This is England Four
I’ve so forgotten what day I’m up too…. And because I’ve had so much trouble with getting internet access this is more of a summary of the last week.
Northern England.
When I left you last, I was in the Peak District but since then I moved onto the Yorkshire Dales, York, Northumberland and Newcastle.
The Yorkshire Dales was so beautiful. I did this 15km walk (not as bad as it sounds), which took about five and a half hours. It took you passed these fantastic rock formations the most amazing of which was the Gordale Scar. Two cliffs with a waterfall running through the middle of them.
There was something about that walk that made me feel so much better than I’ve felt in months. As I was walking along, I found myself just letting go of some of the angst caused by (well we all know what it’s been caused by). It was like I decided that I wouldn’t bring it back down from there with me. For the first time in about six months I feel like myself again.
When I got to the end of the walk there was a cliff called the Malham cove. There were all these people with telescopes there, I had no idea what they were doing until I saw the sign that they were looking for the Falcons. They basically sit there all day with their tweed jackets, thermos and blankets watching these birds. It’s just so English.
The other thing I did in Yorkshire, was a falconry course. I’ve always wanted to try it but it’s not as easy to do in Australia. It was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever done. It was both exhilarating (I know that’s spelt wrong but I don’t have a spell checker) and ultimately completely pointless.
You fly a bird of prey, they land on your hand and you feed them raw meat. The birds a supposed to hunt and can kill rabbits and hares in the wild. People who own them actually use them for this reason. I just kept giving them bits of chicken. The best bit was going out into the fields with a hawk who would see me about 200 metres away and then fly towards me. They can judge the distance perfectly. You think they are going to crash into you but they put the brakes on and make a smooth landing. It’s pretty cool. It was a great experience, even if I’d never do it again.
From here I moved onto York, which was disappointing. York is a rival to Canterbury in that they are almost the same kind of city and even the whole religion thing as well. The Minster at work was undergoing major renovations, so the most famous bits of it you couldn’t see and they still charged £7.50 to get in there.
The rest of the city had a few interesting parts. Especially a street called the Shambles, which used to be where all the butchers were. The houses were still as they were in Tudor times. There are two on opposite sides of the street where it is possible for people to lean out the upper story window and shake hands.
From York, I went out to Hadrian’s Wall. I’d always wanted to see this an 84 mile stretch of wall running from Newcastle to Carlisle. I know it’s just a wall but it’s absolutely beautiful. 2000 years of absolute Roman genuis. The prescision of the bricks is amazing. You can still walk right beside it, which I did.
On the walk I saw what is called the “Kevin Costner Sycamore Tree”. It’s the tree from the first few scenes of Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, where he saves the boy from the guards with dogs. After this he says that they will be with his father for dinner, considering Nottingham is about 100 miles south it would have been a very very very very very very very late dinner. But that’s Hollywood. (I was wondering if they made him walk to that tree like everyone else.)
Newcastle… What to say about this city? At first glance it’s very pretty, not at all what I expected lots of Georgian and Victorian architecture. But as the guy in my hostel said “it’s after a few hours that you notice that it’s a city with lots of man-made fibres”… Which is pretty much a reference to the fact that I all the locals seem to wear parachute like trackie pants. Another person in my hostel said that you can pick the non-locals as they’re the one’s that are attractive. A tad harsh but also scarily true.
This is the land of the Geordies where it’s actually quite hard to understand people when they talk fast. Most of the time I could only understand the swearing. Apparently Geordies use 82% of words from Saxon times they like to think of themselves as the true English.
Newcastle it trying to change it’s image as a rough industrial city to a cultural oasis of the north. There are a stack of art galleries and sculptures around town. I went to this one called the Laing, which had an exhibition on Love. Yoko Ono is going to make a piece of art work out of messages of love you had to write. That should be cool, when it’s done.
I meet a group of Aussies who were all leaving for Scotland in a few days so we went out celebrating and ending up drinking with these Irish guys… How do I manage to always end up with the only Irish guys in Newcastle???? Anyway it was fitting, if somewhat messy end to my time in England.
So I’m now in Scotland. (I’m going to write a bit of a sum up when I get a chance).
Tags: Travel
danabroad
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