England ENGLAND: Portmeirion, Yorkshire, and home
Hi all, I am back home in grey, drizzly California, missing the English sunshine and trying to drive on the righthand side of the road again. Here's some photos, but just to round off this little travelogue...
Portmeirion, AKA The Village from The Prisoner: I think my favorite place I went on the trip. An architect decided to build a whole village to be fun and beautiful. And he didn't end up with Disneyland! No, he actually succeeded, and it's called Portmeirion, and it's one of those very special places that start fake and become real. Like the Palace of Fine Arts. I have a great fondness for these places. Portmeirion is also, quite simply, camera candy. See above note re architect.
Then I headed to an inn on a country road outside of Skipton in Yorkshire. I really think on my next visit to England, I should do Yorkshire first. This makes the second time I've been there at the end of a trip, when I'm rather tired, so I don't think I've gotten a fair impression of it. I did drive around on the moors, which are indeed imposing and barren and lovely. pasajera says they remind her of the desert; they reminded me of the ocean; I suppose we both mean they have a feeling of vast solitude. And apart from the moors, the countryside is quite lovely too-hillier than southern England, which seems more natural to our Californian eyes. Though Yorkshire is also a lot more settled than Cornwall and the other parts of southern England I was in, hence some annoying traffic at times.
My Jane Austen doll and I did invade the Bronte Parsonage Museum, which was interesting. More formal than Jane Austen's house in Chawton, meaning there were rope barriers and all that. They did have an actual dress of Charlotte's, which was surprisingly nice, and seeing just how much the Bronte's stories were based on their lives was also interesting. That same day I went to a David Hockney gallery in Bradford, the industrial town where he grew up (and enjoyed escaping from, seeing as how he painted CA so much, and lives here too.) But they have a lot of his earlier work, and his most recent work, which he creates by "painting" on the iPad. Flower still-lifes mostly, and some of them very good.
Next day, I went to Castle Howard, which is really a very grand manor house. If you've seen either version of Brideshead Revisited, you'll know Castle Howard, as they both were filmed there (and they think Waugh had in it mind when he wrote the book anyway.) Then, the next day I drove up to Brimham Rocks, recommended by more than one person, and actually very close to where I was staying. Freaky rock formations featured in The Princess Bride (funranium , you'd enjoy the geology). I got quite a shock as the place was swarmed with families on Spring Break. But it was still beautiful and even eerie, and I love taking photos of tourists, so that was all right.
The 19th and 20th were both long days of travel, stressful at the time, but not too exciting to hear about blow-by-blow. On the 19th I turned in my car at York Rail Station and trained down to King's Cross (which is my icon here.) I left in plenty of time EXCEPT for the massive roadwork traffic jam getting into York. Due to that and other fun details, I only barely made my train, and that because it was 10 min late. Dinner with Graham in London (I was so pleased to see London after so many small towns!), up at 4:30 to get to Heathrow, 8+ hours to Chicago, just JUST missed my connecting flight, got onto a completely full one 3 hrs later, a very claustrophobic 4.5 hrs, botched rental car arrangements, BART, the kindness of captainoz in conveying me home, and here I am. And that, as they said, is another story.
Portmeirion, AKA The Village from The Prisoner: I think my favorite place I went on the trip. An architect decided to build a whole village to be fun and beautiful. And he didn't end up with Disneyland! No, he actually succeeded, and it's called Portmeirion, and it's one of those very special places that start fake and become real. Like the Palace of Fine Arts. I have a great fondness for these places. Portmeirion is also, quite simply, camera candy. See above note re architect.
Then I headed to an inn on a country road outside of Skipton in Yorkshire. I really think on my next visit to England, I should do Yorkshire first. This makes the second time I've been there at the end of a trip, when I'm rather tired, so I don't think I've gotten a fair impression of it. I did drive around on the moors, which are indeed imposing and barren and lovely. pasajera says they remind her of the desert; they reminded me of the ocean; I suppose we both mean they have a feeling of vast solitude. And apart from the moors, the countryside is quite lovely too-hillier than southern England, which seems more natural to our Californian eyes. Though Yorkshire is also a lot more settled than Cornwall and the other parts of southern England I was in, hence some annoying traffic at times.
My Jane Austen doll and I did invade the Bronte Parsonage Museum, which was interesting. More formal than Jane Austen's house in Chawton, meaning there were rope barriers and all that. They did have an actual dress of Charlotte's, which was surprisingly nice, and seeing just how much the Bronte's stories were based on their lives was also interesting. That same day I went to a David Hockney gallery in Bradford, the industrial town where he grew up (and enjoyed escaping from, seeing as how he painted CA so much, and lives here too.) But they have a lot of his earlier work, and his most recent work, which he creates by "painting" on the iPad. Flower still-lifes mostly, and some of them very good.
Next day, I went to Castle Howard, which is really a very grand manor house. If you've seen either version of Brideshead Revisited, you'll know Castle Howard, as they both were filmed there (and they think Waugh had in it mind when he wrote the book anyway.) Then, the next day I drove up to Brimham Rocks, recommended by more than one person, and actually very close to where I was staying. Freaky rock formations featured in The Princess Bride (funranium , you'd enjoy the geology). I got quite a shock as the place was swarmed with families on Spring Break. But it was still beautiful and even eerie, and I love taking photos of tourists, so that was all right.
The 19th and 20th were both long days of travel, stressful at the time, but not too exciting to hear about blow-by-blow. On the 19th I turned in my car at York Rail Station and trained down to King's Cross (which is my icon here.) I left in plenty of time EXCEPT for the massive roadwork traffic jam getting into York. Due to that and other fun details, I only barely made my train, and that because it was 10 min late. Dinner with Graham in London (I was so pleased to see London after so many small towns!), up at 4:30 to get to Heathrow, 8+ hours to Chicago, just JUST missed my connecting flight, got onto a completely full one 3 hrs later, a very claustrophobic 4.5 hrs, botched rental car arrangements, BART, the kindness of captainoz in conveying me home, and here I am. And that, as they said, is another story.