Tea, Cathedrals and Rocks...

This is very delayed...obviously. I have been busy here with classes and traveling and I am therefore very behind on my blog. In order to remedy this to a certain extent I have decided to loosen things up a bit. So, please realize that these next few entries are going to be more in the style of stream of consciousness and therefor are unedited. If you know me, as you all do, you will probably be aware that spelling is not my strong suit. Also, grammar will be unedited and therefore frequently wrong. I apologize to the English majors among you.


Southwest England is quite a different place from Scotland. I know this may seem obvious when you think about it, but think how many people assume that East Tennessee is the same, in culture or land, as West Tennessee, or that North Jersey is the same as South, or even that West coast and East coast USA are the same. It is easy, as an outsider, to think that a nation has a single identity, this tendency probably only gets easier to fall into the smaller the country. Well, there are many differences that I got to experience first hand this past weekend!!


Very early Friday, so early it could have almost been considered Thursday, five of us set out for Edinburgh airport to get on a plane to Bristol. After getting some tea, we headed through security and off to the gate. Things went very smoothly and we even got seats together on the plane. A short flight later we were in Bristol. We got into a cab to go to Bath and ended up getting a cabbie who not only drove us to Bath but also took us by an ancient stone circle and gave us great advice about where to eat and some things to see.

After a delicious breakfast we headed to the abbey. Everything about the building is beautiful. The ceilings,the stained glass windows and the side chapels are in different styles, but somehow it all fits well anyway. One thing that I loved about all of the cathedrals we saw was that it was clear that people still use them. They are living churches. It is sometimes odd to me that we move out of old buildings and houses and make them museums. There is something about using a building that connects you even more to its history. I feel this way when I sit in the classrooms here. Though there is technology and white boards that weren't in the original rooms, it is still something to learn in the same buildings that people have been learning in for hundreds of years.

After a good amount of time at the abbey we went to the roman baths, which are right across the square. This was maybe my favorite site of the whole weekend. The source of the water that filled the baths in ancient times is still filling them today. You can almost see Roman citizens walking around. The steam rooms were really interesting too. At first I didn't understand what I was looking at, but a friend who is a classics major explained that the piles of stones held up a tiled floor and created a gap that could be heated by a fire and thus create a steam room above. There was also a section that was the temple. Though mostly in ruins, you can still see the steps into one part of the temple and can tell where they have been warn away by the years of people walking up and down them. You can tell something is old when stone has been warn down not a few centimeters but almost half a foot!

After the baths we headed to the Jane Austen Center. While slightly touristy, it was interesting to see the fashion and get a better understanding of Austen's family structure. However cheesy the center was, the tea room upstairs totally made up for it! We got the full high tea of scones and clotted cream (Alex's new favorite spread), cucumber sandwiches, cheese sandwiches and lemon drizzle cake! It was delicious and quite relaxing.

Next we headed up into the Circus, a circular set of row houses. These are some of the oldest large houses in Bath. Next to the Circus is the Royal Crescent, a crescent shaped set of row houses. The buildings are all either houses, apartments or a hotel. No 1 Crescent is open to the public and is a museum. We went in and got to see several of the rooms and the kitchen. The docents there were wonderful! They were very knowledgeable but also personable. One explained that No 1 was built by the man that owned the land and so he required all houses built in the crescent to follow the same architectural style. Also, a good number of the houses were rented "for the season" to people "coming to Bath to take the waters".

After walking around the house we headed across town to the hostel. Literally across town. We had no idea how far across town it was until we finally got there. It was at the top of quite a large/long hill as well. After dinner in town and a bus ride back to the hostel we passed out after a very long day of traveling.

The next day we headed to Salisbury on the train. We saw the Cathedral first. It is huge! The building is beautiful wherever you look! Inside, outside, from every direction! We also saw the Magna Carta!

After the cathedral we headed to catch a bus to Stonehenge. I am not sure how to describe how I felt about seeing Stonehenge. I think I have decided that it is one of those things you have to see, but after you have seen it you are not entirely sure why you felt you needed to see it. The size and age of the stones is amazing, but I was almost depressed by the way our culture has made something that was supposedly so sacred to a group of people before us into something so cheesy and touristy. I imagine that it would be like people thousands of years from now wearing t-shirts with cheesy sayings walking around the ruins of the Duomo making up wild stories about what we used to believe. Something that old, to me, deserves a bit more respect.

We had lunch in the market in Salisbury before heading to Exeter and then on to Dartmoor national park! This was a long train ride, but it was through beautiful scenery! The land looks so different in the southwest than up here is Scotland.

Dartmoor was amazing. It is hauntingly beautiful in a unique way. I now understand why English authors frequently set their works on moors. The land itself seemed alive. It was nice to just walk around the land and soak in the scenery and emotion.

My friend Alex and I headed back to St Andrews that night as we had class the next morning. We spent a few hours in Exeter, saw the cathedral and learned a bit about the time when the Romans settled in the area. Though we were slightly delayed on the way back, things worked out just fine in the end and we got back safely.

It was a fun weekend with some great people. I am glad to have gotten to see an area that is not visited quite as often as London or Edinburgh for example.