Journey to the West

Day 15

Not that it really matters, but the peanut butter in England is really weird.

I just got back from our trip to the west. England really is a beautiful place. The city is great; it's fun, and busy, and you can find anything you want and there's a million things to do. But the countryside is gorgeous. And as hard as it may sound to believe, we had, and continue to have, gorgeous, sunny weather.

Our first stop was Stourhead Gardens, which apparently are world famous. The whole place was a beautiful rich green and when you looked out the mist gave everything a very ethereal feel. There was a landscape art movement where it was popular to paint old Greek and Roman ruins into the landscape, and as a result, a lot of large country homes actually built fake Greek and Roman ruins on their land. Stourhead has a Temple of Apollo, a pantheon, an obelisk, and a grotto with Greek-ish statues. Some of you may also recognize these gardens as the location for some of the filming in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice, starring Keira Knightly and Matthew Macfadyen. This is my Elizabeth Bennet pose (just pretend it's pouring rain and I'm soaked and Darcy is about to come prepose to me!). Afterwards we went by Thomas Hardy's house. He's famous for having written Jude the Obscure and Tess of the d'Urbervilles. He also wrote some poetry. Apparently he used to write in this house. Frankly, if I lived there, I might be inclined to do some writing myself. Oh, and then we stayed in the YMCA in Penzance. Huzzah for youth hostels. Sadly, we didn't see any pirates. Here's the coast as seen at night. The next morning we went to a small bay on the coast of Penzance called Porthcurno. This is where the transatlantic telegraph cables left England. I wasn't sure what to expect from an English beach, but it was just beautiful. I'm not even sure what pictures to put in, there were so many beautiful shots. We also got to use the 2006 Loo of the Year! Next we stopped at St. Michael's Mount. One of the cool things about St. Michael's Mount is that it's an island half the time and a peninsula the rest, depending on whether the tide is in or out. When the tide's out, you can walk across a stone causeway. When the tide is in, the only way to get there is by boat or ferry. In 500 AD, Michael the Archangel appeared to local fishermen on the top of this mount, and it's been the site of churches, abbeys, and castles ever since. This is our reinactment with our Michael. There's also a legend about a giant who used to live on the hill (we were lucky enough to spot it) The castle was fun. We enjoyed the arches :) We stayed in Exeter that night and spent the evening down by the quay (incidentally, it's pronounced "key"). The next morning, Friday, we went to Exeter Abbey. The Abbey has the longest stretch of unbroken Gothic vaulting in the world.This was probably my favorite part. This clock dates back to before the heliocentric solar system was confirmed, so you'll notice the sun and moon going around the earth. Our last stop was Lyme Regis, a small coastal town famous for it's fossils and shells. People used to go here to collect. If any of you are big Jane Austen fans, you may recognize the cob from Persuasion.

Louisa: (from top of wall) Catch me Captain Wentworth!
Wentworth: Louisa! No! (vainly trying to catch her)
Louisa: Aaaah! (Louisa, suddenly growing springs in her legs, flys over the heads of everyone below and knocks her head)

There was also this amazing stone balancer. My head keeps telling me it shouldn't be possible, but I saw him do it. The last (and possibly funniest) event on our trip (aside from getting a rubber frog thrown at the window) happened at the last rest stop. We were waiting to get back on the bus, and there was a shuttle parked next to us in the parking lot. One of the riders was a young man who obviously had no tact, while thinking he was something special. He also didn't appear to have ever seen girls before. He got pretty excited and kept saying dumb things to us, and then when we were on our respective vehicles, he kept waving at us through the windows, and even kissed it a few times. Michael, our resident man (there's only one guy student on our trip) decided to walk around the bus, to show him who's bus full of girls it was. As soon as Michael came sauntering around the side of the bus, the other guy freaked out and started pounding on the window.

Guy: Are you normal?? How did you do that? Are you the only one?
Michael: Yeah, I'm the only guy.
Guy: (with big thumbs up) You're my hero!

It pretty much made our day.