Finally

This will be my last entry for Michaelmas term. I have one use left on my BritRail pass to get me to Luton airport. Shanty Irishman that I am, I couldn’t just let the penultimate box go unticked, so I had to do something today. I wanted most to go to the Holy Isle of Lindisfarne. But I just couldn’t do the math needed to coordinate the train schedule and the tides. So I went to Westminster Abbey instead because I’ve never actually visited Chaucer’s tomb, the cornerstone of “Poet’s Corner,” though I have tried twice before.

Well, this pilgrimage was most successful. But no pictures are allowed in the abbey, so I’ll pluck one or two off the web. Chaucer’s tomb itself looks rather cobbled together, and he wasn’t buried in the abbey for being a poet. . .but let the historians worry the facts.

London was very drizzly this morning. . .big surprise. Nevertheless, there was a huge crowd of sightseers, all of them from Spain. It costs 10 quid just to get into Westminster, another four for the guided tour, so I figured “in for a pound, in for some more pounds.” However, no one else signed up because the tour was only in English. Yeah, me! So I got escorted around to all the secret nooks, skipping over velvet robes, gathering sneers along the way. Favorites: Edward's throne (sans scone), Richard II and Anne of Bohemia are buried together; Henry V’s chapel has a huge “H” on it; Mary [don’t call me “Bloody”] Tudor is buried with Elizabeth I (but only ERI gets the effigy); and Ben Jonson is buried vertically because he couldn’t afford to lie down (and his last name is spelled with an H).After three or four hours, I decided to visit the British Museum too. I realized I could only zip through it, but admission is free and it’s sort of on the way back to King’s Cross via the Piccadilly line. Of course, I was overwhelmed: the Sutton Hoo treasures, the Rosetta stone, the Parthenon frieze, and on and on. My brain exploded. But I did take some odd pictures for DF’s H2P lectures: Mithras, Romans being naughty in a boat, etc.
Well, it’s off to meet Tricia in Paris day after tomorrow, and now it’s time for you to make up your own stories.

Of Castles and Kings

Well, I went to West Yorkshire today. . .primarily because there was nobody here to talk me out of it. I wanted to see Wakefield because. . .I don’t know. I thought maybe everyone still speaks in alliterative long lines and ends every verse paragraph with a bob and wheel. But no. The center of Wakefield-Westgate seems proudly proletariat. Smoking is the main sport. The mothers are very young; the children all suck candy and drink pop non-stop; the teenagers are all punked out, and everyone seems related to everyone else–much like Arkansas. In general, the folk also seem much shorter than elsewhere in England and somewhat beat up; I mean literally bruised and limping. At first, I thought everyone was pissed off all the time, but everyone was actually extremely helpful and friendly whenever I asked for directions. Unfortunately, I could barely understand a word they said. Wakefield used to be known as “the merry city” because you couldn’t trip out of one pub without falling into another–this tradition may explain the bruises. The medieval cathedral survives only as a reconstructed idea, and its space is besieged by Burger-King-Woolworth-Boots-like businesses. The interior was in a shambles. The west end was being used for a charity bazaar, and the east end had a temporary TV booth set up for the taping of a choir service. Oh yeah, and there was actually a prayer service going on too. After I finally gave up looking for the pageant wagons, my two remaining targets were the Pontefract and Sandal castles. Why you may ask? Excellent question! Both sites are complete ruins. The two people manning the tucked-away and otherwise empty Tourist Information Office seemed totally surprised to by my inquiry. One actually walked me to the necessary bus stop. Since it took so long to train from Cambridge, it seemed unlikely that I would see both sites before dusk, so they recommended I start with Pontefract (formerly pronounced “Pomfret” but now “Ponty-frack”). The town of Pontefract is itself another very blue collar “do-we-have-a-castle?” burg about a half hour east of Wakefield. But “bloody Pontefract” is where Richard II died (was hacked to death?). King James I of Scotland (about whose poem I wrote my master’s thesis) and Charles d’Orleans were also imprisoned there. So I was feeling all Tintern-Abbeyish. I got back to Wakefield with about an hour to go before sunset. To get to Sandal Castle ten minutes south of town, I had to take a different bus. I was told by a driver to catch the 110 in front of “Gay Bar” just two blocks over. Well, I’m not quite sure how he defined “block,” but when I didn’t see anything resembling a bus stop I suddenly realized I might have to ask a surly little bruised Yorkshireman “Where’s the gay bar?” But then a blessed revelation. . .the bus itself appeared and stopped in front of “The Gate Bar.” The new bus driver told me when to get off, but there are zero signs for the Sandal Castle until you are actually at its entrance. It’s behind a row of very posh homes, and the locals seem to want to keep it secret as their private dog park. Sandal is where the Battle of Wakefield was fought in 1460. Apparently, Duke Richard of York had gone to Merry Wakefield for a few pints and got caught tripping back to the castle. Red Rose 1, White Rose 0.

Bury My Feet

Today, I visited Bury St. Edmunds and Norwich. And my feet fell off. No joke, no hyperbole. . .they just had enough and walked away on their own. My plan today was to make a northeast run from Cambridge into Suffolk. The trip to both places was an easy triangle. But neither of these two sites seems to be a major tourist attraction, and the locals have no clue about the medieval heritage in their midst. I found the ruins of the Abbey in Bury St. Edmunds deeply sad. Much can be blamed on King Henry VIII as usual, but the abbey had been previously sacked twice by totally pissed off peasants in 1327 and again during the Revolt (or more PC “Rising”) of 1381. The Cathedral of St. James has a well-intended Normanicity but its “Millennium Tower” is not more than 50 years old. Also, it was quite impossible to get to the reconstruction of an Anglo-Saxon village in West Stow at this time of year. However, a happy surprise was the 15th-century angel roof of St. Mary’s Church.

Then, on to Norwich (pronounced “nor-itch”; just barely two syllables). My feet (who came home on their own) hate Norwich. The street plan was scribbled by a drunken four-year old. Everywhere else I’ve been, the medieval sites are quite near to one another. But in Norwich there at the four corners of a hustling, prosperous burg. The tourist pamphlets try to convince you that the (19th-century) castle and (19th-century) cathedral are all ooh-ah. . .well, they are in their way. But on almost every other block of the town there’s an astonishing church made out of flint. And the church of Dame Julian is tucked away in a totally ignored nowhere. England is wasted on the English.

Land of Lincoln(shire)

I was scanning my list of places I haven’t seen in England as yet–which remains an ever growing list–and “Lincoln” called my name. Lincoln is north and an itty bit west of Cambridge, about two-thirds of the way to York. It’s a simple enough route if you make the right connections, but if you have one mis-timed nap and go to Nottingham, Robin Hood will stop the train.
This is the first time I’ve traveled on a Saturday. It’s usually just me and a guide and some grammar school kids perhaps. But today the train from Peterborough to Lincoln was overrun by thirteen-year olds bringing their own cacophony to a concert. None of them bought tickets; all of them got caught at the exit gate.
Modern Lincoln, what you see as soon as you get off the train, was awash with Christmas shoppers. The town itself seemed very prosperous, but I fled the feeding frenzy of santa sales, climbed up the Strait and then up an even steeper path cleverly called “Steep Hill.”


OK, any sane person would have had quite enough of Norman cathedrals by now, so I’ll let the pictures do the talking. The light was exceptionally good today (translation from English to American: “the sun actually came out”). My two favorite Chaucer bits: 1) the story of St. Hugh’s missing head (i.e., a relic of the kind and wise bishop who was instrumental in negotiating the Magna Carta, not the boy “martyr” mentioned by Mme. Eglentyne in The Canterbury Tales whose anti-Semitic legend contributed to the expulsion of Jews in 1290); and 2) the fact that Katherine Swynford’s tomb (she was nanny/mistress/wife of John of Gaunt) is just to the left of the main altar. Lincoln Cathedral also has
a unique type of vaulting with the technical name "crazy vaulting"--that's what the guide said and I believe every syllable.

After too much time in the cathedral (did I mention over thirty greenmen, an imp, an angel choir, a double or cadaver effigy, a sepulcher chapel?. . .nevermind), I also walked the walls of the castle. I was doing fine till I ascended the (post-medieval) observatory and had a terrifying attack of vertigo which made me cry like a little boy-martyr. I was once again ready to swear off seeing anything non-medieval, but I kind of really like the memorial to Tennyson (born Somersby, Lincolnshire). No Jane Austen sightings.