Alas, our car driving days have come to a close. And here are how they ended…
In my last post, I cheated the chronology a bit because I was so excited to write about the lovely man we met at the Dolphin in Ilminster. I actually misremembered a couple things, too. Following the day we saw Dartmouth Castle and St. Proxis Church, we didn’t head to Ilminster where we met the lovely man. Instead we still had one more night at Fawlty Towers (I mean, Gleneagles), spent our night there, and the next morning we headed towards a stone circle outside a village called Minions called the Hurlers. This took us through Cornwall for the first time, and we also passed through Plymouth, which was neat, as it was the city where certain English left the Old World for the New via a ship called the Mayflower (but surely you already knew all about this).
We didn’t stop for long in Plymouth, only at a Burger King (we were famished, and it was handy, and it still tastes the same, and the lovely man who served us was so, so skinny and tall and handsome and who had the most striking blue eyes, the most crooked teeth, and whose name was Glen, and who complimented me on my Christmas jumper with a lovely accent where his THs turn to Vs and Rs turn to Ws, and very few consonants are pronounced, but lovely towels sing through), and at a bridge called the Tamar Bridge that we took some pictures of.
Before long we found ourselves off of major motorways outside Plymouth and on squiggly country roads where oncoming vehicles approached in the middle of the road. And also before long we found ourselves on roads that were still paved but where you might find yourself sharing it with a sheep or two.
And then we parked and after a very short walk, we found ourselves amongst some very old stones indeed, arranged in three circles of 25 yards or so in diameter, the center of each circle all on an invisible straight line that stretched for a good 300 yards or so. These weren’t majestic stones of Stonehenge, but rather quite humble stones, and all organized rather neatly. These stones you could walk right up to and touch, if you wanted, and admire the work dedicated to smoothing them (well, smoothing some of them, as it didn’t appear all received the same attention to detail), and placing them, and moving them into their appropriate places. And the circles were all so exact! It was clear that they used some sort of math (or rather maths) to create such wonderfully circular circles.
And by the way, you’re admiring these stones while sheep and cattle and horses graze within feet of you, and there are no fences here. Only friendly people who make sure to drive slowly as to not harm them. But good luck getting close to any of the animals to pet them, as they’re very skittish. The closest we managed was about three feet or so before their eyes eyed us intensely and they ran off, signaling to others to run off as well.
Also in the area around Minions and the Hurlers, you can walk through the Cornish moors. And what a landscape to behold! Something I’ve never quite seen before! It’s so green, and the grass all neatly trimmed thanks to hungry sheep and cattle and horses, and the landscape boxed off neatly by stone walls, plowed and unplowed fields, and crops of different shapes and sizes and colors.
And then there are these shrubs that grow knobily and crooked, with sturdy bark, as if they were all mini oak trees, but not with those recognizably oakish leaves, but rather with little green needles like fir trees might have, soft to the touch, and sometimes these bushes (ranging anywhere to a few inches to several feet high) had yellow flowers growing on them. And if you were in a particularly windy part of the moors, these bushes seemed frozen in time, the strong winds forcing them to grow in a way that made them appear that they were leaning in one direction, branches shaped in long arcs pointing in the general direction of the wind, even on a windless day.
In addition to these shrubs were bizarre circular dips in the landscape. Sometimes they would be solitary, just all alone, a circular dip about 10 feet or less or so in diameter and about 5 feet deep. And in the center was this mud that looked like it could swallow anyone up. Sometimes these dips would appear in groups, though, like larger versions of those muddy dips in cow pastures where cows step in the same areas over and over again so that little muddy patches form surrounded by small foot wide humps of grass.
Even farther inland was a large hill that was littered with great boulders, and this hill could only have garnered all these boulders because of an ancient castle ruin. I could be wrong, though, except for at the summit was a long stretch of smaller boulders all arranged in a great arc around one side of the hill, like an inverted mote of stones. And there were also these extremely large, flat boulders, smoothed as if by millennia of being shaped by the waves of the English Channel, placed on top of each other, pillar like, like giant versions of those stone towers people will make by a river or lake with much smaller stones. There were two of these, and one was climbable which gave a staggering view of the Cornish countryside with all its stone walls, geometric fields all different from each other in colors of browns and greens, and ruins of old mines.
Yes, the mines! I don’t think there’s a place in this country of England where you will ever be far from ruins of some kind. At first I thought they were ruins of old, small castles, but a placard informed us that they were old disused mines. They were basically lone rectangular towers of maybe three stories tall, made of, of course, stone, but roofless as it had long since collapsed and vanished. And there the mines sat, disused but respected. Old but not in danger of being torn down. Lovely artifacts of times gone but never lost.
So that was the Cornish countryside. I kept thinking of the Dr. Who episode “The Sontaran Experiment” while we were out there, Tom Baker (or rather his double Terry Walsh) fighting a Sontaran, Harry falling down a small cliff side, and Sarah being captured by a shiny metallic robot. I’m not sure where they filmed that particular episode, but the Cornish moors resembled the location terribly well.
Then, we were off to Ilminster. (And this is the night where we met that lovely, lovely man at the Dolphin.)
Although we stayed two nights in Ilminster, we really only had one day to explore with the car while we stayed there, since we had to return the car to Bath at 9am the morning after our second night. It was difficult picking out what to see because there is just so, so much to see. We were sad to discover that Sherborne Castle was closed but were happy to discover that Old Sherborne Castle was open.
(Incidentally, lots of our decisions of what to see were based on whether or not they were part of English Heritage. We decided to become members of it when at Stonehenge, as it allowed us free or reduced price admission to many sites throughout England. I highly recommend doing this if you find yourself exploring the English countryside by car.)
Very little remains of Old Sherborne Castle, as much of it was deliberately torn down following the Civil War, a rare example, it seems, of the English deliberately tearing something down. In it’s day, however, the castle was quite a place.
It was built by Bishop Roger (well, he had other people build it for him) of Salisbury in the 12th century, and for a time it belonged to Sir Walter Raleigh. You have to use much of your imagination when viewing this castle, as it stretches in any direction for quite a ways and only bits and pieces remain, such as one of the main tower gates, a long staircase that leads down to a lake that has since long disappeared, and a main hall area where the bishop would have heard pleas from whomever (or whatever).
What’s also fascinating is that you can see more clearly how castles were built, as much of the outer stone blocks were gone, and only the inner stonework remained. If was terribly interesting viewing the mortar that held together stones and whatever else they threw into the wall before building the proper stone brickwork around it to make it pretty. This also led us to wonder what they used to make the mortar that held this all together, as it looked remarkably like concrete, but obviously this was unavailable in the 12th century.
Moving onwards, though, we left Bishop Roger and Walter Raleigh behind (and Oliver Cromwell, too, who spent 11 days trying to capture the castle from Royalists) and visited the nearby chapel of Saint Mary Magdalene Castleton Church. This was a very modest chapel, but still very gorgeous. Towards the front was posted in gold letters with a black background one of the most ridiculous lists ever, the Ten Commandments, and the alter was placed on top of square tiles alternating between red-orange and black, and to the left of the alter was a gorgeous pipe organ whose pipes were painted in predominantly teal-green with elaborate gold leaf-like designs.
In the pews, though, were these cute kneeler things. They were about a foot tall, a foot wide, and about 9 inches deep, but they were decorated in intricate cross stitching in designs of various crosses (as in THE cross) and other iconography from Christianity’s long history. The kneelers were so cute, though, and were wonderful little kind of anachronisms in such an old structure.
After Old Sherborne Castle and St. Mary Magdelene Church, we moved onwards to Muchelney where we saw some more architectural fruits of Christianity.
We went mainly to see Muchelney Abbey, but there was also a parish church in the village as well, which we visited first. As always, your eyes are drawn to the alter, which was set upon some really remarkable tiles that we weren’t allowed to walk on. We would later find out that these tiles were remains from the Muchelney Abbey ruins just outside the church. Behind the alter was a gorgeous painting of Jesus after he had just been killed and taken off the cross and whose bloody head was resting in his mother’s lap.
Also of note in this church was a rather beautiful painted ceiling, the work from the 17th century. The ceiling was segmented into squares, and each square was framed in clouds, and within each frame of clouds was an angel, dressed in robes of colors of reds and blues and greens and whites. It wasn’t the magnificent and staggering work of Michelangelo, of course, but it was still quite a marvelous addition to such a humble church.
And, naturally, there was an organ here, too, its pipes painted mainly blue and with red flower-like designs. After some persuasion from my mother, and after I turned the organ on and heard the wind start blowing through the instrument, I couldn’t resist playing a hymn. So, I opened up the hymn book in front of me and played a hymn (I forget what one). Memories flooded inward from my days when I used to play organ and piano for the Catholic Church. Sometimes I miss those days terribly, as I really loved playing organ and piano for the church, leading the congregation through song. But, I no longer believe in anything resembling “faith.” I don’t supposed they’d hire a devout atheist and humanist, though, would they? I’d love to get paid to do that again, provided they don’t require a believer.
We made our way to the abbey, and sadly only the abbot’s house remains, as much had been torn down, and only the foundation of the original abbey remains. The English Heritage staff explained, however, that this is only 1 of 800 such churches and cathedrals that hadn’t survived which is really quite remarkable. He also explained that the mortar they used was a limestone mortar, and that it was fortified with small pebbles and various animal hairs. He also explained that if it weren’t for the mortar they used and that had they used a more modern day mortar like our concrete, that all these castles and abbeys probably wouldn’t have survived to the present day, as the limestone mortar and how they prepared it allowed the walls to remain semi-liquid and therefore moved and absorbed shocks from canons and winds of the elements. Also, apparently, it has a way of allowing water to evaporate, and if it weren’t for that alone, water would freeze and cause untold damage to the structure.
The abbot’s house, though, was a real treat to see. In addition to some fine fireplaces, huge kitchens, a kind of grand staircase with uneven steps due to wear from millions of people using it over hundreds of years, delicate wall paintings suggesting fabric tapestries, and artifacts excavated from the ruins including bits of gargoyles, pillars, and archways, there was also a little exhibition that detailed how they made tiles like the ones that are now used beneath the alter on the floor in the nearby church, a process of using two different shades of clay and slicing out a design in one and filing in the gaps with the other. Such time and work to create such magnificent architecture!
After the abbot’s house, we took some time to explore the foundation of the abbey. If was fascinating trying to imagine what the structure might have looked like. We did come across the spooky remains of a burial site, a mortar and stone indentation vaguely resembling the shape of a person, with a space clearly for the head and a long trapezoid beneath that to match the shape of the rest of the body. I couldn’t resist lying down in it and taking a few photos of my playing dead. My mother and I had a good laugh.
And so, as we drove back to Ilminster by country roads that no longer seemed quite so ridiculous with their “Oncoming Vehicles in Middle of Road” signs, and whose roundabouts became so, so welcome when it was obvious how much more efficiently they moved traffic on the rare occasions where a busy intersection didn’t have a roundabout (seriously, once you use a roundabout at least 25 times, they’re easy; we really should adopt them more than we do in the States to help ease the flow of traffic and cut down on the number of traffic lights thereby reducing our carbon footprint), the time was nearing where we needed to leave our car behind, and it was a moment prepared for…
The next morning we made our way to Bath, after becoming experts in navigating the English countryside. And I can’t stress this enough… even though it goes contrary to how to experience England, I highly recommend you consider exploring it by car. You adapt to driving on the left very quickly, the roundabouts become second nature after a day or so, and the squiggly country roads are an absolute hoot to drive on. This isn’t to say that it was easy adapting to driving over here, as even on the fifth day I still needed to pay attention like a hawk, but not nearly with such resolute consistency as on the first day. (But even on the last day I found myself saying, “Turning right ahead. This is the difficult turn.”)
But seriously… give it a try. Driving here is a blast and you can get to see so much more of the countryside than by train, and your travels and destinations are ever malleable to your whims and desires.
And the people you can meet! Someone I neglected to mention earlier on was an old man who talked to us while we were admiring the countryside, and he pointed out a distant monastery from centuries past that young maidens used to visit to see if they were ready for marriage. He prefaced his story with, “Excuse me, do you know the area well?” and ended with, “So there’s a bit of local folklore for you.”
And lastly… how friendly every one is, like the man I just told you about and the man at the Dolphin! Frequently on these country lanes, during moments where oncoming traffic approaches in the middle of the road, you have to back up to let people through. And there’s a system: if you decide to back up, you flash your lights. Then, when you pass by the person who backed up for you, you wave with four fingers over the steering wheel. And it never failed: people ways waved!
There was also a really friendly lady who stopped us just as we were about to leave the petrol station after filling up, who told us, “Excuse me, your petrol flap is still open,” to which I responded, “Oh my goodness! Thank-you!” Such a friendly person!
But London beckons! And how exciting is that! I wouldn’t recommend driving in London, as the Underground is so easy to use and it takes you wherever you need to go.
So mind the gap in time between my posting this entry and the next one. We’re back off to the big city. And while I ADORED my time in the countryside, the environment of the hustle and bustle of the city is where my mind fits best.
And I imagine it’s going to be a superb old time!