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.