Scotland -- On the Road

 

 

 

 This morning we left our Bradford hotel and headed for Glasgow, Scotland. There was something very romantic about that prospect. Scotland is so remote and so different from England, and I was looking forward to seeing it to discover its magic. (It would not disappoint!)

 

Green meadows, rock fences, and tiny white dots (sheep) occupy mile upon mile during our journey north.  

As we near the Scotland, the terrain begins to change from flat green pastures to some grand hills. We are entering the Scottish Highlands. The brownish color on the hills is heather. The rugged peaks of the Highlands were formed by glaciers. Before the glaciers arrived these lands were filled with forests. The glaciers killed the trees, and they decomposed into peat bogs, which makes for very fertile soil--perfect for raising sheep. Hairy cows also live here. Actually, they are so hearty, they can live anywhere. So the area produces high quality beef and wool.

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

Loch Lomand

We passed Loch Lomand while on the road. Here is the popular song in video. It appears to be a song of lost love. Historian Murray G. H. Pittock writes that the song “is a Jacobite adaptation of an eighteenth-century erotic song, with the lover dying for his king, and taking only the ‘low road’ of death back to Scotland.” It is one of many poems and songs that emerged from Jacobite political culture in Scotland.

The verse: "you’ll take the high road, and I’ll take the low road" alludes to the high road, meaning the bodies of the men that were going to be exhibited on a coach on the most important road in the country.

Loch Lomond is a much-loved song of pride of country. It is traditionally played as the last song of the night at Scottish parties. 

 

Hadrian's Wall is sometimes viewed as the boundary between England and Scotland, but it is really further north. We didn't see the wall because it would have taken us way off course (so I am using a Google images photo instead). It was a dividing line that the Romans began building in 122 C.E. Tens of thousands of legionnaires were stationed along the 71-mile wall, which is the shortest width between England and Scotland. 

Carlisle was one major garrison and a walled city. A ditch surrounded the town with wooden spikes next to the wall and a generous supply of boulders and vats for hot boiling oil were strategically placed in case of an attack. In actuality, the wall was only used for less than 100 years before it was abandoned. 

The Romans stopped in the region where they built Hadrian's Wall because they didn't want to go any further north into the Highlands. They did, however, go on to Edinburgh and set up a trading post there. The stone of Hadrian's wall was used for other things. Some of it had Latin graffiti carved into the stone.

This area of Scotland was like the Wild West: untamed, lawless, and always in some kind of battle. Any attempts at making laws was futile because people refused to follow them.

Scotland was divided into four parts. The top half, the Highlands, was full of the ancient Celtic people who lived there since the second century B.C.E. They were scary people wild and ferocious. They were named "the painted ones" because they used blue war paint on their faces and bodies. They did this to separate themselves from their enemies in battle, because they looked more ferocious, and because the paint helped to heal scars they received in battle. 

The bottom half of Scotland, the Low Lands, was held by the Romans. On the right half lived the Anglo-Saxons who served as mercenaries to protect the farmers who had settled all over England. On the left half were the Vikings. The Irish also lived in western Scotland.

The Low Lands were green, fertile lands that were full of resources. It was in this area that Robert the Bruce (1274-1329), a Norman who won independence from the English in 1314 in the battle of Bannockburn. He was king of Scotland from 1306 to 1329, and considered a national hero and one of the greatest of monarchs. The film "Braveheart" is based on his life.

 

 

 

 

 

Gretna Green

One of the first stops over the Scottish border is Gretna Green, a small village where English people used to go to get married in a hurry without the bride's father's permission. (It is even mentioned on "The Crown" when Princess Margaret and Tony Armstrong-Jones talked of getting married.)

The happy couple could go to the blacksmith shop (above), knock on the door, and a little ceremony over the anvil in front of a pastor and witness would make their marriage legal. Romantic novels like Jane Austen's would take place in Gretna Green. In the mid-1700s, this place was a popular marriage center, much like Las Vegas is in the United States, only without Elvis or the glitter.

 

A newly-married bride and groom make their way from the Anvil Chapel.

 

 

 

 The entrance to the complex from the parking lot.

 

Love statues

Gretna Green is also a little way station for shopping and eating. The Wee Big Shop was just one place that has many different food items to buy--as well as some love and food proverbs to share. Everything here is about love!

 

 

After a little nip of Scottish whiskey offered by our wonderful guide, Speedy, we were off in our CostSaver bus. Our adventures in Scotland would continue with a day visit to Edinburgh and a two-night stay in our hotel in Glasgow.

Resources

Andrew Speed, guide for CostSaver Travel Company

Hadrian's Wall -- https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/hadrians-wall/hadrians-wall-history-and-stories/history/

The Celts and War Paint -- https://worldhistoryfaq.com/celts-war-paint/

Loch Lomand -- meaning and interpretation -- https://dailyjustnow.com/en/what-is-the-meaning-of-the-bonnie-banks-of-loch-lomond-18540/

England -- On the Road

 

England is comprised of small villages, a great countryside, and very dense cities where 51 percent of the people live. This is by design in order to preserve the country's rural environment. England is the size of Kentucky. On many of the green rural areas are black-faced sheep grazing in tree-lined pastures and enclosed by dry rock fences that divide the land into an asymmetrical patchwork of farms and pastures. (Those who build these rock fences are so adept at it that they only touch a rock once! This is a challenge especially as the wall must be built so it doesn't fall and so that water doesn't get in it to erode it.) The serenity is exactly what you'd expect if you read 19th and 20th century novels. A flock of geese flies overhead. Occasional streams wander through the land. Farm sheds and houses appear on the landscape. The rolling hills are products of the Ice Age, and England has seen to it to preserve them in all their beauty.

I would learn on this long-distance bus trip that covering ground is important so as to see how things are put together and how they relate to one another. While this whirlwind tour only scratched the surface or provided appetizers about key places in the UK and Ireland, I hope to return here some day and spend more time and see with more depth the spirit and soul of these beautiful lands.

Here are a couple places we passed that hold some familiar stories.

 

Coventry

A short distance north of Stratford-on-Avon is the town of Coventry. It has two important histories. During World War II, it was the place where a British team of mathematicians cracked the Enigma Code.  

The Enigma was a device used by the German military to encode strategic messages before and during World War II. Its cryptology was first broken by the Poles in the early 1930s. When Hitler's intentions of threatening England became apparent in 1939, the Poles shared their intelligence with the British who then set up a secret code-breaking group called "Ultra", under mathematician Alan M. Turing.

The Germans used the Enigma to send messages securely. The Polish mathematicians had worked out how to read Enigma messages, however, the Germans increased its security by changing the cipher system daily, which created innumerable code possibilities and made understanding the code even more difficult.

Turing played a key role in this, inventing a decoding machine known as "the Bombe", which helped to reduce the work of the code-breakers. From mid-1940, the British were able to read German Air Force signals to help overcome the Germans, save lives, and shorten the war by several years.

The other history that Coventry is famous for is Lady Godiva, an 11th century noblewoman who was married to Leofric, the powerful Earl of Mercia and Lord of Coventry. Leofric was a mean ruler and he seemed to delight in over-taxing his people. Lady Godiva pleaded with him to stop this practice, and Leofric quipped that he would lower taxes only if she rode naked on horseback through the center of town. 

So Lady Godiva did just that with only her long flowing hair to cover herself. Before leaving for her famous ride, however, she ordered the people of Coventry to remain inside their homes and not peek.  One man, named Tom, couldn’t resist looking, and thus we have called subsequent voyeurs “Peeping Toms”. After finishing this gesture, Lady Godiva demanded that her husband hold up his end of the bargain and reduce the people’s debts. And he did just that.

Although the truth of this story is doubtful, the historical Lady Godiva was known for her generosity to the church and her support in found a Benedictine monastery in Coventry.

Nottingham

Robin Hood was largely a myth, although this area produced many stories and legends about him. He was supposedly from the 12th century. What did exist here, were the forests that King John (reigned 1199-1216) hunted. King John is famous for signing the Magna Carta (1215), which provided the foundation of the British and American legal systems by limiting royal power and emphasizing the primacy of the law over all, including the monarchy. Another reality was that these forests teemed with outlaws like Robin Hood, which is how stories came to be. Maid Marion also did exist during this time.

 

 The Industrial Triangle -- Sheffield, Manchester, Leeds

This area made England what it was to become: an industrial giant in the 19th and 20th centuries. During the period of 1745-1850 things were changing in Europe. It was the age of revolutions where monarchies tumbled and new countries were being formed. The change and upheaval were tremendous and disorienting. A different kind of revolution, however, was fomenting in England:  the Industrial Revolution. Products now made by machine, most specifically, textiles from the wool of the country's sheep. 

What the machines replaced, however, were the craftsmen who had honed their skilled trades. Many rose up to resist the machines in Manchester in the first decade of the 19th century. They were known as Luddites, named after their symbolic hero, King Ludd (right). The Luddites opposed this new technology and went to the new factories to hammer away--literally--at the wooden frames making the textiles. They wanted to negotiate the changes the factories were presenting, but in fact, lost out to the machines.

Another outcome of the Industrial Revolution the the ending of the slave trade in 1833. The machines, in effect, replaced the slaves even though the slave trade had made a lot of money. Since they were no longer needed, England freed them, and the Royal Navy worked to stop ships participating in the slave trade. Steam power and the Spinning Jenny, which processed cotton faster than human labor changed everything. 

The Industrial Revolution attracted people living in rural to the cities where they obtained jobs in the factories. As there were fewer people producing food, and greater demand for food in the cities, an accompanying Agricultural Revolution evolved. New farm equipment was invented. In spite of the progress and wealth that came out of the Industrial Revolution, working conditions were so bad that Karl Marx and Frederic Engels worked to protest these injustices with a book titled: The Communist Manifesto. The book contends that a class struggle exists between the bourgeoisie, those who own the means of production, and the proletariat, those who labor for wages. The logic of capitalism dictates that the bourgeoisie will keep minimizing the wages of the proletariat until the proletariat has no choice but to revolt. Marx and Engels made their case by pointing out that workers were not only paid less than a living wage, but that the nature of their labor was brutal and harsh.  Communism was a political-economic theory that called for collective ownership over the means of production, e.g., factories and farms. 

Some of the legislation that came out of this period would change the political and social environment as well. Trade unions were organized, hospitals were founded, lending libraries were created, free schools were provided, the Suffragettes lobbied for women's rights. Work weeks were established as was the "working class". So-called "red brick universities" offered programs in science and engineering emerged as a contrast to the medieval universities of Oxford and Cambridge that schooled their elite, upper class students in mathematics, theology, and philosophy.

 

An Ecological Note

This area was also coal country, which helped to power the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Unfortunately, there was so much coal mining in the 19th and 20th centuries that the forests were stripped bare. In recent years, environmental concerns have seen the replanting of trees, the proliferation of wind turbines, and solar power have replaced coal-fired furnaces.

 

Resources

Andrew Speed, guide for CostSaver Travel Company

Enigma (includes an 8-minute video) -- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Enigma-German-code-device

 How Alan Turing Cracked the Enigma Code -- https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-alan-turing-cracked-the-enigma-code

Marks and Engels on the Communist Revolution -- https://study.com/learn/lesson/friedrich-engels-marx-manifesto-communism-revolution.html

England -- York

York was the Roman capital of the North Britain territories. Its main port was on the Rivers Ouse and Foss. It was also the main terminal for tens of thousands of Roman soldiers. Consequently, trade developed, and the city grew in importance. Several emperors visited here, including Constantine the Great. Then arose the need to defend the city from the warring tribes north of it, and York became a walled city. This was also the time that Hadrian's Wall was built for the same reason. 

In the 9th century the Vikings finally took the city and gave it its name, Jórvík. In the Middle Ages, York became the capital of the northern England ecclesiastical province as a wool-trading center. In the 19th century, it became a major railway network hub and confectionery manufacturing center. During World War II, the city was largely spared, however, several historic buildings were gutted and restored up through to the 1960s. 

York Minster Cathedral

One of the most outstanding sights in York is York Minster. The church has a long and transformative history of building and re-building, but it remains one of the great cathedrals of the world. 

A wooden Christian church was quickly built here in 627 in order baptize Edwin, King of Northumbria, but it was replaced in 637 with a stone structure. In 741, the church was destroyed in a fire and rebuilt into a much larger structure with 30 altars. Prior to its Christian foundations, York was the site of a Celtic temple for 5,000-6,000 years.  

The church was destroyed again during William the Conqueror's time, but Thomas Bayeaux, a Norman bishop was assigned in 1070. The first order of business for the new bishop was to organize the repairs.

The Danes destroyed the church in 1075, but it was again rebuilt shortly afterward. Applying the Norman style (Romanesque rounded arches and especially massive proportions), it was 364.173 ft long. The new structure was damaged by fire in 1137 but soon repaired. The choir and crypt were remodeled in 1154, and a new chapel was built, again all in the Norman style. 

The mid-12th century saw the arrival of the Gothic style of architecture, and the newly-appointed Archbishop Walter de Gray ordered that a Gothic structure be built starting in 1220. The north and south transepts were completed in the 1250s as well as the central tower and a wooden spire. The stone used was magnesium limestone, a creamy-white colored rock that was quarried in nearby Tadcaster. Building projects continued into the 15th century, and other changes and expansions were made until the cathedral was finished and consecrated in 1472.

The 16th century English Reformation led to the looting of much of the cathedral's treasures. Under Elizabeth I there was a concerted effort to remove all traces of Roman Catholicism from the cathedral, so tombs, windows and altars were destroyed. Once religious tensions calmed down, restoration work began in 1730. However, an accidental fire in 1840 destroyed the roof in the nave, towers, and south aisle. The second half of the 19th century saw a revival and preservation of the cathedral, which continued into the 20th century.  

A great fire in July 1984 destroyed the roof of the south transept and a repair and restoration project was completed in 1988. In 2007, renovation began on the east front, including the Great East Window where 311 glass panels were removed for conservation. The project was completed in 2018. The most recent addition was the mounting of Queen Elizabeth II (left) on the front alcove of the cathedral.

York Minster is the second-largest Gothic cathedral of Northern Europe. The Minster is 524.5 feet long and the central tower is 235 feet high. The choir has an interior height of 102 feet.

I was unable to go into the cathedral when I was in York because it was closed due to evening prayers. So the photos below provide a look at the interior of the cathedral.

 

 

 

 

                    The Altar

The Choir

< Organ -- 1832

                

 

Some of the 15 statues of kings, from Henry III to Henry VI, in the 15th-century Kings Screen 

 

 

 

The work of building the cathedral was hard, and the days were long. The craftsmen who carved and mounted the characters on the cathedral's exterior shared their feelings for the people they worked for by creating funny faces and ugly monsters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Shambles

One of the main streets in Old York is The Shambles. York Minster towers over the city in the background.

Old York has preserved its medieval character despite England's destruction of many old cities, an outcome of the 1661 Great Fire of London. Narrow streets owith timbered buildings and thatched roofs were deemed fire hazards and removed. One of today's popular streets in York is The Shambles, which is pretty much the same as it was 900 years ago except it is in better condition. This street used to house the butchers who worked among blood, piles of rot, stench, rats, and created an open invitation to disease since there was no refrigeration or health and safety rules. Some of the meat hooks from the old days are still there as novelty shops, stores, and cafés now grace the popular street.

King's Court is a square in Old York with a small park and gathering space for food trucks and various forms of street entertainment.

Guy Fawkes dons this building's signature. Fawkes (1570-1606) was a member of a group of provincial English Catholics involved in the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, which sought to assassinate King James I and members of the Parliament in order to restore a Catholic monarch to the throne. Fawkes was in charge of guarding the explosives. He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, but he jumped off the platform and broke his neck. He was born and educated in York. Guy Fawkes Night is held on November 5, 1605, when his effigy is traditionally burned on a bonfire, commonly accompanied by fireworks.

Although York is a three-hour drive direct from London, we took a route the went west to Stratford-on-Avon first before we headed to York. When we left York, we headed for an overnight in Bradford, southwest of York, so that we could make our way to Scotland the next day.

Resources

Andrew Speed, guide from CostSaver Travel Company

York Minster -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_Minster

England -- Stratford-on-Avon

  

One of my favorite places on this earth is Stratford, Ontario. For over 25 years I attended the summer festival which offered wonderful plays, delicious food, comfortable bed & breakfast places, and a totally aesthetic experience. Stratford has really been #1 on the list of places I have missed during my life in France. To see the original was very interesting although not a complete substitute. For one thing, it is much smaller and less developed commercially.

Stratford-on-Avon is really close to London--about 2 hours. It was actually where Shakespeare was born in 1564--on Henby Street. He was the son of a glove maker and was expected to follow suit. Young William had other ideas, however, like being an actor. This choice was not a respectable one in 16th century England as it was associated with debauchery and prostitution--and didn't pay very much. However, he made the most of it and became a playwright to boot. How lucky we have been that he "followed his bliss".

There are 10 years that we know nothing about Shakespeare, which occurred before he broke out as a playwright. He probably was a troubadour, one who traveled the country telling stories and/or singing songs. This time helped him research the plots of his plays and the stagecraft that eventually made him a success. Shakespeare's legacy, perhaps, is British theatre, which is reputedly the best in the world. It has produced many famous and accomplished actors and actresses. The Brits are both proud and crazy about theatre.

 

Stratford-on-Avon is a pleasant village, small enough to appreciate and beautiful enough to enjoy. The Avon river runs through it and a theatre is on its banks (below). It is not the original Globe Theatre, rather it was built in the 1960s. 

In Shakespeare's day, the Avon River was a conduit for the wool trade even though it is a fairly narrow river. Today, boatsmen offer rides to tourists.

Across from the river from the theatre are some bronze sculptures of Shakespeare's famous characters: (left to right) Falstaff, Hamlet, Lady MacBeth, and Prince Hal. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are lots of places for hot tea and a scrumptious scone on the village's main streets. There are also some interesting shops like this one.

 

A tribute to Shakespeare on Henby Street near his birthplace (in the background).