A Break in Cornwall

In October, we took a long weekend trip to Penzance in Cornwall.  We had a lovely rail journey, as part of the track runs right along the shore (we almost certainly traversed the portion of the track which has since been destroyed at Dawlish in the recent late-winter storms).  We stayed in a Grade II-listed eighteenth-century town house on historic Chapel Street.  The house was much bigger than our flat, with three floors and two separate living areas.  We had to shout to each other to figure out who was where.  We made great use of the fireplace and the two cozy armchairs in the living room and one night watched The Big Lebowski, which was in the DVD collection.

The first two things we noticed about Penzance were 1) that it smelled of sea salt (which reminded me of a family trip to the Canadian Maritimes) and 2) there were palm trees! (because Penzance is in a sub-tropical zone).

 

 

We were also just steps away from the house Maria Branwell, the mother of the Brontes, grew up in.  Further up the street was the old Wesleyan Methodist chapel, which I suppose they must have attended (the Branwell were Methodists before the sect split off from the Church of England).

Other than relaxing by the fire with books, Tim and I did two awesome seaside walks.  First we set out to the east for Mousehole (pronounced Mow-zel, I don't know why) via Newlyn.  Here we go along the promenade at low tide.

Mousehole was delightful, set on a hill and surrounding a harbour.  Tim stopped at a pub and had the catch of the day.

The next day, we headed out in the other direction, for St Michael's Mount, just off the coast at Marazion. You can see town and castle/island in this picture.  It was quite breezy that day, so we also got to enjoy watching the kitesurfers as we walked along.

We had checked the low tide time the day before to make sure we could walk across the causeway to the island.  Usually, you can take a boat back to the mainland at high tide, but for whatever reason, it wasn't in operation on the day of our visit and the castle closed early that day, so we mostly just walked around the grounds for a bit, and then headed back across the causeway without seeing the castle itself.  Alas.  We'll just need to visit again someday.

In Marazion, heading back to Penzance, with palm trees!  If you find yourself with the opportunity to visit Cornwall, I'd certainly recommend it.  It was a lovely place for a seaside break, even in October.

Bristol Day-Trip

Hello, hello, poor neglected blog!  Three months is a long time between posts, so now that I'm sort of on Christmas vacation, I will try to catch you up on my Michaelmas adventures - DPhil strategies that mostly seemed to work and trip pictures - as well as the standard end-of-the-year "Best Books" post (which I can't write yet because I'm still reading!) and goals for 2014 (namely: Submit Thesis).

The best way to slide back into blog posting is to share some pretty pictures, so I'll start with shots from our November anniversary day-trip to Bristol, which was great fun.

Upon arriving in Bristol, we headed to the furthest afield site we were interested in: the suspension bridge at Clifton, designed by good old Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel.  (Actually, there's a bit of a Brunel theme to the whole trip.)  We walked across half the bridge.  Apparently there are great trails on the other side of the Avon gorge but we didn't have enough time to explore them.  Next time, perhaps.

We checked out the bridge from the hill the Clifton Observatory sits on.  As you can see, the observatory was all fenced off, so we couldn't explore inside.  Alas.

Then we headed down through Clifton to the harbour, passing delightful (and very expensive) row houses along the way.

We made a point of popping into one particular courtyard to see the blue plaque on the building where Thomas Beddoes had his Pneumatic Institute in the late eighteenth century.  Tim wrote his MA thesis on Beddoes, who was also a Clifton doctor.

Bristol's harbour was rather lovely and housed, in permanent dry dock, Brunel's S.S. Great Britain, which you can tour inside and out after a great deal of restoration work.  The ship was the first to combine an iron hull with a screw-driven propellor.  In the 1930s, it was scuttled off the coast of the Falkland islands, but in 1970 the ship was raised and floated back to Bristol, where it had originally been built and launched.  As you can see, the hull has taken quite a beating from being immersed in salt water for decades, so it is now kept in very dry conditions to keep the iron from rusting any quicker than it needs to.  The interior is set up to resemble the ship's days as an immigrant ship to Australia.

Bristol Cathedral.  We met a very friendly verger on the way in, whose wife was Canadian.  We knew he must be connected to Canada because it was Remembrance Day and he was wearing a Canadian poppy, rather than a British one, and had secured it using a little Canada flag label pin.

 This is Cabot Tower, a lovely Victorian folly, built to honour John Cabot, who set out to explore what is know Canada from Bristol.  We got a lovely, misty view of the city from the first viewing platform.  I'm glad we didn't go to the top of the tower, because the stairs we did climb made my knees rather unhappy as it was.

 Then we followed that up by going down the Christmas Steps, a nice shopping street, and came upon this medieval almshouse.

 We saw this bomb-damaged church on the way back to the train station.  Because of its harbour, Bristol was a prime target for Nazi bombs during the Second World War, making the fifth most heavily bombed city in the country.

And to end our Brunel-themed trip, here is the Brunel-designed train station.

We also very quickly popped into John Wesley's first-ever Methodist chapel, but I don't have a picture of it!  I will check with Tim to see if he took a photo on his phone.

Avignon, Pont du Gard, and a Miserable Day in Arles

I did promise my mother I would finish posting the highlights of our France trip.  For the last few days, we were based in the old town of Avignon, where popes (and then anti-popes) set up shop for about a hundred years in the 14th century (Rome was thought to be too dangerous).  The entire old city is surrounded by an intact medieval city wall and is very walkable, with quirky little side streets and squares.  We also liked Avignon because we could hop on the TGV to go back to Paris, or go by train or bus to other places in Provence.

 Here is the Papal Palace by sunset, on the gloriously warm day of our arrival in Avignon.

The next day, it had become quite a bit cooler and rainier, alas.  We took a very inexpensive bus up to the Pont du Gard, exclaiming over all the vineyards we passed and all the lovely hills.  Provence felt much more sun-baked and Italian than we were expecting.  This is the river itself, with great hills on either side for scampering up and down and taking in the view.

The famous bridge with the aqueduct just running along the very top (after the sun had come back out).  The museum here had a really fascinating exhibition on the engineering and administration that went into building this aqueduct in the 1st century AD to supply water to nearby Nîmes.  This is the second-tallest Roman ruin after the Coliseum and it was something to behold in person.

The next day, we took an ill-fated day trip to Arles.  Sigh.  The forecast for our visit to France promised us temperatures of 25 degrees each day we were in Provence.  Alas, on this day, it poured rain and was windy and was about 8 (EIGHT) degrees!  Since we had stupidly not brought our umbrellas with us and had only light jackets, we ended up rather soggy and sad.

 Here is Arles' Roman arena - still in use for rodeo-style events, with metal risers built over the old stone seating.  I couldn't decide if I was really pleased the arena was still being used for something like its original purpose or slightly sad that it wasn't being carefully preserved as a Roman ruin.  The tower you see towards the back is a medieval construction and at one point in the Middle Ages, an entire settlement was set up inside the arena.

We came to this church because the always-helpful Rick Steves promised it had one of the most beautiful and elaborate entrances of any Romanesque church.  The church wasn't open when we happened by.  We considered waiting awhile so we could see the inside, but we were soaked by this point and decided to cut short our visit to Arles.  We dashed through the pouring rain to catch an earlier train, took a wrong turn, missed the train, and then ended up on a bus back to Avignon.  I suspect we need to go back to Arles some day when the weather's nicer.

The Loire Valley

From Paris, we took the train to Amboise, on the banks of the Loire, whose valley is home to hundreds of chateaux.  

Part of the chateau at Amboise

This hall had a real, live fire to heat it.  At first this seemed strange to us - an open flame in a historical building?  But it does make a fair bit of sense - there have been fires in these buildings for hundreds of years, after all.

While in Amboise, we also visited Clos Luce, a large house and walled garden where Leonardo da Vinci spent his last years at the invitation of French king Francis I.

On our second day in the Loire Valley, we took a minibus tour to two of the biggest chateaux in the region.  Above was our first stop, Chambord, the largest chateau of them all and the first (or one of the first) to be built purely for hunting parties and, well, entertaining, rather than defense.

One of the highlights was this double helix spiral staircase.  There are two different sets of stairs which never meet.  Tim and I had fun each taking a side and catching glimpses of each other across the central well from the windows set into the staircase.

The fantastical, fairy tale-ish towers and turrets up on the terrace are also wonderful.

Chenonceau was next.  Looks smallish from the front, right?

The main chateau was given to a French king's wife for her use, but she was then replaced by the king's mistress, Diane de Poitiers, who had the chateau wing built across the river!

Here is the gallery which runs across the river.

And here is the kitchen, one of the best fitted out we've ever seen in a great house.

Then it was back to Paris in order to get on the TGV to Avignon!

Paris

Our first stop on our Easter vacation was Paris, which we had both visited four years ago.  So this trip was a good chance to visit new neighbourhoods and see sights we had missed the first time.  We stayed in a rental apartment right on the corner of L'Esplanade des Invalides (last time we stayed in the Marais).  Luckily for us, the first full day of our trip was the first nice day of spring (France apparently had a cold and rainy early spring, just like the UK).  It was lovely to walk around in the glorious sun and to watch the leaves coming out.  As we were right at Invalides, we visited Napoleon's Tomb (above), which is crazily grandiose, and also the military history museum attached, which is very good.

We took the metro to Montmarte to finally visit Sacre Coeur.  You can see the multitudes of people sitting on the hill, enjoying the sun.  The bit of Monmartre we saw was unfortunately rather touristy, not very bohemian anymore, alas.

Then, onto the metro again to Pere Lachaise cemetary.  For some reason, I had been picturing a massive lawn covered with orderly tombstones, with a few monuments thrown in.  Oh, no.  Pere Lachaise is filled with family vaults of varying degrees of ornateness and delapidation.  There are proper paths (like the one pictured), plus innumerable little alleys between vaults.  Some vaults have lost their doors, or have had blocks fall out, or glass broken.  Where there are holes, part of me seized up with horror-film fear of what I would see if I looked over the edge - garbage, unfortunately.  The cemetary is huge, and well-treed, both peaceful and slightly eerie.  We meandered through a good portion of it, and ended with a visit to Oscar Wilde's grave.

Another day, we walked past the Palais Royale, to Place Vendome (pictured above), with its column made from melted down cannon from the Battle of Austerlitz (!).  We saw the Opera Garnier, but couldn't go in as it was closed (alas).  Then we revisited the Louvre.

One of my favourite parts was a courtyard that had been glassed over.  It was lovely to see the statues in natural light.  As I recall, we did a big loop home from the Louvre that day, crossing the two islands, visiting Notre Dame, winding through the Latin Quarter, taking a little break in Luxembourg Gardens, and then finally wending our way back to our apartment.  My feet were sore by the end!

Blog Apologies and General Life Update

Hello!  I realised with some shame that it has been two months (ish) since I've updated this blog!  Partly it's because I've been busy, and then because I wasn't sure I had anything to say.  So, I've decided to break the ice with a quick update on the Easter vacation and Trinity Term have been like for me.

In the last two months, I've...

• Gone to Paris, the Loire Valley, and Avignon on vacation (see obligatory Eiffel Tower photo above - with more pictures to come!)
• Finished another section of my thesis, this time discussing domestic violence and other forms of male dominance in the Bronte novels.  Next up is a short section on male relationships (primarily on how they can be damaging when they impinge on domestic/family life).
• Read many books for fun, including some that I plan to review on the blog in the near future.
• Given the Michael Mahoney Graduate Seminar at my college - a one-hour lecture on my research, which was actually really fun, especially as it was followed by a fancy dinner in the chapel (which is currently serving as our dining hall).
• Completely rewrote the end of my novel for the first time.  The ending is different from what I originally intended, but it fits better with my expectations for and conception of the book now.  I hope to start submitting it really, really soon - after one more proofread and a couple small changes.
• Helped to organise this year's Oxford English graduate conference, "Object", which went really, really well.  I chaired a fantastic panel on Victorian material culture; there was an fabulous panel discussion on the Book as Object, featuring Nick Cross, Digital Products Manager at the Oxford University Press and fellow SCWBI member, Paul Nash, the University's printing tutor, and Stephen Walter, text/map artist.  The day was capped off by a fantastic keynote address on the construction of the author as "object" by acclaimed children's author Frances Hardinge.  (Her most recent novel, A Face Like Glass is amazing and Frances is absolutely lovely in person to boot!)
• Went up to London to see The Book of Mormon (amazing, with brilliant music, and much blasphemy - not for the easily offended) and finally visit the Tate Modern (loved the first floor Surrealists, then became increasingly bored by the abstract art and installations - I am a bit of a traditionalist, I suppose)
• More recently, went up to London to see Neil Gaiman talk about his most recent novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane.  Amazing.  Also snagged a signed first edition, which is very good so far.
• Plus, I attended the seminars for the Developing Teaching and Learning course run by the Humanities Division and am working on a teaching portfolio to submit in hopes it will gain me Associate Fellow status with the Higher Education Academy.  As part of my teaching training, I ran revision classes and tutorials to prepare first-year Mansfielders for their exam on Victorian literature, which was a rewarding experience.  It was great to really dig into the Victorians with friendly, enthusiastic, and hard-working students.

Okay, I think that's it.  I will try to update more frequently, and will definitely post pictures from our France trip.  The next big thing is that we're going home for two weeks on Saturday, which is shockingly only two sleeps away!  Yikes.

Bruges

 The last stop on our trip was Bruges, which was already delightfully Christmassy looking, with decorations and lights up.  This was by far the most tourist-packed city we visited during the trip.  Bruges also seems to have its tourists figured out - I'd never seen so many chocolate, lace, and beer shops before!  Thankfully, they were almost all well-presented, not tacky.

City hall on Burg Square.  The next day we visisted the Gothic Hall inside, which was redone beautifully by the Victorians.  Beside this is the romanesque Basilica of the Holy Blood.  We visited the upper chapel (also redecorated marvellousely in the 19th century) where they hold the supposed relic.

 Tim grabs his first round of frites (with a curry mustard sauce) from a stand recommended by trusty Rick Steves and located at the base of this building...

 The Belfort, Bruges's medieval bell tower on the Grote Markt.  (Very busy and looked like they were setting up their Christmas market).  You can apparently get a great view if you go up the 300+ steps of the tower, but we passed.

 One of the lovely canals.

 The courtyard outside the Gruuthuse Museum, a mansion belonging to 16th-century burghers.

 Cathedral of Our Lady, featuring a Michelangelo Madonna and Child statue, as well as other art.  Just across the street from the cathedral is the Memling Museum, housed in what used to be a medieval hospital (of the good intentions-primitive medicine variety).  Lots of medieval art, but we liked the hospital and medical history best.  (Tim's not so keen on pre-Renaissance art.)

 Swans and a canal by the Begijnhof (a word I'm sure I never pronounced correctly during the trip.)

Our favourite Dutch word was the famously not-quite-translateable gezellig, which seems to mean "coziness".  We had a very gezellig time in our accomodation, which was a newly renovated 16th-century house with this delightful gas fireplace.  I spent a great deal of my time in Bruges in an armchair by this fire, racing through to the conclusion of Laini Taylor's Days of Blood and Starlight, which was amazing.

Then after two days in Bruges, we finished our remarkably fun, stress-free trip and took the Eurostar back to London and the train back to Oxford.