Monthly Archives: September 2010

I didn’t expect so much to post about today, but I had my first tea on a train from a tea trolley, found my favorite peach schnapps never available in the USA at Heathrow duty-free, and for our last “pub” drink picture of our trip, I even found a new cider Old Rosie’s cloudy scrumpy that tastes suspiciously like my homebrew, perhaps the same strain of British ale yeast! Well it tasted like my homebrew about a week extra fermenting than the flavor I prefer, but definitely better than Strongbow or Blackthorn.

Our flight was delayed a whole hour because the plane didn’t arrive on time, but after they tried to sell us an upgrade to Economy Plus for more leg room, I’m glad we didn’t bother, since we had one of the upgraded 777s on the way home today, with the enhanced on-demand entertainment AND enough leg room my knees did not touch the seat in front of me…amazing! When walking past it didn’t look like any more leg room than the Economy Plus seats.

I watched 3 movies & slept a bit since I could lean on the wall at the window seat, then since they were trying to make up time, they had enough re-routes that we were coming in directly south into San Francisco, on a clear day so it was a gorgeous view of the Golden Gate and the whole bay! I’d never flown in that direction, at least not in daylight or without fog, and it was a very nice welcome home!

Our last day in England started out gloomy again, but by the time we toured Gainsborough Hall, blue skies had appeared! Gainsborough Hall is an old Tudor manor house, complete with the wonkiest sagging timbers I’ve ever seen Can you see how it tilts inward? I’m surprised some of the upper floors didn’t have things rolling around the floors were so angled! There were two groups of young kids there, all dressed up with costumed docents, so that was fun. I was sad none of the clothes were grown-up sized, but Chris did stick a jester hat on my head while I was listening to the audio tour, then a complete stranger walking by separately said “It suits you” just after Chris had said the same…haha…Janet found another jester hat & attempted to juggle, then she insisted Cyd & I pose with the papier-mache Henry VIII.

We went all the way up the tower steps for a nice view of the town. Even though none of the furniture is original to the hall, they have it all set up with props & fake food, which was fun, especially the huge kitchen, one of the best preserved Tudor kitchens.

From Gainsborough we drove to a pub along the river called the Jenny Wren, another favorite of Janet & Chris when taking visitors around. I enjoyed a fish pie, with smoked haddock, salmon & shrimp with mashed potatoes on top. Delicious! We all had bread & butter pudding with proper custard for dessert too, since we knew this was our main meal of the day. Cute pub with all sorts of fun things hanging from the beams, and Country Life magazines to browse, seeing which manor houses or country homes were our favorites. Cyd liked the ones in France or Italy, but my favorite was a 14th century Oxfordshire ivy-covered stone gatehouse with a spiral stone staircase “in need of refurbishment” on 26.5 acres…but I’d still rather build my own small castle in the Bay Area hills instead! 😉

From the pub we drove to Epworth, to the rectory where John Wesley grew up, the founder of the Methodist church. We had a personal guided tour from a very knowledgeable older gentleman, and since I didn’t know much about the origins of the Methodist church, I learned a lot. We also browsed the gardens a bit, still thankful for the sunshine!

Since we were still full from our pub lunch, we strolled around Epworth, up to St Andrew’s Church with its large graveyard (yes, lots of Halloween research), and Samuel Wesley’s tomb, where John Wesley preached when they wouldn’t let him preach inside the church. Then we strolled through the rest of town, past a cute brick house with fabulous flowers, down to the Wesley Memorial Methodist Church from the late 1800s.

Tonight was a light dinner of soup, with a large variety of cheeses, apples & salami while watching Monday night quiz shows on BBC, then Cyd went to the computer while the rest of us watched Chuck…heehee! Not the season premiere, since as I’m writing this that still hasn’t aired yet, but they’re not too far behind, only a few episodes from the season 3 finale. We have to leave the house before 7:30am to get to the train station on time, then it’ll be a long travel day all the way to London by train, from Kings Cross to Paddington, then to Heathrow before we get on the long plane ride home!

We had a delicious cooked breakfast this morning even with black pudding, then headed in the car for Newstead Abbey, the ancestral home of the poet Lord Byron. He only lived there a few years, and the previous lord had close to bankrupt the estate, so he couldn’t improve it, so it was his bachelor pad for “wild parties,” with practice shooting in the great hall, and using the dining room as a gym. He finally had to sell to his friend who was able to improve it, then it was taken care of through different families since then, now as a tourist center, so most rooms are more recent than the poet’s time, but they have a few rooms furnished as he did, including the pistol at his bedside.

Byron loved animals, dogs especially, and there is a large monument in the gardens for his Newfoundland called Boatswain (“bosun”). Quite the inscription, and the poor dog only lived 5 years. I had never seen these fairytale mushrooms in real life before, so both Chris & I got artsy in the wet grass trying to get this photo. 😉 Speaking of Chris, he found a goose wing feather & did his best brooding Byron pose on a garden bench…haha! We strolled around the entire large gardens, finding this waterfall in the Japanese section, then started the tour inside the house.

Having heard so much about Byron’s many sordid love affairs with both persuasions, it was funny to see this sign! Also this gilded bed was his bed at school in Cambridge…did your college dorm beds ever look like this? haha…I took a billion photos of the books in the library for Halloween research, and the cases were very interesting telling about his life and showing original copies of his works. There was even an interactive area to dress up! Hilarious since on the drive Janet had been asking why didn’t we bring our puffy poet shirts to wear today. Here I am doing my best brooding Byron pose in a puffy shirt & hooded cloak! 😉

We left the abbey and drove a little ways to Southwell, where Byron grew up before living at Newstead Abbey. We had tea & snacks at a little deli, went to Southwell Minster where we could hear the organ & choir since evening services were going on, but I didn’t pay the permit fee for inside photos, so I took some video with my camera in my bag just for the sound. 😉 We stopped in the one shop still open on a Sunday afternoon, quite a challenge in these smaller towns, and I splurged on honeycomb and toffee ice cream at the sweet shop. Very tasty!

We drove back to Janet & Chris’ house, turned on the oven, then strolled down to their local pub for a pint. By the time we finished & walked back, the oven timer was just going off, and dinner was delicious stuffed pork loins with roasted potatoes. We watched The School of Rock since not even Cyd had seen that before, and it was more entertaining than I expected, quite cute really, reminding me a bit like Sister Act. Worth a rental but not full theatre price.

Tomorrow is our last day before going home, and we’re still deciding where to go…either a local brewery tour (no they don’t make ciders) or a medieval park & funky pub. Then it’s repacking since we have to leave 7am to catch our train to London to get to Heathrow for our afternoon flight home. Sure glad I have a whole day to recuperate before going back to work!

It was nice to not have to rush in the morning, so even after sleeping in, I was ready for the day well before 11am, knowing we were going to the church luncheon. Chris’ mother drove over to walk with us to the lunch, but also to collaborate on the weekly crossword, since her cousins call her to gloat on Sunday evenings. Janet, Chris & Cyd had been working all morning with various resources and had already gotten much farther than his mother, then we all tried some more before strolling through the neighborhood to the lunch at the Methodist church. I think it’s the tiniest church I’ve ever been in, and the parish hall for the lunch was also tiny, the size of one Sunday school room or nursery in other churches back home. The lunch was tasty, quiche, baked potato with grated cheese, baked beans, and green salad with no dressing, then a choice of chocolate or strawberry cake for dessert. Before it was served we had several quizzes, like pub quizzes, one for church etiquette that was more just funny, one about agriculture we did horribly on, but Chris’ mother knows a lot of flower common names, so between all 5 of us contributing at least one answer that stumped the others, we got 31 of 33 on the flower quiz! No prize except knowing we’re the best! haha…After we walked back there was some more crossword collaboration, then we said our goodbyes to Chris’ mother as she went home.

Elsie the black kitty has now let me pet her a few times, but Gwen is still running past as quickly as she can. However, Walden is Mr Friendly, with a purr you can hear across the room. He attacks the two shy girls though, so it’s a matter of shutting off certain doors to let Walden run around rooms Elsie & Gwen aren’t in, or putting Walden back in the furnished garage in his own “suite.” Walden is such a big heavy boy! He’s at least twice the weight of Onyx. He was a neighborhood cat for several years, but was hit by a car, then when the whole neighborhood kept trying to catch him for several days to take him to a vet since they could tell he was hurt badly, he chose Janet & Chris by strolling into their house for help, lame paw hanging from the wrist and one eye stuck open and blind, and has stayed with them ever since. He does quite well now limping along, since the vet tested that he can’t feel the paw and the tendons don’t work at all, but he can put a bit of weight on it and uses it to wash himself just fine. Not sure you can really tell how large he is but here are some photos.

We lounged the afternoon away playing with Walden and watching an Eddie Izzard standup video even Cyd hadn’t seen, which was pretty funny, then we changed into better clothes for our dinner out at the art deco Earl of Doncaster, a favorite of Janet & Chris. We drove past the church I performed at in 2004 on the Choral Project tour, and the restaurant was very cool. Nicely done decor, and even though it goes with the theme, I’m not quite sure about the GOLD-painted Steinway piano! No one was playing tonight, but they have TV screens that play classic movies in the background. Tonight was the original Sunset Boulevard, which is still on my list to see. Cyd had Guinness again, but since they had a classic cocktail menu, I had a champagne cocktail and a Kir Royale, while Janet had a Cosmo and some white wine. Our dinner was excellent! Cyd & I enjoyed the black pudding salad starter, with poached duck egg on top, and I was the only one not full to bursting since I had a risotto starter as my entree instead of a full main dish. I had room for sticky toffee pudding so Cyd finally was able to taste some. We still haven’t seen spotted dick on menus anywhere for her to try though!

Our hosts have already pooped out & gone to bed at 9:30pm, so Cyd & I are on separate computers, which means I’m waiting my turn to get access to the single ethernet port on the router. Tomorrow sounds like it’ll be a couple more National Trust or English Heritage sites in the rain, especially because we’ve borrowed Chris’ mother’s lifetime membership cards, so that we’ll only have to pay one ticket anywhere we go.

Since it’s a 2 hour drive from Doncaster, we left for Whitby just after 9am, driving through the North York Moors covered in blooming heather & gorse. The bright blue skies of Doncaster were high gray clouds by Whitby, but the winds were blowing enough that we got some blue skies before we left. We headed for the abbey at the top of the hill first, up the 199 steps to St Mary’s Church and graveyard, then further up the hill pathway, with lovely views of the crashing waves at the coast.

The Whitby Abbey ruins are stunning, especially the carvings and the checkerboard colors of stone in the columns. It must have been glorious in its heyday, but the monastery was closed by Henry VIII of course, like all the rest. We strolled the grounds, barely hearing the audio tour for the blustery winds, but it wasn’t nearly as windy as Giant’s Causeway! Working around the groundskeeping crew was a bit difficult for good photos. 😉

After we’d seen enough of the abbey ruins, we went back to the church, which is where Count Dracula attacked Mina Harker while she was sitting on a bench in the graveyard overlooking the sea in the original novel Dracula. The gravestones are very weathered from the constant wind, but quite a nice view. Funnily enough inside the church they have a sign posted, since they’re obviously tired of questions over the years. 😉

After walking down all 199 steps again, we ate a light lunch at the Duke of York pub, fresh Whitby crab sandwich for me – yum! Cyd was back to Guinness, but I only have a half pint in the photo since they didn’t have good cider on tap, so I didn’t want to waste my calories on Woodpecker. 😉 This was a new style of Guinness glass, with an embossed harp design, so I tried to take photos showing it.

We had about an hour left on the parking limit, so we strolled around the shops a bit, where I couldn’t resist trying some Dracula’s Dream Fudge with “bloody” strawberry with dark chocolate, and found an official Dracula sequel on sale for 2 GBP so figured it was worth a read as a souvenir even if the story was crap. 😉 We looked at a lot of nice Whitby jet jewelry, all too expensive for me, but I found gorgeous costume jewelry rhinestone spiders! The large ones were too big and 46 GBP, and there was no black in the medium size that would have been perfect, so I just got a small one instead for 22 GBP, still steep for costume jewelry, but I took photos of the others. At the end of the street, I saw a poster for “Bram(ble) Stoker” ice cream, so I had to try. Very tasty blueberry & blackberry combination with white chocolate fangs…haha! They created the flavor for the big annual Halloween Goth festival last year, but when they took it off the menu, people begged for it, so now it’s a staple.

We got back to Doncaster by around 5pm, I started reading the sequel “Dracula: The Un-Dead” while Cyd kept reading the original she bought in Whitby 4 years ago on her first trip, then after a pizza dinner I finally saw the Ricky Gervais Extras Christmas special from several years ago since Janet & Chris have it on DVD. More poignant & serious moments than I expected from Extras (well I shouldn’t have been that surprised seeing how the 2nd series ended), but plenty of gut-busting laughs from me! Glad I was able to see it!

Except for a church luncheon for the harvest festival, we don’t have much scheduled tomorrow, so perhaps it’ll be a relaxing day? We’ll see!