Leeds Castle, Canterbury, and the White Cliffs of Dover

So the horizons of England keep opening up before me... Today's adventure: a trip all the way from Oxford to London and through the countryside of Kent, to the banks of the English Channel itself!

I got up at a rather unearthly hour to catch a bus to London for a day tour heading out from Victoria Station - making the trip alone this time because of irreconcilable issues with my friends' schedules, but so much the better. It ended up being a good day to go solo for a number of reasons, not least of all the opportunity for self-reflection and taking obscene numbers of pictures. My first stop was Leeds Castle, an absolutely resplendent medieval castle built on top of a small lake. The walls extend out over the water, and the view (both from inside the castle and outside) is so magical, it's like something out of a fairy tale. Plus I have personal reasons for liking this castle: besides supposedly being one of the most breathtaking in England, it was the topic of a final class project my little sister did a few years ago. She researched and constructed a scale model of it (which is still around our house somewhere - even if useless, things like that take so much work you never want to throw them away), so I felt a bit surreal seeing it in person.

After Leeds, I was on my way to Canterbury, which I'd mostly wanted to visit out of interest in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Though I haven't taken a class in Chaucer yet, I almost certainly will for my English major, and hopefully having seen the place itself will help! Canterbury was charming, a bustling little medieval town, very similar to Winchester and York. I visited the cathedral, which was the site for many pilgrimages back in medieval times, and then roamed around the city, seeing the walls/river/shops/ streets/etc., and trying to imagine what it would have felt like to live there centuries ago. To have that tiny place be your whole world. It's hard for us twenty-first century people to picture.

Canterbury is surprisingly close to the ocean, and after getting back on the bus a final time I ended up at Dover and the English Channel. The white cliffs are indeed white, and jump up so suddenly out of rolling English countryside that the effect is startling. It's as if the British Isles, without warning, have decided to throw themselves into the sea. Being from the American West, though, I have to say I was a bit underwhelmed by the scale of these cliffs, which I'd imagined as being massive. (Hello, Grand Canyon - hello, Rocky Mountains and Yosemite - you knock this British pretender out of the water!) In terms of scale, the West trumps all. Still, the cliffs of Dover were neat to look at, and I was unreasonably pleased to have set foot on the banks of the English Channel - and seen France way over there on the other side!

Now I'm nestled back at Oxford, dead tired, and heading off to bed...

Various Views of St. Paul's

...from several different times in London, and inspired by a paper I just wrote on the subject. (Oh yeah, I'm cranking out those papers!)

York Part II: York and York Minster

After leaving Hardwick Hall just after lunch on Friday, we rode the bus up to the city of York itself. There, we all disembarked and walked as a group to York Minster - formally the Cathedral and Church of Saint Peter in York or something, but whatever, no one calls it that.

I've seen a lot of cathedrals since coming to Europe, but York Minster is one of my favorites so far. It's constructed in a Gothic style that reminded me of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, with its looming bell towers and ribbed ceilings inside, but it had a much brighter, airier feel - not nearly so shadowy. While it wasn't stunning in the same grand, soaring way as St. Paul's in London, the architecture was still intricately worked and beautiful. Unlike some other Gothic buildings, this one was accented with color and detail everywhere, from its ceilings to its floors and the memorials along the walls. I fell in love with one stained-glass window in particular, a complex and abstract mosaic of different-colored panes, a very divergent (and, apparently, short-lived) alternative to the "picture window" that was common at the time and for centuries after. Our tour guide told us that most onlookers tend to either love or hate this window - but what was there to hate? It was gorgeous!

Speaking of that tour guide, he was excellent, telling us many quirky/funny stories about the cathedral itself, the architecture and artwork we saw inside, and the people who have been part of the Minster's history. Apparently the cathedral has had an extensive record of fires and other disasters - I couldn't tell, it's been so well restored over the years. After our tour, we descended to the crypt below the main cathedral floor, where we found a fascinating display of excavated foundations and artifacts from Roman and Norman ruins. The place where York Minster now stands started first as a Roman basilica, then a Norman chapel, before being built in its current structure around the 13th century. Such an intriguing overlap of different eras.

It was about 4pm when we left the Minster, after which we headed out for a brisk walk around York's amazingly well-preserved medieval city walls. On top of the walls, behind the turrets, I felt like I was a sentry on duty! Plus the views back at the Minster, which towers over the whole city, and at the other historic buildings throughout, were wonderful. Especially with the fall colors bursting out on the trees.

Rounds on the fortress walls over, we wandered the city a bit, seeing old brick and Tudor-style buildings revamped to host more modern shops and restaurants, before heading back to the hotel for a buffet dinner and some R&R. Highlight of the York streets: the Shambles, a famous medieval street where the cramped buildings lean and (seemingly) almost tumble in on top of each other. It's where Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter movies was filmed. (I keep seeing so many Harry Potter places here in the UK... too fun!)