Sightseeing in My New Country

[anarchist_nomad]

As mentioned previously, cassiopia came to visit me here in England for ten days. This entry attempts to chronicle that trip, which can be broken into three parts: A long weekend driving around the English countryside, a short week in Oxford, and another long weekend in London. Each part is behind a separate cut, for ease of navigation.

To supplement the written report, I will use various pictures that were taken (mostly by me) during the trip. To save bandwidth, I will make links to the pictures, rather than inserting them into the entry directly. Thus, to keep things simple, all links below go to a photograph.

[NOTE: The photographs will be added later, so check back if you want to see them. I will delete this note once the photo links have been added.]

So, without further ado, here goes:

Prelude: Friday 12 May in Oxford
Around the same time that cassiopia was landing at Heathrow Airport, I woke up and got ready to attend a class on safety around cryogenic liquids (unfortunately, it mostly focused on liquid nitrogen). By the time the class ended, I knew that she had made it by bus to Oxford but, before we could meet, I had an induction seminar for new contract research staff to go to. Once my professional commitments for the day were over, I met cassiopia on Cornmarket Street, which is the pedestrian mall in the city centre. Of course, we met outside of LUSH, her favourite store. We collected bags from the backpackers' hostel where she had checked them, then hopped a bus back to "my" house. Nothing worth noting really happened in the afternoon, as cassiopia was tired from her journey. In the evening, we went back to the city centre and got dinner at an Italian restaurant near the Gloucester Green bus station. Then we headed to the Oxford Playhouse to see a production of Edward Albee's Three Tall Women. I enjoyed it, but cassiopia slept through most of the performance. When it was over, we headed home to pack for the weekend and then get some sleep.


Part One: Weekend in Countryside (Sat 13 May - Mon 15 May)
Saturday 13 May: We woke up early and drove to Avebury to see the standing stones there. Although not as concentrated as Stonehenge, they encompass a large fraction of the town area. The stones standing now were put there in the twentieth century, as -- after standing for millennia -- Christians had toppled and buried the stones centuries ago. Although the stones were the primary reason for going to Avebury, we stayed for much longer than expected to see other things. After lunching near the stones, we poked our heads into an old church. Then we parked near Silbury Hill, which is a massive artificial hill built for unknown reasons about 4500 years ago. In the past, people thought that it was a Western equivalent of the Egyptian pyramids and probed it for treasures... but none were found. Once we left the hill, we walked to the West Kennet Long Barrow. The barrow is a mass grave, for at least forty-six people, that is even older than Silbury Hill -- by about one thousand years! The tomb was sealed around 1600 BCE, but is now open to go inside. Finally, before leaving the Avebury area, we walked to a shrine at a sacred spring so that cassiopia could leave an offering.

Upon leaving Avebury, we drove to Stonehenge and did the usual tourist thing: We took a self-guided audio tour of the stones while snapping many photographs. Stonehenge is famous enough that it needs no further comment by me.

Our additional time at Avebury meant that we did not have time to stop in Salisbury as we had originally planned. However, our main stop there was to have been to see the cathedral... and we ended up getting a very nice view of it from the road as we drove through town on our way from Stonehenge to Lymington. In Lymington, we left the car behind and hopped a ferry to the Isle of Wight. During our ferry ride, the sun was setting over the water, which I always love. We landed in Yarmouth and took a bus to Freshwater Bay, where we had reservations at a bed & breakfast. We got off the bus around dusk and spent some time appreciating the natural beauty of the bay, then we walked to the Heather House B&B to unload our bags. Finally, we ended the day by walking up the road to get some exceptional Indian food for dinner (though it was still not as good as what I ate in India last year).

Sunday 14 May: Staying at a B&B, we began our day with breakfast. I had a traditional English breakfast, which I have grown quite fond of, while cassiopia had cereal and fruit. Then we hopped a bus to the Carisbrooke Castle in Newport, near the center of the island. Carisbrooke is a Norman castle built in the eleventh century at the site of an eighth century Saxon fort. It was attacked twice (first by Spain, later by France) in the first few centuries that it stood, and it repelled one of the two attacks (the French). Centuries later, it was the base of Charles I during the English Civil War... and after that it became his prison when the monarchy was deposed by Oliver Cromwell.

We sat outside and ate a pub lunch after visiting the castle. Then we went on to see the Needles, at Alum Bay, which are a natural outcropping of jagged chalk rocks in the water off of the Western coast of the island. There is an amusement park near the Needles, where we hopped a chair life down the cliff and then rode a boat to get a close look at the actual chalk spikes.

We visited the Isle of Wight during their annual two-week "walking festival." In fact, the day that we were there was the day of the biggest walk. "Walk the Wight" is a twenty-six mile walk, spanning the entire island, to raise money for the local hospice. During the day, we saw hundreds of walkers go by. We were not prepared for a twenty-six mile walk, but we did forego the bus and walked four miles from the Needles park back to our B&B in Freshwater Bay. It was a beautiful walk, with stunning views of the ocean. The walk traversed an incline; the area on top was known as Tennyson Down and features a large shine in his name.

When we finally arrived back in Freshwater Bay, we gathered our bags from the Heather House and took a bus to the ferry terminal in Yarmouth. Then we made the three hour drive to Glastonbury and, after checking in at the Glastonbury Backpackers' Hostel, we grabbed dinner at a kabob house. I had pizza and cassiopia ordered chicken and chips. After dinner, we collapsed for the night.

Monday 15 May: Monday was spent in Glastonbury. We began our day at the Glastonbury Abbey, touring the ruins of what was once the second richest and most powerful abbey in England (after Westminster). The bones of King Arthur were allegedly found there in the late eleventh century. However, it was destroyed in the mid 1500s, when King Henry VIII -- what a bastard -- dissolved the monasteries so that he could put their wealth into the depleted coffers of the crown. The only building still mostly intact is the abbot's kitchen, where we were taken back in time to 1500 by a monk who welcomed us as pilgrims. The poor monk expected the eldest prince, Arthur, to become the next king, which would usher in a new age of splendor for the monastery after the plague and the hundred years war had taken a toll. Poor guy did not know that Prince Arthur would die and his younger brother Henry would take the throne and dissolve it all. In reality, it turned out that the monk was an expatriate from Binghamton, New York; we spent quite a bit of time talking to him after the performance was over. Learned quite a bit from him, too!

Glastonbury is a very new-age sort of town. So, after leaving the Abbey, we got lunch at the Blue Note, a local vegetarian restaurant. Then we visited the Chalice Well, reputably at the site where Joseph of Arimathea buried the Holy Chalice, or Grail, that had caught drops of Jesus's blood while he was on the cross. The water from the well, which is safe for drinking, has stained the rocks red with Jesus's blood. Or with iron. Around the well and the spring is a quiet garden for meditation and the like. There is also a healing pool, where the spring water collects, for people to put their feet in. We both gathered water to drink, then cassiopia rested on a bench while I waded into the healing pool.

Outside of, and next door to, the Chalice Well gardens is the White Spring, where calcite-rich water flows. The spring is housed in a nineteenth century grotto and there are many shrines within. The one that particularly caught my attention had a candle flame begun by a Japanese woman. The woman had originally kindled the flame using the ashes of her family, who had died in Hiroshima. I lit a tealight candle to add to that shrine.

Finally, we made the ascent up Glastonbury Tor, legendary site of Avalon, to see the view from the top and to visit the only tower left standing from the Medieval church of St. Michael. The tor is 520 feet high and I can't imagine why anyone would put a church up on top. Who wants to climb 520 feet on a Sunday morning to go to church?!? However, as tourists making the journey only once, the climb was well worth it; the views from the top were delightful.

Upon descending the tor, cassiopia wanted to do some shopping. She got in about an hour, though it was after 5pm and many stores were closed. One store in particular, "The Goddess and the Green Man" looks worth returning to when next I visit, but we were unable to get in this time.

Finally, after the shopping was done, we drove back to Oxford. We unloaded the car at home, then rode the bus into town to get dinner at the "Eagle and Child" pub. This pub was the regular meeting place of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and other writers for a number of years. We ate in the "rabbit room", which is where the "inklings" (as the group of writers are called) used to gather. After a yummy meal of vegetarian bangers and mash, plus a chocolate dessert, I was ready to head home and call it a night.


Part Two: Short Week in Oxford (Tue 16 May - Thu 18 May)
Tuesday 16 May: Tuesday morning, I woke up earlier than usual, around 7:30am, to go to work. After weeks of waiting, we had finally received a dewar of liquid helium, so it was time to cool down the K-400 cryostat with liquid nitrogen, in preparation for filling with helium. I worked until about 2pm, then met cassiopia for lunch. We grabbed sandwiches at the deli and brought them to the University Park to eat them at the side of the duck pond. We had not brought food for the ducks, which was a mistake, as several ducks informed us. I ended up breaking off pieces of my baguette to appease the water fowl. Near the pond passes the river Cherwell, so we got to see a couple of punts make their way down the river as we ate.

Once the picnic was over, I returned to work at around 3:30pm and put in another two hours before leaving to meet cassiopia at Magdalen College. We were gathering there to listen to the evening choral prayer, or "evensong." Usually they are performed by an all-male choir, but on Tuesdays at Magdalen College, the co-ed group Magdala sings. When the services were over, we made our way to the Old Fire Station theatre to see their performance of Othello. Since the show ended fairly late, we got take away from the Noodle Bar for dinner. After eating our take away in my office, we hopped the bus home and went to sleep.

Wednesday 17 May: Again, I woke early to get to work early. Since the K-400 was now at liquid nitrogen temperature (77K), it was time to remove the nitrogen and start filling it with our liquid helium. This work took me until 1:30pm, when I met cassiopia again for lunch. We each got a pasty for lunch from the West Cornwall Pasty Company on Cornmarket Street. They have no place to sit and eat, and it was the first rainy day of the trip, so we walked beneath an underpass and ate there. Then we climbed Carfax tower, which marks the center of Oxford, to get an elevated view of the city. For comparison's sake, when we descended from Carfax, we walked down the road to the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin. They have a taller tower, though the land there is not as high, so the actual elevation from Carfax is greater.

Having seen two semi-aerial views of the city of Oxford, I left cassiopia at the Bodleian Library and returned to working on cooling down the K-400. We met again at my office at 7pm to go to the O'Reilly Theatre for a theatrical adaption of Terry Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters, put on at Keble College. Again, the show ended too late for a true sit-down dinner. Instead, we bought food at a roadside cart. I had a veggie burger and chips with cheese and beans. cassiopia was more adventurous and ordered a baguette with chips and cheese. The rain had stopped and the temperature was mild, so we ate outside sitting on one of the monuments near the city centre. Then it was a bus ride home and straight to bed.

Thursday 18 May: Continuing the tradition, I woke early and got to work around 8:30am. Upon arriving, I learned that we had exhausted our meager 75 liters of liquid helium... but the K-400 cryostat was less than 40% full. This put a temporary halt to this particular work and I spent the morning leak checking the equipment instead.

Around 1pm, I met cassiopia again. Instead of getting lunch straightaway, we went to the Oxford Botanical Gardens, near the Magdalen Bridge. These are the oldest botanical gardens in Britain, run by the University, and we spent a couple of hours wandering the grounds. Besides the outside displays of very old trees and food crops and budding flowers, there were several glass houses (i.e., greenhouses for you yanks) to visit. The glass houses that I enjoyed most were the one with the succulents and the one with the insectivorous plants. After leaving the botanical gardens, we crossed the bridge and walked into Cowley to get lunch at a falafel house. Then I returned to the University, where I spent the afternoon incorporating editorial comments into my technical paper on the Central Laser Facility of the Pierre Auger Observatory. The paper has now been approved by the internal referees and has been sent to the full collaboration for comment.

Again keeping with our usual pattern, I met cassiopia at 7:15pm at the Oxford Playhouse, which was the venue for a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Gondoliers. The show was only the second Gilbert and Sullivan that I have seen -- after, of course, the Pirates of Penzance -- and we enjoyed it. For dinner, we hit a little place called George & Davis's Ice Cream Shop, very close to the building where I work. We each got a pizza bagel at G&D's and it was quite good. Then we split a brownie sundae for dessert. Finally, we ducked into my building briefly so I could send a fax to DuPage County explaining that I am out of the country for two years and, as such, unable to show up for jury duty. That accomplished, we caught the very last bus of the night (barely!) and went home to pack for London and then sleep.


Part Three: Weekend in London (Fri 19 May - Mon 22 May)
[NOTE: Like the photograph links, this part is still under construction.]