Conwy

After Liverpuddle, we drove on, through the tunnel and into Wales, stopping at a real campground just short of Conwy. Despite rain, we got the wash done and other campground things, and then, as the sky cleared to a beautiful day Sunday, we drove on to Conwy and its castle.

The best real medieval castles, some say, are all in Wales, ordered in the later 13th century by Edward I, whom we last saw getting defeated by Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn near Stirling, in Scotland. Edward did much better in Wales, though he had to fight two wars and did not get a Stone of Scone as a bonus. (But he did get the Prince of Wales thing, which turned out to be important.) The Welsh strongholds were all in mountainous Snowdonia, in the north. Edward and his advisors concluded that it would be cheaper to build these monster castles and the fortified towns associated with them, and to send in English settlers, than to continue a series of wars with the feisty Welsh. History always has its little surprises, but, basically, he was right, and up went the castles, 17 in all, the largest and strongest of which ring Snowdonia. Edward had traveled widely before becoming king, including a crusade or two, knew the latest in warfare, and employed the leading military architect of his time. They were military fortresses, strongholds, part of the national defense, neither noble nor royal residences. They were designed to be defended by as few as a couple dozen men. And did. Anyhow, several of the castles are still in reasonably good shape. Conwy is one of the best, although not "concentric" in design, it still had its "killing fields," fortified access to the harbor, etc.

Conwy Castle

"Will you go and tell your master that Arthur from the

Court of Camelot is here?"

Towers and turrets

The (still-) walled town of Conwy, looking toward the

fortified quay

Conwy harbor

Tower coffee house

Oldest house in Conwy, c. 1300, a National

Trust property

Oldest dining room in Conwy

Smallest house in UK, they said; hey, Vicki and I live in

something smaller than that...

The mussel monument, outside the Mussel

Museum (alas, closed for the season)

Beatlemania II

Mathew Street is where much of the Beatles stuff is concentrated. Particularly venerated is the Cavern Club, where they performed some 292 times. Alas, the Cavern Club was torn down some years back, but an Exact Replica in Pretty Much the Exact Same Place Give or Take is there. Bricks from the old Cavern Club now comprise a Wall of Fame of groups that performed at the Cavern over the years, an impressive lot. About every two feet down the street is a bronze plaque asserting something like "On this spot, between acts, on the evening of November 23, 1962, George Harrison re-tied his left shoe; confirmed by his then-agent, Hamish Hornsby."

Mathew Street

The Wall of Fame

I think she was squeezing his bum; she says not

Exact Replica of the Cavern Club

Large display explaining exactly where the Cavern Club was, and is, employing 
historical photographs, personal testimony, etc.

Beatlemania I

We were not really big Beatles fans, but always did like their music. The Museum down the street from the Walker had a special "Beat Goes On" exhibition on the history of Liverpool pop music, which is a lot more than the Beatles, so we visited it, for starters. Then, we had to find the Eleanor Rigby statue. See illustrations. Vicki says this is positively the last such photo she is taking. Liverpudlian passers-by did give us quite a look.

"The North's Top Group"

Screaming back at an audience

The "new look" suits

Paul's pants; read text (below)

Paul's pants text

Me consoling Eleanor Rigby; one of the two reasons I especially wanted to visit 
Liverpool

But she was inconsolable; I looked for Father MacKenzie, but he was away 
writing the sermon no one would hear; especially me

(The opportunity to meaningfully use the word "Liverpudlian" (=def. a resident of Liverpool), a very cool word, in my estimation, is the other reason for visiting).

Mersey, Mersey

We almost decided not to visit Liverpool but are glad we did. It's a city with important history, the museums are good, the downtown vibrant, and, there's always the Beatles. After the Walker Museum and environs, we walked into the main shopping district, which was crowded like Xmas, then to the Prince Albert Pier, then to the Cavern district on Mathew Street. We prepared ourselves for the experience by listening the night before to the entire collected works of the Beatles while parked outside a Tesco in St. Helens (a suburb).

It did not start well; the Kensington approach consists of block-after-block of 
(tastefully) boarded-up houses, awaiting "regeneration"; Liverpool has a long 
history of economic ups and downs

2008 European Capital of Culture

The Walker Museum, where we spent much of Saturday morning

Hogarth's portrait of his friend, the actor David Garrick, as Richard III

There were plenty of famous paintings, including the obligatory Rembrandt 
self-portrait (he must have done thousands of them); "The Punishment of 
Lust," by an obscure 19th century Italian, caught my eye; it was the mountains, 
I guess, if not the levitation

"A horse is a horse, unless, of course..."

Among the interesting buildings downtown, on the harbor

Arbor Low

One of the megalithic sites I first read about, way back in the late 70s, was Arbor Low, in Derbyshire. The name stays with you, somehow. It is a sizeable henge, with ditch, big circle, a causeway and a little tumulus (Gib Hill) a few hundred yards away. The whole thing is a kind of Avebury/Silbury Hill on smaller scale, in limestone. As with Avebury, the Christians tried very hard to take this one down, and here, unlike Avebury, they succeeded. Not one of the stones now stands. But they all lay where they fell, and despite being limestone and melting away, it takes little imagination to see a very impressive circle, of interesting stone, large, and with associated peripherals. It is on a farm out in the boonies, several miles from Bakewell (not Half-Baked).

Places like Arbor Low were not protected, from Christians

or antiquarians or farmers, until the Antiquities Act of 1882;

at Arbor Low, the "VR" (Victoria Regina) posts circle the

monument itself; damn, I'd like to have one of those for my

garden!

Arbor Low; imagine all the stones up-right

Scale...big stones

Ditch and henge segment

Mental note: when we build our stone circle, we'll want to

use metamorphic rock

Gib Hill, a few hundred yard away from the henge

Chatsworth Gardens

Chatsworth dates from the 16th century, and, of course, there were gardens then too. The great breakthrough was in the 19th century, with the landscape architect and gardener Joseph Paxton. He made his name at Chatsworth, and went on to do the Crystal Palace in London, Central Park in NYC, and some other things. The conservatory at Chatsworth was one of his greatest achievements, a football field sized glass-enclosed and heated indoor garden (at this latitude?!) that could grow all manner of sub-tropical and tropical plants. It is gone now, a victim of wars and war economies, but much of his work...the rose garden, the flower garden, the cook's garden, the pine forest, the maze, the  grotto, and most especially the incredible rock garden (acres of it! giant boulders heaped on one another in amazing shapes), remains and could take a whole day to explore just in themselves. Unfortunately, or not, our camera battery died in the midst of the gardens, and I had forgotten to bring the spare.

Grand canal and fountain from House

The Wall here is an enclosed heated wall that supports larger arboreal specimens 
not-native to the climate; a remnant of Paxton's great conservatory

At the top of the Cascade

The Cascade, down to the House

In the Gardens...

Looking toward the Maze

Beginning the Rock Garden

My definition of a cool place...Missoula, Chamonix, Nelson (South Island, 
NZ)... includes the presence, on clear, calm days, of parasails, even the 
motorized types...

Chatsworth House

We have seen a great number of royal and other palaces and great houses in the past several months. For me, Chatsworth was the best, all-around, so far. It is by no means the largest, oldest, most important, historically, architecturally or artisitically. It's art is just so-so. But it's been lived in and cared for by the same family for 16 generations, and everything in the place is authentic, real, and genuine. No "period" stuff. The care is evident in the narrative and in the renovations now underway. And the gardens...Jospeph Paxton's gardens are not nearly what they were in Victorian times...the Crystal Palace had its origins here....but they are by far the best and most interesting I have seen yet, anywhere. I'll have to do a separate post on them.

View from the gardens

Entry hall; "apotheosis of Julius Caesar" on the ceiling (huh?)

State bedroom; reserved for the Monarch

Really nice character log in the study

Library

Dining room, where Queen Victoria had her first meal with the 
grown-ups, age 13

Now there's an antler chandelier!

Music room

Sculpture hall

Artsy shot of the fountains and grand canal

In the gift shoppe: one of the items you see all over the UK

is the "Keep Calm and Carry On" saying from WWII, on

mugs, fridge magnets, mousepads, and everywhere else...

Yorkshire Notes

We are now in Derbyshire, on a hill lay-by between (beautiful) Bakewell and Arbor Low, moving back to the left side, toward Wales. We'll be zig-zagging all the way back to Dover, I suppose. It's really a small island. Today we saw incredible Chatsworth, about which I'll write tomorrow. For now, some notes vaguely related to our second visit to Yorkshire:

1) In Yorkshire, on the Bronte Way walk, I had what I considered the nearly perfect day-hike lunch. First, thin-sliced Spam ("Some Parts Are Mammal"), fried in its own glop until golden brown. Although popularized by the Pythons, it is not really the British delicacy. Too many hikes in Hawaii have inclined me to it. Serving suggestion: don't read the label. Second, a chunk of Normandy cheese, accompanied by a few gulps of red French wine; in my case, Chateau de Tescaux, a very recent vintage, I suspect. Third, a hard-boiled egg (remove shell). Fourth, a handful of salted almonds. And, fifth, a confection, in my case, a slab or two of Romney's Kendal Mint Cake. (Make sure you have finished the wine). Mint cake ingredients are: sugar, glucose, and oil of peppermint. Nothing else. I love the way they sort sugar out from the glucose. Unlike all other British foods, there are no other nutritional notes. Nothing about daily requirements of triglycerides or red dye #4. Apparently Romney's was great-grand-fathered in, or else the appreciative 1953 quote from Sir Edmund Hillary on the package was good enough. It was good enough for me. Hillary...whom we encountered in Nepal and then in New Zealand, and now here, if only on a candy wrapper...really ties things together.

2) Driving in Yorkshire, especially in and around Haworth. The Dales are pretty, but driving up and down these deep valleys can be harrowing, especially in a 22 foot 3 ton van. The roads are rarely more than 12 feet wide, often less, never a shoulder, grades less than 20% aren't even marked (seriously), people park all over the streets, there is always a bus or "heavy goods vehicle" coming at you, there are bicyclists and pedestrians and dogs, and, invariably, there is always a woman and a baby carriage between you and the oncoming heavy goods vehicle, which is in a hurry, on the 24% grade turning road. None of this is hyperbole.

I have been coping, despite driving on the left side of the vehicle, contrary to British custom, and left side of the road. Vicki absolutely freaks out whenever we start the motor and stays that way for the duration of the trip. She braces for impact at the sight of any vehicle. In just four months she has nearly finished the bottle of raspberry liquer; normally it would have taken four years or fourteen years. Tom, our navigator, only complicates matters by consistently routing us through the CBD of any hamlet/village/town/city/metropolis we are near, consistently also on the smallest, steepest, and most exposed roads available. His answer to every query or command, and the first thing he says whenever we turn him on, is "turn around when possible." Turning the Grey Wanderer around, on these roads, is not always my first answer. But we are coping. Fortunately, British motorists, like those we have encountered elsewhere in northern Europe, are consistently patient, couretous, considerate, and smart. I hope they don't mind too much our blundering among them.

3) We did not visit Peniston, and we did not sample the pudding.