Lines Composed Inside Tintern Abbey: Day 4 of the Southern Excursion

Thursday we ventured to Wales, to pay homage to one of the most famous sites in literature: Tintern Abbey.  Wordsworth wrote his famous poem: “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” here.  Most other romantic poets eventually pilgrimaged here, as according to Dr. Ryken: “you couldn’t be a card carrying romantic poet without visiting Tintern.” 

            The Abbey is also in ruins (thanks Henry VIII), but it is more intact than Glastonbury.  It was absolutely wonderful.  We thankfully had sunny weather and after viewing the Abbey with sunlight streaming in and doves flying above, I agree with C.S. Lewis’ own sentiment after seeing the Abbey that “all churches should be roofless”.  For a while I sat in an old windowsill (where the stained glass would have been) and took in the beauty of the site. I listened to the cows moo at the cow farm next door, and I watched the birds flit in out of the bare windows and uncovered ceiling. 

            After almost an hour at the Abbey, Dr. Ryken took us on a walk to an old bridge and read the poem aloud to us as we faced the River Wye that Wordsworth “always turned to” in the poem.  Wordworth himself would have been higher up in the hills of Wales as he looked down on the Abbey, but it gave us a general idea as we saw the ruined, yet still stately Abbey rise up out of the lush green grass surrounded by the muddy river and white swans. 

            I have always loved Wordsworth’s poem about the Abbey, and it was wonderful to see the scene that inspired it as an ending to the Excursion.  Our traveling days are over for now, and we must settle down back into classes and schoolwork at Oxford.  Classes begin Monday. Thankfully at Oxford, class will start at 9:00 AM instead of 8:00 AM.  I knew I loved the Brits for a reason.  

Dr. Ryken reading the poem to us

From afar

Independence Day in England: Day 3 of the Southern Excursion

Wednesday

Independence dawned rainy in Tintagel.  At breakfast, we remembered that it was indeed the Fourth of July, and one of the women who ran the hostel said with a smile it “was the biggest mistake we ever made”.  I’m not quite sure if I would agree with her on that, although I wouldn’t mind reinstating teatime in the afternoon.

After breakfast, we had a rather muddy hike back down to town with our luggage, but we bore it “with our characteristic maturity” and enjoyed the time in singing.  Once we reached town, a few of us sang the national anthem while sitting under a gazebo waiting for the coach.  We then boarded the coach for what Dr. Ryken assured us would be “a short two hour ride” to Glastonbury.

Glastonbury is the site of where the fabled Avalon would have stood, which is where King Arthur went to recover from his fatal wound and he would supposedly return to help England in its “bleakest hour”.  Some other versions of the tale have Arthur dying at Avalon.  We saw the abandoned Abbey that is in ruins.  It was destroyed during the time of Henry VIII.   He destroyed all monasteries and Abbeys as he switched the country from Catholicism to Protestantism.  At the Abbey are the supposed graves of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere.  In all likelihood, the monks found the bodies and said they were the famous king and queen to bring in pilgrims and money.  But it is more fun to say that it actually is their grave.  

Chelsea Sarah on the King and Queen's Graves

The Rykens and the Owl

Glastonbury Abbey

Another shot of the Abbey

The ruined Abbey was beautiful.  The grass was so green from the constant rain that it almost hurt your eyes.  There was a bird trainer with an owl that many paid to hold, including Mrs. Ryken.  Nearby in the distance up on the hill we could see the Torre, which is where the actual Island of Avalon is supposed to be. 

After Glastonbury, we rode off towards Bath.  Bath was where the Romans used the natural hot springs to build public baths to cleanse themselves in and for recreational purposes.  Later in the eighteenth-century, many would go to Bath for the healing powers of the waters.  It was very fashionable in Jane Austen’s time to reside or vacation there.  Austen herself lived in Bath and set two of her novels there. Many of us were most excited about Bath for the Austen connections more so than anything else there.

Bath! Where the ending of Persuasion was filmed!

Upon arrival, I was amazed by the architecture of Bath.  It is still in the neo-classical style from the eighteenth-century.  One of the first streets I saw was where Anne and Captain Wentworth were united at the end of Persuasion.  Indeed, while I was in Bath I felt like I was living in an Austen novel. 

The first site we saw was the Roman Baths, and then we were free “to poke around”.  The Baths were incredible.  Most of them have been excavated and preserved to look as they did in Roman times.  They had multiple baths: hot, cold, and others in between.  At the end you could sample the water, known for it’s “healing powers”.  It was disgusting.  Warm, and it tasted like Iron.  Hopefully, it made me healthier.

The Roman Baths

Afterwards, a group of us set off for our pilgrimage to Austen’s house.  We had a rocky start when a woman at the Tourist information desk tried to tell us that Jane Austen never lived in Bath. (How can you work in Bath at a tourist desk and NOT KNOW THAT!??! We were slightly horrified).  We eventually made our way to the Jane Austen Centre, where they were more helpful.  Jane Austen actually lived in two houses in Bath. The one we saw is now a dental surgeon office.  The other one is a private home.  There was a man in regency dress outside the Centre we took pictures with while he sang to us “Happy Birthday” in honor of our country’s birth.  When he found out I was from Kentucky he knew that both Johnny Depp and George Clooney were from there, which impressed me.  Not everyone in the States knows that.

Austen's House!

Our friend outside the Jane Austen Centre

Our final stop in Bath was the Bath Abbey.  It was beautiful and the stone inside was all white, which I had not seen in our previous Abbey stops.  The University of Bath had just had their graduation there, so we saw many recent grads milling about taking pictures.  Afterwards, we were driven up the hill to our youth hostel, which resembled an Italian villa.  It was lovely and very nice.  Downtown Bath was situated in the valley, and the rest of Bath bordered on steep hills.

Bath Abbey

To celebrate the holiday, we ventured farther up the hill in search of a body of water to throw tea in.  All we could find is a big puddle on the University of Bath horse and soccer field.  We made do, sang the national anthem, and threw the tea in.  Then a few of us ventured a ways down the hill to a big open field that was uncut and gorgeous.  It was mostly empty except for a few tourists and a man taking his evening walk there with his glass of wine. Standing there we could watch the sun set over the city of Bath filling the sky with pinks, oranges, and purples.  It was my first Fourth of July without fireworks, but it was still beautiful.  

Our "body of water"

Singing the National Anthem

The Field we found

Sunset in Bath

The town of Bath

“What are men to rocks and mountains?” Day 2 of the Southern Excursion

Tuesday

Even though the excursion means a lot of time on the bus, it is nice because we are able to enjoy the beautiful English countryside, which looks exactly like the Shire. I love being able to look out the window and listen to my iPod, just taking it all in.  It also involves Dr. Ryken enjoying his power with the announcement system.  At one “motorway rest stop”, he commended us to enjoy the “archetypal” experience of the motorway rest stop and for half of us to write poetry about it and the other half to write a novel about it and compose “A Motorway Rest Stop Anthology” for future Wheaton in England students to study.  It would definitely be a new venture into an unknown genre.

Tuesday we had a nice long bus ride to Tintagel, which is supposedly where Arthur had his castle.  The day was overcast and chilly, but it only rained a little bit.  The ruins of the castle were located on the cliffs of Tintagel.  We hiked up there and saw what was left of the stones.  Next, we made our way to the top and saw the view from the cliffs.  It was breathtaking.  The white cliffs jutted out from the brightest green grass I’ve ever seen, which overlooked the blue-gray Atlantic, which disappeared into the gray misty horizon.  The gray sky added to the mystery and magic of the legendary area.  We were hit rather hard by the wind, reminding us that we were but small humans compared to the wild untamed nature that surrounded us. 

We wandered the cliffs, getting as close to the edge as we could without falling.  I’ve never been so awestruck by natural beauty before.  Dr. Ryken told us there are three types of nature in England: the Cultivated (gardens such as Penhurst), the Picturesque (as in the Lake District), and the Sublime, or untamed nature (that would be Tintagel). 

After exploring the cliffs, a few of us wandered down to the beach, which is where Merlin’s cave is located.  Merlin was locked away there forever by a sorceress he fell in love with.  Once the tide comes in, the cave is completely covered by water, as is the beach, leaving only the cliffs for the waves to crash against. 

After exploring Tintagel, we went back to town and then the girls and guys split up for the night to stay in different hostels.  Dr. Coolidge and Dr. Ewart led us girls on the mile hike up the cliffs again to our hostel.  Along the way we passed an abandoned church and graveyard.  The sky was still dark and foreboding and we were surrounded by wild heath everywhere, making us feel as if we were in a Bronte novel.  Our hostel over looked the cliffs and if you walked too far from it, you would fall off. 

The first thing we did upon arrival was to eat a much-needed dinner and then some of us went out exploring.  We walked around the cliff edges taking in the beautiful view.  The area is very lonely, with only a few homes dotting the green heath.  Everywhere there were beautiful wildflowers and wildlife.  We saw a family of bunnies and some seagulls.  It was wonderful just to sit on some shale at the edge of the cliff and take in the beauty of the ocean.  We could hear the waves crash against the black cliffs, and we saw a rainstorm roll in from off the gray ocean.  More than once were we inspired to yell “Heathcliff!”  Afterwards, we bunkered down for the night in our very cozy hostel run by two sweet women who spent their night knitting and drinking wine.  A couple of us ended the night by reading loud select passages from Jane Eyre.  All in all, it was a wonderful day and I would definitely rank Tintagel near the top in sites so far.  

Living Life in the Rain: Day 1 of the Southern Excursion

Bright and early Monday morning we hopped on the coach to head south.  As we left London, we watched the rain pour.  This would continue throughout the day.  But as Dr. Ryken constantly reminds us via the bus’ mike system: “You only have a chance to experience these things once! We will forge ahead rain or no rain! Life is 90% attitude! We are like Bob the Builder! Can we do it? Yes we can!”  Therefore, much like the Postal System we have been trooping across countryside no matter what the weather.

Our first stop on the excursion was Winchester Cathedral.  This is the longest Cathedral in England.  It was also built on a marsh (much like the Billy Graham Center in Wheaton. Except the building is beautiful).  Since it was built on a marsh the building is sinking in certain parts.  In medieval times a man dove beneath the building and helped fortify it, and he is memorialized in the church today.  Today, the floor is uneven in certain parts, but I thought it added to the overall charm of the building.  It was fun to ramble around and explore the endless nooks and crannies of the cathedral.  I think out of all the ones we have visited it is my favorite.

 Winchester is also the site of Jane Austen’s grave.  She was in Winchester seeking treatment from the doctors when she succumbed to her mysterious illness.  A number of us girls on the trip lingered around her grave for several minutes paying our respects to one of the greatest authors of English literature.  I would partly credit her as one of the reasons I am an English major today. 

After exploring the cathedral we had the option of going on a water meadow walk with Dr. Ryken.  The goal was to retrace Keats’ path that he took when he composed his poem “To Autumn”.  Of course as Dr. Ryken reminded us, the path would look different on a rainy summer day compared to a sunny autumn day.  Only a handful of us gathered to brave the rain to the water meadow.  Dr. Ryken was prepared for the walk in head to toe rain gear (including his rain pants), and he rallied our spirits by quoting Shakespeare’s Henry V’s speech to his troops: “We happy few! We band of brothers”!  The “happy few” splashed after Dr. Ryken until we arrived at the water meadow.  It was worth the walk in the rain: it was unbelievably green and the stream was flowing.  I actually think the rain made the experience more beautiful.

Next, we all gathered on the bus to head to our next stop: Stonehenge.  No one knows what the rocks are for or how they got there.  They date back to before Christ and were probably used in pagan rituals.  Today, the Druids are allowed to use them once a year for Summer Solstice.  My personal favorite story about the stones is from Geoffrey’s tales of Arthur: Merlin decides that England needs these stones and in classic British Imperialistic style goes to Ireland to take them.  The king of Ireland says there is no way Merlin can move them.  Of course, being a wizard he can do whatever he wants, so he uses his magic to assist the strong knights he has brought with him, and they float the stones back to England where they now stand today. 

Stonehenge was beautiful, even in the rain.  I actually think the rain added to the overall mystery surrounding the stones as it was dark and mist surrounded the area.  I half-expected Merlin and Arthur to appear out of the distance.  You can no longer walk through the stones; instead you walk around them in a huge circle that takes about fifteen to twenty minutes. 

At Stonehenge, there were an abundance of sheep nearby since this is the countryside and sheep are everywhere.  Dr. Ryken notoriously hates sheep (he apparently had a traumatic encounter with one as a child), and some students mischievously bought him a beanie hat that was in the shape of a sheep and presented it to him on the coach while reading a poem about sheep.  Dr. Ryken was a good sport about it and put the hat on, although he promptly removed it after the poem was read and muttered something about giving it to his wife. 

Our next stop was Salisbury, which is also where we stayed for the night in a youth hostel.  We saw the Salisbury Cathedral first, which is the tallest Cathedral because of its spire.  It is also one of the most architecturally perfect Cathedrals.  It was beautiful and had some of the most gorgeous stained glass I’ve seen on this trip.  The Cathedral also holds one of the original copies of the Magna Carta, which was cool to see.  Dr. Coolidge pointed out some medieval friezes in the chapter house, which had several Bible stories carved in them.  These stories were for the illiterate peasants, so they could learn the Bible. 

Afterwards, we saw the smallest church I have ever seen.  It was the church where the poet George Herbert was rector in Salisbury.  He is now buried there.  Our entire group (almost forty of us) filled the entire church.  We sang one of Herbert’s hymns.  It was a nice change of pace after seeing multiple cathedrals to sit down and worship God together as a group.

After singing, we ventured to another water meadow.  I really enjoy seeing this around England.  Looking at the stream and overhanging canopy of green vegetation, made me wish I had a canoe to explore the area with. 

That night I slept well in my first-ever youth hostel, which was very nice.  It was a busy but good first day of traveling. 

London: The Finale

Sunday was our last day in London.  In the morning, I again attended church at St. Paul’s Cathedral.  There was a special performance of Hayden’s Missa Sancti Nicolai with the London Symphony and the choirs.  The music was beautiful.  I love the acoustics in that church so much. 

After service, I had my final meal in a London café.  One of my favorite things about London were the cafes everywhere providing cheap and tasty food, caffeine, and plenty of street viewing opportunity from the window seats.  It was always nice to take a break from our busy schedule and just relax and enjoy the atmosphere.

Our final group activity was a trip to the Romantic poet John Keats’ house.  Out of the second wave Romantics, he is definitely my favorite.  The house was located in the Hampstead neighborhood.  It was very yuppie, but also very charming.  From the outside Keats’ house seemed rather plain, but inside it contained a great deal of “scope for the imagination” as Anne Shirley would say.  It was full of charming rooms, windy staircases, and stone floors in the basement.  In Keats’s time, a wall divided the house into two separate living spaces.  When Keats lived there, he fell in love with the girl next door, named Fanny Brawney.  Tragically, Keats died in his mid-twenties and never got to marry his love. Below is a picture of the front of the house with Laura Fittz and me!

The house is also where Keats composed “Ode to a Nightingale” while sitting under the famed mulberry tree.  The tree used to be there until recently.  We improvised and had Christian Kim hold an umbrella and be the tree while Elisabeth Fojtik recited the poem from memory.  She did a great job!

We then hiked to Hampstead Heath, which is a nearby park.  It was beautiful.  Unlike the other parks we had been to, there was no cultivated beauty.  Instead there were ponds surrounded by willow trees and trails leading to the heath.  The heath was a huge hill of uncut grass.  From the hill you had a spectacular view of London.  Many families were out flying kites (many of us started singing the kite song from Mary Poppins).  The wind was blowing and the sky was overcast adding to the wild, untamed beauty surrounding us.  I enjoyed seeing another side of English landscapes, and it got me excited for the Moors of Bronte fame that we will see later on the trip. Views of the Heath:

Another wonderful aspect of the park is that there were dogs everywhere! I saw an English Springer Spaniel, which made me miss my own.  Later in a bakery, a man was holding a black poodle.  He noticed my excitement in seeing the dog, and offered to let me pet it.  I told him I had a poodle at home that I missed, and after a few minutes, he asked if I felt better after petting his dog.  I said I did.  I really enjoy the fact that British are such dog lovers (and horse lovers).  They actually have a statue in London dedicated to the dogs and horses that served and fell in WWII. 

For our final night, I watched part of the EuroCup game in the pub.  While I went more for the experience than for love of either team, I was rooting for Italy because their colors are blue and white and Spain was red.  From a young age, I’ve been trained to think blue=UK=good and red=UofL=evil.  I wasn’t that invested though, so when Italy lost all was still right with the world.  It was fun to be in a pub though and see the atmosphere and watch everyone get excited.  Made me miss basketball season back home. 

It was a great last day in London, which is definitely one of my favorite cities.  I will miss it, but I am excited to see what the rest of England holds and the adventures that await us.

Seeing it All: Palaces and Slums

Saturday was a day of extremes for me; I saw the top of English society and the bottom of it.  To start at the beginning, we woke up Saturday morning and headed to Hampton Court.  This is an old Palace notably used by William and Mary and King Henry VII.  It is rumored that two out of Henry’s six wives still haunt the place.  Besides getting married six times, Henry is also famous (infamous?) for starting the Church of England.  The Pope wouldn’t give him a divorce, so he put himself in charge and started a new denomination. 

The Palace was beautiful, especially the gardens.  They ran along the Thames, which was most charming.  The weather was beautiful and people were out boating and fishing. My favorite gardens were the Pond Gardens, which were surrounded by hedges that formed arches you could peek through to see the flowers and pond inside. The gardens also contained the largest grape vine in the world.  There was also a maze, which I didn’t have time to do, but fun fact: Dr. Ryken and a young President Ryken once got lost in there on a Wheaton in England trip years ago.  As a result, Dr. Ryken was not a huge fan of the maze and highly discouraged us in participating in it, especially 15 minutes before the bus was leaving.

After Hampton, we had the afternoon free.  My friend Chelsea and I had purchased tickets to see inside Buckingham Palace.  We were very excited, as the Palace is not always accessible to the public.  The Palace is the Queen’s “London House” or “Office” (I’m not sure if I would put it in either of those categories).  Her true home is Windsor Castle outside of town.  (It is very common in England to live in London but have your home in country).  To get into the Palace, we had to go through airport-like security.  Also, photos are not allowed inside the Palace.  It was beautiful inside.  The rooms were huge, red lush carpet, everything was gilded in gold, and the pillows were fluffed to all look the same.  The special exhibit was a display of the Queen’s diamonds as it is the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee (Another fun fact: the only other monarch to have a Diamond Jubilee was Queen Victoria, who was the first monarch to live in Buckingham Palace).  The diamonds were beautiful, especially the Queen’s three tiaras/crowns on display.  As beautiful as they were, there was a sad story behind the diamonds: they all came from India, and England completely bled India dry of diamonds during their colonization of the country. 

My favorite discovery of the tour was finding out that Queen Elizabeth uses secret passageways to greet her guests.  One minute you are waiting to meet the Queen in a stateroom, the next thing you know a wall swings out and there she is.  Nifty.  I like the idea of the Queen pattering around in secret hallways.  No royalty was spotted on the trip, unfortunately.

After Chelsea and I enjoyed a cuppa tea and scone with clotted cream and fruit, my friend Deborah and I went to meet up with some other Wheaties and Wheaton staff who were in town.  As many of you know, last summer I participated in Global Urban Perspectives (GUP), which is the urban summer ministry.  This year, two students were during a GUP trip in London, and Sue Lee, Professor Samuelson of the Art department, and Kristy, the RD of Mac-Evans came to visit.  Deborah and I took the tube to East London to have dinner with them.

Once we started heading East on the Tube, I could tell that we had reached a different part of London.  Suddenly, the Tube was dirtier as were the streets.  East London is traditionally where many of the slums were.  One of the interns told me that Dickens was born in this area.  While East London has improved since Dickens time, it is still noticeably poorer.  It was sharp reality check, especially after Buckingham Palace which is out of a fairy tale.  It was interesting to compare to the ghettoes of the United States.  While we have rougher parts of town, we don’t have the class divide of England.  I was grateful that I was able to see the full picture of the richest to the poorest in English Society. It was hard to reconcile that they both exist in the same city, although I know that this is no different from any city anywhere else in the world.  Interestingly enough, today the Dean of St. Paul preached on remembering the poor, who are blessed as Jesus himself told us: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20).  After all, no Palace or Castle here on Earth can ever compare to what waits for us in Heaven.  

From Abbeys to Towers

Friday

            Friday morning we woke up early to beat the crowds to Westminster Abbey.  We were successful and we had the Abbey mostly to ourselves, which was nice.  Westminster is a beautiful old cathedral, but at times it feels like a museum as almost anybody who was important in his or her life is buried there.  Some of the more well known include: Winston Churchill, Charles Darwin, Bloody Mary, Queen Elizabeth I, Oliver Cromwell, Laurence Olivier, and several others.  There is an entire section of the Abbey dedicated to famous writers that is called Poet’s Corner.  Chaucer was the first one to be buried there and was followed by George Eliot, T. S. Eliot, Charles Dickens, Dryden, Edmond Spenser, Ben Jonson, Robert Browning, Samuel Johnson, Tennyson, Henry James and many more.  There are also several more authors commemorated there such as Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Thackeray, the Bronte sisters and countless others.  We saw the chapter house where the monks would gather each day to hear a chapter read from the Bible.  Westminster is also where every monarch has been crowned since 1066, and they have been using the same coronation chair since then which we also saw.  In addition, the tomb to the Unknown Soldier is there.  It is also a popular location for Royal weddings: Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip were married there and more recently so were Will and Kate.  Furthermore, we ventured into the museum that had several artifacts such as Lord Nelson’s uniform and Queen Mary’s coronation chair (William and Mary are the only monarchs in Britain’s history who ruled jointly). 

            After seeing the Abbey, we went to the adjoining church called St. Margaret’s.  This was traditional for the more ordinary people and was later used by the House of Commons during the Puritan Revolution, as they disliked the high church practices of Westminster.  Milton attended church there and was also married there.  Winston and Clementine Churchill chose it for their wedding as well.  The church felt more like a place of worship as it had fewer tourists, no monuments, and an organist playing the organ in the background.

            Our next stop was the Tower of London.  To get there, we took a boat ride down the Thames!  We saw the famous London Bridge (which is an ugly concrete bridge. Rather anti-climatic).  Our tour guide pointed out many sites of interest and gave us some classic British humor in his commentary: “See that building? (Parliament)  That houses Big Ben.  The bell is supposedly cracked.  As are most of the people who work there.”  This was given in typical British deadpan style.  I personally rather enjoyed it. 

            Upon arriving at the Tower, we also saw the famous Tower Bridge (it is the famous one with two towers.  It is NOT London Bridge, which it is usually mistaken for).  Currently, the Tower Bridge has Olympic Rings hanging from it.  Once we got into the Tower we saw the White Tower first.  The Tower first functioned as Castle for the Normans when they invaded England.  It later held armor, and of course political prisoners who were tortured.  We saw a reconstruction of the various means of torture: the rack, manacles, and scavenger’s daughter.  If you want to know the specifics of what each of those do, I suggest you Google it. They were gruesome.  We did see the famous ravens that are kept on the grounds.  There was a prophecy during Charles II reign that if the ravens escaped, the kingdom would fall.  As a result, they are watched very carefully.  We saw where the prisoners were held and the graffiti that they etched into the walls (they had a lot of time on their hands and the graffiti was very elaborate).  On a less gruesome note, we saw the Crown Jewels, which are housed in the Tower.  To see the Jewels, you go on a moving sidewalk that slowly sweeps you by each jewel.  They were gorgeous, so sparkly they almost looked like costume jewelry. 

            After the Tower, we did our laundry at the local laundry mat to ensure that we have clean clothes for our upcoming Southern Excursion that begins Monday.  Dr. Ryken called this a “socially redemptive activity”. 

            Friday night, a group of us went to see the show 39 Steps, which is a play version of the famous Hitchcock film.  I’ve never seen the film, but the play was hysterical.  Four actors played over one hundred roles, which was extremely impressive.  They also made numerous references to other Hitchcock films and spoofed many old film clichés.  As a lover of old films, I really enjoyed it.  It was a great end to a wonderful day.