U.K. Trip, Day 24

We were up promptly this morning. Outside it was still raining and cold. Mrs W was downstairs in the kitchen, chipper and cheerful, and we ate breakfast with her. Lots to pray for.

We packed the car and left by nine or so to drive to the airport, return the car, and inch through Belfast's steel-tight, sharply professional security force. Our flight to Newark left earlier than scheduled. A long flight.... I watched the new Sherlock Holmes film with Robert Downey, Jr., which is all flash and fluff, like a carnival. We ate two meals, dozed, chatted, read. Below, the Atlantic rolled away, cerulean, mile-by-mile. We flew down over Canada, I think--some land full of lakes as Swiss cheese is full of holes--then over hilly, forested country.

Landing in New Jersey was rough because of storms in the area. The Newark airport gave us as charming an arrival as ever: crowds and crowds of people, customs, layer after layer of security, the sensation of being pushed through lines and gates like a cow. Once we'd been cleared (which really wasn't that arduous; it only felt like a personal insult), we were reinstated--into more crowds, more security. A feeling of claustrophobia thanks to these masses of big, busy people packed together in dark, low-ceilinged spaces.

Thanks to our early arrival, we had just enough time to wend our way through security, terminals, rail system, and bus system in order to catch our last flight. I finished The Vicar of Wakefield on the plane.

Indianapolis seemed clean, light, and calm after Newark. Rachel, Dale, and Joe met us outside baggage claim. On the drive back to Bloomington, Scott told them all about our trip, while Joe and I played with his new lego ship. In Bloomington everything was green and lush. Masses of daylilies blooming everywhere, dizzying the eye with colour. The plants had grown over the house, and as soon as Dale stopped the truck, Scott was outside, investigating the gardens busily.

The rest of us went inside to say hello to Eric, who's been house-sitting for us. All of us eventually strolled down to Mother Bear's for pizza. Eric caught us up on all the news, which included two weddings, a neighbourhood garage sale hosted by the church, and the arrival of our new associate pastor. Back at home, after everyone left, all the wee things to be done before we could go to sleep: unpacking, emptying the cat boxes, giving some of the plants triage care, cleaning the bathroom, checking e-mail. Home.

U.K. Trip, Day 23

Gortrim Forest Park, Northern Ireland

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After our last breakfast this morning, and packing, and chatting with our hostess, we were on our way back east. It rained... all... day... long.... A steady, persistent, soaking rain. We drove through Donegal, bought fuel, and crossed the border, where the roads immediately worsened. Scott really wanted coffee, as our last B&B had only served instant, but nowhere was a cafe to be found (we laughed at Edinburgh again!). 

We stopped at Gortrim Forest Park in the Sperrins. It turned out to be a nearly-deserted wood of tall, dark pine trees, reaching away across the hills. We sat in a car park overhung with evergreens and ate lunch. A flock of wee schoolkids in jackets and wellies pranced out of one of the forest service buildings and onto their bus, and then the place was quite empty. 

The rain seemed to let up, so we went for a walk through the dripping forest, following the burn. Gorgeous waterfalls. The path crossed and recrossed the burn on bridges so that we could gaze down on the backs of fast, sleek water as they shot back and forth through narrow channels, or fell over short drops, or swam smoothly over pebbly flats. All overhung with bracken and rowan trees. We walked back through the forest, which dripped. Perfectly straight pine trunks, rank on rank, marching away. The ground was lime green with moss and shamrock clover, and, in some places, immense ferns.

Back at the car we decided to take the drive through the park. This looped us up to a newly-logged hillside, so newly-logged that we could see the machines piling logs at the foot of the slope. Horrible, that desolate, jagged expanse, but that's paper for writing and boards for houses. Also, there were fields of new young trees sprouting up thickly. It was all very weird and desolate under the rain and low clouds, with the hills veiled in mist. 

We left the forest park finally and drove on straight through the valley of the Sperrins. Quite lonely. We passed farms and occasional single houses, but every wee town seemed deserted. Mist and rain blew over the grey hills. We managed to find our way out of this dreary dreamscape at last, but only to have to navigate the badly-marked B roads to the A6. So we went through Antrim and up to Doagh by the B59. We stopped for diesel, and Scott finally found some decent coffee. We were supposed to be at the Ws' house at six, but we were an hour early, so I pointed us down the road, and we stopped at Trinity RPC. I just wanted to show Scott the building. He drank his coffee, and we sat in the car park listening to Energy Radio, i.e., crazy club music, in which U2 and Coldplay were inexplicably mixed. 

It was so good to see the Ws again. After Scott piloted the car to a space in the crooked driveway, Mrs W welcomed us at the back door, and I received a whiskery kiss from Mr W, and Scott, a handshake. Then the warm kitchen. Claire had also just arrived, and Calvin joined us a little later. We ate a solid meal and talked and talked. After we ate, Mr W led us in family worship, and we sang Psalm 20B and 138B, beautiful--Claire, alto; Mr W, bass; Calvin, tenor; Scott, Mrs W, and me, melody, singing our hearts out. We played an uproarious round of Articulate, girls versus guys, with plenty of chaffing and laughter. Tea, camaraderie, warmth from the stove, and the rain sweeping over the windows outside. 

After we played, Calvin left, and Scott went upstairs. I stayed to chat with Claire before she left and then went up myself. Everything exactly the same, down to the smell of the house, down to the clock chime in the hallway. So many nights listening to that chime! When I went upstairs, Scott was busy inviting people to The First Traditional Ye Olde June 15th Party, in celebration of our return.

U.K. Trip, Day 22

Carrowmore megalithic cemetery with Knocknarea in the background, Co. Sligo

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Our last full free day in R.O.I. After a late breakfast--tea and toast for us both; we've wearied of fries, despite their almost magical ability to sustain us on our feet for a whole day--we set out southward, toward Sligo Town. The further south we went, the lusher the land grew. The great headlands around Glencar and Benbulbin rose on the horizon, forbidding steeps, cliffs scarred by erosion channels, dropping sheer over grey escarpments to fields below. The fields, though, were green and verdant, unlike the highland country we'd seen yesterday.

Our first stop was Knocknarea, said to be Queen Maeve's tomb. We drove through Sligo Town and out, around the headland on which Knocknarea sits, skirting its western edge, and then winding back up past houses, down a narrow lane, to the car park. From there we hiked up a very gravelly path and then scrambled to the summit, weaving our way across erosion ditches, beside a pasture where cows gazed curiously at us. 

Up and up, up and up. The slope is long and steep. The view below expanded to reveal pastures, woods, and the ring of mountains/hills all around the east: from Benbulbin above Sligo Town around to the Ox Mountains, ridge after ridge, like the vertebrae of a dragon. All green below. To the south, clouds flowed up a broad, flat valley, covering the far hills with fog. To the north, more clouds marched inland above Sligo's broad bay, like the cavalry of an army.

When we reached the top, we found the enormous cairn. It stands with its satellites nearby, feet buried in heather. An eerie, eerie place. To one side, the dark clouds approaching from the sea; to the other side, the pastures, woods, and towns abruptly fenced by the mountains, and in the middle of it all, the great cairn, silent, undisturbed, holding its secret. Down the slope seaward, a black sheep wandered through the heather alone. We wandered there ourselves, and heard church bells tolling from far below, as though from another world.

After awhile we scrambled down and drove up the lane to Carrowmore. Here our good fortune began (or continued), since first Wednesdays of each month are free. So we were given a laminated self-tour map in the visitors' centre and set loose to view the cemetery ourselves. They all stand out in a deep pasture, a lovely lush hillside of purple-plumed grass, yellow buttercups, daisies, and red-and-purple clover. When the breeze blew, we seemed to stand in a mauve feathered sea, starred with yellow and white. In this the rings and dolmens and lone cairn were nested like jewels in velvet. The whole scene was weirdly overshadowed by Knocknarea's distant cairn. That cairn in its enormity dominates the landscape for miles; nearly everywhere we went today, we could see it, black against the sky. We made the circuit of the cemetery, stopping to inspect each grave. The massive, jagged stones are mostly undisturbed and make strange, rather ugly objects in the landscape.

After lunch, we braved Sligo Town. We stopped at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, a gorgeous space, painted blue and cream inside, with vivid but simple stained glass. Many arches. Silent but not dark. From there (the church bells sounding the half-hours followed us), we walked down to Sligo Abbey/Friary. On the way, we arrived at a not-very-favourable impression of the town, which seems to be ill-kept and not well inhabited. 

The friary rose suddenly out of the mess of shops, terraces, and narrow streets. We poked around it for awhile with another laminated self-tour map. A beautiful ruin. So much of the nave and tower still stand, from the tomb slabs in the walls to the quatrefoils in the windows. Some of the tombs were beautifully carved, especially the one of the Elizabethan couple above the stone altar. The altar itself is noteworthy, with its filigree of roses, grapes, and pointed arches, as it is one of the only stone high altars extant in Ireland. Stooping, we left the nave for the partly buried chapter house, where the 13th century stone weighed above us. Down the cloister, where bits of detail remain--a carved ram's head, columns carved with spirals or checkerboard patterns. Up a staircase to a pulpit overlooking the cloister, and to the dormitories. 

Standing there in the ruins, I saw a pair of wild swans flying east, white against the aquamarine sky and dramatic cumulus clouds, against the grey tower. Afternoon lay golden and quiet on the stones. Tombstones everywhere, flat in the ground, leaning against the walls, or fragmented. Partially-burying one's local friaries and then using them as cemeteries seems to be much in vogue here.

Once we'd made our way back to the car, we drove to Parke's Castle on Lough Gill. A winding road through thick forests. We emerged suddenly round a corner to see the long silver expanse of loch, with the castle showing a modest white shoulder on its green promontory. Again, a laminate map, and again we wandered alone through the old stone buildings. These, though, have been recently restored. The foundations of the original tower house still sit in the courtyard (to Scott's chagrin, since he wants to live in one), but the stone from that house was used in the 16th century to build the now-renovated manor house that encircles the old courtyard. None of the eerie loneliness of the cairns or the peaceful pathos of the friary; here, the proximity to everyday life via restoration made it all seem much more normal, even cozy. Sunshine through deep embrasures. Crenellations outside. The re-thatched forge. Swallows darting under the eaves. 

We followed the R286 up through the glens, back to the N15. The evening was gorgeous. Light lay like fine onionskin paper over the glens, light through which we saw lush trees, grey waters, and barren cliffs to the north and south. We drove through a valley where flat-topped cliffs cascaded down over grey and green slopes, all sharply cut in the evening light. Blue shadows veined them. The flat, reed-rimmed loch in the valley contrasted with the high cliffs. And before us, very far away, the sea. The quiet loveliness of it all.

We drove back to Donegal after two stops, one by the loch in Glencar to admire the lake and cliffs, and one at a shop on the N15 for groceries. Ahead of us on the highway rose enormous cumulus clouds, like the crowns of a magnificent forest, dark below, brilliant above against the vivid green hills and aquamarine sky. The scene changed as the road wound as though we were inside the facets of a flashing Faberge jewel.

At our B&B, we ate one of the best meals we've had all trip: floury buns, creamy French cheese, salami, and Australian shiraz, with salt-and-vinegar crisps and an apple for good measure. Something so comforting about that plain, straightforward food that we'd found ourselves. We listened to music for awhile and chatted and planned our route for tomorrow.

U.K. Trip, Day 21

Slieve League sea cliffs, Co. Donegal

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At breakfast a random selection of soundtrack music was playing from a stereo in the corner of the room. Music and room decor were equally eccentric; Scott amused himself by singing along with the song from Top Gun. (As it turned out, we ate breakfast at approximately the same time every morning here, and each morning we were treated to the same music! Which meant I was also treated to Scott's singing.)

After breakfast we embarked on the day's voyage. We drove down to Donegal Town, which was surprisingly crowded, and onward, west-northwest. Our first goal: to find the Slieve League cliffs. This proved to be a somewhat arduous endeavour, requiring a great deal of driving up nearly vertical mountain roads, very narrow, through tiny villages, and out, across the lower valleys where the backs of the cliffs loomed enormous to our right. 

Eventually, we parked the car and walked from the foot of the cliffs up, following an even narrower road. Stunning views to the south over Donegal Bay, where the great blue cliffs in County Sligo ran out and out and out into the Atlantic, far vague headland after headland, mountains edging the horizon. Appropriately, the day was overcast, the wind cold, and drizzle falling. We soon learned that not even the dizziest edges or sheerest drops could frighten the sheep: flocks of them grazed just at the edge of the cliffs, placid, unperturbed by the gusts riffling through their wool.

We walked up through a barren world, the Atlantic reaching away westward, grey, smooth, trackless, and Slieve League towering, ridge upon ridge, to the northeast. When we reached the upper car park, we were rewarded with a spectacular sight of the cliffs. One's eye tries to level the heights, but they're nearly two thousand feet from ridge to ocean--forbidding slopes of scree and stone and desperate moss, grey and green, dropping to the deep, teal-grey water. Right below us was a sliver of grey rocky beach, with the pillars of the cliff creating other narrow coves and sea caves around it. We could hear the waters far, far below booming on the rocks. Seagulls helped us gauge the size of the cliffs: they wheeled against the sheer walls, tiny white specks, or leaped out suddenly from the cliff below us to veer through empty air, or skimmed the distant water so closely that their shadows appeared, small and dark. Above us, on the mountain slopes, was a huge, barren world, stone and moss and heather. Tiny birds and moths fluttered in the grass as though they were quite comfortable on those scoured heights.

As we walked back, into the maw of the frigid wind, we noticed the ruins of a tower on one of the sheer cliffheads. We ate lunch in the car and then drove on through Glencolumbkille to Ardara. Everywhere the same stark beauty: high mountain heads, often shrouded in cloud, steep, rocky fells, ridges, moorland, one steep after another. Sheep everywhere. Peat everywhere, too, freshly-cut, rolled into logs, endless patches of it. We drove up over Glengesh Pass, also breathtakingly stark. Rock reared out of scant grass on the boulder-speckled hillsides under the low, dark clouds. Occasional glimpses of the sea. 

Another very surreal landscape feature here: abandoned houses. Not just cottages, left in the 19th century, stones decaying, roofs gone, buried under ivy, but new houses, quite new, left derelict when the Irish economy collapsed. Big cinderblock constructions sprinkled everywhere, empty. 

In Ardara we explored a couple of wool shops. The first one seemed to have no proprietor, but when we finally sorted a wee cream hat (for me) and a rich green scarf (for Rachel) out of the piles of Arran sweaters, a guy emerged from a side room to man the till. He was red-faced, paunchy, and punch, blind, totally drunk. He talked a mile-a-minute and reeked. He crowed over my "Northern Irish accent" (which I was making thicker out of annoyance), and he slashed the prices on our goods ridiculously. The next shop was much more tidy and prim; we bought a couple of scarves there. 

Then on through Glenties--oh, but what a drive! Between Ardara and Glenties we were on the roof of the world. We passed through a high, broad plateau, with the heads of the mountains ringing us round, dark, blue, cloud-crowned, on the horizon in every direction--but immediately around us, moor, copper-brown bog. And then we plunged down suddenly into a valley beside a loch. I never though lochs were actually black (just as I thought no thatched cottages still exist, but we saw three today!), but this one was really and truly slate black, silver-scalloped, with a magnificent mountain slope rising steeply down its length. Barren fell in part, dark evergreen forest in part, and the clouds descending over all. As the road wheeled and veered, new crags, new fells, new bays emerged. Heaped and dark under the sky.

At long last we found the N56, just past Frosses, and entered Donegal Town again. We parked in the city centre and ate at a large bar/restaurant. I've been looking forward to fish-and-chips all trip, but now, when I finally ordered them, I couldn't stomach them at all. Too much restaurant food over the past two weeks. At a nearby table, two couples were dining together. One of the men had an iPad he wouldn't put down; his companions were looking at him askance, pained. 

After tea we walked down to the ruined abbey, which sits right on the bay and which we'd been able to see from the restaurant. For awhile we wandered there. The abbey is partly buried, its walls in total ruins, a few massive window frames and cloistered colonnades standing in what is now a crowded graveyard. At some point someone added three or four feet of dirt on top of the abbey to give room for graves. Tombstones dated from the mid 1700s mingled with ones from the present, a chaos of monuments, some decayed, some new and crisp. The cheap, faded funerary rubbish--silk flowers, figurines, smashed vases--seemed anachronistic beside the ruined Gothic arches. Beside the abbey lay the corner of the bay, a long, green inlet, overhung with trees, the water smooth, opaque. More like a river than the sea.

U.K. Trip, Day 20

Glenveagh Castle gardens, Co. Donegal, Republic of Ireland

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We packed up and drove to Coleraine to meet Rachel. The three of us went over to Portstewart to walk the promenade. So beautiful: the light had that unearthly translucence, that quality in which the calm sea gleamed and flickered and danced and sheened aquamarine. White and silver clouds floated over, shadowing Donegal far away. Children played in the park in front of us, and people sat on the steps that led down from the promenade to the rocky shoreline. We sat there, too, and Rachel and I talked busily. After awhile the three of us poked around the shops. We bought books in an antique shop, most notably a wonderful thick tome, Guide to British Nature. 

After saying good-bye to Rachel, we picked our way through Coleraine's centre, which was completely made. The banks of the river were packed with people who had gathered to watch the Olympic torch come through. Insanity! People playing football, flying flags, gawking, thronging, milling.... We struck out for Donegal. The afternoon still had its slightly unearthly sheen. Great masses of magenta rhododendron bloomed against dark evergreens as we climbed the pass to Limavady and Londonderry, and so on into Donegal. 

Across the border, signs in Gaelic and English. The euro. Kilometers. More gorgeous scenery--green fields and wee abrupt hills, with the dark heads of mountains rearing on the horizon. We drove to Letterkenny, where we managed to find Daphne's new laundrette, the Washing Well, just by the hospital. She met us there and showed us around her business, a small room with eight washers and dryers and some ironing boards. 

She suggested we drive to Glenveagh National Park to see the castle. The park had an austere, rugged, weird beauty: the huge mountains rising suddenly out of the barren moor, above green grass and bracken, their sides gold with grass and grey with stone, grim, withdrawn. Vistas ringed with low, broken peaks. The castle beside its loch seemed strangely verdant and out-of-place. 

We took the bus up the loch to the castle, through leggy stands of red pine. The castle is surrounded by lush gardens, where we browsed for awhile. Flat lawns walled by rhododendrons, azaleas, and Japanese maples; hillside walks; an expansive formal garden with borders of lavish-leafed poppies; neat beds of herbs and vegetables. Arched gateways gave glimpses of still more green avenues and flowers, of peonies just blooming and dark evergreens. We reentered the castle through the orangerie, where a bird-of-paradise was flowering effusively, rich purple and orange plumage. 

We took a tour of the castle, which is a late 19th and mid 20th century hodgepodge of architecture, furniture, and knickknacks. Unfortunately, Scott and I are both the sorts of people who can't really appreciate furniture the way we do art, despite the docent's best abilities to the contrary. After the tour we drove Daphne home. Her mother insisted on serving us tea and sandwiches and buns as we sat in the parlour, chatting.

At about half seven we said good-bye and pushed on for Donegal Town. The drive took us through more steep mountains and dark glens. We found our final B&B easily: Rossmore Manor, a fourteen-year-old mansion built to resemble a castle, perched above an inlet of the bay. Quite an edifice: as though an amateur medievalist had gone crazy. Our room, "The Hall," has a twenty-one foot timbered ceiling, tapestries on the walls, massive furniture, a great fireplace, and a Gothic pointed window! Outside, clouds descended.

U.K. Trip, Day 19

Portstewart Strand, my favourite Northern Irish beach

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Today was busy for a Sabbath, much busier than our last. We rode with the McCs to church at Cloughmills RPC. We were so warmly welcomed there that one couple our age, Peter and Linda McK, invited us over after evening worship. The congregation is small but lively. At the McCs' house we ate a sumptuous lunch, complete with an elaborate dessert that involved cheesecake and chocolate sauce. 

After lunch Scott and I drove to Portstewart Strand, which we walked end-to-end. The beach was crowded with kids, body-boarders, jet skiiers, picnickers, and dog-walkers when we arrived, but on our way back the tide was coming in, and most people had left. I love this beach--its long, smooth curve of sand, Portstewart's roofs huddled at one end, and the cliffs of Donegal at the other, with Mussenden Temple perched on its headland between beach and cliffs like a clock on a shelf. (Of course Londonderry hides up the river behind Mussenden Temple.) The sky was covered with whorled clouds to the south, which gave light and water an unearthly silver pearliness as the long smooth waves flowed over the sand.

Since Scott drove us back to Cloughmills for evening worship, we missed the crazy Mr McC driving experience, which had made the road home from morning worship a rollercoaster. After evening worship we said good-bye to the McCs and went with Peter and Linda to their house. Their three wee kids were already in bed. We stayed with them until after half eleven. I think that if we were ever to move here, we'd be best friends with them as we got along famously on all fronts, discussing everything from West Wing to witnessing to Catholics. 

On our drive home, down winding, narrow country roads, we saw a badger running along the hedge beside us. It's a mercy we didn't get lost; if it hadn't been for the map Mrs McC lent us, we would definitely have lost our way somewhere in all the turnings and odd angles.

U.K. Trip, Day 18

Dunseverick Castle

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Thanks to our hostess's willingness to cook us a late breakfast, we actually rested this morning (the one flaw of a B&B, we've discovered, is having to get up and eat on someone else's schedule). So pleasant to wake with the lace curtains filtering the light, turning it silver over the pale blue walls. We intended today to drive along the coast and see what we could see, but we turned aside almost immediately this morning to visit Dunseverick Castle. Really it's only a ruined tower clinging to a promontory in the middle of a great bay of the land formed by two cliffs. Wild irises thick below. Windswept. Gulls wheeled to nests perched on the cliff faces opposite. 

We discovered a four-mile walking trail along the cliffs west toward Giant's Causeway, and, gluttons for punishment, we decided to go for it. A perfect walk, as it turned out, not strenuous, gently twining up and down, out and in, following the jutting clifftops closely. We gazed down into deep bays made by the sea, including Port Moon. Seagulls seemed to hover effortlessly far above the water. The cliffheads jutted away behind and before us like the prows of a fleet of great dark ships. We could see Scotland and Rathlin island far away against the blurred horizon, northward. Wind roughened our hair. A partly sunny sky, silver clouds tempering the light. We encountered a few sheep and cattle in nearby fields.

On and on, through the clear air, over the springy turf. The sea sighed on the rocks far below. The Causeway, then, seemed impossibly crowded when we finally reached it. Again, my head was full of wind and sea and sky and had no room for people. We poked around among the queer hexagonal columns, where we found tidal pools inhabited by translucent prawns, anemones red as blood clots, strange weeds curling upward like the spires of cities, and thick mats of glossy kelp. Tiny barnacles speckled the black rocks. 

We followed the herd of people up to the car park at last, and so out onto the road again. We walked the A2 back to our car (possibly not the safest idea in the world, but shorter than traversing the cliffs again). We drove to Dunluce Castle, where we spent the rest of the afternoon. Scott went dreamy-eyed and wandered around the ruins, following the very detailed map, reading bits of history to me, and wondering aloud what it must've been like to live here (cold, wet, lonely, and extremely precarious!). 

We climbed all over the old house, from gate towers to bakeries and up the spiral staircase. We stared up through chimneys, admired the glassless, stone-framed bay windows, and poked our heads into the ovens (no Sylvia Plath reenactment here, however). Wind soughed over the edges of broken rock and whistled through the wee clumps of flowers that sprouted from lintels and sills. Through windows and gun loops we could look straight down into the sea. The sound of water endlessly washing the rock. The eerie sense of being held inside a great stone bird, perched there, almost ready to take flight.

The castle was almost deserted, compared to the Causeway. We scrambled down under the cliff on which the castle sits, down to the sea cave under the castle. You can now go right into the cave itself, but the way is exceedingly steep, down under the rock. I perched in the mouth of the cave, staring, entranced, down into the great, high, arched, echoing space below. Down there the sea lapped endlessly on a sloping beach, daylight and blue water surging up against the rock. Thanks to the sea working away at this cave, though, the whole castle is gradually falling into the water, bit by bit.

We ate dinner at Smuggler's Inn near the Causeway. Their burgers turned out to be absolutely gigantic, two-patty affairs with cheese, bacon, fried onions, tomato, and lettuce. As we drove back to our B&B, we went through Bushmills. Before we could get up through the town because, lo and behold, another one of Northern Ireland's spontaneous, apparently ubiquitous parades was marching down the road. Bushmills Protestant Boys, all red-white-and-blue, fifes, drums, and banners. After it passed we drove back to our B&B to read. All this trip Scott has been obsessed with the Kate Bush song based on Wuthering Heights, and to his delight he found a copy of the novel on the sunroom bookshelf to read.

U.K. Trip, Day 17

Torr Head, Northern Ireland

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After another delicious breakfast, accompanied by Bach cello suites and Mozart flute concerti, we said good-bye to our hosts at the B&B and walked down to Waverly Bridge to catch the airport bus. Then, our Easy Jet flight back to Belfast. The airplane seemed to be largely occupied by a group of flashy, drunk, loud women, which was somewhat unpleasant. But in the airport, the woman who process our Avis car rental was extraordinarily kind and spoke with the same accent as Mrs W, which made me feel at home again.

We were given a Peugeot hatchback, black, brand-new. Scott evinced some trepidation, but we managed to leave the car park without mishap (and by the end of our stint with that car, we had added about 800 miles to it!). Today's goal: drive up to the north coast via the Glens of Antrim by way of Larne. 

We drove up through Glenarm and Glenariff, where we stopped at the Forest Park. The air smelled so clear, fresh, full of evergreen and gorse and wet grass smells under the high blue sky. The glens were gorgeous, wild and rugged. Fields with webbed patterns of hedges ran partway up their steep sides, with only brown fells above. Those high cliffs, and then the rich blue sea, so calm as to be almost waveless. In the Forest Park there were fuchsia bushes that were probably about twenty feet tall and in full bloom.

We drove through a handful of wee towns strung along the coast and as adorable as children's book illustrations. Narrow main streets lined with white terraced houses and shops, nestled at the mouths of the glens, with the great, jewel-green crags rising overhead, and the cerulean sea lapping the smooth curves of white beaches. Jelly-bean-coloured flags zig-zagged between the roofs above the main streets in celebration of the Olympics. 

The road wound up and up, and we traced it out to Torr Head. The car groaned and roared as it climbed roads steep as the roof of a house, twisting back and forth, up, up, up, down, down, right along the cliffs' edges. Scott would have to dodge the car to one side in order to avoid vans or other cars coming the opposite direction. Once we got stuck behind a schoolbus. Torr Head is a knob of rock thrust out into the sea, reached by a long lane down from the cliffs. An abandoned RAF station stands there, a ruin eerie in its recentness, all the doors and windows burst in, graffiti everywhere. It was the cliffs themselves, though, that held our gaze. From the Head they run north and south, crag after crag. Far away, to the northeast, are the islands and Scotland, which in that clear air seemed really very close. It was a pristine afternoon, cool, brilliant. 

We drove on up, through Ballycastle, and eventually managed, despite the ill-signposted country roads, to find our next B&B, Island Corr, on a dairy farm near Bushmills. Three wooly collie dogs and the woman of the house greeted us. It's a modern farmhouse. Our hostess chatted away to us in her own light patter, brought us a tray of tea and buns in the upstairs sunroom, and generally made sure we were as comfortable as we could wish. We sat in the sunroom, enjoying our very Northern Irish snack, appreciating being out of the car.

The strangeness set in as we drove through Bushmills, over to Portrush, and so to the McC's house for tea at seven. The sun was just beginning to set. Dunluce Castle hovered weirdly on the edge of its cliffs, iridescent with the fading day, crowned with that strange bloom of light so that the ruined, roofless stone walls seemed more like shining curtains hung, billowing, on the land's edge. Beyond, out at sea, the great rocks looked like half-sunken ships. Past the golf course. Through the town. Up the road, past Loguestown Road, turning right at the Bellemont Caravan Park sign, and so on down to the farm. Perhaps it was partly so strange because, though I haven't been here for quite some time, and never drove here, I was able to direct us without a map, just by the landmarks.

In true higgledy-piggledy McC fashion, fresh concrete had just been poured at the entrance of the drive, so we jumped out and walked up the lane to the house. Mrs M met us at the kitchen door. Reuben and Eleanor were in the kitchen. As Eleanor and Mrs M put the finishing touches on dinner, we talked all about our trip, the boys' exams, Eleanor's trip to Colorado this summer, etc. We ate a delicious meal, of course, and caught up on all the family's adventures. Eleanor's sense of humour and timing when telling a story has become impeccable; we were all in stitches. 

After dessert Reuben took us out to the back patio to shoot his new recurve bow. A golden evening, green grass. Reuben let us try it out, and Scott loved it. Mr and Mrs M, Nathanael, and Reuben gave us a tour of the farm, from the enormous sheds where the cattle were eating to the massive new slurry tank, to the wee calf huts, to the gigantic new sheds, extensions of the old ones, to the vast gleaming milk tanker, ready for tomorrow's truck. All very prosperous. The smell of molasses and maize in the high-ceilinged feed barn. The rough, sticky, wet calf tongues on my fingers. The lowing of the cattle and stamp of hooves on the concrete floors; the bleating of the calves.

Indoors we sat and talked until after eleven. The McCs had just been to California last year, and when Scott discovered that, they could swap all sorts of tales about the beaches and landmarks. It was a fine, clear night when we left at last and let ourselves into our lodging again.

Another interjection, this time for some gems from Flannery O'Connor:

"The creative action of the Christian's life is to prepare his death in Christ. It is a continuous action in which this world's goods are utilized to the fullest, both positive gifts and... 'passive diminishments'...."

"Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept the fact that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy expression. The modes of good have to be satisfied with a cliche or a smoothing-down that will soften their real look."

From "A memoir of Mary Ann" in Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

U.K. Trip, Day 16

Edinburgh streets

~

It was raining steadily this morning, a disappointment since we had planned to hike Arthur's Seat today. In fact it only rained harder and harder, so by the time we'd walked down to Grassmarket, my jeans were soaked above the knee. We returned to the National Museum and perused their Reformation and Medieval Church sections. One jewel: a gorgeous tapestry of the Arma Christi, the threads still vibrantly tinted, glowing. Another jewel: communion tokens, inscribed, "Holiness to the Lord." 

We took our time there, then sauntered down to Armchair Books to have a last look-round before walking back to our room, where we ate a very late lunch. We spent the afternoon reading while rain beat against the broad windowpanes. I finished The Help. 

In the evening we walked to Reverie again for tea, in the rain. It was crowded this time, the windows fogged over. We ordered a mussel pot, four pounds of mussels steamed in garlic, white wine, and butter, and garnished with fresh parsley, with bread to soak up the sauce. Another new food for me, and a delicious one--nutty, buttery, smooth. We walked back to our room in the rain, up Blacket Avenue, which we've come to love for its greenness and stillness--the elegant, protective, brooding silence of the huge old trees in the rain (with the barren city all round; no tree-lined avenues in Edinburgh!). 

We packed, and Scott finished "The Turn of the Screw." Back to Northern Ireland tomorrow.

U.K. Trip, Day 15

The National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

~

Today's adventures took place under another leaden sky, technically, though most of our excursions involved being indoors: in the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. After breakfast we walked the long way up the road back to the Royal Mile, which was already busy with tourists. We wound our way to the Mound and spent all morning and the early afternoon in the National Gallery. It was strange to be in a gallery with such a rich colour scheme in its own right--deep reds, greens, blues on the walls and floors--in contrast to American galleries where the walls are so often a shade of off-white. 

So many paintings! For me the highlights of the gallery included 

     Greuze's "Girl with a Dead Canary" (over which I've poured in Michael Fried's Absorption and Theatricality), which is even more delicate and lovely in person

    Cursiter, "Twilight" (1914), an eerie, balanced evocation of light, dark, and reflection

    Sargent's sultry "Lady Agnew"

    El Greco's "A Fable"

and by far 

    Velasquez's "An Old Woman Cooking Eggs," with its gloriously varied portrayals of light and the strangely evocative faces of woman and boy

    Botticelli's "Ave Maria," of Mary kneeling before Christ, with all Botticelli's characteristic lucid grace.

For Scott, highlights included a small Watteau and a luminous portrait of Mme. de Pompadour by Boucher, the sitter's eyes captivating above billows of blue silk, flowers, and pearls.

Outside, we munched on sandwiches and salt-and-vinegar crisps for lunch. We spent the rest of the afternoon at the National Portrait Gallery, where we remained until it closed at 5pm. The magnificent, newly-restored neo-Gothic structure, built of red sandstone, houses a fairly good collection. All the portraits from the 1500s - 1700s were very tastefully arranged so as to give the visitor an excellent sketch of Scottish/English politics during that troubled era. Scott moved very slowly, absorbing. Our favourite part of the gallery was the series of portraits of James III, covering his lifespan. 

I also found arresting the ornate entrance gallery. Here, a ceiling painted in rich blue with gilt stars portraying the constellations looked down on an upper gallery with murals from Scottish history: great victories, heroes, and heroines. Just below, bordering the divide between ground floor and upper storey, was a fresco full of Scottish dignitaries, a throng that spanned history, crowded together full-length against a rich gilt background. Their clothes were colourful, matched to their eras, and their faces were regal, serene. All done in a gorgeous, stylised, late 19th century hand. Really lovely.

From there we walked to St. Giles, which is too cluttered for me. Tourists everywhere. Scott was fascinated by the war memorials, though, especially to Scottish soldiers who fell in India. An organ had just been installed--the incongruity....

We ate tea at Reverie, an eclectic bar near our B&B: slightly French cuisine (mussels), traditional pub feel (scuffed country tables, leather, old guys sitting and talking, tennis on TV), and retro, quasi-reggae, quasi-1950s music, which made Scott feel at home. Then a quiet evening, listening to Corelli on Scott's phone, watching the fog gradually descend over the nearby crags, and reading.

U.K. Trip, Day 14

Armchair Books, Edinburgh, one of our new favourite haunts

~

When we ventured downstairs for breakfast, we found ourselves in yet another high-ceilinged, elegant room. White tapestry wallpaper in a pattern of dove-grey vines and yellow flowers, with original landscape miniatures hung above the sideboard. Baroque music was playing from an old set in the corner, which delighted us both, of course. Gladstone House easily takes the prize for classiest B&B on our whole trip. 

After breakfast, which followed the usual pattern, but with one anomaly--

     juice

     fruit/muesli

    tea/coffee

    toast

    pancakes and bacon (shock, horror, not a fry! And, from a British perspective, pancakes for breakfast--weird!)--

we set out. A chilly, overcast day. Edinburgh is quiet even in the late morning. We wandered down toward Grassmarket, past The Meadows. We stepped into Greyfriars Kirk and spent awhile strolling over the wet grass outside, perusing the monuments set into the grey kirkyard walls. Bitterly, I noticed that the Covenanter Prison has become part of a tourist attraction, the "City of the Dead" tour. 

Inside the kirk itself, a wee old woman detached herself from a group of docents gossiping in a corner to welcome us. She pointed out that the Gaelic church meets here now, too, and expressed astonishment at their old-fashioned (accapela) singing. The complete detachment from the faith jolted Scott and me, creating a sense of disquiet that strengthened when we entered the small visitors' centre, a room at the back of the sanctuary. Here all the emphasis lay on the church and the Covenanters as champions of democracy and human rights, not of God and His glory. The Bibles were in a glass display case with communion tokens and snuff boxes, and the only quote from the Bible was an unattributed sentence from John 17. 

The church itself was lovely in the plain, Covenanter way. Stained glass with geometric designs or illustrations of Christ's parables. A lovely organ - ! - proudly installed in 1990. No respect for the past, not even a sense that this naive appropriate might be misguided. Just the bland equalizing of past values and faith with present, humanistic ecumenicalism. 

We walked down the lane toward Grassmarket, stopping at a lovely wee artisans' shop with jewelery and prints. Then through Grassmarket itself, noting the Covenanter monument. We laughed at all the cafes that have sprung up everywhere, thick as fungus on a log. The Castle loomed on its rise behind the buildings. We spent the rest of the morning/early afternoon browsing around bookshops in the West Port district. Armchair Books was by far the best - two terraced houses converted into bookshops, both parts packed to the ceiling with books, books, books on tippy shelves and boards splayed overhead, books in piles on the floor, books on shelves on every wall. A bewildering array of lighting (mostly contractors' lights on extension cords) dangled overhead, and on the ends of the shelves were tiny plackards and notes of a sarcastically humorous nature. The place seemed to be run by two very quiet, neat young guys who kept very much to themselves, pasting pages into old books. We fingered endless gilt bindings, admired woodcuts.... The musty smell.

Eventually, we ate the lunch we'd packed outside. Then we went to the National Museum and explored the pre-900 galleries. The Roman altars were weirdly the most evocative, seeming to speak our language from a world of organization and right angles. Scott made endless fun of a series of bizarre bronze statues, human/robotic, that held Celtic jewelry in display boxes embedded in various parts of their anatomy. I've never seen an exhibit of prehistoric artifacts done so strangely. Also there was a Viking skeleton, displayed as found in a pit tomb set into the museum floor. Scott commented on the strange alterity that has to accumulate before such a display of human remains is acceptable--everyone would be disgusted if people from Greyfriars cemetery were dug up and displayed like this!

We looked at the Scottish exhibits from 900 - 1600 as well, including the lovely, odd Lewis chessmen with their blank stares and intricate clothes. When the museum closed at 5pm, we visited another bookshop, and then concluded the day at a Chinese restaurant, where we were the sole sit-in clientele. Good food, though. A tank of pirhanas sat in one corner of the room, and Chinese pop played on the radio. Our waiter was morbidly impressed by the pirhanas and showed us, when we paid our bill, how he had come in this morning to discover that they had eaten part of one of their fellows last night.

Back in our room, Scott laughed himself silly over captions he created for photos of me with the big bronze statues. He read aloud to me Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw," which we'd bought this morning in a perfectly-sized paperback edition. We also bought a lovely copy of The Vicar of Wakefield and a small volume of French poetry. Scott managed to get through about a third of the story this evening, while I sat curled up beside him, listening to his even voice and watching the fog descend to cover the shoulders of Arthur's Seat. Then we read our own books; he started the Petite Anthologie des poetes Francais, and occasionally he read bits of the French to me. I read The Help, much less classy, but still enjoyable (on loan from Missy--it will have had quite the voyage before I give it back to her).

Another break from our regularly-scheduled programming:

It rained yesterday! Triumph!

U.K. Trip, Day 13

Our room in Gladstone House, Edinburgh

~

The early sunrise always wakes me up long before I'm ready; this happened frequently on the hike, too--I'd wake up at four, half four, five, six, half six, as the light grew stronger and stronger outside. Thanks to yesterday's rest, this staccato sleep-pattern wasn't quite as onerous as it was on the hike. From my pillow I watched blurred colours growing out on the firth. At breakfast this morning we sat with an elderly British couple, diary farmers, the wife very chatty, and a middle-aged Swedish couple, very taciturn, who had just finished the Wall. 

Afterward we packed up and waited outside in the warm sunshine for the Carlisle bus. We watched a man washing windows at a tiny pub on the corner and swallows darting in and out of their nests under the eaves of the row houses across from the bus stop. So began our trip back to civilization, an hour's ride over ground we'd so arduously covered on Saturday. Everyone on the bus seemed to know each other and were busy waving and nodding as we entered Carlisle. Slow city traffic. Then the bustle of the city centre, the train station, and a long, excruciatingly hot wait on the platform. I was sick and felt worse still on the train, so I missed the majestic entrance into the Scottish Lowlands, and was nearly ill in Waverly Station when we finally reached it. 

Crowds, crowds, crowds, all packed together underground, and then up a long series of escalators. At the top, the cold wind took our breath away. Sunny here, still, but far colder than the north of England somehow. We made our way over the bridge and up to the Royal Mile. Scott was dazzled by the crowds--American students attempting to look as hipster as possible, Indian and Asian tourists, Scots decked out with kilts and bagpipes, knots of teens in weird tight clothing.... We dodged down a side street and into a pub, The Advocate, where Scott happily consumed an enormous plate of fish-and-chips while I watched, still green around the gills. 

We found a coffee shop up the road, where I ordered peppermint coffee, and Scott an Americano, and we sat and people-watched for a good hour-and-a-half or so. I felt better slowly. It was a highly amusing late afternoon pastime; together, we maintained a snarky commentary on the peculiar garb of all the passers-by. (Although I daresay we looked odd enough ourselves, with our enormous packs!) Scott commented dryly that Edinburgh seems to want to be San Francisco--at least, that all the failed American hipsters want it to be San Francisco since they've come here to try to be cool. 

After awhile, we moved on toward Gladstone House, our next B&B, stopping at a Tesco along the way for supplies. Gladstone House is down a fairly busy street near Arthur's Seat. Our host greeted us and showed us to our room. It's right at the front of the house, with an enormous bay window that gives a gorgeous view of the craggy hilltop over the roofs of a school. Scott and I relaxed and tried to plan the Northern Irish portion of our trip, which commences at the end of this week. From the bay window, I could look down into the neighbour's neighbour's garden, where a large rosebush was covered with a magnificent flush of cream-yellow buds and blossoms. The bush was taller than the ten-foot garden wall and nodded above the footpath; its great blooms almost glowed as the slow, meditative, silver dusk began to descend on the street. 

We ate a late tea after Scott had found our accommodation for next week. Our meal included a giant mango, which we'd picked up at Tesco on a lark. Scott had to saw it into dripping, ragged, juicy pieces with the only knife we had--the tiny knife on the corkscrew our host had lent us. We used a saucer from the tea tray to catch the juice, which rapidly filled it. We laughed ourselves silly over the mess, but oh, it was delicious. A quiet evening of thumbing through guidebooks.

U.K. Trip, Day 12

Sunset from our window over the firth

~

Today was a day of rest for us, a day spent in our room in the B&B. When we arrived down in the dining room this morning, who should we find but the same trio who'd been on the train in Newcastle with us! We were all seated at one big table, so we chatted to them as we ate breakfast. Apparently the two men had hiked the Wall, while the woman had driven down to pick them up at this end. 

After a convivial farewell with our fellow-hikers, Scott and I hobbled back to Bowness for church. Scott had twisted his ankle, so we went slowly, enjoying the bright, cool, breezy morning. Church at St. Michael's was a somewhat surreal experience. We arrived twenty minutes early and entered the church through the low Norman door. Cool inside. Stone walls and wooden ceiling, arches, a few stained-glass windows, a few war memorials, a few funerary plaques. 

The congregation trickled in as the minister rang the bell--above the twitter of British voices and the peal of the organ tinned the high, clear bell. Only about twenty people in the long nave. Liturgy, familiar to Scott, but strange to me, and a sermon which was nearly as discouraging as it could have been: the minister, sleepy-eyed in his white robes, finished his message with a query as to whether the Spirit still exists or still works in the world now. An unsettling way to conclude a Pentecost message. 

Disheartened, we hobbled back. Scott dozed. I read my Bible. Outside, meadowlarks vied with each other; indoors, our hostess was cleaning the neighbouring rooms. We ate lunch, PB&J scrounged from the supplies we'd bought in Carlisle. Then I went for a stroll on the beach. After scrambling down over springy grass tussocks, I reached the hard-packed sand and so walked very slowly over the long flats to the wet, brown sand. I poked at seaweed, examined crab skeletons, and collected tiny bivalves like pink butterflies. Wave-forms left in the firm sand cushioned my tired feet. Overhead, a huge expanse of blue sky; beyond and to either side, flat sand and the blue firth. Gulls and terns cried to each other with human voices. 

I waited out there under the uninterrupted sky, watching the tide turn and begin to rush inland. A strong wind blew latte-coloured foam from the waves over the sand. Fast-flowing. I remembered the two Margarets at Wigtown, just across the firth. 

Back in the room, we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing--reading, listening to sermons, dozing. The cool breeze played through the windows. Quiet, fresh sunshine lingered on the wood floor. We ate tuna for tea and listened to music and talked about the Romans and their emperors, the Wall, indie music, and California. Out on the firth, the tide was leaving. A great flock of seabirds hovered over the water, white wings flashing as they dove for fish. The pale blue deepened to cobalt and cerulean. The wind whistled through the window frame. Night fell.

U.K. Trip, Day 11
Hadrian's Wall, Day 6

Solway Firth

~

We bid farewell to Warwick House after a sturdy breakfast of cream-cheese-and-smoked salmon omelets. Another gorgeous, warm day, with a strong north-northeast breeze (freshening steadily). We walked up through Carlisle's centre, past the castellated town hall set among crooked streets, past all the standard British amenities--chippies, Marks & Spencer, Topshop, travel agents, and a preponderance of hairdressers. Even a bookshop. 

Rounding a corner, we came upon Carlisle cathedral, a splendid red sandstone structure. We took a few moments to step inside and were abundantly rewarded as we passed through the narrow wood-paneled hall from the old Norman church into the "new" nave: a glory of morning sunlight poured through curtains of stained glass, illuminating the vivid primary colours on ceiling and carved misericords and organ--deep red and blue, clean gold and white, angels, fleur-de-lis, trumpetes, stars. Shining carving and gilding in the sunlight. The misericords were dark wood carved into a forest of spires and flourishes crps as ice crystals. Scott harangued against Oliver Cromwell for wrecking the earlier Norman nave as we reentered the sunshine outside. 

We wove through the cathedral close, through Tullie House grounds (where we unexpectedly encountered Philippians 4 inscribed on a plaque in a pedestrian tunnel under the road), and up to the castle, and so on past the crowded football fields, down through Bitts Park, to follow the River Eden again. We couldn't figure out why there were so many people on the football fields til Scott remembered that today is Saturday...!

And so we walked along the river, gradually back into farmland. We followed a winding path that ducked and dodged through pastures, down to the river, up into fields, across farmyards or village greens, back down to the river, and so on. At last we left the river and stuck to a track through fields, long sandy lanes between tremendously tall hawthorn hedges. Always the wind, singing eerily in powerlines overhead or kicking dust into our faces or rippling through grass.

In a village we stopped to admire a church; a girl riding by on a horse said hello. We came to a weird line of oak and hawthorn trees intermingled in a field, following the vallum--huge trees hollowed but still blossoming, creaking in the wind, like giant pillars left to rot on the close-cropped grass. For lunch we stopped on a bench in Burgh-by-Sands, an extremely quaint town. The bench was just under the parish signboard, which was plastered with notices about village celebrations for the Queen's Jubilee. 

In the afternoon, the long, long slog across Solway marsh to Drumburgh. Endless wind roaring over the fens, flats, and sand plains, roaring in the scrubby arc of hawthorns that hedged the south side of an old railway embankment--our trail. The embankment ran beside the current road. We had to detour for steers on the embankment, but the sheep we encountered scattered in fear. Out on the marsh, the tide was rolling in slowly, slowly over the sand. Cars passed frequently on the road. Far away by the water, two people sat while a very happy border collie ran circles around them. Beyond the water lay Scotland, severe ridges adorned with white windmills.

At Drumburgh we took to fields and gravelly bridleways again. We had to beware of stinging nettles that grow around the kissing gates and stiles--nothing new for us. And then suddenly we were out of fields, across a road by a caravan park, and plunging into a long, low tunnel made by wind-writhen oak, hawthorn, gorse, and ash. Stunted but thick-growing. To the left of the trail, black pools of water and cattails. Ahead, the long sunlit tunnel, narrow, secret, with the wind booming over. To the right, between scrub and trees, glimpses of the sea. Whitecaps. Gulls and terns. A sailboat. The smell of gorse, like curry and cinnamon.

Then out at last, up past holiday cottages, to our last stop, Heskett House, an old stone building well-maintained but redecorated in modern freehand style. Our hostess, who looks like an Irish fiddler (and is, in fact, a fiddler, but a British one), welcomed us and showed us our room. It's on the corner, its windows open to the sea. Sharp wind over the open sill. We showered, drank tea, and then walked the very last mile-and-a-half to Bowness-on-Solway, the end of the wall.

The trail followed the road here, up through the village, which was completely empty--a narrow street between white-washed, crooked, narrow houses. The path dodged right, and we found ourselves on the old Edwardian promenade--an overgrown alley behind cottages. A wee arbor there marks the end/beginning of the trail. Sunshine welcomed us as we stepped out of the trees and into the arbor. The end of the way for us. We paused, enjoyed, appreciated, celebrated.

Then--to the King's Arms for tea. Apparently that's where the whole village was because the place was fairly crowded with people eating and hanging out, watching TV, etc. We sat in a corner by windows with lace valances and ate fish (for Scott) and lamb (for me). The pub around us felt like a glorified living room; a football match was being broadcasted tonight.

After we ate, we walked around the corner to the wee Anglican church where we'll worship tomorrow. We wandered among the headstones for awhile. Peaceful. The wind had subsided, and the evening sunlight lay gently on the rows and rows of tall, flat stones. They were weathered, covered with lichen; we tried to make out the inscriptions. One, "Waits for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ," really touched Scott. The quietude and emptiness of the place after the wind-filled marshes and the noisy pub.

We walked back to our B&B in Port Carlisle, only to discover that our hosts had left us a bottle of Chardonnay and an enormous bunch of red-purple lilacs to celebrate our honeymoon! We lay back and laughed about our trip and inspected our bruised nails, blistered toes, and calloused heels. The sun set very, very slowly over the firth. The sky faded gently from vivid salmons and periwinkles to shades of tangerine and cobalt into deep navy and silver with a hint of rust. The wind whistled easily through the (closed) windows. We read. The last light glimmered out on the wet sand.

Done. Done. Done.

U.K. Trip, Day 10
Hadrian's Wall, Day 5

Sandy lanes and farmyards today

~

After another English breakfast (the full country fry), we set out. Overnight, the breeze had strengthened, and all day it followed us, fanned us. It's unusual in this country to have an east wind, we'd learned from our host on Wednesday; most often, people walking from east to west have the wind in their faces and are miserable.

A day of farms and pastures. Cows and horses more than sheep. The Wall was buried under tree roots or turf, and sometimes the path was even directly on top of it--as it lay buried under short grass. Lots of narrow lanes, tiny villages, and alleys behind gardens or through clusters of milking sheds. Pervasive farmyard smells--silage, stale milk, manure, hay. Also tall hawthorn hedges. We crossed several clear brooks on narrow bridges under thick trees. A whole day of this--of wind running before us through long grass in lush fields, of the Penines shadowy to the south, of wood pigeons clattering above us, of blackbirds singing from fences, of crows scouring pastures, of daisies, dandelions, and rich earth.

We paused for lunch in an open field, ate our snacks, and pressed on to Carlisle. The path into town takes you past the weird Georgian folly of Rickerby, past Rickerby mansion, and into Rickerby park, which is a great, open green space dotted with enormous old trees. Cows grazed on the common, to Scott's disgust, but none of the many cyclists, dog-walkers, sunbathers, or lounging highschoolers seemed to mind. We crossed the River Eden on a graceful suspension bridge, where the river flowed below, shallow, clear, and fast. The cattle were splashing in the water. We walked in a long loop around a golf course and found ourselves deposited into Carlisle city centre, just by the university.

It was so strange to be in a city again. Short as today's hike was, from 10:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m., we were grimy and windblown. My eyes were still full of crags, and my ears were still attuned to the silences of wood and hillside. The city seemed rude, cluttered, and filthy. 

We stayed at Warwick Lodge, an old school turned guesthouse--a huge Victorian corner terrace house in a neighborhood of late 19th century brick row houses. Like Renwick House. Our hosts welcomed us with open arms and even offered to wash our laundry (the "bilges," as Scott dubbed them). Our room was very spacious with a great bay window overlooking the street.

After showers we walked up Warwick Road to the Andalusian for dinner. It was very elegant--Spanish tiles, sketches of horses, clean, white walls accented with corbels. I ate clams and squid for the first time, mixed in with pasta. After our meal, we hunted up a Spar for tinned food to eat on Sabbath day. In our room again, I read The Help, and Scott talked to his mother on Facetime--a quiet evening.

U.K. Trip, Day 9
Hadrian's Wall, Day 4

Thirlwall Castle

~

A series of kindnesses from people along the trail punctuated our hike today.

Kindness #1: Our host at Vallum Lodge drove us up to Steel Rigg car park so that we didn't have to hike the mile-and-a-half or so up to the trail (and it would have been straight up, too, right up the backs of the cliffs). So we had a strong start as we headed west over the crags again. Vallum Lodge lies just about in the middle of the craggy portion of the trail, so we spent all morning and part of the early afternoon repeating yesterday's steep up, steep down again and again. We reached the highest trig point in the morning and could look back and ahead along the spine of the crags, north over the sparse moors, and south over rocky slopes. At one high point we encountered three black horses poking their heads over the Wall--I've no idea how they climbed so high; their pasture lay on the moor side, the north side, so it must've been insanely steep.

Then gradually we reentered farmland again. Hot walking over slick, wet grass. We crossed a Roman fort in someone's front pasture, horses and sheep grazing above walls, thresholds, a Roman altar with an amphora carved into the side. We paused in a wood just above the fort for a breather. I grew to love woods even more today for their cool quietness. We passed a disused quarry and several Roman milecastles.

More crags again. The Wall cut long swathes like a circling hawk across the tops of the huge hills. The highest section of the Wall was here--about ten or eleven feet still standing, which is quite unusual. It makes sense, though, because that particular portion is actually down on a cliff face and therefore hidden behind a steep rise from anyone who might be looking for some spare stone to pinch for a farmhouse or a castle. 

For lunch we stopped just below the perilously-perched Arthur's Turret (so-named for King Arthur, though of course it's actually a Roman wall turret). We ate snacks and over-priced ice cream from a National Trust shop that happened to be the only bit of civilization around. Their ginger ice cream was surprisingly delicious.

The hardest part of the day was early afternoon. We walked right under the ruins of Thirlwall Castle on its knoll--we could tell that we were back in civilization again; it's entirely built of Hadrian's Wall stone--over a brook, over railroad tracks, and into the vallum ditch. Long, hot, merciless sunshine beat down on us. Thanks to the unhelpful National Trust, which doesn't provide drinking water, we had very little water. As you might imagine, this heightened our discomfort, particularly for Scott, who isn't used to the heat.

Kindness #2: Just past Gilsland (a small village where school was just letting out; the path led us right by the P1s being picked up by their mothers), we turned aside in some desperation to Willowford Farm, which we reached by crossing a broad field on the path. It's a working farm but also a B&B. A young guy, the owner, just happened to be sitting on the farmhouse threshold with his border collie when we walked up. When Scott told him our plight, he ushered us right into the kitchen to refill our water bottles. He and his wife--ruddy, sweet, completely kind people--made our day.

So on, past the remains of the Roman Wall and bridge in the valley below the farm. The river has changed its course; we crossed it on the new Willowford/Irthing bridge, a sleek, modern span. Late sunshine illuminated the leaves on the beech trees, and the river valley had a dazzle, an abundance in that light--narrow, flat, peaceful, as it wound between high, tree-lined ridges to the north and south. To the north, thunderheads were building.

We slogged up to Birdoswald, rested in the shadow of the fort's tourist centre, and so on... and on... and on.... Back into fields now, through pastures where we scared lambs, through more lovely beech woods, past hummocks and hillocks that clearly hid other Roman sites. Past turrets, milecastles, and the great ruined signal tower that looks south toward the majestic Penines. Apparently the Picts were less of a concern here than the local Brigantes.

My eyes began to play tricks; distant trees looked like horses, and we were both so footsore. But now we were going down, down, down, always more down than up, following the gentle curves of the small hills. Oaks joined sycamores and beeches in copses. Tiny daisies and dandelions freckled the pastures. The smells of earth, sheep, cattle; the occasional "hello" to a fellow walker. Sheep bleating constantly--lambs are noisy creatures!

Past the wee village of Banks, hardly more than a cluster of terraced houses around a crossroads in a wet, wooded valley. In a lane past the village, I saw a pheasant, tottering across the road. We also had our last sight of the Wall, buried under the roots of an immense sycamore tree. Then up, up, up to Walton, an almost nauseatingly picturesque village on a hilltop, complete with a church under tall, lacy trees and a village green with a fete being set up--tents, giggling children. 

Kindness #3: Hoping we weren't lost, we walked through Walton and were rewarded at last with Low Rigg Farm, an operational dairy farm cum B&B. Our hostess showed us to our room (spacious but rustic) and kindly agreed to cook a meal for us. Through the dining room window, we could see a pasture of content Holsteins shadowed by a great copper beech, all gilded by the evening sunlight.

Quite a day: from Windshields to Walton, from magnificent to commonplace, from wall as a glorious luxury, an accent to cliffs already impervious to attack, to Wall as a quiet collection of grey stones bedded down in green pastures.

U.K. Trip, Day 8
Hadrian's Wall, Day 3

The famous sycamore gap at the end of today.

~

From Portgate to Vallum Lodge was our hike today. The proprietor of the Wheatsheaf very kindly gave us a lift from Corbridge to Portgate since Corbridge itself is three miles or so south of the Wall. That lift probably saved us since I'm not sure we would've made it to Vallum Lodge in time for tea (or anything, for that matter) if we hadn't shaved those three miles off what was already a nearly eighteen-mile day.

Since I wrote this journal entry at the conclusion of a very strenuous day, it's pretty sparse. The morning was sunny, warm, and breezy. Overall, our path today consisted of a string of milecastles, towers, and forts, most notably including Chesters and Housesteads. Black Carts began the real section of wall for us, after we ate lunch in the early afternoon. The general trend of the trail was upward, from the verdant lowlands--castles, pastures, fields--to barren crags inhabited only by the occasional sheep and hooded crows. It's no wonder that so much more of the wall survives up there since the crags are so steep as to be uninhabitable. 

At the start of the day, we enjoyed the shade of conifer plantations and woods in creek beds. Tangles of roots. Unfortunately, a lot of the early portion of the day also included some extensive road walking, our least favorite part of the trail since British roads have no shoulder and no footpath beaten alongside--hard on the feet, therefore, and harrowing, since cars tend to come whizzing from one direction or another around tight bends. One section of road walking was mitigated by turning out to be along a lovely wee country lane that skirted an estate and followed a fast, clear brook under deep trees. Soon after, under the lea of that wood, we encountered our first Roman wall tower. We could still see the indentation for the door hinge in the threshold stone. 

We walked up into Chesters, which includes one of the best-preserved Roman forts--past a waterwheel, over the massive bridge, past the fort itself, and past a gigantic 19th-century mansion house (complete with stable block) that was up for sale. Into fields again. We lunched on a grassy bank in a cow pasture high above Chesters, which was quite possibly one of my favourite stops on our whole trip. Something about the long, warm hike through woods and fields up to that ridge, and then the pause under the low hawthorn trees, and the simple food we ate--Spanish oranges that shot spumes of juice--and having our packs off, and our feet bare to the cool green grass....

The path wound up past an evergreen thicket, and there was Black Carts, another sinuous spine of wall stretching down the hillside.

After that: wild, stern midafternoon. Bricolitia and its Mithraic temple on a desolate, wind-dazzled hilltop. Mile after mile of hilltop, the land growing wilder to either side. On the left, it tended to slope down more gently, a sheer swallow's wing slant into vast distant valleys (bordered far, far away by the Pennines). On the right, it tended to slope more steeply so that we seemed to be walking on the ridgepole of a roof. A military jet roared past, almost skimming the moor. We trudged by chunks of stone abandoned by the Roman masons, too hard to cut. 

After the next milecastle, the land became thoroughly wild. To the left, the steep slopes rose and fell like the backs of Atlantic breakers, chopped into huge fields by drystone walls, and falling into that valley, at the bottom of which sparkled the indefatigable B6318. Beyond the highway, it rose into infinite blue, richer and richer as the sun sank. Sheep, ubiquitous.

To the right--cliff. Those great hills ended abruptly in sheer falls, rocky escarpments tumbling hundreds of feet to empty moors far, far below. Cattle way down there, and farmhouses. To the north up there, hills rose again, blotted by occasional oblongs of dark pine forest. Loneliness. The clear, pure, high air. A cool wind. The vast sky above those great cliffs. Ahead of us the cliffs marched, head beyond head, like the faces of a line of gigantic cavalry horses rallied against the north. Sheep bleated and hooded crows cried to each other; I heard a nest of them twittering in one cliff face above the last loch we passed today. Also, meadowlarks, irrepressible, mounting up, up, up, singing to that vast, empty sky. 

And of course, our constant companion now, the indomitable Wall. Steep up and down it ran; after Housesteads it was so steep that the path required stairs to chase it. Of course, all this time our muscles ached, our mouths burned, our packs weighed on our shoulders, and the sun blazed in our faces. We stumbled downhill and scrambled uphill.

The trail took us through Sewingshields Woods, a gorgeous patch of sycamores, their elegant limbs and roots echoing each other's patterns. Also, through a pine wood above a loch, where the path ran so close to the edge of the cliff that Scott nearly perished of fright when I paused to take a picture of the loch far below.

My journal entry for this afternoon can't do it justice at all. Perhaps it's the sheer volume: we climbed every single one of those cliff faces (and encountered many other hikers along the way), but there's no way to account for the ups and downs, the panting and pausing for breath, the stunned awe at the top, the terrifyingly vertiginous struggle down--and the constant repetition of that process, which resulted in as much emotional tension as physical exertion.

Seeing Sycamore Gap was a glorious moment because it meant that we were almost done, almost done--all we had to do was hike down the slope from the trail to Vallum Lodge. My feet nearly killed me for that last mile. The sun was setting; it was nearly eight o'clock. At Vallum Lodge, our hostess showed us our room--small but very elegant in the mild British way, comfortable. We ate tea at the Twice Brewed Inn down the road. Steak pie. 

When we left the Inn to walk back to the Lodge, the sun was nearly gone. The long, grey backs of the cliffs sloped upward, grey as a slate roof in the dusk, with a couple of stone houses huddled at their backs. Above them, the sky was forget-me-not blue, pearl-and-rose clouds skeined across in an iridescent web. 

I was particularly struck by how the landscapes we saw today reflected God's character, His sheer love of variety. White hawthorn flowers, yellow gorse flowers, tiny white daisies, forget-me-nots, dandelions. Wee lambs with their mothers; ravens soaring down the wind. The deep, cool waters of the sedge-crusted loch near day's end; the clear, high majesty of the cliffs in the afternoon; the rich pastureland this morning.

U.K. Trip, Day 7
Hadrian's Wall, Day 2

Rape Field

~

Downstairs for breakfast this morning, our hostess served up an enormous French press of coffee, giving the lie to all my warnings about the British and their coffee. We ate a full country breakfast (we learned to hate them by the end of the trip, but that was all in the future), which included thick bacon, eggs, toast, and black pudding. 

The church bells rang the hour as we walked out of Wylam, down the lovely wooded lane we'd come up yesterday. Cool. Clear. Sun through young trees. Birds trilling. The Tyne buried behind thickets to the right; a golf course to our left. We slogged up the hill to Heddon-on-the-Wall, a long, slow trek, which was greatly mitigated by our first mature woodlands, great beeches, elms, and sycamores, which threw deep shade over the rutted track.

At last, we emerged past an old farmhouse into modern neighborhoods. "It's a lovely morning," a wee old woman remarked to her friend as we walked through the village on the hilltop to the first real stretch of wall--a great, sinuous backbone of stone curving alongside a horse pasture.

Then downhill, out into open countryside. Field after field, all morning. We followed the B6318 all day. A thoughtful 18th-century general decided that Hadrian's Wall would make an excellent army road foundation, so the road is actually built on top of the wall. The trail usually keeps to the ditch beside the road--in other words, the ditch the Romans built in front of the wall. On the other side of the road is the vallum, the ditch behind the wall that was probably used by the Romans for transport. 

Oh, the lovely, lovely countryside! The first part of the day and the last part were the best. At first, we walked through fields of sheep, which bleated and gazed at us curiously from the shade provided by hawthorn hedges. We passed Vindobala, the hummocks and mounds showing where the Roman fort still lies buried in a paddock behind disused cattle sheds. Then the path ran right beside a field of rape, which smelled like daffodils, the showy flowers viridescent against the sky. A bridge over a brook. A long green lane, shaded deeply, beside a cow pasture.

More open fields. A pale blue cloudless sky. Meadowlarks zipped into the sky, arpeggiating incorrigibly. Lush fields of wheat. We hiked up to Harlow Hill, where an abandoned church with a pale blue door sits under a maroon-leafed copper beech. Then down from to a reservoir for a lunch break. After lunch, we stopped at Vallum Farm for blueberry-and-lemon gelato, which was perfectly cool and sharp for what was becoming a scorching afternoon.

The afternoon stretched on and on. The sun became merciless. Small hills betrayed us as we had to hike up them, shoulders rubbed raw by our packs, and then down, our feet throbbing. Sweat, sun, flies. Of course this all sounds highly melodramatic, but it was nothing compared to what tomorrow held. And also, this whole time we were walking through gorgeous fields, elegant beech groves, rows of cottages with tiny gardens (colorful with late tulips, narcissi, and saxifrage). Sheep bleated and panted in the fields. We scrambled up and over stone walls by stiles, or through fences by gates.

We paused to rest on a hilltop. Behind us, the Vallum curved in sinuous throes over a green slope. Before us, a great valley lay, fields and fields of wheat and rape, distant hills sliding away to the hazy horizon. Crooked walls, punctuated by copses of beech or pine. At our back was one such copse, on the hill's crest. At its edge was an absolutely gigantic chestnut tree, one of the biggest trees I've ever seen, and it was under this mammoth that we took refuge from the sun. We hadn't packed for this heat and were carrying all the gear we'd need for rain and cold weather, which made the excellent sunshine an added insult.

Past Onnum, we turned south toward Corbridge via Halton and Ayden Castles. A lovely, peaceful lane in the late afternoon. At Halton Castle, a wee old woman with white hair waved at us as she perambulated around her gardens. We admired the squat crenellated keep, the patchwork of added farm buildings, the well-trimmed evergreens, the clear stone pool. In a field across from the castle, a tractor was ploughing, and great flocks of crows followed, cawing, hunting insects in the brown hillside.

Down the hill, Ayden Castle was just visible through the trees, a swallow's nest of roofs daubed thick against the forest. A small herd of curious horses walked up to the fence to make our acquaintance.  Just below the castle, we plunged into the forest, down a steep bridleway. Earthy smells here. Black mud. A sheer ravine, heavily wooded, down which the path leaped to a fast, clear, broad creek, which shone over tea-brown stones. The dazzle of light on water.

And here we got lost. Thanks to a passer-by with a dog, we veered left, not right, and wandered up and down through sheep pastures for awhile, til Scott asked a guy digging fencepost holes for the way to Corbridge. When we were back on track, we followed the path under an overpass, past a school, and into ugly modern terraced houses. We found our B&B easily: the Wheatsheaf, just on the edge of the small village centre. Despite sheik modern furnishings, the building maintains its crazy old footprint.

After we'd relaxed a bit, we ventured down the street to St. Andrew's, the ancient church nestled in the centre of the town. It sits in an irregular oblong of graveyard with huge leaning stones. The late sunlight through the trees was jewel-toned. Inside, the church was cool, quiet, and dark. The bit of the nave under the belltower was built in the late 7th century with stones pinched from Corstopitum down the road; the rest of the church dates from the 13th century, I believe. The very friendly warden let us stay and explore, though she normally locks the doors at half four.

We stopped at Boots for suncream and the Co-op for food, with everyone else in the village, who was shopping after work. We ate tea in the hotel restaurant, Yorkshire puddings and sausages. The sunset was all wispy lace of white and silver, flung across the blue sky above the deeply blue-green fields that rise just beyond the town. 

Gluttons for punishment, we walked to Corstopitum after tea. Of course the fort was closed, but the walk was lovely, taking us through neighborhoods and down a lane. A cool, quiet evening. Sheep, blackbirds, rabbits. We could look out from the low hilltop, south to the river valley with its steep distant hills beyond; north to the B6318 and more deeply-wooded hills and fields; east through the trees to the village, roofs, and the square church tower riding above the curve of the hill. Dusk falling. 

We walked back through narrow byways behind detached houses with expansive, dense gardens of evergreen and rhododendron. In our room, we watched the BBC, hoping for weather news. Karaoke pumped up from the bar below.