Other Strange Lands

Summer is here and summer is my chance to go other places and do other things.  I really do love teaching, but I usually desperately need summer by the time it comes.  It's here and I'm loving it.  This summer "other places" equaled England, Scotland, and France.  Quite the adventures we had.  Since I already put lots of pictures on Facebook, I'll stick to a few favorite spots and interesting happenings.

Being the C. S. Lewis fan that I am, I was delighted to see the lamp post and door (complete with a lion's face and fauns) that inspired Lewis to write the Chronicles of Narnia.  A number of us also ate at Eagle and Child, the pub where Lewis frequently met with the Inklings.

One of my favorite sandwiches of the tour (bacon, brie, and cranberry) and I did actually take a picture of it.  Now if only I could find this kind of bacon on this side of the pond.  Traveling always does that to me.

 We ate a hurried lunch in Thirsk, the town where James Herriot had his veterinary practice.  Later in the bus we had some James Herriot story time and the pub, Black Bull, where we had eaten lunch was mentioned in the story. The food at the Black Bull also happened to be some of the best I had the entire tour!

  Of course the group I traveled with was a great part of the tour!

Hadrian's Wall.  It was in this area that I suddenly had the contented feeling that I was seeing England as I had imagined it.  Beautiful country!

And then we got to Scotland.  I loved Scotland.  Less refined than England, it felt more closely tied to years gone by.  Of course we enjoyed hearing and struggled to fully understand the Scottish brogue.

 Singing in St. Giles where the sound kept going and going and we had to sing slower than normal so as to take it all in and not be confused.

The Shambles in York.  In this charming little street, where the bottoms of the buildings are smaller than the top, I found it difficult to imagine the days when the shop fronts were full of raw meat and the families in the upstairs rooms threw their waste out the windows and into the streets.

I think I have more favorites that I realized.  I will need to write about the additional 5 days of travel I did with a smaller group at the end of tour another time.