I love cliffs. Today we rode the bus to East Dean and then walked a little over 3.5 miles to Beachy Head via Birling Gap, just east of the Seven Sisters chalk cliffs. The walk is undulating: steep climbs lead to steep running descents. The final ascent brought us to Beachy Head, where AC snapped [...]
“Treachery! Treachery! England is ours!” is what Sam shouted over and over again as she galloped her way through the Battle of Hastings Heritage site and the ruined Abbey that now stands where King Harold fell.
As in the “Battle of Hastings” country. Nothing about this trip went as planned. We missed our train. The train we did end up on was packed and we had to stand with our bicycles at the end of the car. We wanted to visit the Herstmonceux Castle and Science Center, but we were blocked [...]
It took us three trains and three hours to make our pilgrimage from Brighton to Canterbury. These are our tales. If you’re expecting something bawdy, you’ll need to read Chaucer. The Mexican Food Lover’s Tale One of the things we miss from the States is Mexican food. So when our friends from London suggested that [...]
I thought this was a pretty dramatic way to enshrine the spot where the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Beckett, was murdered in 1170. Other less dramatic tales from our trip to Canterbury to come.
When we very first came to Brighton for a short stay at the end of 2008, we looked into going to Pooh Corner and Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, the stomping grounds of A.A. Milne’s son Christopher Robin, and inspiration for many of the stories and landmarks in Winnie the Pooh (1926) and The House [...]
Friends in London invited us to explore Kent with them this weekend, and so we took 3 trains to arrive at Leigh (sounds like Lye) and then set off on a 6-mile walk which took us past a castle, a village, a few streams, cows, sheep, oast houses, and fields and fields of tall, stiff [...]
Smiling despite the long queue at Victoria Station to buy an Oyster card for the Underground. AC uses his deductive powers to determine that the Jubillee Line was closed and that we needed to take three different tube trains to our destination. Then the Super Sleuth found us a free bus to take us to [...]
The most wonderful Macbeth I’ve ever seen. Definitely the most visceral–blood, entrails, smoke, incense, thumping, pounding rhythm and quavering pipes. I cried and I laughed and was generally transfixed. Here the cast sing a stirring Gaelic round for their curtain call in the beautiful Globe theatre on the Thames in London.
I am a timid cyclist. I love being outdoors and I love seeing new places and because I am married to an adventurous cyclist who is not at all timid, I get persuaded to try excursions that would otherwise never enter my mind. Such as yesterday: I had an idea to take Sam to watch [...]
An impromptu trip: we cycled along the coast to Rottingdean today, a little village to the east of Brighton. Once we got past the throngs of people shuffling around near the Brighton Pier and Marina, it was a lovely ride, if a bit incongruous: on one side, lovely grassy coastline and cliff views; on the [...]
For my 40th birthday coming up in a few days I decided that I wanted to go see something really old. A 5000 year old prehistoric stone circle seemed like it should do the trick. However, there were some obstacles to today’s jaunt up to Salisbury and then over to Stonehenge. First, our train was [...]
I couldn’t walk in them this morning. I laced them up, threw on my raincoat and headed outside to pick up breakfast food for the train ride home, and after just a couple of steps, I knew it was time for us to part ways. I bought these boots in Charlottesville, Virginia, circa 2001 (I [...]
I have never before seen a tree with such personality, such sleepy menace, so old, leaning heavily on its crutches, the last soldier standing, who once rumbled up its roots from the earth and lumbered to Dunsinane Hill. Yes, I know that Birnam wood doesn’t really come to Dunsinane, and that Macbeth, as usual, takes [...]
We walked through Glen Tilt today (about 6 miles we think) just north of Blair Atholl. It was an adventure in map reading, trespassing, and hiking over and around enormous downed trees. As Sam remarked, “This forest is a tree graveyard!” But on the other side of the graveyard was a gentle path flanked by [...]
Yesterday the cashier at The Sheep Shop in Pitlochry told us that it’s a lovely walk to Strathtay, a village to the southwest of Pitlochry. He also mentioned that there’s a chocolatier there. That was all I needed to hear. We set out. Sam’s magic boots required an adjustment early on. And then we came [...]
We walked back to Edradour distillery today–Scotland’s smallest distillery–via a slightly different route through the Black Spout woods. A tour, a tasting, and now I know much more than I ever did before about how whisky is made. Sam thought it all noisy and smelly (she didn’t get to taste any of course– “Come back [...]
Coronation bridge, which crosses the river Tummel, was built to commemorate the coronation of George V (1911). We crossed it as part of our ELEVEN mile hike today. Even we are stunned at the distance we covered. Sam walked 10 miles by herself and rode on AC’s back for the final stretch back into Pitlochry. [...]