Cotswolds - Day 4

June 27, 2016

"Ignorance is the curse of God. Knowledge is the wing whereupon we fly to heaven."

- William Shakespeare

No worries, my dear wife and I are no longer ignorant of Stratford-upon-Avon. The birthplace and the burial place of Mr. Shakespeare are both situated in Stratford and we visited both venues this morning. We got a ride into town at about 10am and were delivered to the Hertz depot which is next to the train station. We filled out all the paperwork and became the proud temporary owners of a fine Ford Focus that has a ding on the driver's side, rear-bumper and a tendency to lose power at red-lights. But, it gets us from A to B. The real bonus though was that we left the ride in the Hertz parking lot while we checked out Shakespeare's crib and we didn't have to pay for parking.

So it turns out that William was gifted. His father and mother had lost three children before he came along and it is lucky that he survived because he helped the family out later on when there were financial troubles. Did you know that William Shakespeare's father was a glover? Do you know what a glover is? Well, a glover makes gloves. And the senior Mr. Shakespeare did all the leather work right there in the family home. So, you know what they do to soften leather? Well, they soak it in urine for a long time. And where were those urine pits? Well, they were in William's backyard. So, how do you get your son thinking about doing something great? You raise him playing with his dinky toys around the urine pits, that's how. That will drive anyone onto the stage. But William was special, he was a rather good student and subsequently, we got a lot of good material out of him. 

Today, William Shakespeare's house is a museum and it is said that he was born right there in an upstairs bedroom (however after close examination, the bed that is in that room, appears to be newish). It costs about 17 quid to enter the exhibit and the ticket will also get you into Ann Hathaway's house (Will's wife), as well as the his mother's farm which is outside of town. I thought that was pretty good value but we did not have time to see the homes of the women in William's life, so we just did the birthplace in the childhood home as well as his gravesite. 

William had done so well that he and his whole family are buried in a family tomb in the front of Holy Trinity Church alter, in Stratford. He was wealthy before he was 45 years of age and although he worked in London, he came back to Stratford often. In fact, the guy was baptized, most likely married, and buried at Holy Trinity Church. In other words, he did not loiter in London. In all, it is an easy half-day to see the birth and burial sites and the only other thing that you should do while you are there is see a play. A Midsummer Night's Dream was playing while we were there but as usual, we didn't have enough time to schedule it.

So why didn't we make time for a Shakespeare play? This turns out to be an easy question to answer. The food and service back home in the Buckland Manor was too good. Shoot, if I were judging for Michelin, I might give them a star. Perhaps it is coming because a sister hotel in Bath does have one.

Notwithstanding the slick ride we picked up today, we walked 4.1 miles as we strolled around Stratford and then we finally got to the  Broadway Tower to see the sites from that pretty cool place. It is interesting to scale the tower constructed in 1800 and to see the surrounding countryside. It was especially cool to see all the places that we had hiked to and from since we got to the Cotswolds, from a great vantage point on one of the northernmost parts of the uplifted cuestas, in the AONB.

There is a memorial not to far from the tower where an RAF bomber crashed during a training flight in WWII. It is within a couple of hundred meters of the tower. Standing there on the tower, it is totally understandable how a rookie crew could have flown out of the mostly flat, British countryside and  into the side of the summit when there was no modern navigational equipment on board. Sadly, that particular plane was so close to clearing the top of the hill! 

After the tower, Mrs. Gym and I cruised around Broadway in our shiny, new Focus.  Everyone was checking us out.

Will Shakespeare's crib

A budding shakespearean standing on top of what used to be urine pits.

Will's crypt in Holy Trinity

Holy Trinity ranks up there in beautiful churches (of a non-Catholic variety)

nice, eh?

The river Avon

Where we could have seen a Midsummer Night's Dream

Shakespeare's classic stage sticking out at the back of the theatre

Mrs. Gym on the path to the Broadway Tower

RAF memorial

Red Deer below Broadway Tower

The tower up close

View to Broadway

a windy viewpoint

Cotswolds Day 3

June 26, 2016

It was Sunday here in the Cotswolds and another hike was on the agenda. As I sit here clacking away we have just come back from another wonderful dinner in the dining room where we re-capped the day's accomplishments over coffee and petits fours. Mrs. Gym's FitBit reads 93 floors climbed and 9.86 miles traveled (15 kilometres). So today, we strode out upon a quest that turned out to be 1.5X as long as the previous day's.  But we did not make it to Broadway Tower which was our stated goal. What happened?

No, we didn't get lost. Gym rarely gets lost. He has worked with maps all his life and I might say that Gym is a keen observer of his surroundings. So why venture away from planned goal? Well, Gym decided that something the driver from the airport had said did not sit well with him. When we were travelling down the hill into Broadway, the driver said something like, "no one hikes up a hill like this".

Gym and Mrs Gym did! And we made it to Snowshill, on a route high above the road. Our route took us along the Cotswold Way. And there are some fantastic views of the Cotswolds from along that trail. Once in Snowshill, we visited the Snowshill Manor and Gardens.

We spent about an hour and a half in the Gardens, the outbuildings and the Manor Home of Charles Wade.  Gym was drawn to the place because like his father, Charles Wade was a great collector. Gym had to check out his collection. The difference between Charles Wade and Gym's father was that Charles Wade had no heirs. So, all the wonderful collections Wade had as well as his real estate were left to the National Trust. This allowed Gym and all the other tourists to check out the treasures for a small fee, paid to the trust.

It turns out that Charles Wade's collections were better than Gym's father's but Gym's father had a collection of children that trumped everything at Snowshill Manor. Having said that you have to see some of the cool stuff we saw that we hope we captured in some of our photos.

After Snowshill, the intrepid couple hoofed it down to Broadway again and required some respite in the pub of the Broadway Hotel, where Gym unsuccessfully tried to locate a taxi to take him back to Buckland Manor. It being Sunday and there being only 4 taxis in the area, Gym girded up his loins and accepted the fact that another traverse of the hill between the two communities was in the offing. The walking was never any issue for Mrs. Gym and in some way, as it was sabbath, Gym somehow deserved to have to walk. Slowly at first, Gym found his stride and punched a hoped for, gentler line across the cuesta. Unfortunately, the new route was a much muddier path and Gym ruined a facecloth back at Buckland Manor cleaning his shoes, much to the chagrin of Mrs. Gym.

Dinner tonight, was again an outstanding experience and I hope to describe the menu in more detail in future post.

Gym makes new friend near Cotswold Way

Mom makes a nice pillow

View from Cotswold Way

Charles Wade's garden

The Manor House is surrounded by colour

A pathway on the grounds of Snowshill Manor

Looking back towards the Cotswold Way from near the Manor

A collection of Samurai Armour

Charles Wade's toy soldier collection (Gym's is better)

Really cool musical instrument collection

There was lots of stuff like this

A fascinating 19th century bike collection

Tomorrow we are renting a car.

Cotswolds Day 2

Buckland Manor is situated in a AONB. It is the largest AONB in Britain. An "Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty" is like a National Park and there are restrictions on development and land use within the AONB to protect its distinct nature. On June 25th, we set out on a journey to discover the distinct nature of the Cotswolds on our own. We would hike up over the spine of the uplifted limestone that gives the AONB its unique geography and we would explore a very good example of a Cotswolds village made out of that special limestone as we strolled High Street in Broadway. All the while our steps and the distance we travelled were being recorded by the products of Apple Inc.

Our route would take us out the back of Buckland Manor and up the to the summit of the spine of the Cotswolds, where the path intersected the Cotswolds Way. The Cotswolds Way is a footpath along the summit of the uplifted limestone that runs 100 miles along the length of the AONB. We would not attempt to cover the entire trail on this day but Mrs. Gym would have given it a go, if that was the plan. Instead, I thought we might descend into the next valley and check out Broadway, Worchestershire, England. I had two reasons for wanting to see the place, it is supposed to be a good example of an entire town built out of Cotswold stone and it must also be somewhere near where a famous brown sauce was invented. Although we did not see a worchestershire sauce factory on our visit, we did see lots of cool houses built out of Cotswold stone.

We did not go home to Buckland Manor by the same path that we traveled to Broadway. Gym wanted to check out a garden on the edge of the AONB but it would turn out that the garden was either no longer open or we were there at the wrong time of year. So, we returned to the hotel along the border of the AONB beside a road that had no footpath. That bit of bushwhacking on what turned out to be a 6-mile hike was just enough to require that Gym needed two Gin and tonics on the patio to recover from the day's travails. Mrs. Gym was no worse for wear.

After a short nap we got ready for dinner and enjoyed our second dinner in the dining room. I will just say that it is expensive but worth every penny. The service is first class and the food is outstanding.

St. Michael's Church is beside Buckland Manor. In front of  it is the kitchen garden for the hotel.

For many years the Buckland village church, St Michael's, housed a sixteenth-century copy of The Acts and Monuments (popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs). However, the book was reportedly stolen in January 2012.^[41]

From the spine of the limestone escarpment between Buckland and
Broadway, one can see Broadway Tower which is across the valley
and on the next hill. it is the goal of the next day's hike.

A Broadway home that is made out of Cotswold stone and sports a thatched roof.

The first Broadway pub.

A second Broadway pub

The Cotswold stone takes on a warm honey-coloured hue in the sunlight

A nice Cotswold Stone place surrounded by the classic "cocks and hens" fence.

Back in Buckland, the centre of the village.

Another good example of the "cocks and hens" fence around a Buckland home.

Stay tuned, because if Gym survives the hike tomorrow, there will be another posting.

The 2016 Post Brexit Adventure


June 24, 2016



The Cotswolds

Mrs. Gym and I are in the United Kingdom again. Yesterday, I might have said we were back in Europe but that is not correct today. Britain voted to leave the European Union and as we arrived at Heathrow this morning the whole world was learning of the narrow victory that the "leave" faction had over the "stay" faction. This morning, there were some very happy people, like Don our driver and some very sad people, like David Cameron the Prime Minister. The markets reacted swiftly and although it was sad to see how negative the market sentiment was to the realization that Brexit was happening, the historic vote just made our visit to the Cotswolds a little cheaper as the pound fell hard against all other currencies. In other words, our vacation just got cheaper! Mrs. Gym and I won't rub that in and we will continue to be the fine Canadian ambassadors that we always are, as we explore this beautiful part of Britain.  However, the circumstances of the vote certainly do make it an interesting time to visit.

We left Calgary on Thursday the 23rd of June at dinner time and arrived on one of Air Canada's newest airplanes that took us directly to Heathrow. It was an excellent flight and we landed in London in mid-morning somewhat unrefreshed but excited to be back on the road. We had traveled over the pole and it was hard to get any sleep on the flight because the Canadian arctic is of course enjoying its longest days of the year, this time of year. Through the entire night you could open your window blind and see daylight below as we flew over the Hudson's Bay, Baffin Island and the tip of Greenland before we crossed over Northern Ireland and started our descent.

At the airport we met up with Don our driver. He is the go-to driver for the Buckland Manor which is the really cool "hotel" that we are currently camped out at. From here, Mrs Gym and I will be exploring the Cotswolds over the next week or so and then Gym is going to golf in Scotland and Linda is going to spend time with the Anderson's. Brenda and Roland Anderson are a couple we met on another  adventure and we have written about them in this blog. Mrs. Gym will be visiting them in Essex at their home, while Gym is off to the birthplace of golf.

Hopefully, over the next couple of days while we are exploring the Cotswolds together we will be able to post a couple of articles that will give you our observations about this unique part of Britain.

Mrs. Gym on front steps of the Buckland Manor where we arrived on
June 24th. It is a two hour drive from Heathrow. Here we were greeted by
a welcoming staff and the manor's yellow labrador.

After checking in we hiked around the ten-acre property and this is a
shot from the south side of the acreage.

This is the backyard and it gives a sense for how green the Cotswolds are and how the
buildings that are constructed from the Oolitic Jurassic Cotswold Limestone stand out of all the lush
vegetation.

Gardening here appears to be a little easier than it is in Calgary.

We hope to be able to show you more of the beautiful scenery in the days ahead. Stay tuned...

Visiting the Vatican

October 31, 2015 - The Afternoon


Gym's Rome Travel Tips

1. Don't drive in Rome! Traffic lanes are just suggestions in this city and unless you like to try and rein in chaos, leave the driving to the pros - the locals;
2. Taxis are everywhere in Rome but make sure that you get in a white one that has a meter because some don't have meters and the "gypsy taxis" will charge too much; and,
3. Make sure to go to the Vatican and check out Michelangelo's Pieta. This magnificent sculpture struck Gym as the most impressive artwork seen on this whole trip.

The Pieta is carved with Carrera marble that can be polished to
a warm, lustrous shine, giving the figures a life-like appearance.
It is an inspiring piece of art and perhaps the artist thought so too because it is the
only artwork that Michelangelo ever signed his a to. 

For our second tour of the day, on Halloween day, we had very little time to get from ancient Rome to the Vatican, across the Tiber river and then get a quick bite of lunch. We needed to jump in a cab and hope we had enough time before the start of the afternoon tour, to find a sandwich.

The cabs in Rome reminded me of something out of the movies. The cabbies speed across the city muttering out things in Italian and look to me like they could all use some time on the couch discussing their issues with an analyst. Despite the crazed cabbies and the typical Rome traffic, we made it to the Vatican in time to have a quick lunch before our second tour. Our afternoon guide/docent, met us in the restaurant as we finished lunch. We were across the street and beneath the walls of Vatican City.
  

The docent for the afternoon's tour of the Vatican was Gregory DiPippo. That might sound like a local guide but Gregory is a native of Rhode Island and he took his undergraduate degree in Montreal, at McGill. It would prove to be challenging to keep up with Greg's long strides as he led us through the Vatican Museums, then on to the Sistine Chapel and finally into Saint Peter's Basilica. After trudging all over ancient Rome in the morning, we would walk many more kilometres in the afternoon and climb at least 20 stories of stairs. My iphone actually lost count at 10 km. and 20 stories of stairs for the day when it ran out juice well before we finished that evening.

Greg had two important rules for the day. The first rule was not to get killed crossing the street to get to the Vatican Museum and the second rule was to always try and keep up. So, even though Gym was a little stiff from a morning of scrambling over hill and dale on the cobbles of Ancient Rome, the second part of our ambitious day of touring had begun and we had to suck it up and push on (this was nothing for Mrs. Gym who is a veteran marathon runner).

Looking across a fairly busy street at the walls surrounding the Vatican  and the entrance to the "Vatican Museums"

We cleared security at the northern doors to the Vatican Museums and because we had special passes we were able to skip the lines and begin touring right away. We would sort of be working south through the various exhibit rooms to finish in Saint Peter's Basilica. It is difficult to even scratch the surface on a half-day tour of a major museum like this but I think we got a good grounding in the early exhibits we toured. This early grounding allowed us to be able to appreciate better the major artwork we would see in the Sistine Chapel and Saint Peter's Basilica, at the end of the tour. I can't imagine having tried to tour this massive collection of wonders on my own. I recommend Context Tours very highly not only for the knowledgeable guides but the well thought-out tour agendas that they have developed.

Below are just some of the many works of art that we saw on our sprint through the Vatican Museums:

Doubting Thomas by Guercino - Thomas is seen putting his fingers in Jesus' wound

The Transfiguration by Raphael. Together with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo,
Raphael is considered the third great grand master from that period.

A work that may have inspired what we would see in the Sistine Chapel

Here is another work that may have inspired Michelangelo.
St. Jerome and  the lion by Leonardo da Vinci. It is notable for many reasons but
the saint's shoulder is very detailed and would have required expert knowledge of that part of the human anatomy.
The lion of course is the same one that Jerome befriended when he removed the thorn from his paw.

Fontana della Pigna is a 4-meter high pine cone fountain spout that used to stand near the Pantheon
in front of the Temple of Isis. The beautiful niche was built after the fountain was moved here in 1608.

The Laocoon Group - this massive sculpture is thought to have been sculpted by ancient
Greeks. It is described as the prototypical expression of human agony. It is huge at over 2 meters in height
and 1.6 m in width.

Apollo Belvedere - this sculpture is also over 2 meters high and it comes from the antiquities as well.
It is said to have been the inspiration for many future masters.

Of course we also visited the Sistine Chapel and it is pretty cool. This is where the cardinals all camp out when they pick a new pope. The artwork on the ceiling is by Michelangelo and he also did a magnificent Fresco of the Last Judgement at one end of the chapel. Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take any pictures in there.

We then got to Saint Peter's Basilica just before they closed off the area around Saint Peter's tomb. So we were able to see the basilica's high alter above the tomb and stand there in the middle of the building to get a sense of how gigantic it  really is. As we stood there Gregory explained that we were standing above the tombs of numerous popes and many other christians that chose to be buried near St. Peter.

The massive dome of St. Peter's Basilica from the Vatican Gardens.
the dome covers an area of over 5 acres.

This is a good picture from inside the basilica. It does not give you
a very good feel for the size of the place. As I said the room above the
tomb of  St. Peter is more than 5 acres in size and the columns of
Bernini's solid bronze canopy, over the tomb are 60 feet high.In the background,
another work by Bernini is a massive stained glass window that glows through the
middle of the canopy as seen from the front doors.

Just out the front doors you look across he high, curved colonnade also designed
by Bernini to the building containing the ope's apartment. He was scheduled to greet the Sunday
morning crowd in the square the day after this picture was taken. He comes out of the room on the
far right of the building and on the second highest floor.

Light streaming through the windows high above the people coming
and going from the square into the basilica and visa versa.
The vertical height is hard to capture in a photo

Here is a close up of Bernini's dove of piece at the very opposite end
of the building from St. Peter's Square. The dove itself in the large window
is 6 feet wide.

from the steps of the basilica out past the centre of St. Peter's Square where you
can see they are setting up chairs for the Mass on Sunday morning.

The basilica from the front with the dome in the background.

A member of the elite Swiss Guard, the private army of the Vatican.

We were dog tired when Gregory left us on the front steps of the Vatican and we made our way down across the Piazza San Pietro (Saint Peter's Square) where the faithful gather the next day to catch a glimpse of Pope Francis. It was time to take a taxi back to the hotel after a long day of touring.

The next day we would just enjoy the hotel and some amazingly beautiful fall weather. On November 2, 2015 we left Rome and flew home.

So, much has happened since we left Rome and I apologize for getting this last post out so late after we left Rome. In the almost 8 months between leaving and my publishing this post today we have just been so busy that the intrepid couple has not been able to get away on vacation and chronicle any new adventures on this blog.

However, as I sit here in the Oak Room of Buckland Manor, in the Cotswolds, I am raring to tell you about the latest adventure. We arrived this morning in the U.K. on the morning of Brexit!

Gym