Friday, August 11, 2006

England Travelogue - 5

The rest of the trip seemed to go by quickly. I took many hikes. Up a tarn in Grasmere.


Around Grasmere Lake.


Through Yewbarrow Wood. And along what is referred to as the Estuary Footpath along Morecambe Bay. Much of that route is a paved promenade that is reminiscent of the Victorian Era. There are grass tennis courts and lawn bowling and a tea shop and flower gardens.



Morecambe Bay is a strange, beautiful and deadly place. The guidebooks are filled with stories of women losing their lovers and husbands on Morecambe Bay. The reason is that, when the tide is out it doesn't look like a bay at all but rather an inviting, grassy marshland.

But do not be deceived! Much of that grassland is actually quicksand. And when the tide comes in, it comes at a killing pace. Too fast to outrun. So unless you are prepared to swim four miles, you drown. Which evidently people do almost every year. There are big signs. You can walk across it if you contact a Mr. Cedric Robinson, who is listed as The Queen's Guide to the Sands of Morecambe Bay. I didn't take the guided walk. I knew I could hande the eight miles, but not without a bathroom. But if you are a birdwatcher, they say it is not to be missed.

I went to Cartmel where there is a priory dating to the 12th Century, which is just after my father's family got to England from Normandy, if you believe the folklore. The priory has a graveyard and I expected to see very old graves, but the oldest were from the 1800's. There were some remnants of headstones leaning against the wall. It looks like gravestones don't last more than 200 or 300 years. The monks were tortured and burned at various times - as happens when you are a monk in the middle ages. Cartmel was lovely - like all the towns in the Lake District.

The monks also gave Grange-Over-Sands its name. They had a granary there, which is graunge in French and eventually became Grange.

And then we had to pack up Sky and head to London. We had tea one more time at the fabulous Hazelmere Cafe in Grange-Over-Sands. I was sad but I hate goodbye's so we got in the car and headed back down the M6. Another 7 hour endurance test. We got lost over and over in London trying to get to our hotel on Grosvenor Square. Cheryl was magnificent. I can't imagine a more stressful driving situation and she never flinched. As I pored over the map, getting more and more carsick, she would say "I think it's this way". And she'd be right. It was pure intuition, but it worked better than all my left-brained reasoning. She works for a company that is a partner to Marriott and so we got a room in a very luxurious hotel right in downtown London for about $59 a night. We didn't have long - we got there Friday night and left Sunday morning. London felt just like New York to me, except older architecture. And more international somehow. New York you hear a lot of accented English on the streets. Perhaps peppered with Spanish or Yiddish. But in London, every conversation you pass is a different language. Every language in the world, it seems. I had the same sense of excitement and energy there that I have in New York.


And then it was home again, home again, jiggety jig. I went to Trader Joe's yesterday. I moved to Baltimore in May and have been there numerous times but I still can't figure out how to get to the adjacent parking lot. The Trader Joe's is in the 'Towson Town Center' - a huge mall built over the downtown area of Townson Maryland. There is free parking - acres of it all enclosed in a multi-level parking garage. I know there is a way to get through that garage to the parking lot at Trader Joe's but I've spent hours at this point and still end up walking a long way with heavy grocery bags. I couldn't help but notice the difference from the experience of buying groceries in Grange-Over-Sands and I felt sad and angry. How much we have lost in this country - does anyone realize it? Well, at least I've seen where life is managed with grace and beauty. The question is, can I now be content with less?

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

William Shakespeare - King Richard II. Act ii. Sc. 1.


4 comments:

Don Cummings said...

Oh My God
These pictures are gorgeous
AND QUICKSAND, TOO!
I love the Shakespeare quote. Love it all.
It is truly beautiful. How lucky to have had that trip!

Rebecca Waring said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

A beautiful description of a trip. Glad you liked it so much. Thanks for a small diversion to the lakes while sat at my desk in Sheffield !

Before the modern roads were engineered, Morecambe bay was the main route to the Lakes. People used to cross the sands and marshes in carriages as well as on foot - some died when they got stuck or lost their way in the trickling streams as the tide came back in. A recent disaster was when a crew of cockle-pickers unfamiliar with the sands and led by an unscrupulous and incompetent employer were drowned by the incoming tide. There was also another near disaster when two tractors pulling two more crews collided out on the sands....

Rebecca Waring said...

Thank you Chris, and everyone in the UK, for keeping your country so beautiful even into the 21st century. I hope someday Americans will take a lesson from you.