Bristol
Since this may be Last Internet Access Before Wilderness, I think I should write about Bristol.
In all my trips to England, I've never been to Bristol before. I can't imagine why. It has a cathedral and a museum and a waterfront and lots of history. It also has the tavern (the Llandoger Trow) where Defoe met the seaman who inspired him to write Robinson Crusoe and which arguably was Jim Hawkins' tavern in Treasure Island.
What's not to like?
I will draw a veil over our drive from Exeter, where we picked up the car. Suffice it to say that roundabouts are not as easy to navigate as traffic circles are,and that it's easier to get lost when it's all you can do to figure out what side of the road you're supposed to be driving on in the first place. Still, we got here without real incident, and checked into the Bristol Hotel, which is a pretty spiffy place, with free internet and a view of the river and a lovely deep bathtub I'm going to climb in just as soon as I finish writing.
First stop was the tourist office. That's the rule, when we hit a new city: Tourist Information for maps and brochures, then off to adventure. Ours began in the Bristol Cathedral, which full of stone carvings (I particularly liked the sheep and the fiddle in the Lady Chapel, and the Green Man and Woman in one of the tombs) and light. Since it was already after 3, and things close at 5, we gave it short shrift, and pressed on to the Red Lodge, a 15th Century merchant's house about 10 minutes' walk pretty much straight uphill from the Cathedral.
The most significant thing about the Red Lodge is the 3 remaining oak-paneled rooms on the first floor (that's second floor to us USians). By comparison, the rooms "modernized" in the 18th C. with plaster walls and chaste raised panels, look pale and chill--at least to my taste. Give me a massive carved oak bed with hangings all around and a clothes press and a couple of beautifully carved chairs beside a hearth that takes up a good half of the wall. The biggest of these rooms has the original plaster ceiling and a gigantic fireplace you could roast an ox in, if you could get it up the stairs, and a portrait of Elizabeth I above the sideboard--an original, not a copy, on loan. There's a pretty knot garden, too, with an herbaceous border surrounding it, but it's not open to the public.
Time was passing, so we hurried to the Georgian house so we'd have time to see it before they started closing it down at 4:30. As it was, they were on our heels, closing shutters and drawing curtains and sweeping and generally making us feel as if they'd just as soon we were out of there. We rushed through the bedroom on the third floor, with a bed and a wicker cradle all hung with dimity curtains (you probably knew that dimity is a white-on-white woven stripe, but I didn't) and the parlors and library on the second, with its double secretary/bookcase and two globes of the world, and so on down the house. But when we got to the kitchen in the basement, we had to linger because they've really done the belowstairs proud. Spits, smoking ovens, rows and rows of copper pans, lids, ladles, moulds, colanders, basins, bowls, and I don't know what else, lining glass cabinets and hanging from hooks on the walls and from the ceiling. And a second kitchen off the big one that served mostly as a laundry, with a mangle that looked like an instrument of torture and a mysterious 19th century rocker-washer and irons. Two pantries, a housekeeper's room, and across from it, a slate plunge-bath like a mikvah, where the master of the house immersed himself in cold water over his head every morning.
And then the caretaker closed the shutters and started locking the doors, and we left to have dinner at a fish restaurant by the river (I've never had a salmon cake that good. Never.), followed by a 1/2 pint of ale at the Llandoger Trow and a leisurely walk back to the hotel as the sun set over Queen's Square, a nice hot bath which felt fine on my leg, and now a some pages of Captain Blood before I go to sleep. It's by Raphael Sabatini. I downloaded it from Freebooks, and have been reading it off my iPhone. Such a modern gadget. Such an old-fashioned book. The juxtaposition makes me almost as happy as the book, which is delicious.
Tomorrow, we go to Tintern. Posting may be intermittent, but I'll try to keep up.
In all my trips to England, I've never been to Bristol before. I can't imagine why. It has a cathedral and a museum and a waterfront and lots of history. It also has the tavern (the Llandoger Trow) where Defoe met the seaman who inspired him to write Robinson Crusoe and which arguably was Jim Hawkins' tavern in Treasure Island.
What's not to like?
I will draw a veil over our drive from Exeter, where we picked up the car. Suffice it to say that roundabouts are not as easy to navigate as traffic circles are,and that it's easier to get lost when it's all you can do to figure out what side of the road you're supposed to be driving on in the first place. Still, we got here without real incident, and checked into the Bristol Hotel, which is a pretty spiffy place, with free internet and a view of the river and a lovely deep bathtub I'm going to climb in just as soon as I finish writing.
First stop was the tourist office. That's the rule, when we hit a new city: Tourist Information for maps and brochures, then off to adventure. Ours began in the Bristol Cathedral, which full of stone carvings (I particularly liked the sheep and the fiddle in the Lady Chapel, and the Green Man and Woman in one of the tombs) and light. Since it was already after 3, and things close at 5, we gave it short shrift, and pressed on to the Red Lodge, a 15th Century merchant's house about 10 minutes' walk pretty much straight uphill from the Cathedral.
The most significant thing about the Red Lodge is the 3 remaining oak-paneled rooms on the first floor (that's second floor to us USians). By comparison, the rooms "modernized" in the 18th C. with plaster walls and chaste raised panels, look pale and chill--at least to my taste. Give me a massive carved oak bed with hangings all around and a clothes press and a couple of beautifully carved chairs beside a hearth that takes up a good half of the wall. The biggest of these rooms has the original plaster ceiling and a gigantic fireplace you could roast an ox in, if you could get it up the stairs, and a portrait of Elizabeth I above the sideboard--an original, not a copy, on loan. There's a pretty knot garden, too, with an herbaceous border surrounding it, but it's not open to the public.
Time was passing, so we hurried to the Georgian house so we'd have time to see it before they started closing it down at 4:30. As it was, they were on our heels, closing shutters and drawing curtains and sweeping and generally making us feel as if they'd just as soon we were out of there. We rushed through the bedroom on the third floor, with a bed and a wicker cradle all hung with dimity curtains (you probably knew that dimity is a white-on-white woven stripe, but I didn't) and the parlors and library on the second, with its double secretary/bookcase and two globes of the world, and so on down the house. But when we got to the kitchen in the basement, we had to linger because they've really done the belowstairs proud. Spits, smoking ovens, rows and rows of copper pans, lids, ladles, moulds, colanders, basins, bowls, and I don't know what else, lining glass cabinets and hanging from hooks on the walls and from the ceiling. And a second kitchen off the big one that served mostly as a laundry, with a mangle that looked like an instrument of torture and a mysterious 19th century rocker-washer and irons. Two pantries, a housekeeper's room, and across from it, a slate plunge-bath like a mikvah, where the master of the house immersed himself in cold water over his head every morning.
And then the caretaker closed the shutters and started locking the doors, and we left to have dinner at a fish restaurant by the river (I've never had a salmon cake that good. Never.), followed by a 1/2 pint of ale at the Llandoger Trow and a leisurely walk back to the hotel as the sun set over Queen's Square, a nice hot bath which felt fine on my leg, and now a some pages of Captain Blood before I go to sleep. It's by Raphael Sabatini. I downloaded it from Freebooks, and have been reading it off my iPhone. Such a modern gadget. Such an old-fashioned book. The juxtaposition makes me almost as happy as the book, which is delicious.
Tomorrow, we go to Tintern. Posting may be intermittent, but I'll try to keep up.