Some Randomness from England

A collection of random photos from the past few months here in England.

When I look out the front window of our house, off in the distance I can see this beautiful church perked high on a hill.  In fact, it's called Breedon on the Hill.  Well, actually the town sitting below it is called Breedon on the Hill (although the town isn't on the hill at all, it's below the hill and below the church so it seems a bit odd that the town is called "Breedon on the Hill" but that's just the way it is - did you follow all of that?), but everyone just refers to the church that you can see for miles around as Breedon on the Hill. 

We can walk to the church from our house.  It's a bit of a hike, but there is a trail that takes us into the town and another trail that takes us up the hill...

past all the sheep munching on the now brown grass...

and right up to the church.

The official church name is The Priory Church of Saint Mary and Saint Hardulph.  I can't find the exact construction date for the church, but inside are tombs dating back to the 16th century.  This site was used as far back as 676 as a monastery.   

You can see for a long, long ways from up on the hill at Breedon.  

In fact, off in the distance there somewhere is our house.  

It was a beautiful old church to hike to on a beautiful fall day...

and the perfect place to sit and read while your father takes loads of pictures.  I'm glad I get to see this church from my front window every day.  I'll miss it when we return to the US. 

Down in the village of Breedon on the Hill (which is actually below the hill) sits an adorable little circular stone structure.  You see these little round houses a lot in England, in fact there is one in our little village as well.  When you see one, your first reaction is usually, "Oh, how cute is that little round stone building with a little wooden door.  I wonder what it was used for?"  

And then you read the plaque sitting beside it:

The Village Round House or Lock Up was built in or about 1793, for the detention of human offenders against the Law, until they could be removed to a town prison… The Round House was last used for prisoners in 1885.

Ohhhhh - that is what it was used for.  It still is cute though.  And this is why it is so fun to live in England because you get to see things like this everyday, things you just don't see back in Indiana or Wisconsin or wherever you live in the US.

On another note, maybe the most important thing that has happened for us recently…

Leah is now tall enough to wash dishes.  Yeah! In fact she loves washing the dishes.  Double yeah! How can I argue with that - except that she also likes to do it very, very slowly which draws out after dinner dish duty much too long.  Ah, but part of being a parent is learning patient, right.

Leah celebrated birthday number 8 here in England back in October.  She received some gifts and cards from home (thank you family - we LOVE getting mail here even though we know it's ridiculously expensive to send).

Last year on her birthday, we had barely lived in our house here for a week and didn't know anyone so we just had a quiet family celebration for her birthday.  But this year, she invited some friends over for a Halloween themed birthday party.  We had so much fun planning it because we've never had a Halloween party before and there are so many cute, adorable and sometimes just down right gross ideas for Halloween themed food (we did not have the green hot dog witch fingers because seriously, who would want to eat that).  

We had ghost and spider sandwiches, and pumpkin clementines and ghost bananas.  We froze gummy worms in ice cubes to put in their drinks (sounds cute, but in actuality, the freezing process left the gummy worms disgustingly mushy and much to like what you would think of when eating an actual worm).

And for dessert, cat cupcakes.  

The party goers all came in costumes and got to decorate pumpkins.

They danced to The Monster Mash and ate candy corns while watching the Charlie Brown classic "The Great Pumpkin."  The funny thing is that some of Leah's friends from England that she invited thought it was weird that she was having a Halloween party because it just seemed too early in October to be thinking about Halloween.  And if you recall from an earlier post of mine, I had to order most of the supplies from the internet because no stores had any Halloween stuff out yet, and we had to have the pumpkins personally picked for us from a local farm because there wasn't a single pumpkin for sale yet in this country on October 1.  This is clearly not the USA, but Leah and all of her friends loved the party!  And so did I because despite the fact that Halloween has never been my favorite of celebrations, planning a Halloween party is a blast!

One day this fall, we went blackberry picking on the trail near our house and I made a pie (I told you this was going to be a random post).  That is something else I will miss when we leave here - being able to grab a couple of pails and head out the front door to pick berries on the trail down the road or in the hedges.  They grow everywhere here and they are juicy and delicious.

Back in September, we spent a beautiful Saturday afternoon in a town just up the road called Melbourne.  Melbourne is a lovely old English town and on this particular weekend they just happened to be holding their annual art fair.  

This wasn't your typical art fair with tents set up in the park.  This art fair was unique in that not only did it feature a load of local artists but it also gave you the opportunity to get a peak behind the closed doors of the many cute, historical and unique houses in Melbourne because the artists actually set up their displays inside peoples homes or in their back gardens as they are called here (that's backyard to all of you Americans).  

I've walked the streets of Melbourne many times wishing I could see inside some of these dwellings and finally we got to.  

Fun fact:  The much much larger city of Melbourne in Australia actually got its name from this little town in Derbyshire, England.  Australia's Melbourne is named after Lord Melbourne, whose real name is William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne.  He was Queen Victoria's first Prime Minister.  

During the art fair, we got to visit the inside of St. Michael and St. Mary's Church in Melbourne, a beautiful old church that dates back to the early 12th century.  This church is a bell ringing church, and I don't mean a table full of bells that people hold and ring on cue.  No - this church has several bells up in the tower and to ring them, a group of people need to pull on the ropes that hang down to the church floor (you can see all of the ropes hanging down in the photo above).  

It takes talent and practice to be a bell ringer like this, and as luck would have it, the girls got to try their hand at it. Not on a real bell mind you because they don't want any amatuers harming the real bells, but on a practice bell.  Ellie stepped up to the big practice bell apparatus first...

And she listened very carefully as she was given instructions on how to ring the bell. 

Bell ringing like this takes great concentration and coordination to pull and release and then catch the rope in the right order.  It was a bit intimidating to climb onto this crazy apparatus and try bell ringing as we had stood in line for several minutes and watched other kids try to master the catch and release of the thick rope only to have it fly back and hit them in the face if they didn't do it correctly.  But Ellie did it. 

And then Leah did too...

And she showed as much concentration and determination to master bell ringing as her big sister did.

Another random but somewhat related photo because of it's location.  

This is one of our favorite pubs in the area and it just happens to be located in Melbourne - Harpur's.  Delicious food, good beer, and cozy ambience.  Just what you want in a good pub.

I leave you today with a few more photos from Melbourne, most of which are from Melbourne Hall and its surrounding gardens.  

Melbourne Hall is the seat of Lord and Lady Ralph Kerr, but it once was the seat of William Lamb, aka Lord Melbourne who I mentioned early (where Melbourne, Australia got its name).  Sorry about the randomness of this post, but I warned you back at the beginning.  I hope you enjoyed it! 

There was a dream, and one day I could see it

Like a bird in a cage I broke in and demanded that somebody free it

 - The Avett Brothers

More from Cornwall

Last week I shared a post with you about our trip way back in May to the Lost Gardens of Heligan down on the coast of Cornwall, so today I thought I would share some photos from the rest of our long, wet weekend in Cornwall.  Truth be told, we’ve been pretty lucky with the weather everywhere we’ve traveled here in Europe, including around England.  The weather has only stopped us a couple of times from doing things, but this weekend in Cornwall tested us.  It was rainy, chilly and windy pretty much the entire time.  But, as we had someone tell us in Bergen, Norway, where on average they receive rain on 231 days of the year, “There is no bad weather, just bad clothing.”  So we were prepared, as we have learned we need to be when traveling around England where a sunny morning can quickly and unexpectedly transform into a rainy day.  We donned our raincoats, waterproof hiking shoes and grabbed the umbrellas for some extra protection and off we went to a place called the Eden Project.  

The Eden Project is truly a unique and fascinating site to see with it's space age looking complex of biomes.  But that's fitting because the main message here at the Eden Project is sustainability - what can we do today to ensure a better tomorrow.  Within the complex of biomes are two that are under bubble like domes that are said to be the largest greenhouses in the world and house a tropical and Mediterranean environment..   

Outside these giant bubbles are surrounded by a third biome that uses the natural environment of coastal England to present a temperate landscape.    

All of this is housed down in a huge crater in the earth that looks like it might have been formed when a gigantic meteor smashing into the planet but is in fact an old clay pit that was mined for over 160 years but has now been turned into a productive environment capable of producing food, fiber, fuel and lots of other items we need to survive, and that my friends is a wonderful example of sustainability.

The idea for the Project was conceived by one Sir Timothy Smit, the very same guy who was involved in the rediscovering of the Lost Gardens of Heligan that I shared with you last week, and the first sketches of the Project happened on a napkin in a pub over a pint - very British.  Building this amazing place was not easy though.  It was very expensive, and for the first few months of the building process, it rained everyday sending 43 million liters of water into the pit that sits fifteen meters below the water table.  As you can imagine, that put a damper on the construction process.  During the building of the Eden Project, 230 miles of scaffolding was used in the construction of the biomes which earned it a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records.  And if you think you’ve seen this place before but have never traveled to England, it may be that you’ve seen the 2002 James Bond flick Die Another Day which used this site for some of it’s scenes.  It’s not hard to understand why the Eden Project would catch the eye of a filmmaker.

Inside the rainforest biome it is hot and steamy and filled with every manner of tropical rainforest plant you can imagine...

from bananas...

to bright birds of paradise...

and everything in between...

and some actual birds as well.

We were allowed to climb to the top of the rainforest biome which is nearly 180 feet high giving you a fantastic view of the entire space.  

Before setting off, they ask each person if they have heart trouble because it is quite a climb as you can imagine, and as you go up, the stairs and platform you ultimate reach at the top have an unsteady sway as they are supported by cables attached to the great bubble ceiling above.  This is not a place for those who are afraid of heights.  

Inside the Mediterranean biome the conditions are different as you might expect.  

It's arid and dry, the foliage not nearly as dense as in the rainforest biome, but it's equally as beautiful, even peaceful feeling with the scent of citrus blossoms in the air...

rows of grape vines strung up on trellises...

and lots and lots of colorful flowers.  There was a replica of a stone hut from the bronze age called a borrie which was used by shepherds for shelter.  These huts continued to be used up until the 18th century and some still remain in the south of France today.  

In face, we saw some of the remains of these borries in person just a few weeks ago when we were traveling around Provence in southern France where the landscape closely resembled what we saw at the Eden Project (guess what pictures and adventures I'll be sharing with you next :).

This was not my first trip to the Eden Project.  Back in 2001 when Eric spent three months here in England for work, I came for a visit and we stopped at the Eden Project on our travels around the UK.  At that time, the Eden Project had only been open for a few months and was very much a work in progress.  The biomes were completed and we could go inside of them, but outside of them it still looked like a clay pit giving you the feeling you had just arrived on Mars as you approached the site from the rim and caught sight of the huge bubble domes sitting down in the old clay pit.

It was very interesting and fun to come back fourteen years later to see it near completion and with our girls in tow, and of course they now have a playground.  It doesn't matter what the weather is - if you can climb on it, they will.  

We weren’t in Cornwall for long, so between visiting the Eden Project and the Lost Gardens of Heligan, we didn’t have much time to do anything else.  But we did make time to check out the seashore because we couldn’t travel all this way and not see the coastline of Cornwall.  Our first night there was cold, windy, and gray, and while we tried to take a short walk on the beach where the restaurant we had dinner at sat, getting pelted in the face with raindrops wasn’t much fun so our walk was rather short.   

Luckily, the restaurant we found, Sam’s on the Beach in the tiny little village of Polkerris, had delicious food and was very cozy inside as the waves crashed into the beach right outside the windows.   

This was where I had my first run in with prawns British style - they still had their heads attached and you just pinch them off with your fingers.  That’s just how they serve them here.  And of course Eric tried one of the local Cornish beers.   

Look closely at the photo unless you are easily offended in which case you should look away.  These Cornish people have a good sense of humor. 

We arrived in Cornwall late on Friday night and by Monday, it was time to head back home again.  The weekend flew by fast but before we left, Mother Nature decided to give us a break at last from the rain.  

The clouds parted, the sun came out and we finally got a little beach time.  

We took a walk along the coast… 

watching out for the rabbit holes as we went, just as the sign warned us.  No wonder the great English author Lewis Carroll chose a rabbit hole as the entrance for Alice to Wonderland.  There really are loads of rabbit holes in England, big ankle twisting types of holes. 

We grabbed a quick lunch in the little village by the ocean and headed for home.  But on the way we decided to take a detour through a national forest, a different route than we had taken on the drive down to Cornwall because what prettier scenery to pass the time than a nice forest. Here is a photo from our drive through the national forest.

See anything that is missing?  I'm really serious - the atlas and the signs along the road both assured us that we were indeed driving through a national forest.  Hmm....

Some of the signs here in England really crack us up because this just isn't something we see back in Indiana. 

But honestly, you really do need to watch for the sheep here because they are everywhere and while we didn't actually see any right on the road here, we did see some lying immediately beside the road.  

And maybe the warning sign really should have said "Watch for stopped vehicles taking photos of sheep" because it's hard not to stop and take pictures of them, especially in the spring when the fuzzy lambs are wandering around the countryside with their mamas.  Are they cute or what?

And this, along with the visit to the Lost Gardens of Heligan, was our quick weekend trip to Cornwall.  I leave you today with a somewhat random photo that we just happened to take on the drive back from Cornwall - a drive through the hedges.  As natural barriers for animals and whatever else you may wish to keep out of your fields, hedges work great!  But driving through them can be nerve wracking and down right scary, especially when they sit right on the road and the roads are very narrow and windy (which basically describes all rural roads in England), not to mention the fact that you can't see anything but the hedges.  But this is England my friends, the land of hedges.