A Literary Tour: Day 10

Day 10: Hay-on-Wye

Today we are going to shop until we drop. And then shop some more. For booklovers, this is the ultimate shopping trip. On the English-Welsh border not far from Hereford is the little town of Hay-on-Wye. Book town! Here we are going to spend the day browsing through nearly forty bookshops of all shapes, sizes and flavours. "Book town" was the brainchild of eccentric bookseller Richard Booth. With the help of occasional publicity stunts - in 1977 he declared Hay an independent state and appointed himself king - the idea took off. You can whet your appetite by checking out the list of bookshops on the Hay website. The majority sell used books, ranging from specialist antiquarian booksellers, through children's bookshops, to giant book treasure houses with hundreds of thousands of volumes stacked on shelves, in piles, in dusty corners, in outhouses ... even in a ruined castle. Whatever book you want you have a chance of finding it here. But where? This is a booklover's paradise.

One of my most memorable weekends was spent at Hay with a group of six homeschooling mothers ... there is nothing more fun than bookshopping at Hay with like minded friends. After a day of treasure hunting we had the pleasure of inspecting each other's finds and admiring bargains. Then we celebrated with a good meal and a restorative bottle or two of wine. Between the six of us we accumulated over three hundred books in the course of the weekend! The reticent British women in the party also learned a lesson from our American expatriate friends (we were a mixed bag bunch) ... if you ask for an educational discount, most of the shops will give you one.

Be warned. By the end of the day you will have seriously aching feet!

A Literary Tour: Day 11

Day 11: Shrewsbury (Ellis Peters)


I am not a big fan of mysteries and detective stories, although I enjoy them on occasions. One of several exceptions to this rule is the Cadfael series by Ellis Peters. Cadfael, the crusader turned Benedictine monk, is an inspired choice of sleuth, and I love the way she captures the atmosphere of mid-twelfth century England during the civil war between King Stephen and his cousin Matilda. The setting is Shrewsbury Abbey, another of the great religious houses of medieval England. The monks went when Henry VIII dissolved the English monasteries, but Shrewsbury - like Bath Abbey - was one of the fortunate churches to survive more or less intact as a place of worship for the townspeople.

Shrewsbury is a town I have never visited so I'm looking forward to this trip. Browsing for pictures has whetted my appetite, and I was intrigued to discover that Shrewsbury Abbey now has a "Cadfael window", in honour of its fictional son. The Abbey was also home to the shrine of St.Winifred, thanks to a raiding party of monks who simply appropriated her body from its burial place in North Wales in the twelfth century. Unfortunately the shrine did not survive the Reformation. Purloining the relics of saints was something of a medieval hobby. My favourite example is the monks of Fleury in France, who travelled to Italy and carried off the bones of St.Benedict himself. They justified this with the impeccable logic that if St.Benedict had not wanted to come with them, he would not have let them take him.

I have found a nice book to whet our appetite for this trip, Cadfael Country: Shropshire and the Welsh Borders, by Rob Talbot and Robin Whiteman. I'm almost sure my mother - who lived in Shrewsbury during the 1950s - has a copy, and I'm planning to browse through it next time I visit her.

A Literary Tour: Day 12

Day 12: Hornby, Lancashire (John Lingard)

As life gets back on an even keel it's time to venture on with our travels. Today we are heading north again to Hornby in Lancashire - another new destination for me. A year or so ago I discovered John Lingard (1771-1851), who combined life as a rural priest with a career as a pioneering Catholic historian of international reputation. Among other works he wrote a ten volume History of England that was some hundred and fifty years ahead of its time - many of his conclusions match those of recent historians. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the writing of English history was dominated by a series of "Whig" historians who portrayed it as a story of steady progress culminating in the greatness of Victorian England and the British Empire. Protestantism was seen as an essential part of this progress, not so much through religious conviction, but because it permitted English independence from the influence of Rome. Lingard painted a very different picture, and one that was for a century or more thoroughly unfashionable outside of Catholic circles. Nowadays his work is almost unknown, but a recent biography justifiably describes him as the greatest English historian of the second millenium. (If you are wondering, the greatest of the first millenium was the Venerable Bede.) Unfortunately his books are now almost unobtainable at an affordable price, so what I know of Lingard I have learned from his biographer, but I'm looking forward to one day reading his master work. One single sentence sums up Lingard's approach - a sentence that should be the motto of any good historian:

My object is truth ... through the work I made it a rule to tell the truth whether it made for us or against us. (John Lingard)

His biographer elaborates:

To him it was a matter of personal conscience. He believed that historical truth is both achievable and sacrosanct. The truth was sacred, so he handled facts with great care. Truth and true religion, in his view, could never be at odds. (Edwin Jones, John Lingard and the Pursuit of Historical Truth)

Ironically some Catholics criticised Lingard's work for not being sufficiently partisan. Approval came at the highest level, though, and he was given the honour of a triple doctorate by Pope Pius VII.

So ... we head for Hornby to tread in the footsteps of John Lingard. From all accounts he seems to have been an attractive character. He was a keen gardener and naturalist, with a love of animals. The little Church of St.Mary, where he was parish priest, still stands and is an obvious place to start our visit. A testimony to his standing in the local community is that after his death the non-Catholic villagers of Hornby had a memorial plaque in his honour placed in the Anglican Church there. At a time when Catholics in general and priests in particular were still objects of suspicion among the general population this was praise indeed. We can search out Lingard's memorial in St.Margaret's Church, and explore the rest of the village. Unfortunately the splendid looking Hornby Castle is a private home so we can't explore the castle itself, but we can take in the view.













From Hornby we are only a short hop from our next destination ... Cumbria and the Lake District.

A Literary Tour: Day 13

Day 13: Ambleside and Lake Windermere (Charlotte Mason, Beatrix Potter, Arthur Ransome)

A long day today with many places to visit. If we are lucky the weather will hold ... if not, then make sure you bring plenty of rain gear! The Lake District is one of the most beautiful parts of England, but also one of the wettest. As I am a Charlotte Mason devotee we will start at Ambleside with a visit to the Armitt Museum. This holds the Charlotte Mason archive and also has a number of items belonging to Charlotte on display, including her writing desk. The museum is at the bottom of the drive leading up to Charlotte Mason's old house, Scale How - now part of St.Martin's College. The photograph above is the one I took last month at great personal cost (bruised knees and a fainting fit!). The one to the left shows a class being taken out of doors in the late nineteenth century. It is too small to tell whether Charlotte herself was the teacher. The location of the college is stunning, overlooked by the fells behind and close to the northern end of Lake Windermere. If we take a brisk walk down to the lake we can catch a ferry south to Bowness. We'll have to settle for an engine where the Swallows and Amazons in Arthur Ransome's story relied on sail.


The southern end of Windermere is Beatrix Potter country. She lived the later part of her life in the village of Sawrey, a hop and a skip across the lake from Bowness. OK, hop and skip is poetic licence. For those of us without nine league boots it is a trip on another ferry - this one more of a glorified raft than a boat. I imagine the ferry in which the hobbits crossed the Brandywine in Lord of the Rings to be a smaller but similar craft, though with horses as cargo, not cars.


Once in Sawrey we can visit Beatrix Potter's Hill Top Farm, now owned by the National Trust. Beatrix herself was one of the founders of this charitable organisation which preserves large tracts of countryside (including much of the Lake District) and historic buildings. She left Hill Top to the Trust on condition it was kept as it was at her death. Here at Hill Top she wrote many of her beloved children's books, although when she eventually married a local solicitor and Sawrey became her permanent home rather than a holiday bolthole they lived in a larger house in the village. If you want to get a feel for the village as it was in the early twentieth century I recommend the new series of Beatrix Potter mysteries by Susan Wittig Albert, beginning with The Tale of Hill Top Farm.

We can round off the day with a late afternoon walk to enjoy the scenery.

A Literary Tour: Day 14

Day 14: Yorkshire Dales (James Herriot)

For enjoyable light reading James Herriot's autobiographical books describing his life as a vetinary surgeon in the Yorkshire Dales are hard to beat. They have the added attraction of being set in one of my favourite parts of the country, North Yorkshire. (My mother is a Yorkshire woman, so I attribute this in part to genetics!) From the Lake District we can head east to Herriot's "Darrowby" (in reality, the small market town of Thirsk) with a beautiful drive through Wensleydale, stopping of to enjoy scenery like the Aysgarth Falls en route. When we need a break, we can stop in one of the little Dales towns - Hawes, Leyburn or Bedale - for something to eat. If we are hungry we could have roast beef and Yorkshire pudding; if we want a light snack, some local Wensleydale cheese. Yorkshire pudding is a batter pudding traditionally served in large slices with gravy before the meat and potatoes, the idea being that it filled the holes in hungry stomachs when money didn't stretch to much meat to follow. These days it is usually eaten alongside roast beef and roast potatoes. Wensleydale is a crumbly, tangy cheese. The traditional Yorkshire combination of Wensleydale cheese with a rich fruit cake may sound odd, but is delicious - try it and see! (Mmm ... note to self: buy Wensleydale and fruit cake next time I'm at the supermarket.) As we continue our drive we will pass many little farms of the type James Herriot knew, with fields separated by dry stone walls.

Once we arrive at Thirsk, we can spend some time exploring the town, then visit James Herriot's old home and surgery, now a museum. In our family's sole and very distant literary connection Star enjoys the distinction of being related by baptism to the author - her godmother's father-in-law is Alf Wight's much younger first cousin ('James Herriot', like 'Darrowby' is a pseudonym). Her seven year old god-sister (I am also godmother to my friend's daughter, so we invented the god-sister relationship!) has ambitions to be a vet, so maybe there are genetics at work there too.

A Literary Tour: Day 15

Day 15: North Yorkshire Moors (Evelyn Waugh, St.Ailred of Rievaulx)

Today we are taking a short drive east from Thirsk - a short drive, but a steep climb up Sutton Bank, which marks the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors. When we last visited this area a few years ago we found a pub just beyond the top of Sutton Bank where we had a memorably good lunch of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Today, though, we are going to stop in the pretty little town of Helmsley at Hunter's delicatessen to buy a picnic lunch. Whatever else we choose, it has to include another of my Yorkshire favourites, curd tart - a kind of cheesecake made from the curd part of Little Miss Muffet's "curds and whey", mixed with eggs, sugar, butter and currants and cooked in a pastry case. I have never found it anywhere but Yorkshire, leaving me in a state of semi-permanent deprivation!

From Helmsley it is a short hop to the ruined Rievaulx Abbey (yes, that's right, Henry VIII again. Grrrr!!!). Rievaulx was one of the great Cistercian Abbeys of medieval Yorkshire and the home of one of medieval England's more endearing saints, Ailred of Rievaulx. It merits a place in a literary tour as Ailred's treatise on friendship is a spiritual classic (unfortunately another of the many books I intend to read one day but haven't got to yet). The picture here doesn't do justice to the beauty of the site. It is at the bottom of a wooded valley with a stunning view on the approach.

After Rievaulx we are going to take an unashamedly unliterary tour just to appreciate the beauty of the moors. The photo below shows Bilsdale, where generations of my mother's family were tenant farmers in the nineteenth century. They were something of a genealogist's nightmare, with three successive generations of Isaac Holmes's, all married to wives named Elizabeth.

After our moorland drive, we will take a short detour to St.Gregory's Minster, Kirkdale, where my mother was baptised. A rare surviving Anglo-Saxon Church, it sits in splendid isolation in a small valley with a stream flowing past the churchyard. The grass is kept down by grazing sheep ... probably not a good idea to put flowers on graves! One of the most peaceful places imaginable, this is somewhere to sit quietly and let the connection with England's long Christian history wash over us.

Back on the literary trail again, our next stop is the magnificent Castle Howard, home of the Howard family for three hundred years. Castle Howard was the location used by the BBC when filming a dramatisation of Evelyn Waugh's Catholic classic, Brideshead Revisited. Somehow I managed to miss out on 'Brideshead' until I finally read the book a couple of years ago. I recommend it. On one level it is a tale of dissolution and adultery, but it has a redemptive Catholic twist that lifts it onto a different level. After visiting the house and grounds, we will have earned a trip to the tea room for a substantial afternoon tea.

A Literary Tour: Day 16

Day 16: Northamptonshire (Flora Thompson)

A long drive south today, so only a short literary visit. We are headed for the county of Northamptonshire, where it borders Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire - middle England, almost but not quite into the Cotswolds. Our destination is the tiny hamlet of Juniper Hill, immortalised by Flora Thompson as "Lark Rise" in her autobiographical trilogy of country life over a hundred years ago, Lark Rise to Candleford. In the nineteenth century the men in my father's family were almost without exception agricultural labourers (the women were strawplaiters) and both my father and grandfather were farmers, so books on rural life are an interest of mine.Lark Rise is a classic, describing the life and personalities of a small English village in great detail - the seasons of village life, the poverty of many of the families, the games played by the children, the ups and downs of schooldays, and much more besides.

After looking at Flora's old house in Juniper Hill, we can walk across the fields to Cottisford, the parish to which Juniper Hill belonged. Here is Flora's description of the church:

... the congregation averaged about thirty. Even with this small number, the church was fairly well filled, for it was a tiny place, about the size of a barn, with nave and chancel only, no side aisles. The interior was almost as bare as a barn, with its grey, roughcast, walls, plain-glass windows, and flagstone floor. The cold, damp, earthy odour common to old and unheated churches pervaded the atmosphere, with occasional whiffs of a more unpleasant nature said to proceed from the stacks of mouldering bones in the vault beneath. ... The Church, like the village, was old and forgotten, and those buried in the vault, who must have once been people of importance, had not left even a name. Only the stained glass window over the altar, glowing jewel-like amidst the cold greyness, the broken piscina within the altar rails, and a tall broken shaft of what had been a cross in the churchyard, remained to witness mutely to what once had been.

Looking again at Lark Rise I was intrigued to discover that like my own great-grandfather, Flora Thompson's grandfather:

... followed the old country calling of an eggler, travelling the countryside with a little horse and trap, buying up eggs from farms and cottages and selling them at markets and to shopkeepers.

Goose at large!

My mother just phoned. She had been watching the local news on TV and rang to warn us that there is aggressive goose at large on the nearby canal towpath attacking women and children. We reassured her that it was cold outside, warm inside, and we were going nowhere, goose or no goose. That would be nature study too up close and personal for my liking!

The Lord's Prayer

For those with a linguistic turn of mind, take a look at the Lord's Prayer in 1325 languages. To link in with my literary tour, here it is in Cornish:

Pader an Arleth
Agon Taze nye, eze en Neve,
Benegas bo tha Hanow.
Tha Gwlaskath gwrenz doaz;
Tha Voth bo gwreze,
En Noer pecarra en Neve.
Ro tha nye an journama gon bara pub death,
Ha gave tha nye gon pehasow
Pecarra tel era nye gava angye
Neb eze peha war agon bidn.
Ha na raze gon lewa en antall,
Buz gweeth nye thurt droeg.
Rag an Gwlaskath Che a beaw,
Han Nearth, han Worrians,
Rag nevra venitha.
Andelna ra bo, Amen.

In case you were wondering, the last of the old Cornish speakers died in 1891, but since then enthusiasts have worked hard to revive the language. As they put it: "Cornish never died, it just wasn't very well." Want to take a crack at reading it out loud? Here is a pronunciation guide. Good luck!

Plans for Lent

Star will be making her First Confession next month and her First Communion in May. I'm mortified that I simply haven't done as much to prepare her as I would have liked (blame pregnancy brain and lack of energy). With that in mind I wanted to focus in Lent not just on preparing for Easter, but on something that would deepen our appreciation and understanding of the Mass. The answer? We are going to work on Easter Vigil notebooks using these plans generously shared by the author on the 4 Real message board last year. Other than that I'm going to keep it very simple -if I aim to do too much, nothing will happen - but I'm very tempted to add in this lovely idea for a Lenten Crown shared on Karen Edmisten's blog. Apart from that we will all choose a Lenten sacrifice. I'm going to pick up on another of Karen's ideas and give up complaining. More easily said than done, I suspect. Star is planning to forego sweets and chocolate, and Angel is still considering the matter.

Action and inaction

I'm finally hitting the right balance between action and inaction. I went for a swim on Sunday and again today, and have booked myself in for an aqua aerobics class on Thursday. I'm also getting into the habit of going to bed for an hour after lunch, either to read or sleep, while Angel and Star do some reading and then play quietly. It has taken twenty three weeks, but I'm beginning to feel I might be getting some energy back :).

Star's thoughts on bedtime ...

Rather hopefully, when told it was bedtime ... "It's illegal to have to go to bed."

Goodnight Angel - techie style!

Angel is an unabashed techie. She likes gadgets. She likes computers. Fortunately she also likes boundaries. Once parameters are set she will not step beyond them, and is very responsible over computer limits. As a result, over the last month or so we have been letting her use our old laptop in her room for a short time after she goes to bed. I tend to use the computer in the evenings, so we have fallen into the habit of chatting to each other online for a while. Winks and smileys go a long way. Tonight we established that she now felt better {{large nodding blue smiley}} after a {{glum face}} sort of day. I told her how much I love her, even when she is {{red, angry face}}, but how I like it much better when she is {{big grin}}. She exploded kisses over my computer screen. I sent hugs and kisses back, though I haven't mastered the exploding version. It may be a bizarre way to say goodnight, but we enjoy it. (And she did sneak down for an extra real-life goodnight hug on the pretext of bringing a plate downstairs!)

St. Gilbert of Sempringham

Thanks to MyCatholic.com I realised today is the feast of St. Gilbert of Sempringham, one of the most endearing of English medieval saints and founder of the only specifically English religious order. A humane and humble man, he founded monasteries for men, women and both, hostels for the poor, the sick and the widowed, and provided education for both boys and girls (far ahead of his time!). He was canonised less than twenty years after his death at the age of one hundred and five. You can read more about him on this site from the Friends of Chicksands Priory. This is rather more reliable than the seriously muddled MyCatholic version which claims St. Gilbert was imprisoned by Henry VIII. Given that Gilbert died in 1189, over three hundred years before Henry VIII became king, I think not!

Note to self: Pay a visit to Chicksands Priory! I can claim a slightly proprietary interest in Chicksands - it was founded in the twelfth century by Payne de Beauchamp, baron of Bedford and his wife Rose, and I wrote an entry for the New Dictionary of National Biography on the Beachamps of Bedford. I hadn't realised that the ruins (grrr!!! that monastic terrorist Henry VIII again!) are now open to the public, and it is only around twenty miles away from us.

Book Review: The Tale of Hill Top Farm

Thanks to recommendations on the 4 Real Learning message board I took The Tale of Hill Top Farm by Susan Wittig Albert with me last weekend as light reading. This is the first book in a new mystery series blending fact with fiction. The heroine is real life Edwardian children's author and illustrator Beatrix Potter, and the setting the village of Sawrey in the Lake District where she spent her later years. The author populates the village with fictional characters and involves the newly arrived Miss Potter in solving various village mysteries and intrigues. As an added touch, she includes Beatrix Potter's pets (one hedgehog - Mrs Tiggywinkle - two rabbits and a mouse) and various village animals in the plot. Blending reality and fiction in this way is difficult to do; combining talking animals with a human mystery story is even harder. Susan Wittig Albert succeeds on both counts. The book is gentle, humorous and a thoroughly enjoyable light read. She captures Beatrix Potter beautifully (I'm no expert, but she is certainly recognisable from a biography I read a while ago), both Sawrey village and her invented characters come alive, and the animals are suitably Potter-esque. The mystery aspect of the book was a little on the thin side, but that didn't detract from my enjoyment. The second book in the series, The Tale of Holly How, is already available, and a third, The Tale of Cuckoo Brown Wood, is due for publication in the summer. As the books aren't available through our library system I will have to wait patiently for the paperback edition of Holly How to be published. I'm looking forward to it.

Quote: "I never eat anything I've been introduced to" (Tabitha Twitchit to Tom Thumb)

Charlotte Maria Shaw Mason: RIP

I can't believe I did that! (Part 3)

A couple of weeks ago I had a conversation with Angel about reading in the bath and the risk of dropping a book in the water. I reassured her that it was quite hard to do, and in over three decades as an inveterate reader-in-the-bath I only remembered dropping a book once - as long as she avoided library books or anything particularly precious, I was quite happy for her to take the risk. After our adventures in Ambleside I retired to a nice warm bath to soak my bruised knees and enjoy The Tale of Hill Top Farm. Yes. You've guessed it. I had a cack-handed moment and The Tale of Hill Top Farm landed in the water. I'm glad to report it dried well, with only a slight crinkling of some pages to show for its misadventure.

I can't believe I did that! (Part 2)

On Saturday we decided to visit Ambleside and Lake Windermere. We arrived in Ambleside after a scenic drive around Ullswater and across the fells - Tevye was a little alarmed when I directed him down a narrow road signed 'Ambleside via "The Struggle" ', but to his relief we we were travelling in the right direction and got the cruise downhill, not the struggle uphill. Unlike the last time I visited I had remembered my camera, so I strolled up the drive of Scale How, Charlotte Mason's old House of Education (now known as St.Martin's College) to take a picture. With my mind on finding a good spot for photography I forgot to keep an eye on my feet, tripped and fell headlong, nearly giving Tevye heart failure. Fortunately there was no real damage done apart from bruised and scraped knees. Unfortunately when pregnant I have a tendency to faint if I hurt myself, so after reassuring Tevye that everything was OK I proceeded to flake out. I did the exact same thing when I was expecting Star, in MacDonalds of all places - at least this time I managed to choose more memorable surroundings. I spent the rest of our time in Ambleside clinging tightly to Tevye's arm and keeping a very close eye on my feet. On the bright side, at least my trousers were undamaged - I could have ended up spending the rest of the weekend stuck with clothes with shredded knees - and I did manage to take the photo. So here it is ... Scale How.

Appleby Manor Hotel

We love this place! We discovered it when Angel was tiny and we saw it recommended as a family-friendly hotel. Over the ten years since then we have been back both with and without the girls as an occasional treat. It is a long drive in British terms (250 miles), but worth the time on the road. Midway between the Lake District (think Beatrix Potter, Swallows and Amazons and Charlotte Mason) and the Yorkshire Dales (James Herriot country), the location is superb. The house itself was built in the late nineteenth century by John Heelis, a wealthy solicitor (lawyer). I am privately convinced he must have been a relative of Beatrix Potter's solicitor husband, Willie Heelis. I haven't been able to confirm this - but how many families of solicitors called Heelis could there be? It is a classic English country house, with wood panelled walls, log fires and a general sense of comfort and solidity. The food is superb - if anything it gets better every time we visit - and the hotel has managed to combine a luxurious feel with friendly service and a genuinely warm welcome to children. There are games in the lounge, a swing and a playhouse in the garden, and ice cream cones as an alternative to desserts more appealing to adult tastebuds. It is also the one place I know where Tevye slows down visibly within minutes of arriving!

I can't believe I did that! (Part 1)

We are back from a wonderful, relaxing long weekend away at our all-time favourite hotel ... a weekend interspersed with a number of "I can't believe I did that!" moments on my part. The first one was sartorial. I have reached that stage of pregnancy when none of my normal sized skirts or trousers fit. I'm also trying to keep the number of maternity clothes I have to buy to a budget-saving minimum. As a result my entire lower-half wardrobe is currently two pairs of trousers: a plain, chocolate brown everyday pair bought very cheaply in a sale; and a black jersey pair. I was particularly pleased with this black jersey pair as they are very comfortable, can be worn for everyday, but can also be dressed up with shoes and a nice top to be suitable for times when I need something smarter to wear. I was feeling quite smug that I had something I could wear for dinner in our nice hotel without having either to bust my clothes budget or undergo a last minute "I've nothing to wear!" trauma. When we arrived I was tired, so Tevye unpacked our suitcase. The time came to change for dinner ... "where did you put my black trousers?" said I ... "what black trousers?" he replied. Yes. That's right. I'd left them at home. I had to spend the entire four days in my one, everyday pair of brown trousers - dinner and all. That will teach me to be smug!