Visitors from Ohio

I'm a little slow in sharing details, but we did get a visit from Aunt Helen, Grandma and Grandpa Saluke in early September. They came on 9/11 (hopefully some nice discount tickets for flying on such a date) and rented a car so they could see as much of England as possible while here. With school and work, Dan, Emily and I were only able to join them on their excursions about half the time, but they got to see quite a bit in their brief 10-day stay.

The first excursion was to Alnwick (pronounced AH-nick) Castle, ancestral home to the Duke of Northumberland. Northumberland is the county where Newcastle is situated, the largest in England. Like many large counties, it is kinda big and empty. Here the sheep outnumber the people. Impressive when you consider there are about one million people in the Newcastle/Gateshead metropolitan area. A friendly guide at Alnwick gave us directions to the local moor -- a landscape I have been dying to see since arriving. A moor is an ecosystem with low-lying plants, often kinda boggy and used in lots of literature to reflect desolate landscape. The moor to the left is just starting to bloom with heather supposedly. The guide mentioned that we were catching it at just the right time because they do a controlled burn to enrich the soil shortly after the heather blooms.

Our next stop for the day was Bamburgh (pronounced BAM-bur-uh) Castle. This seaside castle has a commanding view of a vast beach and some nasty rocks. For a while, the inhabitants of the castle made a small fortune in salvage from the various ships breaking up just offshore. They'd collect the leftover bits by just pulling them in with giant chains with links the size of a person, then charge the owner a salvage fee or sell them themselves. This one beach shot captures the photographer, showing that Dan does indeed take the occasional break from studying to get out and see the world. Aunt Helen was in charge of bringing photos back for the grandparents because the climb over to the beach was a little too arduous. I also got to explore the secret exit from the castle. See the hidden path in the picture to the right?

Another big day trip was heading West to the Lake District. This area is a favorite holiday spot for hikers, poets, boaters, and outdoorspeople. Plus, there's plenty of cultural events in such a touristy area as well. In England, they weren't able to set aside national parks as giant swaths of land to never be settled. Instead, their national parks, such as the Lake District, are areas with special building codes and other restrictions to preserve the natural beauty and allow people to continue to live in their towns and farms as usual. It's an interesting balance.

Our first stop was Castlerigg -- don't be fooled by the name, it's actually a stone circle similar to the one at Stonehenge. These are volcanic stones that were moved here between 15,000 and 35,000 B.C. for a purpose not quite understood yet. Leading guess is a religious use. There's lots of interesting archaeology going on currently at a village just outside of Stonehenge that is thought to have been where the people who built that circle lived. So perhaps soon we'll have a better understanding of what these circles are all about.

While visiting a famous gingerbread shop in a nearby town, we took a leisurely stroll through the local cemetery. Here we stumbled upon one of the folks who helped to make the Lake District famous locally and internationally. William Wordsworth really enjoyed this area and found it inspirational for several of his works as I understand it.

Our visitors trekked out to many other destinations -- Edinburgh (pronounced ED-in-bur-uh), Hadrian's Wall, some abbeys, tour of local schools, etc., but darned exams and work got in the way for us. They impressed the many English tourists we met along the way because each of these day trips would be a week-long holiday by British standards.

Last, but not least, I wanted to include a picture of some little friends. This is a ubiquitous hazard once you get out of the city. Apparently, it is one that customs is on the lookout for as well. Aunt Helen reported that as they entered the US, all three travelers were asked if they had walked through active pastures in the UK. Apparently, they got some kind of special mark in their passport and special shoe treatment for having done such a thing. When I had visited the UK in 1999, I just threw away my hiking shoes -- more room for souveniers. I'll probably end up doing the same with my icky shoes from this year.