History Becomes Alive

Reading history interests me, but actually being and seeing gives a much greater depth of color and experience.

Some times it is little things that bring history to life, like the small museum in Cirencester, the Corinium Museum. Cirencester in the beautiful Cotswolds was Corinium in the Roman days — over three centuries of Roman days. It was a provincial capital. The well laid out museum features Roman artifacts and large floor mosaics unearthed locally, as well as Saxon and medieval finds and remains. But what most intrigued me under the subject of "History Becomes Alive" was a museum wall with information about the English Civil War (1642-1651).

Off and on several times, I have read about the cavaliers versus the roundheads; the Royalists versus the Parlimentarians. Cromwell and an austere form of religion win and become dictators. The display on the wall in Corinium Museum shows how the people suffered from both sides. Leave aside the direct horrors of warfare and sieges. Think about damage to farms and property, theft to feed the armies, and forced billeting of soldiers. One young man kept a diary in which he recorded the hardships. It was quoted and printed on that wall.

That Civil War also left its mark on Dunnottar Castle. It was blockaded and besieged by Cromwell for months in his effort to take the Scottish crown jewels (the Honors) and destroy them.

Malmesbury Abbey,. What the Tudors left standing
still serves as a magnifiscent church

Then there is Henry VIII, his need for money, heirs and gratification, and Elizabeth I, and her need to surpress Catholic opposition. In the process, monasteries and abbeys were confiscated, sold off, and torn down, and churches stripped and defaced. The obvious scars today are all the many exterior wall naves on the many remaining cathedrals and churches in England. The statues are missing. Plaques on some historic houses describe how some of their stones were pilfered from the demolished monasteries.

We visited Culloden battlefield (1745). Today it is an open, grassy field with three red flags marking the English army positions and three blue flags marking where the Scottish Jacobites stood. Some two thousand mostly Scottish clansmen died or were wounded in that final decisive defeat of Scottish independence. For what? A mixture of religion, clan loyalty, and the vein arrogance of the twenty-six year old young Stuart pretender, the Italian raised and French supported "Bonnie Prince" Charlie. He fled the battlefield when the going got tough, leaving the clansmen to their fates.

Historical anecdotes: The Queen Mum
pulls a beer at The Bell at Stowe pub,
Stowe-on-the-Wold, Cotswolds.

The battlefield has its ghosts, but visiting castles in Britain bring the brutality home. Every one has its prison. Even churches have histories of being used as prisons. Jacobite prisoners were crowded in the dungeon rooms of Carlisle Castle without food or water. The castle brochures point out the worn stone where prisoners licked water dripping into the dungeon.

On a less violent theme, the Corinium Museum in Cirencester has a wall devoted to the wool trade that made the Cotswolds wealthy in the Middle Ages — until the invention of the cotton gin radically changed the economics of clothing. Sheep in the Cotswolds produced the wool that was exported to Flanders and Northern Italy where it was woven into cloth. This wall featured one man born a commoner who became ridiculously wealthy as a wool merchant, bought himself a noble title, and lived to the ripe old age of a hundred and one. He died only because he fell off a horse.

I wish I had taken a photo of that wall. I cannot find any reference to that merchant on the internet. Yet such anecdotes preserved in local histories provide the details that bring history alive -- at least for me.

Post Script:  Searching the Corinium Museum website I found the merchant's portrait and name, then this basic information on a BBC website. (God bless the BBC.)

John Coxwell was a self made man who made his money from the wool trade in the Cotswolds and rose from the ranks of the lower middle classes to that of the gentry. In the 14th and 15th centuries the trade in Cotswold wool was on an international scale

John was in his early twenties when the Abbey at Cirencester was dissolved. Twenty years later, when Elizabeth I sold off the Abbey estates, he purchased a significant amount of land using the money he had made from trading wool. Eventually he owned over 40 properties in Cirencester. In 1563 he purchased part of the manor of Siddington, ten years later he bought the manor of Ablington

John was 101 when he died after falling off his horse at Lechlade!

The Boo Laundrette.

It's been a week, our laundry bag was getting heavy, and we do like to wear our favorite clothes. Monday became laundry day and our laundromat of choice was the Boo Laundrette in downtown Cirencester.

Of course, being an oversized village and medieval wool town, negotiating the warren of narrow streets in the old city was no small feat. But we had scoped out the parking lot, the route, and the location of the Boo well in advance. We even had set aside some one pound coins for the Brewery Car Park. We assumed the Laundrette would give change. It opened at eight.

We were there at eight. The door was locked and no one inside. We rang the bell. Nothing. We begin to get a little desperate. Then Shari noticed the only intelligible instruction in that laundromat, which was to press the button and open the door simultaneously. It worked.

Inside was nice and clean and lonely. But no change machine. There were no instructions posted on the wall as to how much it cost for a load in the washers. We had about £2 in coins. We put a coin in and the washer's screen lit up and asked for another £6 some. We had no such amount in coins.

It was still early, but the butcher shop a block and a half away was opening. I asked the woman, "Could I trouble you for some change? Pound coins? My wife and I are trying to do laundry and the laundromat has no coin changer."

She smiled. "Say no more." and she gave me £5 in pound coins.

Elated with my success, and impressed with yet another example of British kindness, I returned to reassure Shari that all was well. We got the wash going.

While the wash was washing, we had time to decipher the dryer instructions. Here was the clue. A typed and overwritten piece of paper pinned above the dryers which read: "£2 = £1 coins only". The £1 had been handwritten on a tiny piece of paper and sticky-taped over something else.

After about five minutes of pondering alternative interpretations, we reckoned that neither our £2 coins nor our 50p coins would work. The sign meant £2 to get the machine to work and the machine took only £1 coins.

We needed to exchange our coins for £1 coins.

I hesitated to go back to the butcher again. So instead of going out, then left, I walked out, then right. The One Pound store was open. Kinda like our Dollar stores. The doors were open, lights were on, and two young school boys dressed in uniforms were cruising an aisle.

"Can I trouble you for some one pound coins?" I asked in the most calm and polite voice I could master. The lady smiled and asked me how many. I asked for ten £1 coins in exchange for my ten pounds worth of £2 and 50p coins. She pulled out a handful of £1 coins and counted them out.

I returned victorious to Shari who was anxiously waiting. The One Pound store. Of course.

While we are watching the clothes go round, a woman came in dressed as you would expect for an early, chilly, overcast morning that threatened rain. We exchanged polite and warm greetings, she deposited her load of wet clothes into a dryer, and left.

Now comes the good part. A few minutes later, another woman walked in. She was a rather striking woman. She wore a short red dress and high heels suitable for an evening cocktail party. She made no attempt at eye contact or any greeting, but walked right up to the dryer with her Ikea blue bag with wet clothes and shoved them in the dryer. I was sitting next to that machine and, being polite, stared at the ground, unavoidably looking at her naked legs and painted toenails in her high heeled sandals.

Like the first woman, she left. Obviously both women knew the system and how many minutes of dryer time £2 bought.

Now comes a better part. After a few minutes, the dryer used by the woman in the red dress made some god-awful bashing noise. I looked at the dryer and saw a woman's belt tumbling around and around. A belt buckle. Okay.

Now comes the best part. About another five minutes later, I saw some white, rectangular shape tumbling around and around in the dryer used by the woman in the red dress. I thought that was a little odd, but I am polite and did not stare at someone else's laundry in the dryer. But I couldn't help noticing that it was a piece of paper. Okay. She hadn't checked and emptied pockets.

Here's the punchline. As the minutes passed, more and more sheets of paper appeared through the glass door of the dryer used by the woman in the red dress. Soon there were twenty, thirty, and who knows how many more. Now I got curious, stared through the glass, and started reading the printed text on the pages. They were the pages of a book. I read page three hundred and something on one sheet. They were all neatly separated and so many of them were tumbling around and around that the clothes of the woman in the red dress were no longer visible.

Of course, I pulled out my video camera and took some shots of the pages going around and around in the dryer.

Our loads were done, folded, and stacked in our laundry bag so we left. But both Shari and I would have loved to have seen the expression on the face of that woman in the red dress when she came to retrieve her load and opened the dryer door.

British Roads

Dunnottar Castle, just south of Stonehaven

Accomodating automobiles, as we know them today, is a seriously centuries too late afterthought in Britain. These roads are well suited for ox carts and horse drawn carriages. Not so much for automobiles.

We are spoiled in Tucson.

Leave aside driving on the left side, the roundabouts, the hieroglyphic striping on the roads, the signage ("dual carriageway", "give way", and "crawler lane"). Those can be managed.

What is terrifying are the narrow roads and no shoulders.

We were following what we in the US would regard as a tiny RV. It was as wide as the country highway lane. The speed limits are 60 or 70 miles per hour. Imagine oncoming traffic, say, a truck ("lorry") or bus. It's hard not to wince as it passes a few inches away from your driver side rear vision mirror.

No shoulders. Only occasional turn-outs. The countryside is gorgeous, but there's no place to stop. And where there is a pull-out, eight or nine times out of ten, any view is hidden by foliage or a wall. You can't win.

Bicycling should be out of the question. Even footpaths are rare and, if they exist, they too are narrow. It's funny to see rural bus stops with no sidewalk for pedestrians to get to them.

Dundee

And that's just the country roads. Imagine double decker busses routinely driving their routes in medieval city streets. Imagine street parking that takes up the better part of the driving lane. Oncoming traffic has to take turns to pass each other. I'm often not sure if I am behind parked cars or standstill traffic.

Then there is parking, something we take for granted in Tucson. Here, every little village has a pay and display lot from which the council earns money. £1-2 pounds for an hour or two. Visiting a historical site? Royal Collection Trust? National Trust for Scotland? Pay and display.

All those country scenes in BBC shows where the car drives in a broad village space, simply pulls over and parks in front of its intended destination, not another car in sight? All staged.

Not my photo, but typical.

We chose places to stay knowing we would need parking for our rental car. So far the most awkward was the one-car wide alley in Stonehaven with a ninety degree left turn into a car-wide alley that leads to a three, maybe four car lot in back of the B&B. Scraped the left rear fender in my ten minute back and forth that should qualify me for docking a shuttle into the space station.

I should add that I love the roundabouts and, once you get familiar with the system, the highways and directions are well marked (street signs, much less so) - but only because we have GPS and Google maps.

Treasure those wide open country spaces for automobiles at home.

Post script. As I composed this post, Shari is watching some local TV - a program devoted to parking tickets, traffic congestion, and tight squeezes.

Edinburgh and Verdo

Royal Mile (part).

Cosmopolitan. That's one of the first words that come to mind. It's obvious from its restaurants, population, and visitors. Seattle is another word that comes to mind on account of the weather and the black mold-stained stone buildings. Europe is another because of its stone buildings, churches, castle, palace, narrow, old city streets that go back centuries, and a history and identity that goes beyond medieval. But mostly, it is proudly Scottish. Edinburgh.

The city isn't that big in terms of population or area, being hemmed in by some steep rocky outcrops. I suspect weeks and months of exploring would not begin to exhaust its sights or experiences. Still, walking the Royal Mile and visits to Holyrood Palace and Edinburgh Castle are pretty special experiences.

Edinburgh Castle (west side).

There is some personal history here. Alexander Christian Dingwall, Shari's fourth great grandfather, was the Scottish crown keeper in the 1830's. We saw the Scottish crown jewels and the Stone of Destiny (Stone of Scone). At one point, Dingwall lived in 2 Canning Street Lane, just down the hill on the west side of the castle. We walked down there.

Of course, in a foreign place, when you find your way somewhere, it becomes welcome familiarity the second time around. Breakfast twice at the Abbey because it was good and it's just a few blocks up. Twice, beers and snacks at the Royal Mile Tavern because, well, it's good and in the middle of the the Royal Mile.

And two dinners at Verdo because it's up the street, walking by it we smelled angelic wood fire grill smoke, and it serves the best Turkish food either Shari or I have ever eaten anywhere. Turns out the owner is a Kurd from Kahta in eastern Turkey where Shari's dad worked and we have visited. So if you like Turkish cooking, I can safely write the best is the Kurdish restaurant Verdo in Edinburgh.

Traveling Confusion II

The good news is that it worked out well and easily, but for an hour or two, I had my doubts.

There comes a time with each rental car when it's necessary to find the fuel tank cap (which side? how to open?) and figure out whether the gas station pumps are self-serve, prepay, or take credit cards. After a bit of motorway driving and route finding from York to Penrith, I couldn't even find the gas station in the freeway rest area without making a wrong turn. A U-turn around the restaurant and general rest area parking lot, silently muttering "left side, left side", and down the other side, and there's the BP sign.

I had to ask the woman at the gas station shop counter how to pay. Refreshingly simple. Pump, then come inside to pay.

I went back outside and, of the three available nozzles at the island where I stopped, I chose the green one. The other two were black and grey.

Now in the US, we have various grades of gasoline nozzles and the one green nozzle for diesel. I simply chose the green nozzle and started pumping. As the fuel poured in the tank, I saw the black and grey nozzles were labeled diesel and diesel something. I checked the label on the nozzle I was pumping. Unleaded.

I stopped pumping. Our rental is diesel. Not knowing anything specific about the risks, other than it's not really a good thing, I completed the top up with diesel.

Fortunately, we pulled into the gas station primarily for WC purposes. We had almost a half tank when we pulled in.

Fortunately, gas is lighter than diesel, so when I drove another hundred miles to get to our room in Roslin, we were still running on diesel. Dumb luck.

We settled in, had lunch, toured the chapel, returned to our room, and I remembered that it might be a good idea to search the internet and learn a little about mixing the fuels.

It's actually a very, very bad thing to do. And since I couldn't blame anyone but my own stupidity, our comprehensive insurance might not pay for, say, replacing the engine.

We searched the internet for nearby mechanics. It was Saturday night. Everything is closed until Monday morning. We thought we'd risk driving another ten miles Sunday morning to get to our pre-booked Edinburgh guest house and then hope for the best.

Shari to the rescue. Call the rental car number. Use the £10 burner phone we got in Windsor.

The other thing about pouring gasoline in a diesel car is that it's a pretty common occurence. Within 45 minutes, the AA Fuel Assist van showed up. Another 35 minutes, the very nice young Scottish man (he'd been to Las Vegas) had drained our full but contaminated tank and carburetor and put in £10 worth of diesel to get us to the next gas station.

Our comprehensive insurance pays for it.

Rosslyn Chapel, Roslin, Scotland

Rosslyn Chapel

The church is extravagantly decorated with carved stone outside and inside. The village of Roslin was created for the stone masons, carpenters and blacksmiths required to create the structure. Columns and lintels decorated with vines, green men (heads in greenery), allegories (seven sins, seven virtues), geometric designs, dragons (probably pagan Norse influence), and animals. The chapel is as much a pagan celebration of nature as it is a Christian dedication to St. Matthew.

The niches are empty. More evidence of the destructive purges wrought by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. It has had to be repaired and reconstructed to become the tourist mecca that it is today. Despite the entrances fees, docents, and strict prohibition of photography inside, it still hosts church services. Church of Scotland.

No wonder the chapel inspired Queen Victoria and 19th Century poets and authors. And, of course, the Templar connection in the Da Vinci Code novel made even more famous by the Tom Hanks movie. Which is utter fiction, as is the story invented about the Apprentice Column. But to see this chapel is to understand how it has inspired the imagination.

Rosslyn Chapel

Thanks to Shari who knew of the fame of the Roslin Chapel, we included a night in tiny Roslin in our itinerary. It's a Saturday and the folks here are adept at organizing events to attract people from nearby Edinburgh and all over. The village was crowded with familes, young kids with face decorations, and couples young and old. Some children's carnival was underway. The one restaurant already has brochures on every table advertising its 2019 Christmas season and exhorting early reservations. "Breakfast with Santa."

Decent sunshine and warm weather allowed the outside pub area to be filled with beer drinking, snacking, T-shirted and shorted folks. Not everyone wore summer clothes (certainly not us), but most. Locals, I suspect. Inside the pub, families with dogs were noisily talking over the speakers blaring some folk-sounding songs. Too noisy for us.

Odd thing. Bitters and ales in Windsor and York were served only a little below room temperature. I reckon that way, if you nurse a pint or more over an hour's worth of local gossip, it doesn't make much difference. Or maybe it's just the custom. Cross into Scotland and I find my first IPA. It's a very light IPA by US microbrew standards, but what is surprising is that it's served nicely chilled.

And I am pleased to report our room is spacious, nicely appointed, and comfortable. A corner room with views over the tiny park with its war memorial and the beer garden.

York

The gate by the York Minster.

York is an obvious tourist destination in England. I just had no inkling of why. It is simply stunningly amazing.

For one, it's a pretty small town; less than a quarter million. For another, much of the medieval city walls and each gate are still standing. Then there is its Minster, a gigantic gothic cathedral much too large to squeeze into a camera lens.

Inside the walls is a warren of old cobblestone streets devoted to pedestrian traffic and lined with restaurants, pubs, pastry & coffee shops, high end boutiques and department stores, businesses, hotels, tourist knick-knack stores, butchers, cheese mongers, ghost and Viking shows, municipal buildings, market squares, used book stalls, Hogwart shops and kids with magic wands, medieval churches, street musicians and theatres -- to name a few.

The narrow streets and alleys are crowded with tourists; most from Britain, some from the Continent, some from the USA, and plenty of east Asians. No shortage of locals, either. One parade of Malaysians, the women wearing headscarves, was lead by two middle aged women holding a selfie stick on which two (not one) smart phones recorded the entire group strolling about. (I hesitate to think how seasick I would get having to watch the playback.)

York, the wall walk.

We spent a couple of hours inside the old walled city yesterday and return there today. This morning, as I am framing video shots at the gate we walk through, the one closest to the Minster, Shari finds stairs leading up the wall. We discover the walk on top of the walls. Gorgeous views over private gardens, through huge trees, and peering over roofs, the towers of the massive Minster.

We wander inside one elegant department store. There's a fashion show under way upstairs in between racks of merchandise. Tall, long-legged models in high heels and disarming smiles are doing their runway thing as the commentator with a microphone explains the various features of the clothes they are wearing. A woman asks us whether we would like a glass of prosecco. We notice the folks sitting in folding chairs on either side of the makeshift runway are holding champagne glasses. We politely declined. We had just come from a delightful bakery where we drank cappuccinos.

York Minster

In one open area a street musician is singing show tunes accompanied by his karaoke boom box. The man is professional grade. I video record a song. Videographers are always desperate for a soundtrack. The pleasant sounds of people chatting in the streets should also serve nicely.

Before we enjoy our bowls of coconut lentil soup at the Cafe Concerto by the Minster, I spring for the £10.50 fee (seniors over sixty) to wander inside the cathedral. It is incredibly imposing on the outside, even with its myriads of exterior niches missing their statues. The stonework carving is intricate. The interior spces are equally huge and detailed. Incredibly high vaults and stained glass windows make the visitor look up in awe.

Traveling is work, but a day spent in York makes it all worthwhile.