strawberry fields forever
Thursday, July 9th, 2009by Rach
Somewhere between Helmsley and Scarborough, after Beadlam, not exactly sure where, England
Strawberry picking just before dinner. No-one complained about that unplanned stop!
But it was hardly the highlight of the day. (Actually, just as an aside, this week I have issued a challenge: no journal entry is to start “Today we woke up and….” and next week’s challenge has already been put out too: no journal entry is to mention food unless it is spectacularly out of the ordinary. Even though the kids don’t believe it yet, I know they will not necesarilly be interested in reading back that they had porridge for breakfast every morning – and I’m sure they’ll be able to assume that if they wrote something on a given day, they actually woke up that day. Anyway, hand-picked strawberries are worth writing about!)
Yes, I know that’s a raspberry, but at nearly five pounds a kilo, we were not buying any of them not matter how good they looked! Strawberries were half that price – and still not cheap by NZ standards – especially as we grow them ourselves at home!
Oh, and do we look cold? That’s because it’s the English Summer. You may have read about a heat wave last week (and to be fair the mercury did jump over 30 degrees), but that’s all history. We are wearing polarfleece jackets every day now – the temperature is barely more than an Auckland winter!! And it rains just as much (read “most days”) But that hardly makes exciting reading either.
So what shall we tell you about? You’ll have to hold me back from giving a complete history lesson. Maybe a photo of my knitting at Rievaulx (pronounced ree-vo) Abbey will prevent such a disaster:
OK OK enough of that.
How about this industry? Journalling time. Cut short by rain!
Inspirational. There was no shortage of things to write about. No-one even missed not being allowed to start “We woke up” <wink>
Have you heard of the Cistercians? Apart from in our blogpost the other day, that is! We hadn’t. And we were wondering who they were. Now we know. And if you wish to, please read on; if you don’t care to, there will be some more nice pics below!
Once upon a time (although this isn’t a fairy tale) old Benedict (we’d heard of him) wrote a list of rules for monks to live by (we even knew about that bit). But over the centuries the ideal of monks spending their days in worship, study and manual labour had somehow been lost…(in my humble opinion, in some ways this was a good thing -because it is a FALSE dichotomy, this thinking that study and gardening are not worship, but I digress)….these French dudes, calling themselves Cistercians reverted to Benedict’s old rules, wanting to live piously by them. They didn’t just stay in Frogland, but took off as missionaries across the channel and a bunch of them ended up in Yorkshire. Actually, at the height of their devotion, there were more than 800 living here. But by the time King Henry VIII came along and dissolved the Abbey in the early 1500s, there was only handful remaining.
The choir monk (one who wore a white habit and attended seven services a day as opposed to a lay monk, who wore a brown habit and attended fewer services, but was employed in farm labour or working in the infirmary), who took us on an audio tour around the remains was there at the time of the dissolution, and had keenly followed the history of the Abbey and could fill us in on all sorts of interesting details. By the way, did you know that these monks were so devoted to Benedict that they followed his rule of owning only two habits each TOTALLY LITERALLY? Because Benedict hadn’t said they could wear undergarments, they didn’t. Now if you ask me, this was crazy, especially given how cold it gets up here, but there ya go. If they ever left the Abbey to travel, they would borrow a pair of one-size-fits-all breeches, to be returned on their return. It may well be that this was not supposed to be one of the defining features remembered by visitors to the Abbey, but it made an indelible impression….along with the latrine block (which, by the way, was a very sophisticated system, and far less primitive than some of the amenities we have used on this trip)…on some of the boy members of the family. Just check out their journals!
Of course, that wasn’t all there was to learn. We read Theophilus’ description of how to make stained glass windows, including how to make the glass. We *smelt* (and read about and walked through the tannery) the process of tanning hides. We watched the sheep (see photo above!) and discovered what a vital role they played for the monks, whose main income was derived from selling their wool. We sat in the scriptorium and contemplated working there, and having just seen for the first time some *actual* implements used by monks, we were able to imagine what it would have been like. Mboy6 concluded he would like to have been a monk, who did the writing. We giggled about using coriander for flatulence, and squeemishly wriggled away from the *real* blade used to bleed people in the infirmary. I made sure everyone learnt the hand signals used by monks in the refectory, thinking it a grand idea to implement their policy of silence at mealtimes (ha – as if that would work round here! – and to be honest, most of the time I wouldn’t want it to – I do like our mealtime discussions).
The warning that I might start preaching history, appears to have been misplaced. Here are the pictures, anyway.
Time on the road: need to check Jboy13’s record!
Distance covered: 34km
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rayres