July 12, Saturday

We didn’t have any activities planned because we’d originally scheduled a B&B in another town.  The guy canceled on us last night so we had to scramble for a new itinerary.  We were lucky enough to get one more night out of the Holiday Inn, and Adam found a different B&B for us, starting tomorrow, in Birmingham.  This left us at loose ends in Winchester today.

But no matter the plans, each day must begin with liberal amounts of sunscreen.

Winchester used to be nearly as important as London, way back in the 1100-1300s.  It has the oldest High Street in England, which is really saying something considering how old everything is in this country.

Winchester Cathedral.  It’s the longest medieval cathedral in the world.  I generally like really old buildings, but in this one I got madder and madder as the tour went on.

After seeing how the sailors lived yesterday, to seeing this opulence today, it underscored just how corrupt and disgusting the Church was.  These guys were stealing the general populace blind so they could live better than kings.  This cathedral is full of statues of men buried here, and every one of them was fat.  They had fat, jowly faces and double chins, and were depicted in finery to the point Holden kept asking, “Is that a really ugly woman or a man in a dress?”

While the sailors (and everyone else in Christendom) were suffering rickets and scurvy, living in one outfit of clothes until they literally disintegrated, and living in cramped, filthy conditions for the honor of putting their lives on the line — and dying in large numbers — to protect the country and the church, these Bishops and church leaders built themselves monuments and lived in absolute luxury.

Holden is not impressed.

Depiction of a desiccated corpse.  This is the only guy presented as skinny, and it was clearly after he’d been dead for quite some time.

Jane Austen is buried here.

Impressive stained glass windows.

Front of Winchester Cathedral.

A short walk down the street is part of the old city wall.  The Coat of Arms is still there.

This modest little house is where Jane Austen lived her last days and died.  It’s a private residence and not open to the public.

More old city wall.

Here is where the Bishops lived (and, I believe, where the current Bishop still lives.)  It’s literally a palace.  The sign outside it says something like “These grounds look like a castle, but they were technically a palace.”  I don’t know what the difference is, but apparently there is one.  This house is still inhabited, but most of the palace is now in ruins.

The Bishop who first built this place was the younger brother of King Stephen (a French guy who was grandson of William the Conqueror and himself became King of England in 1135.)  They owned basically ALL the land and took ALL the money and had ALL the power.  King Stephen and the Church ended up in a huge feud over who was to have the most money and power — the King didn’t much like how powerful and corrupt the Church had become and wanted to bring them down a peg.  The Bishops, of course, wanted to be in charge and weren’t very happy with King Stephen overstepping his bounds.

Today was plenty hot, so we stopped for some cool drinks.  The kids look bored, but in reality they were just feeling the relief of sitting down out of the sun.

Now Holden really is bored.  This is on the rooftop of one of the old original gate towers into Winchester.

The gate tower was at one time used as a debtors prison.  You can still see the prisoner graffiti carved into the stone walls.  There were a lot of debtors.  The King and the Church needed their money and didn’t look kindly on folks who couldn’t pay.

Old fireplace.  The “fireplace furniture” was interesting.  All those metal things had practical purposes.  This is where all the cooking would have been done during the time when the Gatekeeper lived here.  That big pot in the front was THE cooking pot.  All foodstuffs – aside from bread – were put into the pot.  I guess they ate a lot of stew.

Down into the tunnels under the Great Hall of the Winchester Castle.  The passages were curvy and had lots of wooden doors, the purpose of which was to make it impossible to shoot arrows down long, straight corridors, and to make it impossible for battering rams to have maneuvering room.

That big round thing was at one time believed to be King Arthur’s Round Table.  Carbon dating confirms that it was not.  It was constructed several hundred years after Arthur supposedly lived (if he was even a real guy, and not just a fictionalized amalgam of several different guys) and was painted during the reign on King Henry VIII.  People were confused because it says right on it, “This is King Arthur’s Round Table.”  But no.  It wasn’t.  It has historical significance now because for so many years people thought it was the real deal would make pilgrimages to see it.

Exterior of Winchester Castle.

Garden re-created in the mid-1980s as a replica of what a Queen’s Garden would have looked like in the 1300s.

Walking back toward the High Street, more of the old city walls.

Winchester is having a trade festival this weekend.  Adam bought some French soaps from a French guy.  He was selling fancy soaps for around £2.50 that we can only get at home for $10 per bar.  (Which is why we don’t have any left at home!  We ran through our last stash that we bought a couple years ago in France, where they are practically giving it away.)

The French guy told us that he’s been trying really hard to open up a shop in the United States — he has a buddy in Los Angeles who already has — but the US has made it next to impossible with convoluted importation laws for stuff like soap.  So, he’s here in England where they have some kind of trade agreement between England and France … they don’t have to pay import taxes, etc.  If you ever wondered why French soaps are so expensive in the US, I guess this is the reason.

 

July 13, Sunday

We headed to Birmingham this morning.  On the road, we passed a sign for Highclere Castle, the building used as Downton Abbey.

Adam:  Today we stopped in at Highclere Castle – better known as “Downton Abbey” of PBS fame. This location is used for all exterior shots and many of the interior sets of the television drama.

We’re big DA fans, so it was a real treat to be able to stop by, especially because it wasn’t anything we had planned. I had done some research on the castle, but it was never open. It’s only open to the public for about 65 days each year.

As luck would have it, today was the first day of the summer season and we arrived just as they were opening up. It was a lot of fun to walk around the grounds and to take a tour of the interior (no photos allowed). Many of the rooms are used as TV sets, so it was fun to be able to walk through the Crawley family bedrooms, library, dining room & etc. There were lots of comments like “oh, so this is where Sybil died of eclampsia” or “this is where the Earl of Grantham wrote his letters” or “this is where Maggie Smith said something acerbic and biting” (pretty much every room.)

Fun place to visit – still the current home of the Earl of Carnarvon and family. The manor was built in 1842 and has an interesting history in and of itself, but their story is drowned out by the immense popularity of the TV show.

Holden is not happy we’re here. He’s not seen the show. He doesn’t ever intend to see the show. We’re cutting into either his eating time or his internet time.

Peeking in!  They haven’t opened the doors yet.

It looks just like it does on TV.

Josie:  “I can’t believe we’re at another castle.”

The gardens.  Adam and I walked around and took in the loveliness.

The kids found a bench by the hydrangeas and played school-yard hand games.

I’m convinced that someday they’ll watch the show and then be impressed in retrospect that they’ve been to the filming location.

Holden wouldn’t stop whining about how long this was all taking.  He’s got better things to do, like sleep in the car.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in Oxford.  It seems like the entire town is dedicated to higher learning.

Adam:  On to Oxford. Heard of it? Home of the world’s oldest English speaking university. The entire center of the town is university related – in reality there are 38 small colleges located here, so when you walk the ancient streets you’re never quite sure where you are and where one college ends and the other begins. It was crowded on a Sunday afternoon – we almost gave up visiting for lack of parking spaces, but some perseverance paid off. I was surprised by how many students study here – only 21,000 all told. It seemed like every one of them was in front of us walking around this afternoon.

You can read Wikipedia to see the names of folks who went to Oxford; pretty much everyone of scientific, philosophical and political importance in the UK over the past 500 years… and Bill Clinton.

With buildings that look like this, you could also pretend you’re attending Hogwarts.

At the Bodleian Library – 2nd largest in the UK.  They had a lot of Tolkien books for sale here, including a reproduction of the first edition printing of The Hobbit.  [From wikipedia] Since J.R.R. Tolkien had studied philology at Oxford and eventually became a professor, he was very familiar with the Red Book of Hergest which is kept at the Bodleian on behalf of Jesus College. Tolkien later created his own fictional Red Book of Westmarch telling the story of The Lord of the Rings. Many of Tolkien’s manuscripts are now at the library.

We really wished Andy Jeffery was with us today.  We kept running into one awe-inspiring school after the next, saying to each other, “Andy should be here.”

This is the Bridge of Sighs.

With buildings and views like this, I want to re-enroll in college.  I wouldn’t even be picky about what they’d let me study.  Anything would be fine!

Holden was actually interested in this, since he learned about Boyle’s Law last year while studying SCUBA diving.  The significance of the identification of the first living cell can’t be overstated, either.

 

July 14, Monday

Back when Isabella hurt her ankle, we had to skip going to Alton Towers, the UK’s biggest theme park.  We altered our route back up through England so we could hit it on our slow return north to Edinburgh for our flight home.

I’m glad we did change our route because we got to see Highclere Castle yesterday, but Alton Towers was a huge bust.  Total waste of money.  I won’t go into a critique of the park here, but I’ll give everyone the bottom line: don’t bother with Alton Towers.  Aside from a few moments of fun (which were few and far between) we spent most of the day frustrated and bordering on angry.  Even the kids had enough and we left at 3:00 p.m.

A couple quick photos:  The Smiler.  This has more loops (14) than any other roller coaster in the world.

For an extra £6, Holden and Josie got to do 2 battles up here.  Holden won both of them.

We went home early in sour moods.  We hit some heavy traffic on the way back, which put the final nail of disappointment in the day’s coffin.

Everyone finally felt better after eating some dinner (grocery store fare and left-over Chinese food from yesterday) and relaxing on the couch watching Futurama in our pajamas.  It was the best thing we did all day.