Narnia! (Well, not really.)

I can tell you now that this is not going to be the most exciting blog post for most of you,

but I was incredibly excited at the time (went a little shutter-happy) and I wanted to share at least a glimpse of the experience with you.

It's short, don't worry.

It had been a while since I'd last taken dogs up the hill, so when I emerged from the tree line, I was suddenly, unexpectedly, in a vibrant world of infinite shades of purple and gold.

I felt like I had stepped into my own sort of Narnia.

The entire hill was covered in rippling waves of purple; the afternoon sunlight 

gave everything a golden glow.

It was beautiful.

Pretty forest on the way up.

A genuine Scottish Thistle.

I spent nearly the whole afternoon playing with my camera settings.

Durham Cathedral

Sunday morning, we were on our way again. 

Mr. and Mrs. C dipped back down into Yorkshire to visit his sister before returning to Peterborough.

Neil, Esther and the boys went to visit James's godparents whom they hadn't seen in a while.

On their way, they dropped me off in Durham so that I could explore.

Like St. Andrews, Durham is a university town.

However, it's not by the sea, and their cathedral and castle aren't in ruins.

The River Wear
Durham sits on a peninsula formed by the river.

I liked this pub's hanging baskets.

On the way to the Cathedral.

Built in the 1100s, it is the only English cathedral to still have most of it's Norman craftsmanship.
I don't think it was ever destroyed and rebuilt, so the original structure is still mostly intact.

The River Wear runs through the gorge here.

An absolutely ginormous stained glass window.

This is the castle.
There was a wedding or some such event happening, so it wasn't open to the public.
This is about as much as I could see of it.

This is the old almshouse, built on the same square as the Cathedral and Castle.
Apparently, it still houses some of the Cathedral congregation's elderly.

The city market square.

Military chappie on a horse.

After lunch, I walked back up to the Cathedral and climbed up the Tower.

Benedictine monks used to live and work here.
You can just imagine them in their dark robes walking back and forth along these walkways
high up on the cathedral walls.

The view at the top.
Worth the 325 steps to get there!
That's the castle just beyond the cluster of trees, and the almshouse perpendicular to it.

Old graffiti.

That's the cloister area to the left of the tower, and the River Wear just beyond.

Looking out over Durham.

The cool train bridge.

I asked a nice gentleman to take my picture as proof that I was actually there.
My eyes are closed, of course.

Three hundred and twenty-five spiraling steps.
I felt a wee bit dizzy by the time I reached the top, and again at the bottom.

Down one of the side aisles.

The tomb of St. Cuthbert, a favourite saint in northern England.

Amazing.

There were altars set up throughout the building in remembrance of various important personages. 

The choir stalls are behind this screen-thing at the front of where the congregation sat.

I unwittingly wandered down the main aisle just before the service began 

and a nice man handed me a program.
So I sat down. After all, I wasn't attending my regular service this week...
I had never been to a Catholic service before, and they actually do all that parading
up and down with the Bible and with a crucifix.

As the Mass part of the service drew nearer, I wrestled with the decision whether or not to be rude and walk out, or stay and possibly have to take part in something I didn't agree with.

Thinking about it now, of course I wouldn't have had to take part in it at all, 

but I wasn't thinking clearly at the time.
In the end, I "sneaked" out.
"Sneaked" is in quotation marks because the end of the row I was sitting in 

was blocked by a huge pillar.
It would be more accurate to say I scuttled nervously up the main aisle, 

pretending no one could see me.

They all probably thought I was a terrible heathen.

These pillars were massive.
Two men wouldn't be able to link hands around them.

Yup, I was way up there.

I tried to walk all the way around the Cathedral, but it didn't work.
I did find these lovely gardens though, even if I wasn't actually supposed to be there.
I found a sign that the wind or something had knocked over saying that there was no public access.
Oops.

Oodles of roses!

Norman carvings on the outside of the building.

I had quite high expectations going into Durham cathedral, because 

Neil had told me it was his favourite one in Britain.

They were far surpassed.

My pictures don't do it justice.

If you ever have the chance, it is well worth a visit.

This was the last day of my trip down south.

Later that afternoon, I caught a train back up to Scotland.

I realize that I am ridiculously behind in my posts, but hopefully I'll be able to get caught up before I actually head home before Christmas.

Beamish: Living History

The Saturday after Fountains Abbey, Esther and Neil met us at the B&B/inn/hotel thing we were staying at.

After breakfast, we headed off to Beamish, a kind of museum.

Unlike your typical museum, however, it was a replica of a coal mining town.

Kind of like Barkerville (except coal, not gold), for my British Columbian readers.

It was really quite impressively large.

We started out down by the mine. 

I didn't get any pictures of this part, but we actually went down an old mine shaft. 

Thankfully, we were all wearing hard hats, because the roof of the shaft became lower and lower, until we almost had to crouch.

The especially tall people in the group had some trouble with that.

You could hear the dull thuds and scrapes of their hard hats as they bounced off the roof.

It was cold and damp and dim. 

At one point, the guide flicked off the low electric lights, plunging us into an oppressive darkness that was barely alleviated by the tiny traditional miner's lamp he was carrying.

Stifled squawks came from various points around our ragged little semi-circle.

Apparently, miners had to taste the rocks they loosened to determine if they were coal or not as it was too dark to see the difference.

Little black engine that was used to haul the coal away.

The church.
There was a choir concert there.
We listened to about three songs before the boys got all squirmy and then we left.

Vegetable patches in front of the miners' quarters.

Space was a valuable commodity.

This was in one of the more wealthy of the cottages.
Probably belonging to one of the manager types.

The living room doubled as a bedroom.

Mrs. C and the School House.
Oh, and Esther and Neil.

James practicing his penmanship.
Wrong hand, Master Howie!

The very studious-looking teacher, complete with apple.
I felt creepy taking such a close-up.
Is it creepy?
Meh. Maybe. Oh well.

Recess!

:D

Awesome giant insect posters!

Tearooms!
We stopped here for lunch.

There were seven of us crammed into this teeny tiny, old-fashioned little booth.
There was much elbow-jostling.

Downtown Beamish

Shopping!
Inside the general store.

We lost Neil and Mr. C in this part for a while...

James the Bus Driver.

...And his colleague, Thomas.

Inside the bank.

Bank manager's office, where the fate of all those loans hung in the balance.

Behind the teller cages.

He's making candy!
He mixed hot sticky stuff with food colouring, then twisted and swirled the two colours together.
Then, pulling lumps off, he fed it through this thing that looks kind of like a pasta maker.
It looked like sheets of colourful bubble wrap.
Once the strips were cool enough, he dropped them onto the counter and they shattered into hundreds of little roundish candies.
Yay for free samples!

Blacksmith in the livery stable.

Harnesses.
They smelled all nice and leathery and horsey.

In the post office.

The printer's.

In the Sun Inn.

In the house of one of the more "upstanding" citizens in the actual town,
not the mining village.
The doctor's or lawyer's or banker's?
Can't remember.

Downstairs in one of the better houses.

This was the dentist's office.
He had his practice right in his living room!
The "dentist" was at home, and was regaling a rapt audience with horrible tales
of turn of the century dentistry practices.
Apparently, most people had their remaining teeth pulled and bought a set of dentures by their early twenties.
It made me very grateful for my pearly whites, still firmly attached to my gums.

He made his own false teeth yet too!

Nursery

:)

One of the trams that went between the town, the pit village, the farm, and the manor house.

This was my favourite tram.
One of the drivers was a stately, regal looking old gentleman
who stood at the helm of his tram like a captain on his ship.

Thumbs up, Mr. C!

Pay here for your merry-go-round tickets!
(And a couple of other things, but the merry-go-round was the coolest.)

James and Tom.

The farm vegetable patch.

So perdy.

Inside the farm house.

The Dairy

The Manor gardens.
Sorry for the lack of pictures from about here on.
My camera battery was low, as was mine.
I was still feeling the effects of whatever bug I had in Cardiff and Bath.

The Manor House seemed older than the rest of Beamish.
The town itself is supposed to be Edwardian,
but I think the Manor dates from a little earlier than that. Georgian, maybe?
It was dim and smokey inside, with all these tiny little rooms tucked into corners and under eaves.

I forget what was so significant about this train.
I think it was really fast for its time, or something like that.
It was called the "Steam Elephant."