Whatever happened to me?: U.K. Trip Anniversary Posts

Farewell, Edinburgh ... Hello, England!

[The Waverley Bridge at sunrise]

The Scotland leg of our journey ended much too quickly for me. I would have loved to have spent more time there and seen more of the country. Still... for the little time we had, we saw a lot in our jet-lagged conditions. Our last morning had an extra push, since we had to have our bags packed and out for pick-up and have ourselves groomed, fed and out the door in a timely fashion (a big challenge for this non-morning person who'd been waking up every one or two hours during the first half of the week!). There would be a lot of driving that day and a couple of places to stop along the way. I was hurrying down for breakfast when I glanced toward the outside doors of the Jury's Inn and gasped at the glorious sunrise! Absolutely had to go back up and fetch the camera before it was gone. I was out on the sidewalk with the lone street sweeper, taking pictures while he cleaned the driveway and nearby walk. The Waverley Bridge was off to the left and the photo below was looking up the hill to the right.

As long as I'd grabbed the camera, I thought it was time to photograph our breakfast fare. We had a lot to choose from in this hotel... better than some we stayed at in England. Here's a sampling of some of it (the blood pudding was in the next room... passed on that one). They set up for our group in the pub area.

Different than our typical U.S. breakfasts... fried tomatoes (hot, anyway), bangers (I think that's what they call those sausages) and their version of bacon, which is kind of like Canadian Bacon to me... beans, fried eggs. There were also sweet rolls, toast, croissants, cereal and milk, fruits, yogurt (tart that it was). I liked mixing some of their fresh berries into the yogurt and added a little bit of sugar to lessen the pucker. They also had "wee" cheeses and such in a basket and I confess I grabbed one here and there to save for later... for a hunger emergency (one of those ended up going to someone else that week). Some people wrapped a piece of bacon with a slice of toast and tucked that away for later in a napkin. I don't think we were piggish about it... you're not supposed to eat lunch and breakfast at the hotel's expense ... but we had such a rushed breakfast ... for some it was nice to take a little along for leisurely nibbling. (I guess we weren't supposed to eat on the coach either, but Amanda noticed we were being good about packing out our trash... so she cut us some slack. She only told us after a couple of days about the no eating rule!)

This is a nifty toaster.

We've left Edinburgh and are now on our way to Northern England and GARDENS. :-) This drive near the sea was beautiful.

I've read about this place since we passed it in the coach ... Holy Island (Lindisfarne).

Info on Holy Island from the web:

Holy Island (Lindisfarne) is situated off the Northumberland coast in the north east of England, just a few miles south of the border with Scotland. The island is linked to the mainland by a causeway which twice a day is covered by the tide.

Possibly the holiest site of Anglo-Saxon England, Lindisfarne was founded by St. Aidan, an Irish monk, who came from Iona, the centre of Christianity in Scotland. St Aidan converted Northumbria to Christianity at the invitation of its king, Oswald. St. Aidan founded Lindisfarne Monastery on Holy Island in 635, becoming its first Abbot and Bishop. The Lindisfarne Gospels, a 7th century illuminated Latin manuscript written here, is now in the British Museum.

The island of Lindisfarne with its wealthy monastery was a favourite stop-over for Viking raiders from the end of the 8th century. These Vikings raiders obviously concerned the monks somewhat as they vacated the monastery and did not return for 400 years. Lindisfarne continued as an active religious site from the 12th century until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1537. It seems to have become disused by the early 18th century.

I don't recall how long it took, but compared to road trips in the U.S., Scotland and England sped by pretty quickly! Before we knew it, we'd arrived at Alnwick (pronounced ANN' - ICK). After being debriefed, we sped off to find a restroom. We'd been told that the restroom off the gift shop (Oops! You'll get nothing but eye rolling and laughter is you call it that in the U.K.) had been awarded the best loo in England (maybe the year prior). When we got inside, we could see why. There was a glorious glass counter/sink area that changed color from bright aqua to apple green. The back of it was seated into the wall where there was some kind of fiber-optic setup that lit it up. The doors to the stalls were the same bright green and even the paper towels were green (softer) ... to color coordinate. The Duchess who planned all this was the same one that had been revamping the gardens. I never made it to the castle tour/interior... spent the whole time walking in the garden and buying trinkets for a few folks at the gift shop (mostly for granddaughters who were probably too young to appreciate gemstone bracelets... not sure they lasted very long). Their gift shop was a thing of beauty! I only have two photos of it here... beginning and end of the visit. (When you see the stall in the loo, notice the egg shaped button... "big flush/little flush.")

We're anxious to be off to see the gardens. Many folks are lounging on the patio near the gift shop entrance. There is a food service inside and they'll come to visit this place, have a spot of lunch and walk the gardens. Yearly passes are offered for a fee.

From the entrance to the gift shop, you look across an expanse of lawn to this glorious water feature. When you see a diagram/map of the whole garden, this looks much like a womb... with the garden on the "birthing" end. I don't know if that's what they had in mind... but what it looked like to this mother of six.

At the base of the water feature were these fountains... and a bunch of little John Deere tractor toys for the kiddies.

We had to stop our visit to the main garden to catch the tour of the "Poison Garden." The duchess created this as an educational tool, to show people various plants that are lethal and often deadly. The whole affair was done with a bit of "camp" and our 24-year-old guide was hilarious. He told us all sorts of ghastly stories of people who'd poisoned themselves, their husbands, or accidental mishaps involving poisonous plants... all with a very dramatic delivery. ;-) The entrance beyond this gate began with a beautiful ivy tunnel. You'll see it after our visit to the inside. I'm not including photos of some of the individual plants. The garden was past its best time, beauty-wise. They had a huge marijuana plant in a cage with a sign to "please keep off the grass." Apparently, some folks had pilfered parts of it during the tour, so the cage was deemed necessary.

Chris... our group member who came all the way from Florida.

Okay... now we're off again to the GARDEN! After all, this is why we are here. ;-) I'll hit some of the highlights (there were certainly more photos taken on the whole trip than what I can or should post on the blog)...

You cannot imagine the noise near this spot... there was a huge pump down there and it was frightening to think what might happen to a person if they were so unfortunate as to fall in. =:o

Lovely Sherri. :-) We were picking our way up the hill and along the way were channels and pools. It was beautiful.

Nirvana for us... the garden! :-) Those peachy roses are 'Just Joey.'

If I weren't always trailing behind with the camera, I'd be able to tell you something historical about that ancient building. Sorry. :-/

Clematis tangutica ... there was a stand of it there that was HUGE. In the next photo, it's the vining thing all over the back wall. The lemon yellow flowers are small, and hard to see in a long shot.

Wish you could smell this 'Gertrude Jekyll' rose. Sigh.

This could be seen at the beginning of a maze (only dead fish swim with the stream).

Back at the gift shop... I thought these handmade cards were beautiful. I didn't cough up the money to buy any... but was tempted.

While many of us were walking the beautiful gardens at Alnwick, Joe Binetti and a few others took a tour of the castle. Here are a few of his beautiful photos of the outside and nearby landscape...

We've left beautiful Alnwick and are now entering the Hexham Abbey. It holds a crypt that is made of ancient Roman stone (I'll have to look up the time period... but it's ANCIENT).

Here's something from good, old Wikipedia:

There has been a church on the site for over 1300 years since Etheldreda, Queen of Northumbria made a grant of lands to Wilfrid, Bishop of York c.674. Of Wilfrid's Benedictine abbey, which was constructed almost entirely of material salvaged from nearby Roman ruins, the Saxon crypt still remains; as does a frith stool, a 7th/8th century cathedra or throne.^[1] For a little while around that time it was the seat of a bishopric.

This is near the entrance...

This photo was taken by Joe Binetti.

That gal is supervising entrance to the crypt. The stairs are somewhat steep and uneven and you can only let so many people down there at once.

Once we got to the bottom the main area was filled with others from our group, so I stepped over to the left side in this little space. I got the distinct feeling I was not in there alone and it kind of creeped (crypt?) me out.

There are grave markers on the floor in the larger space. I think they were known to hold prisoners down here. :-P

With the aid of the flash (no art work in this space), you can see the Roman carvings in the stone. It was recycled from other structures when the original church was built.

It's nearly impossible to get the whole thing in from the street view... here's part of the abbey. We're on our way to find a loo... there were none for us to use in the church.

Doesn't this little side street beg to be investigated? I wish we'd had time to walk beyond that curve. Another gal went with me and we found a pub open (it was a Sunday). I don't usually use restrooms... I mean LOOS in pubs, but we were in the U.K., after all! There were some fellows in there shooting pool on their day off.

Norma... the artist from our group that sketched when we were at Stirling Castle. :-)

I loved how this building looked. We were on our way back to the coach and I stopped to snap a photo of this Edinburgh Woolen Mill building. They have outlets all over the U.K. and indeed, I spent most of my time in one when we stopped later in the week at Bourton-on-the-Water. I was running out of time to find gifts for certain people in the family. I'm glad others took photos around that village while I was shopping. Our time there had been short... but more on that in another post.