THE DA VINCI CODE

So, who hasn’t either seen or read The Da Vinci Code?   If ever there was a guilty pleasure, this is it.  So we just had to head on over to one of the key settings of the movie, Rosalyn Chapel.

Unfortunately, they did not allow any photography inside.  Bummer, because there’s lots of interesting stuff, including the doorway to the underground crypt, which is the passageway Tom Hanks and Audrey Tatou go down to discover that she is the vessel of the Holy Grail.  However, the room down there in real life is quite small, nothing like what Tom and Audrey emerge into.  As the guide told everyone, they go through this door and emerge into Pinewood Studios.  Good line.  Inside the chapel there are two elaborate carved columns.  One is rather unimaginative, the other is extraordinary, with a difficult twisting vine ascending the column.  The legend is that the master carver completed the first, but the plans for the latter were so complicated that the master took off for the continent to study the original plans to figure out how to do it.  He left his young assistant behind.  The master was gone so long, they thought he would not return.  The assistant had a dream in which he was shown how to create the column.  He executed it perfectly.  When the master returned, he saw what his pupil had done, and in a fit of jealousy and rage he struck him with a stone and killed him.  The master was thereafter put to death for the murder.  At the rear of the chapel there are two carved heads atop a wall.  One is the young assistant.  The other is of the master, whose gaze is directly at his assistant’s beautiful column for all eternity.  Great story.  Here are some more shots of the exterior.


The chapel is unique. There are thousands of medieval stone carvings: dragons, green men, unicorns, gargoyles, lions and griffons - even an elephant, a camel and a monkey. There are fabulous creatures and grotesques from medieval bestiaries.  On the religious/human side, there is a medieval Mouth of Hell, a depiction of the Seven Deadly Sins, assorted angels and devils, saints and sinners, knights and minstrels, kings and queens, and a heavenly host of musicians.  Pillars and arches were filled with leaves, vines, fruit and flowers. The stone ceiling includes a field of stars, the sun, and a crescent moon.  In short, everywhere you look are fabulous carvings.  You’ll just have to visit to see for yourself.
After lunch, we took off in the drizzle for more ruins, this time Bothwell Castle.  This was one of the attractions that was on our Scottish Heritage Trust pass, which allows us entry to any of dozens of castles and ruins across Scotland, but only on any seven days out of 14.  So, you’ve got to plan carefully to get maximum benefit.  We arrived late in the soggy day, and this would have been our only Trust item of the day.  The friendly gate guard told us to forget it, we could have free admission so that we wouldn’t use up one day on just this item.  Very nice, but we paid for it by listening to his rather detailed history, delivered in the best/worst accent we had encountered thus far.  I think he was lonely, as we were the only visitors.

Bothwell was built on a bluff above a bend in the River Clyde. It was started by Walter of Moray some time in the latter half of the 1200s. Invasion and repeated siege meant that the original design of the castle was never completed and what you see today is largely the work of the Earls of Douglas in the years around 1400. This place was overrun multiple times during the border wars, and was trashed and rebuilt repeatedly.  It was interesting in that it had not been restored at all, thus everything you see is “original” from circa 1400.  When you think of it that way, its held up pretty well.


Most of the castles/ruins that we’ve seen have had dungeons of one sort or another.  This one’s was particularly vile.

It looks better in the right light.  Exterior view of Bothwell from the entry road.

Our next lodging was in Sterling, home of Stirling Castle.  We hit another jackpot with our B&B (good work, Chuck!), called Castlecroft, and situated on the lower slope of the hill that holds the castle.  In fact, as I will relate in the next post, we could and did walk up to it.  For now, we just relax with arrival tea and biscuits provided by our host, Laura.

CASTLE LAG

I’m falling further behind in keeping up with the blog.  Maybe this is due to castle lag.  I’m getting punchdrunk with ruins and stonework.  After Hadrian’s Wall, we went off to two more castles, the first being Aydon Castle.  This aerial is stolen from the internet:

Almost completely intact, it supposedly is one of the finest and most unaltered examples of a 13th century English manor house. It lies in a secluded Northumberland woodland.  Originally built as an undefended residence, it was immediately fortified on the outbreak of Anglo-Scottish warfare. Nevertheless it was pillaged and burnt by the Scots in 1315, seized by English rebels two years later, and again occupied by Scots in 1346.  We didn’t think it was anything special, but it was in fairly good shape for having been a ping pong ball in the border wars.

One of the fun things about driving in England, regardless of which side your steering wheel is on, is the narrow lanes that require someone to back up.  Fortunately, so far everyone has been reasonable and we don’t reverse more than our share.

Next stop was Prudhoe Castle, in even better shape than Aydon, and in a beautiful setting.

Continuously occupied for over nine centuries it was originally the home of the Umfravilles but was eventually taken over by the famous Percy family who restored it. Surviving two sieges during the 1170s , Prudhoe was the only Northumberland castle to resist the Scots.  Most of the surviving building work dates from the 12th century. It originally was built to defend a crossing of the river Tyne, which flows adjacent.  Part of the castle is closed off to the public as it is actively occupied by tenants of a direct descendant of the original Percys.  There are a lot of arches.

And turrets.  I like the cross-shaped slit window.


Our last English castle.  Now back to our last night at the Yellow House. . .

Before heading off to Scotland for two weeks!  Uh, isn’t this August?

OFF THE WALL

Today’s adventure is to be to a couple of sections of Hadrian’s Wall, built early in the second century by the Romans stationed here.  But first, we must fortify with another of Avril’s incredible breakfasts.  This time, I opted for the whole trout.  Oye.  The WHOLE trout.  It was tender, juicy, and delicious;  but that’s a LOT of fish.  I ate every bite.  And didn’t eat for the rest of the day.
By the time Hadrian became Emperor in 117 AD, the Roman Empire had ceased to expand. Hadrian was concerned to consolidate his boundaries. He visited Britain in 122 AD, and ordered a wall to be built between the Solway Firth in the West and the River Tyne in the east "to separate Romans from Barbarians".
The majority of the wall was built of stone. At first 10 Roman Feet wide, and later 8, it  is built of 18" x 12" x 6" blocks.  Milecastles were placed at regular intervals. Each pair of Milecastles had two Turrets between them. A Milecastle could garrison between 8 and 32 men. Turrets could also shelter some soldiers though they may have served primarily as look-out vantage points. As Hadrian's project evolved, more legionaries were moved up to the wall and large Forts were built which straddled it, like Chesters (Roman name Cilurnum) which we saw today.  These Forts had gates to allow traffic to pass north and south through the wall. The wall was built in only six years and ran for 73 miles across England!  An amazing engineering feat.  This was a big site, and the fort must have enclosed several acres at least.  I’m standing in one of the intermediate turrets of the fort wall.  Upper right are the baths.  Lower right shows barracks.

Chesters was obviously very important to the Romans who built a sophisticated bridge (very little of which remains today except foundations) across the River Tyne at this point. It seems very likely that Chesters was established first as a station for cavalry and, later, footsoldiers.  The reason for placing the fort here was to guard and control the bridge.  In the right photo, dead center across the river and just above the embankment, are stones which are all that remains of the bridge.

There’s a small museum which houses hundreds of items, large and small, excavated over the last 160 years at the site.  There’s even some early Roman porn!

Nothing of “the wall” can be seen at Chester, except that the fort walls themselves formed part of it.  To see the wall, we had to travel further west to Housesteads, another fort in the system.  Read the poster at right which explains it better than I can.
This fort was located w-a-y up a hill from where you parked and paid.  As we were setting out from the admission center, a rather large man with a very florid face came wheezing in and, with the help of his wife, sank into a chair to perspire and recover.  And he had just walked down the hill!  We were glad we do daily walks, including hills, and the climb didn’t faze us.
Except for having to dodge sheep droppings almost everywhere.  We have encountered sheep wherever we have traveled in Northumberland.  It looks like New Zealand out there.  Very picturesque when they’re penned in a field;  not so much when the field doubles as your path to the ruin.




Those are the ruins at top right, and the gift shop, etc., on the left.  Note the white dots:  the dreaded ovis aries.
Below:  Chuck, the sheep-gate keeper.  He shoulda let the darn things out (the sheep, not Loni and Alice). Next:  finishing the hill climb.

Once on top, there were more foundations, but better preserved than at Chester’s, and long stretches of the actual wall.  The part at left below comes up the hill to meet the fort wall.


Most of the wall looks “hairy” with grasses sprouting from the top.

Chillin’ on the Wall.

Which Burgh Is This?

After leaving Sir Walter Scott’s house, we planned two more stops on our way back to the B&B.  The first was Dryburgh Abbey. The graceful ruins nestle in wooded seclusion beside the River Tweed. The grounds are park-like, and incredibly peaceful.  Although there wasn’t a lot to see, we all felt this was the most beautiful setting we’d seen thus far.

The abbey was established in 1150 by white-clad Premonstratensian (say that three times!) canons.  All canons are priests; monks may be priests, but it is not their essence.  On the whole, the monastic life was lived out quietly, but war occasionally visited the secluded spot, most famously in 1322, when Edward II’s retreating army, on hearing the abbey’s bells ringing in the distance, turned aside and set fire to the place. That’s what you get for in-your-face bell clanging.  The Protestant Reformation effectively ended Dryburgh Abbey’s days, and by 1584 just two brethren remained alive.  Like I said, there is an atmosphere of peace and tranquility. The church is a fine relic of Gothic architecture, particularly the transepts flanking the presbytery, which were hewn from warm-pink sandstone.

The right picture is the NE pier, and the pillar nearest the camera has the beginning (top) of the arch.  I liked this crusader cross with the sword superimposed on the cross.
A particularly beautiful part of the ruins is the rose window.  Look closely and you can see its sun-image on the grass in front. Amazing something like that survives all these centuries of neglect.
Dryburgh is fairly well known for its delicate carvings, especially this lamb.

All in all, a beautiful, tranquil spot of stone lace.

Another burgh lay ahead, this time called Jedburgh Abbey, an Augustinian abbey founded in 1138.  Unfortunately, it closed just as we got there, but we could get a good view of its exterior walls from an adjacent car park.  The sun kept playing games with us, going in and out of clouds.  But it stayed out long enough to grab this shot and provide some nice light.

Finally, something for the geologist in the family, Mike.  I’m sure he already knows who James Hutton is, but this is where it all took place.

WAS THE BEST FIRST?

After the cathedral, we wandered some more around the streets of the town and stopped at the house of Oliver Cromwell. I’ll let you do your own Wiki search, but he was instrumental in getting Charles I executed in 1649, eventually got himself set up as Lord Protector, a sort of religious dictator, died of natural causes in 1658 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.  For a while.  When the royalists came back into power in 1660, they dug him up and hanged his corpse!  Take that!  Anyway, not much to see here.  I did like the St. Mary’s church sign, which reads:  God is there for you/You just need to/Get closer to see Him.
On our way to our next lodgings in West Woodburn (good luck finding it) we got hungry and decided to have our first real pub lunch.  Purely by chance, we passed Chequers, which certainly looked authentic.  And it turned out to be just that.  A few locals having a mid-day pint, genial barkeep-host, and all the folksy details.  Food turned out to be good as well, although we just had simple fare like soups and some chili over rice.  Didn’t want to go whole hog in mid day, but of course did have to have a half-pint.
At Woodburn, we settled into our first “real” B&B, the Yellow House, run by the redoubtable Avril who, as we shall see in a moment, can cook breakfast like there’s no tomorrow.

The car belongs to the only other guests (6 max), whom we barely saw as we ate breakfast at 7:30 and they didn’t stir until nearly 9.  The rooms here are excellent; we had a twin and C&A got a double, both spotless and comfortable.  There’s a huge gathering room downstairs, but I walked in and immediately had some sort of allergy attack so I beat a quick retreat.  No matter, we didn’t use it anyway as we were out late each night.  The town has one pub, the Bay Horse Inn, so that’s where we went off to dinner, and it was fine.  Chuck tried some Haggis, which didn’t look or taste anything like we had expected.  It came out like two veggie patties, with a coarse texture, and a slight livery taste.  Nothing awful, just not something I need to make a habit of.  John Smith was the beer of choice tonight, nice and smooth.

This was the view out our window.  Bucolic English countryside.  Absolutely dead quiet at night.

The Yellow House is a full English breakfast type of place.  Each night we filled out an order sheet for what we wanted.  There always were cereals, fruit, yoghurts, juice, coffee, tee, toast, and homemade jams.  But after that you could order eggs 4 ways, back bacon, local sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, hash browns, and . . . a whole trout!  Here’s what things looked like our first morning.

Woodburn is located in Northumberland, the northernmost part of England next to the Scottish border.  Our first excursion from here was across the border to Melrose Abbey.  The wind was blowing and it was quite brisk on the summit entering Scotland.  We hustled our buns back to the car.
Melrose Abbey is a spectacular ruin, if that’s not an oxymoron.  It was founded in 1136 by David I, and was the first monastery of the Cistercian order established in Scotland. Only a very small fragment survives of the first abbey church. The present beautiful rose-stoned building dates almost entirely to the post-1385 rebuilding. Nevertheless, this is regarded as one of the most magnificent examples of medieval church architecture anywhere in the British Isles.

We had an overcast day, and the nearly all-white sky was blowing out all of the pictures.  The stonework on this abbey was beautifully carved, probably because the architect was a Frenchman. 

The abbey is known for its many carved decorative details, including likenesses of saints, dragons, gargoyles, plants, and, of course, the famous bagpipe-playing pig, which is the first record of the pipes known to exist.

At the apex of one of the vaulted ceilings the masons carved this “head of god.”  Loni is admiring some of the lush gardens we are seeing everywhere.  And, entering the ruin are two Japanese guys who, well, what can I say, were swishing their way around the grounds.

And last, but certainly least, was the adjacent museum of old artifacts that had been dug up from the centuries-old refuse pits.  I thought the most interesting things were these “piss pots” that the monks carried around under their robes to relieve themselves during long periods of prayer and other duties.  How the heck did they carry those things?
After Melrose we were in need of something more complete, so we headed off to the home of Sir Walter Scott.  Scott was an inveterate collector of anything and everything as long as it was alleged to have belonged to a famous personage.  We all suspect that he got fleeced more often than not, but it makes for great stories.  The house itself is very attractive, and set upon lovely grounds overlooking the river Tweed.

Among the artifacts is a suit of armor allegedly worn by a knight at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, the last significant battle of the War of the Roses.  This guy was a giant for his time, standing over six feet tall.  Supposedly he was killed there in this armor.  The elaborately carved chair was nifty to look at, but I suspect would be very uncomfortable if actually used. Scott fell into severe debt during the last decade of his life, and wrote furiously to try to work his way out.  His health failed and he took a trip to the continent to consult experts, but faded fast and headed for home.  He wanted to die in his beloved home.  He made it back, but couldn’t make it to the second floor bedroom, so he had a cot placed in the alcove of this window where he could see and hear the river running past (it’s there, back by the tree line).  And, after six weeks or so, he passed right there.

View of the library and part of the exterior.

On the way back we stopped at this spectacular bit of scenery.  We’ve been mighty lucky today with the weather and need to take advantage of it when it cooperates.

Oh, yeah.  The title of this entry.  That refers to the Yellow House B&B.  My fear is that we have stumbled upon the best place we will be staying at during our trip.  It’s hard to imagine better food or accommodations.  Guess we’ll have to see.