On to the English Countryside

Sooooo. Just ignore that I'm writing about what happened during the latter half of my trip to England almost six months later. At least I'm getting it done in the same year I suppose. Life really got away from me between working three jobs this summer and plunging back into the rigors of Grove City.

Either way, the second half of our trip to England was one of the most unforgettable few days of my semester. My mom and I were truly blessed to stay with our friends, John and Lin Griffin, in a tiny village just outside of Bristol for three days. It is crazy the way God works sometimes. My parents met John and Lin eight years ago while on vacation in the Caribbean. Three years later, my parents brought us kids along on another trip to the same location in the Caribbean where we happened to run into them in the airport. Five years after that, my mom emailed them about our England trip, expecting to maybe get dinner with them one night, but they invited us to come stay with them for three days! There is absolutely nothing like seeing a country with people who know and understand the area, so those three days I experienced some of the most mind-blowing events of my life.

John and Lin picked us up from an train station not too far outside of London on a sunny, May morning. After a quick visit to their daughter-in-law and adorable granddaughter, we were on our way across the rolling hills of the English countryside on our way toward Bristol.

I asked John what the plan was for the next three days. He simply smiled and said, "I guess you'll just have to wait and see."

The brilliant blue of the sky stretched endlessly, setting the fields alight in the bright baby green of spring. Some of the fields were painted yellow with what we learned was rapeseed, and sheep grazed gently between the hedgerows. I gazed hungrily out the window, unable to believe that I was traversing the same countryside that Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Thomas Hardy, CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien and so many others I admired had once walked.

A moment later, the car trundled over a hill, and John pointed and said, "Oh, look what we found."

It was Stonehenge.

Never have I had a moment of unadulterated awe, shock, and delight than I did just then.

Stonehenge is one of those places that I've seen my entire life in pictures, books, and movies, but to experience it in person was something I had never imagined for myself. I was like a kid, bouncing delightedly around the stones, imagining the windswept eons that this unknown stone structure had witnessed.

John asked my mom if Stonehenge was everything she had imagined, and she responded "well, I actually always imagined it being cloudy, windy, and raining." We teased her for the rest of the trip that we could always come back when the weather wasn't so nice.

John and Lin live in a beautiful house that was once a stable dating back to the 1600s in the tiny village of Wrington just outside of Bristol. John, who is a native of Wales and fluent in Welsh, made sure to point out "God's country," as he always called it, across Bristol Bay. That evening, I took a walk along the public footpaths that ran through the village, and could not help but feel a little like Elizabeth Bennet as I traipsed over the stiles in the purple haze of dusk.

The next morning we hopped in the car, and, in true John and Lin style, they told us nothing about where we were going.

The first stop was an old English manor house for tea and scones. Again, it was something sprung from the pages of a Jane Austen book.

Then, we were back in the car, on to Exmoor for lunch, and as we got there it started raining and the wind howled around me, tugging at me hair, the blustery, dismal atmosphere exactly as I'd always imagined in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. My mom and I were absolutely delighted.

Me, looking pensive on the moor.

Wild ponies on the moor!

We moved on to the Valley of Rocks, which reminded me of the grandeur of the Cliffs of Moher.

These goats were no more than a few feet from us.

Then, back in the car and on to Lynmouth, a small English fishing village that is a popular tourist destination for those who enjoy hiking and the outdoors. In 1952, a massive flood swept the village away, killing many who were vacationing there. Today it has been rebuilt.

Finally, we took a scenic route back through the wandering hedgerows and came upon what my mom called the "actually gorgeous" view (for which we teased her about for the rest of the trip again).

The next morning we drove to a bus stop (again, John and Lin told us nothing), but as we took the bus in to the city, I realized that we were heading to Bath, a city where Jane Austen resided for many years and was a prominent figure in both Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. My mom and I, as Jane Austen connoisseurs, were more than a little excited as we wandered the streets. Then, John and Lin took us to the Pump Room, and I could not stop grinning like an idiot.

A string trio played music while we ate tea and crumpets in the room where Jane Austen (and her characters Anne Eliot and Catherine Morland) had once played the social games of English society.

Me, John, Lin, and mom.

The Pump Room is so named because out the window, the old Roman Baths are located, and water used to be pumped out of the spring and consumed to improve one's health. Mom and I were privileged to be able to tour the ancient ruins of Roman Britannia.

We also took a bus tour of Bath itself. Bath is a unique city as most of the buildings are made out of a tan-ish stone which, unfortunately, turns black over time. Many cleaning measures have been taken in recent years to restore Bath to its original image.

That evening, Mom and I took a train back to London, where we spent one final day before flying out. I am very glad that we did, because it gave us a chance to visit the British Library, which was far and away the highlight of my London trip. The library had an exhibit (which, as an English major, I basically cried my way through) containing the oldest copy of Beowulf, the oldest extant copy of the New Testament (from 350AD!), the Magna Carta, original Beatles lyrics on napkins, the original score of the Messiah in Handel's own hand, as well as original works by Beethoven and Bach, the manuscript of Jane Eyre, poems in William Wordsworth's hand, and so much more. I was vibrating with excitement by the end of that trip, and I felt truly blessed to have been able to see such priceless treasures of literature.

My trip to England with my mom was one of the highlights of my semester, not only because I experienced so many wonderful things, but because I got to spend time with my mom, and we now share unforgettable memories of Europe.

This trip came at exactly the right time. Leaving Berlin was hard, harder than I had expected to be, but because I had something to look forward to before flying home, it made leaving just a little easier.