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ilanaramaEarly Saturday afternoon we got on a train heading west to Carlisle; we'd spend the next two weeks going back across the country that took only a couple of hours to cross by train. We checked into our B&B and unloaded our gear, then headed to a restaurant where we met the rest of the participants on our trip (including ![[livejournal.com profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zebra363). From here on out, pretty much everything was taken care of for us (both logistically and financially), which made for a much more relaxing vacation than our usual! After dinner, Britt and I took advantage of the looooooong daylight hours this time of year to walk around Carlisle, which began life as a Brythonic settlement, became the Roman fortress-town of Luguvalium, but was most marked by the conflict between England and Scotland, who traded the town back and forth between them until the 17th century.
The next morning we boarded a private tour bus for the nearby Birdoswald (Banna) Roman Fort, which is along one of the best-preserved sections of Hadrian's Wall. Yep, after just having seen a bit of the eastern end of the wall, we got to see the western end! Here it really looks like a wall, stretching out across the country:
There was also a tiny museum, which on this day had a potter dressed in (presumably) period Celtic clothes demonstrating early pottery techniques out back - very cool. Also out back of the museum (which is in a 19th-century building) are the fort ruins, which are nicely excavated with various informational signs about Roman fort structure.
After a picnic lunch in the museum's courtyard, we got back on the bus, which took us to St. Bees. Which is an awesome name for a place, isn't it? It's a corruption of 'St. Bega', who was a legendary Irish princess who fled to the coast of Britain to form a religious community rather than marry a Viking prince her father had picked out for her, but I spent the next couple of days silently giggling and reciting the famous limerick to myself.
The limerick was popularized by Edward Lear in the 19th century. His were mostly nonsense verses, beginning, 'There was an old man/young person from X' and the last line repeated the last word (X) of the first line, and one of them is as follows:
There was an old man in a tree,
Who was horribly bored by a bee.
When they said, "Does it buzz?"
He replied, "Yes, it does!
It's a regular brute of a bee!"
But this is not the limerick I am speaking of. The limerick that totally earwormed me during my stay in St. Bees is this parody by W. S. Gilbert:
There was an old man of St Bees
Who was horribly stung by a wasp.
When they said: "Does it hurt?"
He replied: "No, it doesn’t—
It's a good job it wasn’t a hornet!"
Ahem.
After settling in at our various B&Bs, we met at the St. Bees Priory Church, a beautiful building with many elements still remaining from the Norman church built around 1120. There we watched a slideshow about St. Bees Man, the medieval knight (now believed to be Anthony de Lucy, who died in 1368) whose well-preserved body, wrapped in a lead coffin, was found in a ruined part of the priory in 1981. We also were treated to a short concert on the priory's (apparently) famous organ, which is the last organ to be built (in 1899) by Henry Willis, who was the Stradivarius of organ-builders in the Victorian era.
We had some free time before dinner, so we, um, drank at the pub. And then we had a really excellent dinner to fuel us up for the beginning of our hike, which would start early the next morning on the pathway by the priory.
zebra363). From here on out, pretty much everything was taken care of for us (both logistically and financially), which made for a much more relaxing vacation than our usual! After dinner, Britt and I took advantage of the looooooong daylight hours this time of year to walk around Carlisle, which began life as a Brythonic settlement, became the Roman fortress-town of Luguvalium, but was most marked by the conflict between England and Scotland, who traded the town back and forth between them until the 17th century.The next morning we boarded a private tour bus for the nearby Birdoswald (Banna) Roman Fort, which is along one of the best-preserved sections of Hadrian's Wall. Yep, after just having seen a bit of the eastern end of the wall, we got to see the western end! Here it really looks like a wall, stretching out across the country:
There was also a tiny museum, which on this day had a potter dressed in (presumably) period Celtic clothes demonstrating early pottery techniques out back - very cool. Also out back of the museum (which is in a 19th-century building) are the fort ruins, which are nicely excavated with various informational signs about Roman fort structure.
After a picnic lunch in the museum's courtyard, we got back on the bus, which took us to St. Bees. Which is an awesome name for a place, isn't it? It's a corruption of 'St. Bega', who was a legendary Irish princess who fled to the coast of Britain to form a religious community rather than marry a Viking prince her father had picked out for her, but I spent the next couple of days silently giggling and reciting the famous limerick to myself.
The limerick was popularized by Edward Lear in the 19th century. His were mostly nonsense verses, beginning, 'There was an old man/young person from X' and the last line repeated the last word (X) of the first line, and one of them is as follows:
There was an old man in a tree,
Who was horribly bored by a bee.
When they said, "Does it buzz?"
He replied, "Yes, it does!
It's a regular brute of a bee!"
But this is not the limerick I am speaking of. The limerick that totally earwormed me during my stay in St. Bees is this parody by W. S. Gilbert:
There was an old man of St Bees
Who was horribly stung by a wasp.
When they said: "Does it hurt?"
He replied: "No, it doesn’t—
It's a good job it wasn’t a hornet!"
Ahem.
After settling in at our various B&Bs, we met at the St. Bees Priory Church, a beautiful building with many elements still remaining from the Norman church built around 1120. There we watched a slideshow about St. Bees Man, the medieval knight (now believed to be Anthony de Lucy, who died in 1368) whose well-preserved body, wrapped in a lead coffin, was found in a ruined part of the priory in 1981. We also were treated to a short concert on the priory's (apparently) famous organ, which is the last organ to be built (in 1899) by Henry Willis, who was the Stradivarius of organ-builders in the Victorian era.
We had some free time before dinner, so we, um, drank at the pub. And then we had a really excellent dinner to fuel us up for the beginning of our hike, which would start early the next morning on the pathway by the priory.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-06-24 02:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-06-24 12:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-04 08:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-04 04:13 pm (UTC)This is incidentally very much reminiscent of the truth about the 'Great Wall of China' - I read a book about it recently which explains how for most of its length the 'wall' was just a turf berm, more a demarcation than a defense. Yet the dramatic high wall of its far east near Beijing is the iconic image of the Great Wall, and what people think about when they hear the term.