Crazy for You!

Saturday 15th October

Today we decided to do a show, so we headed off to Leicester Square which looked a mess as they are doing major renovations around the area. We had heard there were half price ticket places there. What we hadn’t heard was that there are about 20 of them! We eventually purchased some tickets at TKTS as this was said to be one of the legitimate ones, then we wandered down past Coventry Garden (which has been in existence since 1670 and was started by Charles II issuing a grant to the 4th Earl of Bedford) and in the direction of the Novello Theatre. I was amazed at the number of theatres in the area. We had a directional map that covered probably a square mile of London and there were approximately 50 theatres in this local area, all of which had current shows. We continued to wander through Covent Garden and explore the surrounding streets, then had lunch in a little cafe near the theatre.

We saw the show Crazy for You, which featured many of George Gershwin’s songs and we thoroughly enjoyed it as we knew them all. This was probably not to Shaun’s taste, but old folks like us enjoy musicals like these!! When we came out we were amazed at how busy the streets were. They were far worse than Christmas time in Melbourne. This is when you realise you are in a BIG city. The tube station was jam packed and it was a bit claustrophobic, but we were soon on the tube and in no time were back in Earls Court again. I’m glad however that we saw a matinee rather than an evening show as I’m sure we would have not enjoyed being out so late in surroundings we did not know.

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The changing of the guards …..

Friday 14th October

Well last night was an early night for us and this morning was a sleep-in – we got up at 7 am instead the usual 6 am or earlier!!

As we weren’t able to see the changing of the guards when we visited Buckingham Palace with Shaun, we decided to go there again today. We set off in the tube and got out at St James Park and walked through the gardens which are really beautiful. There were squirrels running around everywhere. Some of them were tame and came right up to us looking for food, striking all sorts of poses, so we managed to take a couple of photos of them. There were also a large number of ducks and birds as we walked along the paths. Eventually we came to Buckingham Palace and asked a bobby where is the best place to see everything. He said, right here! So we were behind the statue of Queen Victoria at the traffic lights that lead down to the Mall. The guards came close enough to us that I could almost pat the horses, so we got a good view of the guards going in and the guards going out. The whole procedure took well over an hour and was very colourful.

While we were waiting for the guards to come past, we saw a big maroon Rolls Royce go into the Palace and about 15 minutes later it came out with the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh in it and they headed down the Mall right in front of us!! The Queen waved as she went past, but it all happened too quickly for me to get a photo of her! Jill was delighted that she had actually got to see the Queen!! (I was too, but wouldn’t admit that to her!).

It was now lunchtime, so we called into a nearby cafe and of all the places to call into in London we found a group from our tour, also lunching there. London isn’t so big after all!!

This afternoon we came back to the apartment to start on the blog before we forget too many details.

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London bound!

Thursday 13th October

Left Plymouth at 8 am and retraced our steps back to Exeter, then continued up the freeway up to Taunton, then turning east along the A30. We stopped off for a quick coffee break along the way, passed through a variety of different landscapes and then arrived at Stonehenge where we stopped. Jill says the area has been heavily commercialised since her last visit 40 odd years ago, but at least there is lots of information now available, so you can understand what is known about the place. It is estimated Stonehenge was built around 2000 BC. The rocks came from North Wales, some 400 miles away and weigh up to 10 ton each! The mind boggles as to how they were carved out and transported. The original purpose has long been forgotten, but many different people have used it over the years, the Druids being the last. When the Romans came, around 40 AD this was a very old site. The rocks currently are situated in cleared farmland, but apparently the area was covered in forest at the time it was built. Another mystery is the large mounds of earth that surround the area. It is believed that these were burial sites where people were originally buried, then as customs changed, the ashes of others were buried there. These mounds are quite prominent even today. I can understand if you just came upon this, it would not interest some, but when you have an audio guide and get to know its origins and significance, it becomes far more interesting.

We resumed our journey and took a quick detour south to the town of Salisbury, to see the well known cathedral where one of the only copies of the historic Magna Carta is situated. We saw the original which was written in Latin but still of great interest, as this document impacts everyone of us even today. This document took away the absolute power of the king and also gave rights to the individual. It is strange that King John petitioned the current Pope of the time to have the document annulled and the Pope attempted to do so in the belief that a king was given his authority by God. Just goes to show how fallible any of us can be.

After lunch we left Salisbury and headed back onto the A30 which then joined the M3 freeway right into London. We were the first to be dropped off at a hotel in Kensington around 3.30 pm, so had a quick goodbye to everyone on the bus and then we got a taxi back to Earls Court, sharing it with another Australian couple who were also staying in an apartment in Earls Court.

Our Tour guide was Mhairi MacLaren, (pronounced Varry) a tiny little Scottish lass, who started life as an actress and was in a number of TV shows. Some 28 years ago, during a ‘down’ period she was asked to fill in as a Tour Guide through Scotland and she managed to bluff her way, but enjoyed the experience and has been at it ever since. She was extremely knowledgable about the history of all the countries we visited in Great Britain and had a very good knowledge of the Royal Family. She was really entertaining and had us in stitches with her different accents and the songs she sang along the way. Our driver Davey was also Scottish and was very adept at driving a 40ft bus through the amazingly narrow streets and roadways. He could back that bus up the most crowded street you could ever imagine.

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Plymouth Harbour and Cornwall

Wednesday 12th October

Started the wet, rainy, foggy day with a boat trip around the massive harbour. This isn’t a very big commercial harbour, as it is the main naval defence harbour normally full of warships, but there was an exercise just off the coast with Spain which meant there were less warships in the harbour. The perimeter of the harbour is full of defensive forts, the main one built by Charles II in 1640. It was from this harbour that the Mayflower left for America and many immigrants left for Australia. Just around the bend from where we started on the Ho (high ground), Sir Francis Drake played bowls and we could see the view he had of the Spanish Armada gathering, getting ready to attack. The Spanish had very big ships set high in the water. Drake had small warships, set low in the water. When the Spanish had gathered into a tight group to sail into the harbour and set amongst them, the Spanish cannons fired over them while Drake fired into them and in a short time decimated them. So presumably there are a number of Spanish warships sitting beneath the waves in the mouth of the Plymouth harbour. We also saw some navy warships in for maintenance and about eight de-commissioned submarines. There were three functioning subs that are capable of sailing under water around the world at a speed of 30 knots without surfacing. When we boarded our boat, we were in Devon, but we landed at Saltash which is in Cornwall.

The River Tamar is the river that separates Cornwall, which was once regarded as a separate country and they had their own language. Even now, when they cross the Tamar, locals say they are visiting England. We travelled down to Penzance in the coach, through a mixture of fog, rain and sunshine. We didn’t see any pirates, but we saw St Michaels Mount, an abbey built on an island several hundred metres offshore. Very impressive, sitting on top of a hill. The sun shone briefly for us while we were there!

From here we crossed from the south shore to the north shore and on to St Ives. In doing so we travelled on very narrow country roads, where two large vehicles upon meeting, had to negotiate who would reverse back to a passing point. Whilst reversing once, we hit something and blew a back tyre, so we had to limp into St Ives, phoning ahead for a mechanic. This gave us more time to explore St Ives, which is a normal Cornwall seaside village. Those of you who watch Doc Martin on TV would recognise what this village was like. We had a dinkum Cornish Pasty and it was delicious and then we walked all around the village, up and down the narrow streets and alleyways each with all sorts of little shops. The terrain is very hilly and if you weren’t walking up a hill, it was because you were walking down a hill! It was a very picturesque village with the tide well out and the fishing boats sitting on the sand in the harbour.

With the tyre replaced we moved on, travelling over the Bodmin moors. We then came to the Jamaica Inn, which was covered in a heavy fog and was built of a grey stone giving off a very eerie atmosphere. You could just see the many smugglers that plied their trade in this area. Daphne Du Maurier wrote a book based on the inn and this is on our reading list on our return now we have seen the area she based the book on. A feature of Cornwall is that the hedgerows, especially on the roadways, are left to grow tall and are up to twelve feet tall, so when driving you have the image of driving continuously through a tunnel. We were to meander over some more country roads, but heavy fog closed in and this seemed worthless, so we headed back to Plymouth on the main road, ready for our goodbye dinner tonight.

Devon and Cornwall are quite correctly described as very pretty. Sunshine or fog this is very true. I am very glad we got down to this part of England. Jill visited this area some forty years ago, but also really enjoyed this visit.

Tonight we had a farewell dinner at our hotel. It’s hard to believe that this trip is almost over. We are all exhausted, but would probably turn around and do it all again as it was packed full of such interesting places.

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Destination Plymouth

Tuesday 11th October

Everyone is tired now, not just not us! We are all fighting a bug that has been going around the bus and it doesn’t help.

We left Cardiff and headed to Newport, over the River Severn on a very big bridge and into England once more. We then continued on down past Bristol and onto the historic city of Bath. Wow! What a fantastic and interesting city, with wonderful architecture and of course the famous Roman Baths which we toured. Fascinating walking on the very stones the Romans did some two thousand years ago. The mechanics or plumbing that allows water in at 44C and excess water out through a viaduct to the Avon River was quite ingenious. They have found artefacts used by stone age man 7,500 years ago, so this place has had some spiritual significance for a long time.

As we walked around the town we found the Royal Theatre where one Shaun Morton is going to be in a couple of weeks. The flyers were up, advertising the forthcoming show. There were a number of street performing singers in the square, especially two superb young soprano singers so we stopped to enjoy them for a few minutes. This is a city that could justify several days of exploration and study.

After leaving Bath, we briefly stopped off at Wells which had a very large impressive Cathedral and a massive Bishop’s Palace, surrounded by a moat and accessed via a drawbridge. These were dangerous times for every one (Note. Only bishops or princes and higher could live in palaces, all other nobility lived in castles).

Next we stopped at Glastonbury for lunch where there is the remains of a huge cathedral or abbey. Now it is alleged that Joseph of Aremathea brought his nephew Jesus here for a visit when he was a young lad, so this is an area of great significance for Christianity. It is also alleged that Joseph thrust his staff into the ground and a thorn bush grew on the spot and that is still alive in the churchyard. This is why the Queen always has a sprig of thorn bush hanging at the Palace at Christmas. Inside the Abbey is where the monks are supposed to have buried King Arthur and his Guinevere. Strangely though, the town is now full of alternate shops and pagan promoters and lots of hippies.

Just outside Glastonbury we passed through the little town of Street, where Clarks shoes are made.

We then moved into the Devon county, through Bridgewater and on to Exeter, which is situated on the River Ex with Exmouth at its outlet. Travelled past the renowned Dartmoors where Sherlock Holmes had problems with the Hounds of Baskerville and where they get around 100 inches of rain each year. We finally reached our destination Plymouth, which we will explore tomorrow.

Tonight we went for dinner on the Dartmoors. We went to a little village called Princetown which is in the middle of the moors and is a gaol town with about six hundred inmates. The gaol was originally built to house prisoners of war from the Napoleonic War. We had our dinner in the Dartmoor Inn which was situated out of town, alone and covered in mist. It has been there since 1625 when it was used by farmers to leave their produce there to be picked up by people from the plague ridden areas. We had a nice dinner (another three courses and a couple of beers) and then we had a storyteller to entertain us with tales about the Dartmoors. When we left the Inn there was a very heavy fog that added to the atmosphere and the lights of the bus picked up the eerie grey stone houses, appearing out of the fog. There was also the issue of that coach that travelled around and around the area with a headless driver and M’Lady who had murdered five husbands sitting in the coach. We were all on the lookout for those large black hounds of Baskerville but we were very alert when we came to a bend in the road where it is reputed that a big black hairy hand would come out of the fog and had claimed three people over the past thirty years! Despite all of this, we did manage to get back to the hotel safely, ready for another day!

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Cardiff Wales

Monday 10th October

We were on the bus by 7 am today and very sleepily set off again. It was still dark so there was nothing to see for the first half hour or so. We made good timing and got to Rosslare harbour and joined the Isle of Inishmore, slightly smaller than our first ferry but still a decent size. This was a four and a half hour trip and there were some very green coloured travellers, but having had some ginger root and with positive thinking, we managed okay.

We arrived at Pembroke in Wales and we exited quickly and set out for Cardiff, stopping first to look at Pembroke Castle where Henry I was born. He was the first Tudor king. Pembroke is where William the Conqueror trained up his long bowed archers, the deadliest ever at that time. The farms seem to have mainly hedgerow fences rather than the stone fences of Ireland. The name Wales actually comes from the Saxon word for stranger and ‘taffies’ as they are sometimes called are named after the river Taff. Wales has more castles than any other place, many now in a state of disrepair.

After booking into our hotel in Cardiff, we had a quick walk around before getting ready for dinner at the Blue Haven Inn which has been going since 1380 . At the Inn we were entertained by a lovely Welsh lass named Amanda Whiting, an internationally recognised harpist and had another three course meal. The helpings were very generous. This was Grandma’s dream, to visit Wales and hear their national instrument, the harp being played. She would have loved this night and I am glad I got the chance to fulfil one of her dreams.

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Jaunting cars and Waterford

Sunday 9th October

We left Kenmore and travelled to Killarney after a rather disturbed night’s sleep in the hotel due to some very noisy rugby fans. Here we went for a ride in the jaunting cars (horse and cart) and went for a ride in a very lovely nearby National Park. Lakes full of trout and salmon, a forest full of deer and other animals, but no hunting here today. I don’t know that I have been in a horse and cart since my farm days with Biddy. Rhodedendrums are a pest here and they are trying to control them in the parklands. We had a delightful but cool journey and the driver of the jaunting car described things in a very broad Irish accent which we sometimes found difficult to understand.

We then left Killarney and headed off towards Cork with the clouds rising for a short period to give us a glimpse of how beautiful the place is. Just before we reached Cork we came to Blarney Castle where the famous blarney stone was waiting to be kissed. As it is five floors up in the castle and Jill thought I already had enough blarney in me, she wasn’t keen on me kissing it. The castle was built in 1446 and was a very interesting structure, like a very large brick sitting on top of a very large rock. They had a garden of poisonous plants there as every castle did. Just in case there was someone you didn’t like, you could feed them something from this garden.

Moving on, we passed through Cork, the birthplace of Ned Kelly. On through Middleton which had a large whisky distillery, then to Dungavan where a large cross set in a field identified the site of a mass grave from the time of the potato famine when one and a half million Irish died.

Waterford, our destination for the night is a farming area where wheat is the major crop and the town is of course known for its Waterford crystal. We toured the showroom and saw them blowing trophy bowls, then followed it through to the cutting, polishing and engraving of the bowls. We got to see some prizes that will be given out at the Olympics in 2012 as well as other major events. They only make specialty products here now. Mass products are now made in the Czech Republic and Poland. It was a fascinating tour to see a product come out of a furnace and end up as a glistening crystal bowl.

This evening we went to Jack Meade’s Pub. This Pub was built as a house around 1647, became a pub in 1705 and has been ever since. The current owners have only been there for 150 years! We had a great singalong couple of hours with a very well known Irish singer named Tom Comerford and I enjoyed a couple of pints of Guinness.

We finished the day with a group dinner at our hotel as we have a VERY early start tomorrow, as we have to catch the ferry again. So tomorrow it will be goodbye Ireland, a very pretty country with 40 shades of green and a people who seem to have a marvellous sense of humour. I now have a greater understanding of Ireland and the Irish people.

Lesson – when speaking in the Celtic language, ‘bh’ is pronounced in English as ‘v’. (e.g. Siobhan) .

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The Ring of Kerry ……

Saturday 8th October

Limerick is where King John signed a Treaty in 1691 when his castle was attacked by the local lords in the Jacobite Uprising. Today you can still see the repairs made by the Jacobite canons. It must have given King John a real fright! A short time later we passed Adare Golf Course where a number of celebrity games have been held. In the town was a church built in 1230, firstly as a fortress then converted to a church as things quietened down. As we travelled, the weather closed in to heavy fog, so we couldn’t appreciate what we were told was a very beautiful place, but we could see the wild fuchsias growing prolifically along the road.

This is Daniel O ‘Connell area, where he was born and where he retired to. Most towns have an O’Connell Street in his memory. The clouds lifted for short periods and we could see the high rolling hills flowing into the Atlantic and right across the ocean lay America. It is claimed that Saint Brendan sailed to America from around here in a cowhide shell boat in the 5th Century. An adventurer recently built a replica and set off and actually reached America. Ireland has many fresh water streams and they are full of salmon and trout. You will only ever have wild salmon here! There is no aquaculture.

The weather is against us, but we meandered along narrow country roads going around the MacGillicuddy’s Reeks. These are the highest mountains in Ireland. The trip is called the Ring of Kerry and is supposed to be some of the most picturesque in Ireland. We didn’t get to see much of it, but we have postcards of what it looks like in sunshine. This is where Gaelic is the first language. As the weather was deteriorating and we couldn’t see much, our tour guide decided to head straight to where we were staying the night at Kenmore, just outside Killarney and we spent the remainder of the afternoon shopping in the local village.

In the evening we had dinner in an 18th Century farmhouse that was also a shabeen in the early days ( an illegal distillery). The owner gave us a short tour of his farm which is run as a historical replica of life in the 18th century. We had a great Irish meal in the house consisting of vegetable soup (root vegetables only), a big plate of Irish Stew and mashed potato and Apple Crumble. After this we learnt how to make soda bread, which everyone ate with their meals in the olden days and then stepped outside again to learn how to make “potcheen” – distilled from potatoes and still illegal. To finish it off we had to have a taste, so we were all given a glass, but the host had two glasses. We were not permitted to drink our “potcheen” until our host had proposed a toast and thrown one of the glasses over his right shoulder for the fairies. If you don’t include the fairies in your tasting, they will do bad things. Who in their right mind would want to tempt fate?!! The taste – it was different!

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Galway and Limerick

Friday 7th October

A very early start after our late night last night, we set off on the new freeway to Galway. We travelled through true Irish farming country with farms and their stone fences everywhere. Fields often vary between between one acre and up to six acres. They are completely different to Australian farms. I am told Ireland is like a frypan! Flat in the middle and hilly around the edges, but wherever we go it is GREEN!! We stopped at Galway, sang some sad Irish songs on the bus, had lunch and a walk around the town. We then turned south and headed to Limerick where we stay tonight. The west side of Ireland isn’t as fertile as the east and this is where Cromwell forced the easterners off their land for not supporting him and sent them west. This is probably why the west is where Gaelic starts to dominate as the first language.

Tonight we went to a Ceildh – in a pub on the Limerick docks, where we had a typical Irish dinner. I had bacon and cabbage (delicious!). Not quite what you would imagine. A family of seven played toe tapping Irish music and a couple of the sons danced for us (like Riverdance) . It was a great night. I went to the bar and asked the barmaid for a lemonade for Jill. Red or white she asked. I looked at her blankly and she said “you want a white” . I still haven’t found out what a red lemonade is!

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Dublin

Thursday 6th October

We started the day with a tour by a local guide. The city has a lot of Georgian style architecture and has the most complete Georgian streets anywhere as Ireland was neutral in World War II and therefore not bombed. I must admit the Georgian style is neat and regal and modern architects could do worse than study it. House prices in Dublin have dropped 40 per cent in the last couple of years – something that would decimate Australia were it to happen there. The country is bilingual, but on the east coast of Ireland English is the dominant language. The three Celtic countries, Scotland, Ireland and Wales all speak a type of Gaelic, but are all different, the Welsh being very different. It is a flowery and descriptive language which is why they have all produced numerous great writers.

In 1916 there was an uprising where 200 armed men took over the GPO in O’Connell Street and declared independence from England. 200 against the might of England did not turn out well for them and the leaders were executed, but Ireland did eventually get it independence, so they are all national heroes now. O’Connell Street is the main street in Dublin running from O’Connell Bridge and contains the Millenium Spire that celebrates the year 2000. This was in fact erected in 2003!! How very Irish!!

Dublin is very proud of Molly Malone, who was a fishmonger and sold cockles and mussels from her fish barrow. As she was a very pretty girl she came back at night and sold Molly. She was so well liked they made a statue of her in the city centre and have a well known song which celebrates her life.

There are two cathedrals in Dublin and with a population 90 per cent Catholic, would you believe they are both Protestant due to Henry VIII’s Reformation. They are both very old and majestic. Christchurch cathedral dates from 1038 and St Patrick’s Cathedral is several years younger.

Guinness is the national drink and I have tasted it several times and it is okay! When women give birth in the main maternity hospital they are given a pint of Guinness immediately after, for the good of the child! Also when you donate blood at the Blood Bank you are given a pint to regain your strength. Mr Guinness was a good business man. He leased 50 acres in the middle of Dublin for 40 pence a year, which may have been fair when he did it, however the term of the lease was 9,000 years! A very good deal!!

Would you believe there are no water meters in Dublin! All water is free. Due to the economic situation, that is about to change and every household will pay a fee in the next few years and this will go towards repairing or replacing the Victorian water pipes that lose 60 per cent of their water through leakage. Water meters may come in the future.

We set off for the Wicklow Mountains south of Dublin along a very long and winding road through some exceptionally pretty and green areas. Johnny Cash wrote a song called Forty Shades of Green and it was based on this area. We were going to visit an area where a monk settled around 400 AD. His name has been anglicised to Kevin and he eventually died and became St Kevin. A monastery was built and lived in for six hundred years by his followers. Many of these buildings are still standing. Two amazing structures are the Chapel, completely standing and with a stone roof supporting itself on the stone Walls. The other was a tower unique to Ireland, shaped just like a rocket. It stood 100 feet high and is still in perfect condition, except the six levels of wooden floors have rotted away. When the Vikings raided them (which they did seven times) the monks would throw their valuables into the tower and climb in there themselves through a small entrance door eleven feet above ground level and wait for the Vikings to leave. Those cunning Vikings realised the structure was built like a chimney, so they removed some of the lower stones and lit a peat fire which would either burn the monks or smoke them to death. Despite these raids, the stone structure still stands. The weather closed in on us while we were there and it was very wet with a biting wind, but it was still an amazing site to visit.

Ireland was populated by Celts who came from around the area of Switzerland about 400 BC. The Vikings started arriving in the AD years. They came to raid, but stayed to trade and marry local girls. Under Viking law the eldest son inherited all of Dad’s wealth. All other sons were sent out to raid surrounding lands and create their own wealth. England, Scotland and Ireland were the main targets. It is claimed that all redheads originate from Viking blood.

I have found the reason the main street in Dublin was named O’Connell Street. Daniel O’Connell 1775 to 1845 was the first Catholic elected to British parliament. He founded the Irish Catholic Rights organisation and had these rights sanctified in Parliament. Until then, Catholics could not own anything of value or hold any position of authority – an unbelievable situation.

In the afternoon we left our local guide and toured by ourselves. We visited Trinity College which was very close to our hotel to see the famous Book of Kells, written over 1,000 years ago on parchment (which is calf skin). There was a display showing how they prepared the parchment and the different materials they used to write with. The language in the Book of Kells is Latin and they contain the Four Gospels. There were a number of these written by monks, but Viking raiders and other heathens when raiding, would remove whatever they found of value and destroy the rest. This copy Is the only known one known to exist. It was an extremely interesting exhibition. Trinity is probably one of the first universities in the world, originally established to educate Protestants by an early English monarch. It was only in the middle of last century Catholics were allowed to attend.

Although Dublin doesn’t have many physical features that appeal compared to some other cities, it has a lot of history attached to it which made it a very interesting place to visit.

Tonight we attended a cabaret, with some lively Irish dancers, musicians and as only the Irish can do it, a comedian who had us crying with laughter. He performed his entire act without swearing once!! That is a true comedian!

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