Photo Recap: Lyme Regis.

This was one of the most anticipated Jane Austen locations. She lived hear for a little while, and she set significant parts of Persuasion here. Specifically, the Cobb.

We started the afternoon we arrived by walking along the foreshore and the Cobb, of course. It was stormy and exciting. Kind of scary as well. Then we ate at a pub. It had a sign saying dogs were allowed in, and all over Lyme were similar signs specifying the acceptance or not of dogs in various shops and cafes.

The next morning we went for a walk up the hill behind the town, towards the next town. We didn't go all the way. Once we had seen the views and the bluebells in the woods. It was a lovely soft still day. I fell over in the mud.

After I got changed, Matt and I split up for the rest of the day. I walked around reading a book on my ipad whenever I found a sunny spot to sit. I had a hot chocolate with cream on it after lunch.

Lyme had very narrow streets. The houses and shops were small and painted.

This is the foreshore, and the Cobb and harbour at low tide.

 

The beach.

And finally, the Cobb. It's lovely for walking, and has no guard rail. It's very beautiful.

These are supposedly the actual steps from which Louisa fell and broke her head. I am not surprised, they were extremely precarious and I was terrified of them. But maybe they have worn down over time and must have been bigger in Louisa's day.

 

These are some other steps, a lot safer, which I think they must use in the movie versions.

The end of the Cobb.

Looking back at Monmouth beach from the end of the Cobb.

So that was Lyme Regis. The Cobb was everything I hoped for, and Lyme was a very pleasant small seaside town. It was nice to be relaxing by this point, and not have much to do, cos we had been travelling hard for almost 2 weeks. There was only one more stop to make on the Jane Austen Adventure Tour before we departed for Namibia.

Glee Project confession.

I love this show. All that happens is some teenagers make a music video and sing some songs. It's got things that I love to hate, like Ryan Murphy, who is scary, and things I love to love, like how corny it is that each week a loser sings Avril Lavigne and goes home.

I'm sad the Charlie was sent off. To be fair, he was a difficult person to like. Super annoying. And 4 'last chance' performances in a row doesn't bode well. He wasn't going to get the job on Glee unless he somehow was able to change a lot of who he is as a person, which is ironic, given all that Glee says it stands for. But his 'last chance' performances were the best part of the show. The first time he was bottom 3, it was for a stupid stunt while 'method acting', and he sang 'Fix You' which is a blah Coldplay anthem, and it was so unexpectedly good. He has a talent. He should have gone on a show that wasn't about being a professional actor slash singer in an audition process, and gone on The Voice or something instead. Goodbye, Charlie.

Photo Recap: Meryton and the White Horse.

I don't believe I've blogged this yet. On Monday we drove east, to go to Laycock and then find a White Horse. Laycock was dead, it being a Monday morning, but we walked all around it, tried on cloth caps in a friendly shop and I bought a toy hedgehog. It has a string you pull and it buzzes along for 3 seconds. But it's very cute. Laycock has lots of tiny cottages, some of them amazingly crooked. The whole village is run by the National Trust so that it stays heritage and can be used as sets for BBC period dramas and Harry Potter movies. It was Meryton, Mr Darcy was there, hence it was a part of this Jane Austen Adventure Tour.

The nearby Abby has a photography museum, because Henry Fox Talbot lived there and invented the negative film process. Wow! And there was an orchard.

Then we drove further afield, to find a White Horse. Just because I am randomly fascinated by them. And we found this one, and took the opportunity to walk around, but it was horrid weather so we didn't walk all the way to it.

And then we drove down to the south coast holiday town of Lyme Regis, for our next 2-night stay.

Photo recap: Bath.

I've already written about this, but I'll do it again with the photos. On Sunday we went to church in Bath, Widcombe Baptist. On the bottom right corner of this useless map, which was all we had on my ipad. This was the worst driving experience we had. Even when we were in the vague area of the route we needed, the map was useless. And it took 15 minutes to get from driving past the church to getting INTO the school carpark. Bath is not car friendly at all. It is, however, another lovely place to walk around.

Church was good, very familiar in style, and we were invite back for the evening service as well, which I was not super keen on because of predicted tiredness, but the promise of all day parking in the school clinched it. Didn't have to drive to a tourist carpark!!! In the end, evening church was really good, 2 uni students were baptised and gave their testimonies, it was incredibly encouraging.  And a young man chatted to Matt afterwards so we got welcomed.

In the afternoon, between church, Matt and I walked into town and arranged to split up and meet back for dinner. We both met up again immediately in the Roman baths. I thought the baths were just the one green steamy swimming pool with columns around it, but there is a whole lot of stuff still underground and it's very educational and takes a long time to go to. I drank the water, it was warm and eggy. I drank 2 cups anyway because it was free.

When I emerged onto the street again, it was raining. The street was busy and there were lots of places to buy cheap pastry-food. I had a sausage roll for I think 85p, and it was cut in half lengthways with tomato sauce in the middle! This is brilliant, I can't believe I never thought of doing that myself, because you get to eat all the sauce and don't waste any on the paper bag.

I took this photo because I remember this exact street from the movie of Persuasion, the old one. Looking at the photo later I wish I had factored in the people a little better, because people with umbrellas are a little like red buses. They don't get in the way in a photo, they add something. This photo could have been very special.

I like this one too. Red umbrella. I really enjoyed exploring the lanes in the rain. Isn't it nice how plain the city is! No advertising, no ugly shop signs. It was very restrained and unobtrusive.

I wanted to go to the Jane Austen centre. It was a letdown. The shop is very good, but the rest of the house is not worth the visit. If you pay to go in to the house part, you do get a helpful short lecture about Jane Austen and her family which is quite good.

Then I wanted to see the round terraces. Remember how much I like terraces built on curves? Bath is famous for them. The Royal Crescent, and the Circus. These are very famous and feature in both versions of Persuasion.

Now this is lovely, on the park in front of the crescent was a Roman reenactment thing. They had trebuchets but I missed out on seeing them fling the watermelons. I did, however, find out how the Romans did brain surgery. But not how they kept warm. They looked really under-dressed for the weather.

I went then to the Assembly Rooms, which were empty and beautiful. This is where Austen and society went to mingle and dance and so on.

Underneath is a costume museum, which was quite good but I only went because it was included in the ticket to the Roman Baths.

Then I mosied around the streets for a little while, and went along the river. Even the non-circular-terrace parts of Bath are lovely.

Then Matt and I scored end-of-the-day 1 pound pasties for dinner. But I ended up with sparkling water, yuck. It is a hazard of bottled water in England that it's not all just water.

I liked Bath a lot.

Photo recap: The road to Bath via a macaroon.

I better finish my holiday photo recap before I completely forget everything!

We drove from Oxford to Bath via the Cotswolds on a Saturday afternoon. So up a bit and to the left and back down. On the way we took a turn-off and saw some Roman villa ruins.

The area was very beautiful, lots of tiny stone villages with narrow streets amid green hills, originally a sheep growing area. Now it looks like a lot of canola. But because it was a nice Saturday every town was chockers with touristy day-trippers. In a place called Chipping Norton, which was relatively large and quiet, we stopped and I bought a macaroon. Not a modern macaron, but an Enid Blyton style macaroon, which is an almond (or coconut) horseshoe biscuit. That is a childhood dream fulfilled.

That was our furthest north point. We turned south and drove towards Bath, because we had a B&B on a farm outside Bath, since Bath itself was booked out for the weekend. We had to buy dinner at a Chinese takeaway in nearby Corsham village, and it was dreadful. Tasteless noodles. Oxford had pretty OK chinese food, even Namibia had a decent Chinese restaurant, but this place was just so bland. I can safely say, the worst in the world, compared the parts of the world I have eaten Chinese food in. But, while eating we saw a squirrel AND a robin!

Back to Oxford!

There were good things in Oxford, but being there as a tourist, there was a feeling of not being allowed to go places because you weren't a student. Really, we looked like students so we probably totally could have, but I'm nervous about that stuff. We were kind of unlucky because it was a time when a lot of colleges weren't letting tourists in because of exams and some kind of special day. This is a random Great Hall, not the Harry Potter one but another one, right after an exam. Imagine doing exams in robes and stuff. It's another time.

And this is the lawn of the college Tolkien was in, which we only go to go into because we paid an official walking tour guide. They were setting up for whatever the day was.

I was a little disappointed with the guide because he waffled on a lot about how Oxford is becoming a modern liberal university, and so many women apply, and so many women get in, and people come from all over the world. He was very knowledgable, but I live 2 blocks away from a modern liberal multicultural university, so I don't care about the number of women at Oxford, Oxford is where people invented magical worlds and wrote books about them. Someone asked where this pub was and the guide gave directions. It's where CS Lewis and Tolkien hung out.

The Bodleian had a free exhibit on Romantic literature of the middle ages. Legends of knights and so on. Lots of very old books. So there was no photography allowed. But we spent ages in there, reading everything and following the development of stories, right up to an original page of a LOTR manuscript hand-written and illustrated by Tolkien. Pretty special, glad we went in there.

Finally, I love how all the colleges are built around lawns. No matter what size the college, a lawn. I rather like the small colleges in particular.

UFO goal.

I'm going to finish my cross stitches. One is basically done, it's a big teddy bear thing I started 15 years ago. I've been sewing beads onto it to fancy it up. I'm not going to get it framed and hang it up, because I'm not into teddy bears any more. I'll just put it away until someone (a sister or a lifelong friend or possibly though unlikelyly me) has a baby. So there's no deadline on that, but end of the year will do.

The other one I bought when I finished my HSC, so that's 10 years. I recently got it out, and I'm on a roll. I did something like 3 hours on it on Sunday, staying warm in bed. It's very pretty and also timeless, young but grown-up at the same time, and will look really good framed and hung up. So I think I can finish this year easily. I'm well over half way done. I mainly have the bunches of flowers and the tree and the bike spokes and some white (TIP: do white as late as you can because it gets dirty from your hands).

If I can knock these over AND fix up my chest of drawers (I've bought the varnish!) then that will be quite good. Next year I will try to finish a quilt, and make a shirt or something from some fabric I got in Bowral, and make a new doona cover from some material I brought back from Namibia. It's like running in a treadmill. Constant motion but always another thing coming around, and I rarely feel like I get to START a project. Or CHOOSE a new project. The choosing was done in the distant past, but the project unfinished remains forever.

Meet me in the middle of the air

One of the best tunings of a psalm ever is Meet me in the middle of the air by Paul Kelly from the album Foggy Highway (only $12 on itunes, if you like gospel, bluegrass, Paul Kelly). There are some good covers out there, by Tripod or Megan Washington, and this live version is slightly not as good as the album version, but it's good to see the real thing.

I am your true shepherd
I will leave you there
Beside still waters
Come and meet me in the middle of the air
I will meet you in the middle of the air

Lovely, hot chocolate.

I have had 2 free hot drinks today! I am so lucky! There were free coffees, chais and HCs from a place in the foodcourt, so I got one of those. And then one of our office neighbours bought me and H each a Lindt dark hot chocolate, the most luxurious drink in the world. I think that might be my 'love language', Lindt hot chocs. I like hugs a lot too, but they aren't as office-appropriate. And now I am in a happy mood and you are saved from me moaning about my braces again.

Maitland Weekend.

I took 2 days off work, so it was a long weekend. JK and I went up on the Countrylink XPT on Wednesday afternoon. I've never gone to Maitland that way, and always wanted to. It's good, because although it is more expensive it feels more special, like a holiday, rather than a commute. The train goes to Brisbane. It had a lot of families on it. This is the carriage number.

I did cross stitch on the way up, which is a benefit of having lots of space and a tray table.

It was rather rainy for 2 days straight. It didn't matter much because we drove around, but it's just not as relaxing as soaking up sunshine. On Thursday we went to Pokolbin. We went to a winery shaped like a barrel of wine, but didn't get service, so hopped straight back in the car and drove to Tempus Two, which we've been to before, and it's very well laid out. First we went to the Smelly Cheese shop. This orange cheese is actually a slightly blue cheese. It was DELICIOUS. We bought 3 different cheeses.

Then we went to the tasting part. We got service, tasted about 7 wines. I was surprised that I could actually taste the difference, and pick up the things that were apparently there. I bought a wine that really does taste like lychees.

Then we popped over to the shops at Hunter Valley Gardens. I've never gone in the gardens, but the shops are not bad. There is a chocolate shop, a paper shop, kitchen shop, cafes.

Friday, we drove to Maitland, went to an op shop where I got doilies, wandered through the art gallery for half an hour. Then we went to Morpeth and had sandwiches for lunch, browsed the shops, especially the upstairs art gallery which has really nice painting for sale, and had flavoured chai.

The weekend also included JK sewing an apron, I made a pear crumble, we did Jillian, went for a walk, ate at Billabongs buffet, and watched some Blackadder II and Big Bang Theory.

Saturday was sunny! In the afternoon we drove down to a train station on the Central Coast, and caught a normal train home.

It's a lovely trip in the daytime.

The bridgeless pylons are my favourite part.