Illuminating the Abbey

I made this a separate post, because I found this part of the Abbey to be worthy of additional note: we ran across and exhibition of diptychs telling the life of Jesus. The left half of the diptych contained the most exquisite illuminations, and the right half had hand-quilted and embroidered panels.

There was no way I could take a picture of everything, but I had to share at least a little with you.

Time for Bath...but not much!

I had the grand idea of stopping in Bath on the way to the car rental dropoff at Gatwick. I though we'd be able to see the Abbey and the Roman baths.

At least we managed one out of two...

The stone tracery of the Abbey is stunning. We had a wonderful visit, and went out to explore the possibility of visiting the baths. Unfortunately, I was told that it would take a minimum of 25 minutes even to buy tickets...and we only had an extra hour before having to leave.

We drowned our sorrows in Cornish pasties and sausage rolls.

Love,

Alexandra

Feeling Sheepish

One afternoon we were outside having tea, and the sheep sounded unusually loud and bleaty. The next day, the farmer's helper happily filled us in: it was time to wean the babies, so they had placed the ewes in one field and the lambs in the opposite field, with the road between them.

In the following days, I had the occasion to use the car and happened upon a lamb that had wandered into the road in a bid to find its mother. The poor lamb was absolutely panicked by the car, and was running away from me, but was then trapped by the cattle gate at the end of the road. A last-ditch effort had it wriggling through the fence rather gracelessly...causing guffaws on our part!

All this to say, I was prepared the next time we saw a lamb, and filmed it for your viewing pleasure. I apologize in advance because it's sideways...I was completely unable to fix that (all the "rotate 90 degree" options that supposedly exist in Youtube and Quicktime were completely absent. If you can fix, have at it and thanks!)

Love,

Alexandra

Riders on the Moors

Sorry to go back and forth on our dear readers! For clarification, we went to Dartmoor for a week prior to going to London. However, it is a large amount of information and the kids had various interests that they wanted to share. So, lest it appear that we went back and forth like pingpong balls, I felt the need to explain. Please forgive our strange sequencing!

And back to our regular programming...i.e., talking about Dartmoor. Specifically Dartmoor ponies.

My parents and I thought it would be a marvelous idea for the kids to get to ride out on the moors, so we looked into a local stable. No problem! Typically British, the ride would go on even if it rained (unlike the Italians who will cancel an indoor meeting if it rains). Bear in mind, we're not talking summer weather, either. It would have been 50 degrees and raining.

Luckily, the day turned out to be fine, and we all set off. The plan was for the adults to go for a walk on the moors and then perhaps find a pub or a cute village to visit. The ride was a 2-hour program, which would give us plenty of time.

It was really sweet to see them all lined up in order of size:

Going to the arena to see how they fare prior to going out on the moors. James had a little trouble taking the parking brake off his pony:

And, they're off!

Love,

Alexandra

Dartmoor

Holwell is a place in Dartmoor. In Holwell there are a couple of cottages and a farm. There are also a bunch of pastures. There are cows, horses, sheep, ponies, goats, rabbits and chickens just roaming around on the side of the road. There were a couple sheep  in front of our holiday home. My favorite part of the trip was when there was a herd of cows that were crossing the road. 

Love, 

James

London and North Eastern Railway Peppercorn class A1 60163 Tornado

This morning I woke up my long-suffering mother at the ungodly hour of 5:45. 

That first sentence was written by said long-suffering mother. 

The LNER Peppercorn Class A1 60613 Tornado is a steam locomotive constructed as a continuation of the Peppercorn A1 series, following the original plan with some modifications (e.g., all-welded boiler as opposed to riveted and steel firebox instead of copper). All of the original A1 series were scrapped with an average lifetime of only 15 years, unlike the A2 and A3 series, of which 60532 Blue Peter(A2) and 4472 Flying Scotsman(A3) were preserved. The single experimental class W1 locomotive 10000(which is nameless) and 6 class A4 locomotives were also preserved: 4498 Sir Nigel Gresley, 4496 Dwight D Eisenhower, 4488 Union of South Africa, 4489 Dominion of Canada, 4464 Bittern, and 4468 Mallard. The locomotives are numbered in a couple different ways. I have listed the numbers written on the cab... obviously these are also the numbers they are known by. Flying Scotsman was marked down for preservation from its inception. 

Part of what's so special about Tornado is that it does mainline runs instead of being only used for special excursions.It was planned to do this from its conception to help revive steam. Some advantages to using steam include avoiding rising diesel prices- of course, then you have to deal with the cost of coal and water. Out of the frying pan, into the fire eh?

It was built at the Darlington Locomotive Works from 1994-2008. 

Today we saw the Tornado at the Paddington station in London. It was AWESOME! It hauled the classic Blood and Custard British Railway coaches for an excursion to Exeter. I had never dreamed of seeing Tornado in real life! 

The locomotive ejected steam onto the tracks just as it was leaving. I think it was to help evaporate some of the water on the tracks for better traction through the initial acceleration, but I will write to the Trust to ask. Update: it was in fact to expel any water in the cylinders that had condensed during the rest in the station.

It's pretty loud when it first starts accelerating, with a continuous noise, and then the noise fades to reveal the accelerating pfufff-pfufff-pfufff of the pistons contrary to the apparent belief that steam locomotives make a chug-chug-chug during the initial acceleration. Later on in the acceleration, a steam locomotive engine (in modern times, simply called a steam locomotive) produces a chug-chug-chug sound. Once it is running at speed, it makes a huhuhuhuhuhuhuh sound.

As it runs on the mainline, it has to meet up with modern specifications. For example, the two headlamps have the same style as the original A1s, but the lamps are LED. It also has to have minimal modern electrical design, and air brakes as apposed to steam brakes. Vacuum brakes have also been added for use with heritage rolling stock. Instead of being a replica of one of the original A1s, it is the next in the series, which I think is just swell. The A1 Locomotive Trust has now started to build Gresley class P2 2007 Prince of Wales. For more information, peruse these websites at your leisure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A1_Tornado, http://www.a1steam.com/, and http://www.p2steam.com/

Jeremy

Hound Tor (or not?)

The day Eleanor left, Paula and I took the kids on a supposedly short-ish hike across to Hound Tor and a medieval settlement. Well. We looked on the map for the footpaths, understood roughly the way to go, and set off.

A word of explanation for American readers: in England, and in fact in most of Europe, private property is (in our view) only "sort of" private. That is, you can "own" land, but there can easily be public footpaths that crisscross your property, and anyone has a right to walk along those paths. Don't like it? Tough. In Italy, you are even allowed to hunt on property that is not yours. But I digress.

I knew from the map that we were to turn left at some point. Sadly, the path kept winding to the right. And going down. And down. And down. Hmm.

We did eventually find a left-hand turn. And then we plowed through a bog reminiscent of the Okeefenokee Swamp (minus the alligators) with no markers. Through a gate, and then? Voila! An obvious footpath again! With markers, no less!

Heartened, we went up. And up. And up. Eventually, we saw a Tor. Paula and I made the executive decision that it was Hound Tor. 

No luck on the medieval settlement, but the kids had a marvelous time on the Tor; James even found some bioluminescence!

Time for group photo, and... a rainbow!

Getting home was a whole different source of anxiety. We learned that we WERE at Hound Tor, but had come in on an alternative path. So we left on the originally intended path, only to circle and circle and circle (getting a bit anxious) and go down on a 6-inch-wide path through bracken above our heads...eventually (phew!) making it to the Okeefenokee. We arrived back at the farm to a delicious meal of Indian takeout sponsored by my parents! Delish!

Love,

Alexandra

Enchanting Exeter

Backing up a day, we met Paula and her kids (plus Eleanor) in Exeter. The weather was authentic English summer (cold and drizzly off and on), so we didn't spend a ton of time there. We did stop by the Cathedral, and had a delightful lunch at a chain called Giraffe.

Archie, the sophisticated man about town

Daisy being her sweet self

Seagull of dignity rather than the bluebird of happiness?

Love,

Alexandra