| DURHAM, ENGLAND
June 18-20, Monday through Wednesday
Monday, June 18, was gray and misty all day in Durham-town and environs. We were a bit gray and misty ourselves, so just spent the day at the hotel regrouping for the next stage of our travels.
Bob had noticed a bus stop shelter as the taxi turned into the street for the hotel last night. Both the mailed TIC information and a bus schedule from the hotel desk recommended buses 55, 57, and 13 to us to get from the countryside hotel into Durham. But no one told us where to find buses 55, 57, and 13.The fellow behind the desk didn't live in this area, so he was no help. We unlimbered our umbrellas and walked back the bus stop Bob had seen. It was for buses 217 and 48X. They did seem to get to Durham in a roundabout way, but there had to be a reason that 55, 57, and 13 were recommended. There was a bus stop sign on a post across the street, but there didn't seem to be a schedule there. We went back to the hotel.
An hour or so later I decided to investigate the sign on the post more carefully, and went back down to the corner, a distance of about three blocks. I crossed the road and studied the sign. All it said was “Bus Stop,” no times, no routes, no bus numbers, no information at all. As I walked back to the hotel, a little old lady in a long raincoat and carrying a plastic grocery bag came towards me. Now this is a tip I pass along to all international travelers. If you want to know anything about anything local, ask a little old lady. She will give you all the details you need and tell you twice to make sure you've got it.
This little white-haired lady brushed off the bus stops I had been investigating. “I never take those buses. They only come once an hour. You want to take the bus from the other side of the estate. There are two stops, and buses to Durham come by every fifteen minutes.”
“Is that the estate?” I asked and pointed to dozens of brick houses clustered along narrow streets a half-block beyond the hotel.
“Yes, that's Bowburn Estates. Now,” she said, pointing, “you walk along next to those clothes hanging out-see that big tree?” I did.
“Turn left at the tree and follow that to the end. There's a newsagent's shop at the end. There are bus stops to the left and to the right. I always use the one to the right, myself.”
We chatted a bit about where I was from and what I was doing. She told me that we must see the castle and the cathedral in Durham, and we parted great friends.
I went back to the room and got Bob. We set out to find these elusive bus stops. We walked alongside the yard with laundry hanging out and turned left at the tree. About two blocks after we turned, the street and sidewalk appeared to end in a court. Then Bob spied how the walk went on between two high brick walls. We walked between the walls for maybe four or five minutes, and came out on a street. There was a newsagent's on the left. Check. There was a bus stop and shelter on the right. Check. We went over to the bus stop. It was for buses 55 and 57. Check. We read the schedule. We had no idea which stop would be in Durham city proper. There were nice English names on the schedule, but we never heard of them.
I walked to the newsagent's to try to get more information.
A broad smiley East Indian lady in a sari behind the counter in the shop chatting with a white-haired lady who bought a paper. I asked if the nearby bus stop would take us to Durham. The white-haired lady cut in and said that she would show me the bus stop. I thanked the smiling Indian lady, and followed the white-haired lady out.
“The bus stops down this way,” she said and crossed the street. I gave Bob the high sign to join us, and we turned a corner and walked on for about a block. “See those people up there?” she asked. “That's where the bus stops.” Sure enough, as she spoke, a bus stopped and the people got on it.
We for sure would have NEVER found that bus stop. It was on a totally different street! The lady went on to her daughter's house; but before she left, she told us that when we come back from Durham, we have to get off at the bus stop by the newsagent's. And strangers are supposed to figure this out? We read the schedule on the stop where she took us. Every run went to Durham.
Tuesday morning, again fortified with a full English breakfast, we put on our packs and headed out for a reconnaissance tour. We need to find the TIC, then buy tickets at a bus or train station for when we leave Durham, find a Post Office to mail some things to British friends, and an internet connection source. It was again a chilly, misty day. I had a clue to the temperature when I saw out our window the gal who works the desk walking across the car park. She had on a winter coat with fur around the hood. I wore a down vest under my raincoat when we left, and was glad for it.
At the TIC we got the unwelcome news that National Express coaches did not have a station in Durham. I couldn't believe that. Durham is a town of some note, a big town with a big tourist draw. The only way I could get a coach was to buy tickets over the internet. I had no internet access and no way to print out tickets. With the coach, you roll your luggage out of the station level with the coach. The driver puts them in the bin. When you get to your destination, the driver hauls them out of the bin. You just pull up the handles and roll away. Whereas on the trains…well, you know about the trains.
That left the train for us to leave Durham. We walked to the train station, which was on top of a hill. Everything in Durham is on top of the hill, or the bottom. Flat streets are unknown here. They go up; they go down. There were about forty-'leven steps up the hillside to the train station from the TIC.
We bought our train tickets to Holyhead Island in Wales, our next destination. We also made a great discovery! Only passengers on trains coming from the North need to go up and down those yellow steps. Platforms for travel south were level with the train station and the taxi stand. Yea! Not only that, but York and Chesire, two of our upcoming changes, had lifts between platform levels in their stations! Yea, again!
With the help of the TIC, we found the post office and bought some padded envelopes. Next stop was the library. They have a whole digital media center floor! Banks of computers are available for free use. Yes, you can bring your own computer and tap into their Wi-Fi, which I couldn't do in Oban library.
Work done, we followed the hilly, narrow, winding cobblestone streets to the castle and cathedral that are Durham's fame. The River Ware makes a loop around a steep hill. The castle and cathedral, on top of the hill, were easily defended. The castle is now used for Durham University. It was the start of a new term, and there were no tours during terms. Just from the outside, the castle is huge, turreted, walled, and very castle-like. I took pictures.
Next to the castle is Durham Cathedral, St. Cuthbert's. That was open to the public. It was impressive and interesting, particularly the architecture, which appears Norman, but has elements of very early Gothic style. Docents in what looked like choir robes stood by to answer questions and give suggestions. There was the option of paying a pound and climbing the 365 steps to the transept tower. I considered it briefly. But with the heavy mists there wouldn't be much to see from the tower. So I didn't climb. Bob never considered it. We spent a couple of hours there, and had a lunch in the undercroft of the cloisters at a little modern coffee shop.
Today, our last day in Durham, the sun shone and the temperatures shot up twenty degrees. I wore a pile jacket and vest into town, but both of us were soon down to short-sleeved shirts. We spent time at the library, where it turned out that I couldn't use their WIFI with my personal computer after all because the young people manning the desk didn't have, didn't know about the password. So we dipped into some books for an hour or so. Then we mailed our packages at the post office and strolled the streets of Durham.
Lunch was at a little back street coffee shop. After lunch, we walked a wooded riverside path that circles the bottom of the castle-cathedral hill. The shaded path has a steep bank going up one side to the castle and cathedral, and the River Ware on the other. It was a beautiful and peaceful walk. Single and double sculls went up and down the river, possibly practicing for a race. A small museum of local archaeology is in an old mossy brick fulling mill building at riverside. We spent time in there with their exhibits. The afternoon waned. It was too soon time to make a last stroll along the cobbled streets and catch Bus 57 or 55 back to Bowburn Hall.
A last bar supper in the elegant lounge finished the day. Tonight it was sliced turkey topped with brown gravy and a big fluffy Yorkshire pudding, with cooked carrots, pea pods, and little corns. The meals are huge, so we split them. With a pint of good English beer, supper was a perfect top-off for a perfect day.
HOLYHEAD, WALES
June 21-25, Thursday through Monday
“We can have a bit of pasty, too, if himself hasn't got into it,” said my friend Eileen. She opened the oven door in her new cooker where the leftover pasties were put for overnight. “No, they're fine. Brilliant. I'll just get me knife and cut them up.”
Her husband Russell was outside on the patio frying up mountains of home made sausage on top of a small wood stove that warmed the patio as well as cooked the meal. Bob was helping by sitting by and chatting. I ran foodstuffs from the kitchen to the patio as Eileen got them prepared. When it was all organized, we dined on sausages, a half of a pasty each, round ciabatta buns, lemonade, and fresh fruit floating in single cream. Oh, and a lettuce salad with salad cream.
We arrived here, Holy (pronounced Holly) Island off the coast of north Wales, in late afternoon on Thursday, June 21, by train from Durham. It had been an easier trip than from Oban to Durham. Since we were heading south, we didn't have to do those stairs to get under the tracks at Durham. We just dragged our luggage out of the taxi, up a ramp, and onto the train platform. There were lifts at York and Chester to get to upper platforms, not stairs. But we still did a lot of hauling. We were an hour from Durham to York, change trains. We were an hour on the train from York to Manchester Piccadilly, change trains again. We were an hour from Manchester Piccadilly to Chester. Change trains. Our final lap was two hours from Chester to Holy Island. Our friends, the Hughes, live in Holyhead (Hollyhead), the little town on the island. Counting in the time we were running around finding platforms for various trains, it was a six-hour trip.
Now it was Friday, June 22, and we were eating sausage on the patio. It had been a mostly sunny and relatively warm day on Holy Island, attached by bridge to Anglesey Island, which is attached to North Wales by the great Menai Bridge. We began the day with a bacon sandwich and tea; then we were off to the South Stack lighthouse and bird sanctuary not far from Russell and Eileen's home. Their daughter, Rhion, and her three children joined us. When we got there the sun was out and the view from the top of the cliff above the bird viewing tower and lighthouse was fantastic. Did I get a picture of it? No. And the camera was hanging around my neck. The grandchildren ran down to the viewing tower with Eileen.
The plan for the adults was to have lunch at the tea room first, then go down to the viewing platform. So we sat on benches and chatted until Eileen and the children got back up. I had toasties and beans for lunch, one of my favorites. It's simply canned baked beans heated and poured over slices of toast. I shake on the vinegar, dig in, and wash it down with black tea.
By the time we finished lunch, sea mist had moved in and there was nothing to view. So we packed up and went on to Breakwater Park. This park, also on the sea, was backed into sheer cliffs cut from the mountain by slate mining. There were not only interpretive exhibits on the mining, but a number of mosaics made by local artists set into the cement slabs that held exhibits and on the sides of visitor center buildings. I picked up several free postcards of the mosaics. We toured the exhibits, all outdoors in the shells of former mine buildings. The adults read the signage; the kids played on the big machines, and everyone was happy. It was misty there, too, but the sun came back out just as we were leaving.
Saturday dawned gray, but in a couple of hours the sun peeped out. I say “peeped” out because that's what it did all day, danced in and out of the clouds. We, with Russell and Eileen, set off for Caernarfon, town and castle. But the castle wasn't our objective this time. We toured the castle when we visited Russell and Eileen in 1996. The shop across from the castle where I had bought a heavy wooly sweater was still there, just as I remember it.
Under a castle wall the narrow-gauge Welsh Highland Railway begins and ends its journey through the hills, mountains, and villages of countryside Wales. We bought our tickets, then Eileen vanished. She reappeared with a bag of sandwiches for the trip as we were about to climb aboard. We chose one of the just-newly-restored cars, and settled in. Each bench seat had a shiny varnished wooden table. Eileen plunked down the bag of sandwiches and we rumbled off into the landscape.
As farms, tiny villages, and sheep flowed by our windows, we ate and admired. A trolley came by selling snacks and tea, so we had hot drinks with our crabmayonnaise and eggsmayonise sandwiches. Russell doesn't like butter on bread any more than I do. He knew those sandwiches had butter on them, so he had biscuits and chips with his tea. I figured the mayonnaise covered up the taste of the butter, so dived into half a crabmayonnaise on wholemeal bread.
At the end of the line Eileen and I set out on a country path for a walk in the sun. We were doing nicely when Eileen halted. Ahead of her was boggy puddles and mud. It was slop through or turn back. We considered. Eileen tested the tall grass beside the path. It squished. We looked at our sandals. “If we had our Wellies…” said Eileen. We turned back, a bit disappointed. I took some pictures of the train engine and local sheep, and we boarded for the return trip.
When we arrived back at Caernarfon the skies were uniformly gray and the breeze was chill. Russell drove around and we did some sight-seeing on our way to the town of Llanberis. We were going to have lunch at Pete's Caffe, a favorite place of Russell and Eileen, and of mountain climbers and long-distance walkers. This is the territory of Joe Brown, a well-known climber. Climbing and mountain camping snapshots decorated the walls. Mountains hovered in the mists just beyond town.
We ordered pots of hot black tea, of course. Russell ordered a full English breakfast of eggs, beans, toast, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, hash browns, bacon, and sausage. Eileen had a chip bap, a sandwich of what we call French fries on a round bun with ketchup or mayonnaise. I could still taste that crabmayonnaise, so I just ordered a flapjack. A flapjack is a cookie bar made of oats, butter, and golden syrup, basically. Bob ordered chips. Just chips. Eileen brought a small dish of olives to the table. Then Bob's chips came - a bowlful of golden fries. I had taken one bite out of my flapjack. Bob and Eileen were sucking on olives and eating fries. I looked at the olives, looked at Bob's bowl of chips, looked at my flapjack. I wrapped up my flapjack in a napkin, poured some more vinegar on Bob's chips (he never puts enough on) and dug into the olives and fries. Russell ate my flapjack later that evening when we had tea.
After lunch we strolled the streets of Llanberis under heavy gray skies to the station for the Snowdon Mountain Railway. It was too late in the day to ride the train, and we had already had one train ride, but we wanted to see the unique cog trains. As we waited to see the train, the clouds began to unload. Sprinkles soon turned to a steady rain. We were dry under the platform roof, though. The train came in. I took some pictures. It was near six p.m. The snack shops were closed and the area deserted except for us and the few people that got off the train. We left, also, and drove home in the rain.
The weather forecast today, Sunday, was for sunshine. So today was set aside to take the hour's drive to Russell and Eileen's caravan (travel trailer) where it spends the summer at the coast. Russell and Eileen go to the caravan nearly every weekend and any other time they can.
It rained all night, and was raining still in the morning. But that did not mean it was raining off the island. We set out about 10 a.m. to go first to an osprey reintroduction project first and then perhaps to the caravan, depending on the weather.
The osprey reintroduction site was near the village of Prenteg, on the river. These osprey migrate to west Africa every winter. There were cameras on the nest. Inside a temporary building were three large flat-screen TV monitors on which the nest could be watched. Even though people flowed in and out of the building, it was always full. A very good interpreter gave an endless commentary about the birds, and events in the nest were recorded on a board under the screens.
We were lucky enough to arrive at about the time the male was expected back to the nest with a fish for the two young birds. A third chick had died, so the two remaining were the darlings of Wales. Eileen and I watched for a while, then went over to another building, the Viewing Hide, to see the nest through telescopes. The only thing I could really pick out was a camera over the nest. The TVs were more interesting. So we strolled back. The fellows had stayed with the screens, and said the male's shadow had passed over the nest. Word was passed as others came in the trailer. “The male's shadow has passed over the nest. He's in the area.”
We sat down to watch.
The female flew up to the scrag branch on the tree that held one of the cameras. A biologist came in to report the male was on a smaller tree nearby the nest. This event had more tension than Law and Order.
The chicks were a week or two from fledging, but still the mother feeds them. One chick fluttered up to the edge of the nest and flapped her wings. The audience was frightened.
“No, get down from there.”
“You're not big enough yet!”
The chick finally wiggled back down into the nest. There was a collective sigh of relief.
Then Dad showed up with a small mullet in his talons. Applause and cheers erupted from the audience. The female tore the fish from his talons and ripped it apart with her beak. One by one, she fed the chicks.
The interpreter wrote on the board under the screens: Male returns with mullet at 12:34. Female feeds both chicks.
Interest soon waned in watching the female tear apart the fish, so we decided to move on. We came out of the trailer. The sun was shining!
We drove then, to the village of Llanbedrod for a Sunday Roast at Y Weddw. In most of Britain, in our experience, pubs and restaurants offer a “Roast,” a single menu offering for Sunday dinner. We dined on roast beef, lamb, or turkey (your choice), Yorkshire pudding, roasted potatoes, baked cauliflower au gratin, boiled carrots and peas, all washed generously with brown gravy. With a half-pint of stout, it was as English a dinner as one could wish.
The sun still shone, so it was off to the caravan. We continued down the Lleyn Peninsula nearly to its end and turned into the caravan park, which was really just a farmer's field. The view from the hilltop, the view Russell and Eileen have from their caravan, was spectacular. I couldn't get it all with my camera in one shot. It is wrap-around unending beautiful. You can see across the Cardigan Bay to mountains. The panorama flows to the right where you can see over a lower hill more out to the sea.
Their caravan has large windows all around one end. When you sit on the couch, the scenery wraps around you. We sat and chatted and sang while Eileen made tea. A camping friend had recorded pub songs from Liverpool for her and sent over the CD when we arrived. Eileen is from Liverpool. With the tea she served warm rhubarb pie awash with custard. To die.
After tea, Eileen and I walked over to her friend's camping pitch. Eileen had piled fresh strawberries into two meringue nests, then poured single cream over them. She took them over to friends Ann and Joe, as a thank-you for the Liverpool CD. We chatted there for a while. The sun shone and the wind was fresh from the sea. They three visited in absolute comfort. I was freezing. When we left, Ann gave me a hug. “Your face is cold!” she said. Hers was warm. Eileen's was warm. I was hypothermic.
Back at our caravan, I put on a down vest and my raincoat to cut the breeze. That was better. Eileen and I played at French boules on the grass while Bob and Russell sat in lawn chairs and watched. I didn't do too badly, considering. I made the first two points, even. It went downhill from that.
Our second game was interrupted by a call from their daughter, Sian. We were all going to meet at The Anchorage back on Holy Head for dinner. That is, they would have dinner. We would have a snack. It was agreed to meet at six. We gathered up the game and Russell and Eileen shut up the caravan. We headed up the peninsula, across Anglesey Island, and back home to Holy Island.
Sian, her husband Russell, and their three boys got to the restaurant shortly after us. Bob and I had a pint and shared an order of chips. It was a merry meal. The family came over to the house afterwards, and we had a tea and cookies.
Today is the end of this Postcard. It is nearly noon. Winds bend the trees; sea mists and rains blow across the island. The cold seeps into the house. Eileen just made some hot tea to warm us all up. It is Monday, June 25. Bob and I will bundle up when tea is done, and walk to the village center to do errands. Eileen has been busy most of the morning making roast and pies. Her brother is coming this afternoon from Cornwall today for three weeks. We'll come home to a hot meal and make a new friend.
Hwyl, from Wales.
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