Signs in England

I talked to my mom on the phone while I was in London, and she told me how funny she thought the "mind the gap" signs are on the London Underground. Please read it in a cool announcer-type woman's voice with a British accent.

Here are signs in Britain, Italy and Ireland I thought were funny:

This is a poster that encourages owners to keep their dogs out of pastures they shouldn't be in around Loch Lomond. It's not funny until you read the smaller print:

Hmm.

yes, the grass is very diverting.

look at the sign. not my face. thanks rachel ashby for not suggesting in the slightest that i may want to take another picture.

ha.

just like chickens.

oh...cute.

"sheep worrying" means anything that may make the sheep start running away from you. sheep are serious business here.

the first sentence. it's only funny if you read "conservation" with wrong like I did so it reads "conversation." so typically British! I thought when I took the picture. Then the more I laughed, the more I realized how stupid I was.

If you can't read that sign, it says "bumping stone: used in the initiation of new choristers." Yes, that dent to the right of the sign is used to initiate new choristers by pounding their heads into that solid stone. Okay, not pounding, more like politely shoving. Centuries later, there is a dip.

Don't be shy. Dominate those railings.

I am home. and Stourhead Gardens.

I chased the sun yesterday, all the way back to the northwest. For the 22 hours I was traveling, the sun was up--from Dublin to Portland. Oh yeah, and in Chicago, and Denver too.

I promised pictures a long time ago, so now, pictures you shall have! I am trying to pick out my favorite ones so that you don't all hate me. and I have added pictures to the previous posts because i now have a computer that doesn't start counting down the seconds after a half hour. yay!

This was a long time ago, so don't get confused. We went to Stourhead gardens, which is a beautiful estate where the Victorian owners decided to go all neoclassical in their garden. Results:


For those of you who recognized the gazebo in the last picture, 20 points for you! That is where the famous proposal scene of the newest adaptation of Pride and Prejudice takes place! I waited there for my own Mr. Darcy, but he didn't come. I think the weather was too good. It should have been raining. Mr. Darcy can only propose in the rain I guess. Instead I got a beautiful view from the gazebo:

Fortunately, I was still able to do something sort of romantic in the gardens. There was a stone grotto that we went inside of and there was a little fountain with a stone nymph lying down, and Katy Anderson said in passing that it would be beautiful to give an offering to the nymph. I pulled out the purple flower she had put in my hair, handed her my camera, and slipped into the cold water.

It was actually a lot deeper than I thought it was,

but the flower was in her hand, and the offering was made.

and everyone ever afterward wondered where that purple flower in her hand came from. Until it rotted away.

Mild apologies for the previous out of control post, everyone.

I am now in London, and it is my last day in England. Which is kind of sad. Especially because London is not like the rest of England that is green and beautiful and there are white cliffs next to the ocean and there are fields and fields of green grass surrounding especially beautiful solitary oak trees. And especially because I am at an internet cafe trying to figure out how to get all of my luggage home. This would not be a problem if I were normal and just flew home like most of the people in my group. No, I decided it was necessary to go to Italy and Ireland, thereby cutting off the amount of luggage I am allowed to bring to 15 kilos. I don't even know how much that weighs, but it is somewhere between 30 and 35 pounds and now I am facing expensive storage charges due to my wonderful ability to replace small pieces of paper in my wallet with wonderful things that are incredibly huger than those pieces of pretty paper with pictures of the queen on them.

But let us move away from these unpleasant thoughts, and on to my favorite place of the entire trip.
Tintagel.

Tintagel is the legendary birthsite of King Arthur. These are castle ruins.
It is on the Southwest coast of England, and it has white cliffs and the ocean goes forever and the water is a teal color and there is a beautiful sunset every night and the stars are perfectly clear at night. These are the ruins where many kings have rebuilt fortresses in order to infuse Arthur's mystical powers. People here are seriously obsessed with King Arthur. Even in the Parliament building in London, there are pictures all over the walls that remind everyone of the chivalric code in ridiculous Victorian costumes.

The cave to the left on the top picture is called Merlin's Cave. I swam in that. In the quite freezing Atlantic Ocean. We fought against the tide and made our way through the cave to the open sea on the other side. A few weeks before, I had gotten a splinter in my foot and I thought it would just go away. A week later, it still hadn't gone away, so I dug around in my foot with my friend's safety pin for about two hours and I still couldn't find it. Everytime I poked my foot I thought I was getting closer because it hurt so badly. I think it just hurts when you aggravate your foot with a safety pin. I assumed I had gotten it, because it wasn't there. I hiked on it for about a week when we got to Tintagel. I had gone swimming in the ocean before this, but my foot was still sore. Then I went swimming in Merlin's Cave. We hiked up on top of the castle to the legendary birth spot of Arthur, and I reached down to my foot and pulled out an inch-long sliver with my bare fingers. Laugh if you will my friends, but Merlin healed me! And as an offering, I gave up my white-pigmented face and back, and became red. Oh, it was a beautiful day.
This is our wonderful Youth Hostel, right next to the cliffs where we stayed and watched the sunset over the ocean, and played guitar when the stars came out under our duvets.

I Love Shakespeare. I am turning into a cliche.

I think I'm doing something wrong because I got a lot of comments on two posts and these next two there are zero comments. Am I getting super boring? If so, sorry. I am sorry I don't have any cutesy pictures to put up and that I am picturally challenged! I don't mean to be. I'm sorry there are just blocks of text. I will try to help that. Really I will try!

We are in Oxford! (Is that helpful?) We just left Stratford this morning,

 and I have seen the newest portrait of Shakespeare! Yes, they discovered a portrait that they really think is Shakespeare. Okay, really quickly: this is the ugliest picture of Shakespeare ever:

This is on textbooks and other things, which makes you think, "Ew, Romeo and Juliet/Macbeth/Othello/The Tempest in High School where I hated my life." But this wood carving is actually a copy of this portrait:

which is actually believed to be now the only portrait that Shakespeare actually sat for and every other is a copy! Isn't this so much more attractive and so much easier to like Shakespeare now? I will answer that for you. Yes. I'm afraid that being in England with these literature people makes me think that Shakespeare is the answer to life.

Anyway, Stratford was really great, even though it kept raining, which really is starting to suck. I really did bring enough clothes even though I'm wearing my raincoat in every picture.

OH YEAH! I went to see the great hall in Oxford in Christ Church College. The Great Hall that inspired the Great Hall at Hogwarts. I will post pictures sometime. But I did sneak a relic from the sight... It is a packet of pepper now in my wallet. Perhaps I will run water over it and sell it to people who need cures for writer's block.

Also, I have really enjoyed some of the Shakespeare gift shop items: an eraser: "out damned spot!" (Lady Macbeth)

That's all.

Disillusionment

I am at a Bed and Breakfast right now where there is unlimited internet. That is why these posts are right in a row. Yay!

On Saturday I decided that I wanted to be John Ruskin. Not the part where he falls in love with a ten-year-old girl, but the part where he does everything, and lives in a place called Brantwood. Which, unfortunately, sounded to me at first like it should be the name of a student housing apartment at BYU. John Ruskin changed people's minds about art, especially about Turner's art, and he sketched watercolors and he advocated for social change in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, and he tried to brighten up schools with posters of paintings and told little kids to go outside to learn and collect bugs and plants and other things. And the Queen liked him, so he got an estate by Coniston Lake that he liked to ice skate across in winter to town, and has enormous gardens, and a large parlour that I played "Dawn" on the piano in. And then I did a watercolor sketch in his study because I was sure that it would be an insult to both Ruskin and myself if I did not do a watercolor on his property. It was pouring down rain, so I had to do a watercolor inside. Unfortunately, I was so nervous that I would get in trouble for having paints and a huge container of water inside of Ruskin's Study that it's like the worst watercolor in my sketchbook. It was the idea that counts though. Right?

Yesterday was the first day where we saw the sun and the first day I have worn shorts outside of a hostel. Today was the second day I wore shorts, and the first part of a long trek across the Yorkshire countryside. Today we walked about 14 miles in the type of landscape I can't help but describe as perfect. There were endless fields of bright green grass rolling in hills called dales, both long and short, and we simply walked through gates and over walls, because we were walking on a public trail. The Penine Trail is a really old trail and landowners simply ask us not to scare their sheep and to keep our dogs on leashes so they don't hurt the lambs (which are so cute Rachel, you would be dying) and to keep the gates closed behind us. And we just walk across their fields and through the gates, and sometimes the trail disappears and we get to go through stinging nettle and barbed wire to find it again. Near the end of the hike, I began to run through the long grass, pretending I couldn't feel my backpack banging against my back like one of those elementary school kids running after the bus, and I may or may not have sung "the hills are alive with the sound of music!" and it is possible that I may have just layed face down in the long grass and smelled the sweet perfume of warm grass. I grabbed Whitney's hand and began to run with her, and I grabbed her other hand and we began to spin around and all I could see was Whitney's excited, smiling face and streaks of bright green flashing in the background. Until something unpleasantly mushy was on my foot and my sandals.

I let go immediately and looked down at my now poop-covered foot. Everyone in the group started to laugh, especially at the irony of my previously and painfully idyllic actions. But there it was. Reality. Smeared across my big toe. There is sheep poop in the pastures of England, everyone. That is all.

I should probably go because there was a rude English woman who asked me a while ago how much longer I would be on the internet. She had a glass of clear alcohol and yellowish teeth that stuck out toward me and ugly fake blonde hair. She is waiting to "check her emails" so we shall let her do that.

PS sorry for all of the bathroom/not bathroom stories in these posts. i guess i just really don't have any good stories. but i'm realizing that basically every post is slightly inappropriate.

Cheers!

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

We are out of the Lake District and in Yorkshire. Surprise! We just left arguably the most beautiful part of the island and now it has stopped raining. It rained everyday we were in the Lake District, including one particularly good day where I decided to wear jeans because I did not want to walk around in my waterproof pants. Needless to say, I was totally soaked through and my waterproof/windproof jacket seemed to have lost the ability to repel anything except for warmth. But that day we were in Grasmere. Which is host to Wordsworth's two cottages he lived his perfect life in--Dove Cottage and Rydal. We hiked over Helvellyn to get to Grasmere, which is a mountain that rises to almost mythic proportions when talked about in reference to British literary history. One of them being when Coleridge hiked across the mountain at 11 o'clock at night because he simply could not wait to share his new poem with Wordsworth. I forget what it's called now. Starts with a C. Anyway, we climbed this mountain, and really, if there hadn't have been 75 kilometers/hour winds, it would have been fine. It wasn't a difficult hike, but there was wind drying out my eyes and going up my nose and out of my mouth. We reached a Tarn (a small lake, or enormous puddle) and were informed that two years ago on this same program, it was balmy weather, and many people chose to jump into the water and then to sunbathe. I tried to forget that this has been a possibility in the past. It was very cold. Very cold. But more importantly, nature was calling, and I went ahead of the group to find a suitable spot even though there were no trees or bushes in sight, and the boulders were too small. Most importantly, I found a place. and slightly more importantly, it is possible that I have peed where Wordsworth has peed.

On Wordsworth day, I also learned that the descriptions of the daffodils that he uses in the title of this post, were actually taken from his sister Dorothy Wordsworth's journal. Which is slightly disappointing. But also makes it okay for me to steal other people's ideas in my writing. so it's not too bad. But he also described his life as so perfect while he was in Grasmere living with his wife and sister, but he also hardly came into the living room of Dove Cottage, not wanting to concern himself with matters in the home. This is kind of bothersome, because then he would go climb mountains by himself and write poetry and sit in his room or garden and write poetry, and spend time with Coleridge, and then steal ideas from Dorothy who was probably helping take care of his children and cooking him dinner and doing his laundry, etc. My rant is over. Wordsworth is a wonderful poet.

Sorry to people who haven't really studied British Literature...

For What Are Men Compared to Rocks and Mountains?

As you have probably guessed, I have been waiting to use this title for a blog post for a while now. I waited until the Lake District to use it. That seems appropriate, doesn't it? At least that's where Elizabeth Bennet was planning on going in Pride and Prejudice with her aunt and uncle before Mr Gardner got cramped for time and they had to content themselves with Derbyshire.

Well, I am here. In England. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to put pictures up on these computers, and so we will have to do without for a while. All of my ideas for cute posts with pictures of Loch Lomond intermixed with the folk song will have to wait. But we have gone to Edinburgh and Loch Lomond and we are now in Keswick, which is in the Lake District. Which is where Wordsworth was inspired for much of his poetry.



Why the title post about rocks and mountains then? The Lake District to my surprise is very rocky. Which explains how there are endless rock walls that seperate sheep pastures. And there are beautiful mountains surrounding the valleys.

Yesterday we decided to hike through a pass in the mountain from our hostel to Keswick.

This picture was taken before we know what we were getting into at all...look how happy we were.)

All of the tops of the mountains were not visible due to fog, which I will display for your viewing pleasure later (which is now).

My underlayers were soaked through my waterproof pants and my camera was taking a bath in my waterproof coat. How good. I thought. How great. Six miles into the hike and we were halfway. And we were on top of a mountain. And we were lost. And there was no van to save us. nothing. We had to keep going because there was really no way back. And we were freezing and shivering in the cold and I was pretty sure we were never going to get off of that mountain. And then something amazing happened. My pants started foaming. Foaming, you ask. Yes. Foaming. That is what Katie said and I didn't believe her. "You're foaming at the butt," she said, and I of course knew no such thing was happening. Until I reached my arm back to my backside and there was foam on my sleeve. I was instantly mortified and made Lori walk in back of my as close as possible. I wondered what it could possibly be. It looked like soap. I licked it. It tasted like soap. Many jokes ensued including backwards rabies, and I was able to ask people many times if they need to wash their hands. No one did. But I think people were laughing as they watched me hiking and foam coming out of my backpack and sliding down my waterproof pants. They forgot that we were lost and freezing and miserable for a while. I guess I had found a way to contribute positively to the group, in however unexpected a way. I looked in my backpack and there was no sign of soap. That is right. No bottle, or bar. No sign of soap except for the soupy soap bath that important things were swimming in. Such as my passport. Which is now drying under my watercolor box in the room in my hostel. But I am proud to have provided some comic relief when our group was in the belly of the whale.

P.S. Paying a pound for fifteen minutes of internet sucks.

pps.

this is Whitney. sucks for her. if you can't tell, she is now sunk knee deep in water, dirt, mud, and probably sheep crap.