of a cramped and more of a more park-like arrangement, apparently modeled after Père Lachaise in Paris.

Nunhead Cemetery, London

We went to Nunhead Cemetery on a gloomy winter day, which is the correct time to go, of course. A few other people wandered through the gates carrying cameras, like us, but they took a different route from us and somehow we never ran into them. Every ten minutes or we encountered men walking their dogs; the dog would give us a sniff and a friendly wag of the tail, and the man would give a slight nod of acknowledgement, and they’d move on. So we mostly had the place to ourselves, which only added to the slightly spooky atmosphere.

The Anglican Chapel

Art installation in the Anglican Chapel

Is this someone growing hops?

Most of the graves were from the 19th century, and apparently left untended for at least the last several decades; gravestones tripped precariously to one side, beheaded angels stood guard over larger graves, stone inscriptions were eroding away or covered in bright green moss. The paths were well-maintained but anything just off of them was left in a perfect state of romantic decay. A Gothic sense of melancholy draped over the stones along with the creeping ivy.

At one point, we were admiring a crow as he hopped about, and then he picked up what seemed to be a chicken bone, and just when the scene couldn’t get more macabre, he fluttered into the air and alighted on a headstone. If you’re looking for a mournful Victorian graveyard to wander about in, I can highly recommend Nunhead Cemetery.

Beautiful Britain is the title I settled on for posts about the British adventures I’m having while living in London. It covers London and non-London locations alike.

Beautiful Britain: Runnymede

Posted on February 8, 2016 by lisafindley

“You have to really menace me with those swords,” I reminded my friends. “Don’t hold back.” They rolled their eyes at me, but obliged by brandishing their sticks more threateningly. The woman taking our photo looked bemused. Welcome to traveling with me–there’s probably going to be some ridiculous posing, and it might well involve liberal interpretations of what a historical moment might have looked like. In this case, the signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede.

“Okay, okay, I’ll sign it! You can have your property rights!”

The Magna Carta Memorial

The Magna Carta is held up as a sort of proto-democratic document, the fledgling beginnings of constitutional rights. And it was the first document in Western society of its kind, even if it was an agreement reached between a weak king and his disgruntled barons, dealing in large part with the property rights of those barons. But never mind, it’s got a lot of symbolic power. It was used throughout the centuries as the basis for laws granting liberties in England, and the Founding Fathers looked to it when they were drawing up the United States Constitution.

The walk to Runnymede

It was really, really, really muddy

The green of spring

Runnymede

King John signed the Magna Carta on June 15, 1215, which means that when I visited last year, it was nearly the 800th anniversary of the signing. There were probably some ceremonies in June last year to commemorate the anniversary, but on that overcast April day, the site was pretty empty. We met only a few people on our walk from the start of the National Trust trail, through the woods and fields, to the monument itself.

Set up by the ABA

Sure, why not

Once at the monument, we saw that the American Bar Association had put it up and maintained it. There was also a monument to John F Kennedy, and a tree planted to commemorate the bicentennial of the United States–that last seems a bit cheeky on English soil. So pretty much everything there was put up by the Americans. My mom said it was typical of both countries: the English took it for granted that this major historical site was just there, and the Americans needed to mark it ostentatiously. Sounds about right.

Action shot along the Thames

Runnymede

Wouldn’t have minded a ride back to town on that boat

When I mentioned to my mom that I’d gone to Runnymede, she asked how I’d got on the island. What island, I wanted to know. She’d been taught at school that the Magna Carta was signed on an island in the Thames. I didn’t even see an island when I was there. I did see the ruins of a priory across the river, unreachable from where we were, and an old yew tree near it, which the Internet tells me is likely the actual spot the document was signed. So the memorial isn’t quite in the right spot. We can only fetishize historical places so much, because it’s all an approximation. I suppose, as usual, it’s what we’ve done with that historical moment that matters.

You can spot the ruins of the priory across the river there

Two stone plinths stood on either side of the two-lane highway that buzzed right through the medes. One of the plinths had this grand inscription.

Ah yes, the tearoom of the major historical and political document. Two scones, please.

Lovely day out with Liz and Michal

Beautiful Britain: The Royal Park of Richmond

Posted on November 13, 2015 by lisafindley

Autumn deserves notice and celebration, and that doesn’t come in the form of pumpkin spice lattes or wool leggings. It comes in the form of long walks, preferably walks that involve some scuffling through fallen leaves. The first weekend of October this year, I paid tribute to the season by visiting Richmond Park, which is one of the royal parks of London.

Richmond Park takes up 2,500 acres, which is about three times as large as Central Park in New York (!). Some of its oaks have been standing since Charles I first created the park in 1637. Like so much in this country, very old things trundle along in the modern day here. Also, most of the beautiful, old things were only very recently made available to the general public. Pembroke Lodge, for example, was owned by the prime minister and was later the birthplace of that PM’s grandson, philosopher Bertrand Russell; the lodge is now a tea room and a place you can rent for weddings.

As far back as Henry VIII, monarchs used the park to hunt deer. Where I come from, deer hunting is a big deal, but here the deer are protected. (You have to read the fine print on some of the signs around the park to realize that they cull a certain number of deer each year to keep them from growing too numerous, since they have no natural predators in the park. So… still a hunting ground? I’m not sure how the culling is done.) There are red and fallow deer in the park, and the males are either stags or bucks depending on which type of deer they are, but I don’t know the difference so I’m afraid I just thought of them all as ‘bucks.’

Here’s a slideshow of photos I took around the park. The deer roam free, and you’re warned to keep a certain distance, especially during rutting season. I did not want to get in the way of a horny buck, so I definitely kept my distance. They make an amazing call when they’re in the mood, a really guttural groan. I got a little of that noise on a super short video, which you can also see below.

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Beautiful Britain is the title I settled on for posts about the British adventures I’m having while living in London. It covers London and non-London locations alike.

Beautiful Britain: Berrington Hall

Posted on October 23, 2015 by lisafindley

I’m visiting my grandmother in Worcestershire this weekend, so I decided it was probably time to post about my visit to her in February, when she took me to Berrington Hall for the afternoon. Created as “the perfect house in the perfect setting,” according to the National Trust, Berrington Hall is a Georgian house built on grounds designed by famed landscape architect Capability Brown. It’s one of the many great houses dotting the English landscape, and I have to say, I’m still not tired of visiting these places.

The severe facade of Berrington Hall (with grandmother for scale)

The National Trust decided to set up the house as it might have looked in its early days, and they’re aided in this by the 18th-century furniture filling the house. None of it is original, because as is the case so often with aristocrats, the family eventually had more debts than money, and most things were sold off. But it’s a collection from the same Georgian period, so you can get an idea of what it looked like then. What it looked like was elegant. If you’ve ever seen an Austen adaptation, then you know what to expect: clean lines, delicate colors, neoclassical geometry. I much prefer it to the overstuffed ostentation of later Victorian decorations. (For some reason, I took a lot of mediocre to bad photos from this visit, so, sorry about that.)

Elegance in the hallway

When my grandmother and I arrived at the estate on the last day of February, it had started to drizzle. A very eager volunteer offered to take us from the parking lot to the front door in her golf cart, stopping at the triumphal arch so we could buy our tickets and then zipping along to the main hall. My grandmother had merely brought her walking stick with her, and voila!–instant assistance. If you needed more reasons to visit your elderly relatives, how about this kind of VIP treatment?

The library

Each room contained a volunteer docent, and all but one of those docents very much wanted to share their knowledge of the place with us. We learned about the family who built the house after making a tidy fortune, the family who married in and many years later gambled away that fortune and lost the house, and the family who bought the house and kept it until the National Trust took over in the ’50s.

Can you tell your Newton from your Addison?

Complemented by a battle scene on the other side of the room

The ceiling of the library had bas-reliefs of famous artists and scientists, and our docent reeled off their names and claims to fame. The dining room held a couple impressive naval paintings, and my grandmother and the docent discussed the uses of various arcane silver dishes on the massive dining table.

I love that the ceilings were considered another canvas for art back in the day–no need for them to just be plain

Upstairs, some old military uniforms were on display, and one of the rooms–which was in the shape of an oval, for some reason–focused on the sons of the house who died in the First World War. Other oddities here and there, like the Georgian need for symmetry throughout the house, which went so far as to lead to some false doors being included, just to balance out real doors on the other side of the room; or the telegram from the queen congratulating the lady of the house on reaching her hundredth birthday.

Dressing room for the man of the house

The oval room created some odd closet spaces in the other rooms

Lady Cawley’s room

Grand staircase

Throughout the house were mannequins displaying costumes from various BBC productions of Austen novels, including the outfits Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant were wearing when Edward finally proposes to Elinor, so that was a little thrill. My main takeaway from the costumes, other than how thin these actresses really are, is how short everyone is. Maybe Tom Cruise doesn’t look so short in his films because all of Hollywood is actually 5’5″.

Elinor & Edward costumes

Costumes from the Charles Paget Wade Collection

The lady’s boudoir

Museums trying to shake their fusty image, with a few hands-on items on display

After looking at the terrifying laundry room (so many heavy machines! so much hot work!), we had a nice lunch in the tea room, which used to be the servants’ dining hall. We walked past some parrots, which a couple had brought with them on their visit to the hall, sure okay, why not; we peeked in the dairy; we walked around the gardens and my grandmother pointed out plants that all looked the same to me, because I am a city-bred cretin.

Laundry used to be way harder

Oh hey there, birds

Entrance to the gardens

The dairy

Finally, we walked a bit of the grounds. There is a great view out to the Brecon Beacons from the house, and a long expanse of grass leads down to a man-made pond with woods along the back. To get to the meadow, we had to walk across a bridge that spanned the ha-ha. The what now? The ha-ha, which is the actual name given to a sort of moat construction that keeps a landscape looking unspoilt from a distance, and then as you get closer you see, “haha!” that there is a ditch and a wall separating the grounds from the main area of the house. The purpose of this was to keep the animals, who grazed around the meadow, from wandering too close to the house.

From Capability Brown’s landscape

Quite a lawn

The ha-ha up close

If you’re out in the western part of the Midlands, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more pleasant or representative great house than Berrington Hall.

Berrington Hall

Beautiful Britain is the title I settled on for posts about the British adventures I’m having while living in London. It covers London and non-London locations alike.

Beautiful Britain: The Long Way ‘Round to Tilbury

Posted on September 21, 2015 by lisafindley

“I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust. I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm.” — Queen Elizabeth I to the troops at Tilbury waiting to battle the Spanish Armada, 1588

Queen Elizabeth I gave this speech astride a magnificent steed and clad in armor, inspiring her troops to battle and all the people of England to see her as their true sovereign. Earlier this year, I tried to repeat some of these stirring words while standing approximately where she might have stood, but I was clad in a soaked-through raincoat and inspiring seagulls to give me a wide berth. Otherwise, pretty much the same thing.

A windswept Queen Elizabeth I impression (I am missing my velvet gown and armor)

By the end of March, Liz and I had decided our next English Heritage adventure would be to Tilbury Fort, built along the Thames estuary as one of several lines of defense against an attack by sea. There were earlier versions of a fort here, but the first permanent one was built under Henry VIII; he kept antagonizing France so much that he became concerned they might try to invade, so he got serious about defense. It was reinforced under Elizabeth I and Charles II, left to a lesser role for a while, and then had one last hurrah during World War II before being decommissioned and turned into a museum site.

The rear approach to Tilbury Fort

Along the ramparts of Tilbury Fort

So on a rainy Sunday, we took a train out to Tilbury town. We walked out of the station and into a bizarre world where literally not a single store was open, there appeared to be no pubs in the entire town (which I would have thought impossible if not downright illegal in the UK), and the Canadian flag flew outside the local council building. What had we done? What would Essex do to us?

I know it’s Sunday, but still…

Essex would soak us in endless amounts of rain and send us down the side of a fast two-lane road with no shoulder to walk on, that’s what it would do. We took a turn that we thought would lead us to a pub, but it just took us past a bunch of houses and onto Ford Road, which sounded promising but was still further away than if we’d just stuck to the main road from the train station. Still, better forge ahead, so we pulled up the hoods on our rain jackets and marched on.

Desolate landscape

Horses and ponies dotted the side of the road, squeezed onto tiny patches of muddy land, hemmed in by flimsy netted fencing. Bits of hay were strewn on the ground, and a few plants tried to grow, but mostly the poor animals were mucking about in mud. Liz fed one of them an apple from her pocket, which seemed an appropriate offering to these guardians along the road, before we carried on.

Nice pony

We walked along a small ridge, with the road on one side and a watery ditch on the other. Cars rushed by at 50 miles an hour, and rain sluiced down my glasses, leaving me partially sighted. The wind tried to push me into the ditch, but I had new boots and came to no harm, which will surprise everyone who has ever met me or heard of my misadventures. No, I didn’t fall down or twist an ankle. I just walked a couple miles out of my way in the driving rain and arrived at my destination already exhausted. The glories of travel!

World’s End is a pretty popular name for pubs in England, but by the time we stumbled upon the Tilbury one, a stone’s throw from the fort, the name obviously felt more appropriate than ever. We fortified ourselves with a giant meal, and it was only as we were leaving for the fort that I realized I’d gone native–normally after all that walking, the first thing I’d want would be a giant glass of water with my meal, but in Britain people generally have a sedate beer and no water with pub meals, and I’d done just that without even thinking about it.

Sunday roast

After all that, we still had a fort to visit. English Heritage has left the main courtyard mostly empty, except for a couple large cannons and machine guns, and from what I understand, historical re-enactors sometimes gather here for shows. Along one side, a row of buildings that used to house officers now holds creepy mannequins dressed in military uniform, as well as a cache of weapons on display.

The guardhouse at the entrance to the fort

The courtyard

Hello creepy

Along the back of the courtyard sits the warehouse where cannons and gunpowder were kept. There are apparently a few underground tunnels, but those were closed when we visited. If you climb up the small grassy hills at the corners of the fort, you have a good view of the flat land all around you, or if you’re on the southern end, the Thames as it flows out to sea.

Old shells and the machine that used to carry them from storage up to the guns

The fort was nearly empty the whole time we were there, which was unsurprising given the weather. So it was a bleak and bare visit, requiring a lot of imagination to see the fort full of the noise and hustle of soldiers. Up on the southern rampart, we found that the heavy guns left over from World War II could still be swung about, and the handles cranked in order to move the barrel of the gun up and down. So we sighted a large ship making its way up the estuary, and that is the closest I got to seeing things from a soldier’s point of view.

Sighting along the gun

The Thames estuary

I certainly didn’t see the fort from Queen Elizabeth I’s point of view, because she actually gave her speech outside the fort, where the troops were assembled. But looking out over the Thames and the surrounding landscape, I thought I would still give such a speech if I were her. Even with rain drizzling down the back of my neck, even looking at the flatness of Essex and the gray dullness of the Thames, I still felt a strong affection for this country. I was almost thrown to the ground by the wind as we walked back to the train station, and it took the entire trip back to London to get even a little dry, but that’s the kind of bracing walk you take here before a pot of tea and a packet of biscuits puts you right when you return home.

At this point, we’re not sure if we’ll ever be warm or dry again, but several hours later, we were both

Beautiful Britain is the title I settled on for posts about the British adventures I’m having while living in London. It covers London and non-London locations alike.