The mortal meandering of a corpse way

My first full day in the Lake District was wet. And soggy. Though relieved to have packed my enormous (and bright) parka, I did not have the foresight to pack my camera bag – therefore the combination of startling color and the strange protuberance underneath my parka dispelled any notions I had about fading into the scenery. (Which, I admit, I don’t tend to do very well on bright and sunny days)

Ambleside in a brief moment of non-precipitation 

We left Ambleside intending to head toward Windermere, and after carefully inquiring at the information office, we promptly headed the wrong way. Luckily, England’s perception of pedestrians is much more evolved than what a hapless walker might find in the Bluegrass, and sidewalks (or more properly “footpaths”) lined most of the major roads. And who can complain about getting lost in the Lake District even when the weather is most dismal? The scenery never disappoints, and for some reason, the 300^th sheep I spot is just as fascinating as the first.

A charming house in Rydal

At the next village a pronouncement concerning peckishness was made (not by me, as  oatmeal is always most fortifying) so we began to look for the nearest tea room. Love the English – such a delight is never far away! The hamlet of Rydal includes the last home of Wordsworth (he lived there from 1837 to 1870), Rydal Mount, which is still owned by his descendants.

There was also a big pile, Rydal Hall, (the technical term for a large house constructed by individuals of means; i.e. rich people), constructed in several phases (beginning in the 16^th century) by the Le Fleming family.  There was some interesting art incorporating textiles with old CDs, a waterfall, and the tea room.  Oh, thank you for tea rooms – caffeine and sweets.

Rydal Hall

Obviously I will be making some of this art for my garden when I return....

We left Rydal in a gentle drizzle of rain, directed by the kind tea room staff to take the coffin trail on the next leg of our journey.  This was not a malicious wish of harm upon us, but rather a fascinating bit of local lore (material culture!).



Coffin trails or paths, also known as corpse roads or church ways, wound between rural settlements and their mother churches – the churches in more populated areas that alone held burial rights. Bodies would often be carried in slings (not coffins) along these unpaved routes,  and it was bad luck if the dead had to be taken another way.  Inevitably, the paths became imbued with otherworldly associations, thought to harbor ghosts and restless spirits. The “church ways” are even referenced by Puck in A Midsummer’s Night Dream:

Now it is the time of night,

That the graves all gaping wide,

Every one lets forth his sprite,

In the church-way paths to glide

There was no unease or malingering haints to be found on our path, but it was, as most of our time there, absolutely beautiful.

The Coffin Trail (along the route we chatted with a very nice German lady with a puzzling English accent) ended in Grassmere, home to Dove Cottage, one of the most iconic Wordsworth spots in the the Lake District. Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy lived here for eight years, during which time he produced the poem known to almost everyone, especially the scads of tourists crowding the tiny house and museum on a rainy day.

Dove Cottage - originally an inn.

            I wandered lonely as a cloud
          That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
          When all at once I saw a crowd,
          A host, of golden daffodils;
          Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

The day ended in the small town of Troutbeck, at a pub known as the Mortal Man. A pub, first known as The White House, has been on the site since 1689. It apparently served as a watering hole for all of the famous Lake District writers and artists, including Wordsworth, Coleridge and Hogarth.

The only honorable thing to do was to sample all five beers on tap, and then take the suggestion of a wandering Swedish man from Manchester on a good walk up the nearby fell (Wansfell). I don’t normally go for a hike after a pint, but the sky had cleared, and it seemed like an excellent idea.

A stone barn in Troutbeck, built in 1890.

Ascending the Wansfell

Descending the Wansfell

Stone barn and attached outbuilding on the trail up the Wansfell

All the fresh air inspired us to return to the Mortal Man and have a very carnivorous feast: leg of lamb, a steak and potato pie, and local Cumberland sausage (this was split between three people, so don't judge me). 

The peas were really, really good. As was the meat explosion. 

Day trip to London

“Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.” 

Samuel Johnson

For a simple farm girl from Mt. Sterling, my fascination with London doesn’t, on the surface, make much sense. It teems with people; the air isn’t exactly sweet and pure; the traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular, provokes rage and despair and the price of everything is inflated beyond belief. Yet, still: London is my favorite city in the world. Even when cursing the tourists (and not lumping myself in with that lot at all) that have caused the Oxford Circus station to overflow with masses of humanity, and the subsequent humidity and rain that colluded to make a towering mass out of my hair – I love it so much that I walk around with a foolish grin on my face.

My trip to London consisted of three separate missions: meet up with Richard and Pam Jett, visit the Tate Modern, and secure a new UV filter for my camera. Part one commenced with a walk from Oxford Circus to St. Paul’s Cathedral, a journey of only two miles (see map)  but it felt like four, due to the thronging masses.

St. Paul's by Canaletto (circa 1754)

Sir Christopher Wren’s masterpiece is not exactly an ocean amidst the frenzy of the city, but somehow the super Jetts and I made contact. (And somehow all of my photos of this architectural treasure are crooked) 

And when you are having lunch in the heart of London,

what do you consume? A giant fish and chips and delicious beer...

Eating such a copious amount of fried food is OK when you are in London, because then you walk across the Milllennium Bridge, gawk at the Thames and then peruse the meaning of art at the Tate Modern. 

Pam and Richard Jett

After I bid farewell to the super Jetts, I wandered back west, along the Thames, to Charing Cross and then on to Trafalgar Square, and my favorite church, St. Martins-in-the Fields. 

And back to Oxford Street, where commuters and feverish consumers packed the street, rendering my dream of getting on the tube for the first leg of my return trip to Oxford moot. So I started walking toward Regent’s Park and the Baker Street Station (visions of Centre-in-London fresh in my head), and I didn't even need to look at a map to chart my course.  John Nash’s design is a thing of beauty – if only I had the money to own a flat overlooking the park...

The Lake District (Part 1)

“With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.” 
― William Wordsworth

Lake Windermere

Despite the onerous thought of boarding a train for an extended journey north after a trans-Atlantic flight (and the accompanying very little sleep), unwinding in the Lake District upon my arrival to England proved to be the perfect antidote to jet lag. Water, fells, stone walls, sheep – the bucolic backdrop to so much of Wordsworth’s writing unfolded over three days, punctuated by countless exclamations of “Look!” followed by deep sighs, no language being sufficient to describe the sublime landscape.

Walking along the Coffin Trail between Ambleside and Grassmere

Staples of the landscape: sheep and stone walls. As my father often says..
                                      "you know they didn't haul that stone in there" - an astute observation made
                                                       about Kentucky, but which applies to this area as well, which doesn't have
the best soils in England. 

The town of Ambleside (the “heart of the southern Lakes District”) was our base for exploring, and a small, three room holiday cottage “How Head Barn” (the custom of naming one’s house is a practice both charming and perplexing, but I’ll not delve into that now), gave the weary travelers respite. Ambleside is located on Lake Windermere, England's largest lake. http://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/visiting/placestogo/explorewindermere

How Head Barn in Ambleside

First of all, a little bit of architectural nerding out: everything is built of stone. How Head Barn (with narrow ventilation slits in the gable ends now covered with glass) was stone, all of the other houses and stores were stone (or covered in what we would call stucco) – rock, rock, rock.

For me, hailing from Central Kentucky where brick and log/frame construction was the norm historically, all of this stone was a bit overwhelming. Wonderful yes – but I am afraid I wandered around like slack-jawed yokel, reflecting on the scant stone buildings of my native environment.

A stone barn near Dove Cottage

A stone outbuilding of "unknown function" near Troutbeck

The Lake District is England’s largest national park – some 800 square miles came under that designation in 1951. Public footpaths meander across the Lake District, with a series of gates keeping sheep in and serving as reminders that the incredible, heart wrenching vistas described by Wordsworth as “a sort of national property, in which every man has a right and interests who has an to perceive an a heart to enjoy” are also someone’s livelihood. I saw few cattle during our trip and only from the train as we moved out of the Lake District did I see someone using the land for purposes other than grazing for sheep – a farmer cutting hay. 

More on this journey later...I have a train to catch into the Big Smoke!

Adolescent Impressions of the British Isles

I hesitate to describe my affection for England as a love affair, but if one must trace the roots of my repeated trips, the origins would be found in a pasty,skinny freshman in high school sporting a trench coat, bad 1980s hair and a scowl. (I was a freshman in high school. Scowls were my favorite accessory.)

Trench coats and fairly big hair  compete for attention with the Tower of London. 

My middle sister was the impetus for our three-week tour of London, northern England and Scotland, as she was studying abroad in Reading, England. Aghast that one of their children must spend Christmas apart from the bosom of the family, my parents packed up to bring Christmas to England.As the only child still living at home, I got to miss two weeks of school and take my first trip overseas.

What role did that whirlwind journey play in my soon to unfold current adventure? If one counts Cadbury Bourneville chocolate, Bailey’s Irish Cream and riding on trains as guideposts and influences…well, then everything. (Transportation, alcohol and chocolate do still figure largely in my life)

Despite my surliness, everything I saw thrilled me. Reading, I thought, was the most magical city of all. There were tiny grocery stores, complete with fresh fruit on stands outside the display windows. Houses constructed of brick whose tones and patterns were alien, yet intoxicating. (Obviously I was already smitten with architecture) Though the landscape mostly slept through the winter, I peered through iron gates and over hedges to glimpse the glory of English cottage gardens. And that was before the delights of London assailed my senses.

The house in Reading. 

The British Museum thrilled me – especially the Lindow man. Peat bogs = the epitome of coolness. Hyde Park, even in the rain, provided a spectacular glimpse of how an urban population enjoyed their open spaces. For a girl used to being in the middle of nowhere, the teeming of a city – the largest city I had yet visited – almost gave me whiplash. Madame Tussauds - before the many divorces of the royal family - was a fun tourist trap.

Edinburgh smelled. Roasting malt wafted about, providing a curious sort of consciousness for the traveler on the sleeper train from London. Scotland, I thought, looked like home (though apparently there was a record snow back in Mt. Sterling at the time). The rolling hills sported more sheep than I had ever seen gathered at once. Only cattle dotted the rolling hills of my home. 

We spent Christmas in York, and being naive Americans, were dumbfounded by the lack of open restaurants on Christmas Eve. Our supper that evening was courtesy of the local golden arches. The foreignness of Boxing Day was punctuated by a great horde of loud, drunken revelers, who seemed quite ridiculous to me. (No foreshadowing of my college exploits here at all...) In Chester, we huddled together in our freezing room at the B&B and watched a miniseries of a Judith Kranz novel on a ridiculously small TV. My sister and I bonded in ways we never would have in the comforts of home.

There was a great deal of crying when we took our leave to return home, knowing my sister had another six months before she would be back on the Prewitt Pike. I returned to the drama of high school life, about which I remember hardly a thing now. 

The memories that persisted, however, centered, (albeit foggily – again, see ungrateful surely teenager) on how lucky I was to have spent those three months out of the comfort zone of my hometown…and how bewitching and fascinating I found the land across the pond.

Agnes and the Hedgerow

One week from today my adventure across the pond will be starting,and with it, the start of this blog with the slightly saucy title. Many thanks to the talented Hayward Wilkirson for designing the banner for this blog. The result is even better than the purloined Edward Gorey clip I snatched from the interwebs, for it had no young lady toppling over a hedge, let alone a delightful little hedgehog named Agnes! 

The inspiration behind this venture (the blog, not the poverty-inducing journey upon which I will be embarking) owes much to the fleeting nature of digital photos that languish on devices, the desire to capture some of the sights and impressions I will gather as I work across the pond, and to a wine-filled evening with Chris Pappas, who encouraged me to take the flippant title and create...if not a irreverent travel book for like-minded lovers of old buildings, incredible gardens and cursing like a craggy sailor, then at least: a blog.

So the plunge begins, and I must think of packing, and train journeys, and try to keep my excitement to a low shrill...