Transition Day

Off to Dunster and its castle today, by a seaside route there and a lovely inland route back. This was for fun and to test the gear, organization, things like that. A getting sorted day, you might say. I'm worried that the boots are a bit tight after their having been resoled, but maybe it was just the sightseeing. Boots are made for walking not touring castles.

On the way, some lady friends wanted a visit, and followed as far as their confines would allow:





Happiest of daisies, blowing in the wind, reaching for the sea and sky:




The castle visit at Dunster was five star! Knowledgeable, engaging volunteers in every room, and you were invited to sit in the chairs and read, if you liked, play billiards, make yourself at home, in other words. Ah, it should be noted that this comfort is reproduced from the late 19th century, not from the castle's medieval origins.

I was beyond excited to see an explanation for the oubliette, as this is one of my favorite OED words of the day, and perhaps the best loan word ever! The explanation below differs from the dictionary one in that there it was described as a dungeon whose entry was only from the top. Why people would go to so much trouble to build such a structure in which to put people to languish and die, is a bit puzzling when they could much more easily toss them into a pit in the yard, cover them over with dirt and be done with it.





Meantime, upstairs, the table is set, impeccably, for dinner. Sadly, the present day visitor is not invited to dine, though the menu, featuring poached salmon—and not the farmed variety, you can be sure—was the main course.





Indeed:




Shortly after the introduction of indoor plumbing and heating, or what one might call the comforts we would hate to do without, one could take a jolly good soak in this tub:





View at lunch. Big leaves under the bridge at the mill:




One of the highlights of the day was a guided tour of the victorian kitchens. All I can say is neither Downton Abbey nor Upstairs Downstairs comes close to portraying the harsh conditions of working "below stairs.". For one thing, those scenes could never have been shot in the actual light conditions of those areas. It was very dark!

I did learn, though, that the expression "upper crust" may come from the fact that when baking bread, the bottom burned, so it would be cut off to be a portion of the servants' fare, while the part with the nice, brown, upper crust went to the upstairs residents.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Minehead

At Basecamp

A day of trains. First from London to Taunton, then a bus to Bishop's Lydeard, and finally the steam train, with its genuine whooo-whooo steam train whistle, to Minehead. All this worked so easily. It still amazes me how easy it is here to use public transportation, and how matter of fact it is to take a bus to do errands rather than hopping into a car.






Why, this was my very brand (before the flood), and I not knowing that they prevented sore throats!

This might work If it is a very little fire.....




On the way to the hotel, where I have a very nice room, thanks to a complementary upgrade by those wonderful Encounter Walking Holiday people, is the sculpture that marks the beginning or end of the walk. It is impressive, but I kind of don't get it, since it celebrates the hands instead of the feet that actually do the walking, unless it is about reading the map. Maybe there is a deeper (hidden) meaning. In any case it is exciting to actually see it for real:




Walked a bit about town, bought supplies, among which were strawberries, which are very very delicious, stopped in at a tea room for leek and potato soup, hot and also very delicious, and finally realized that I am tired!

It takes time to repack the suitcase and backpack, going from "I'd better take those 4.7 pounds of paperwork on the plane," to "OK that can stay in the suitcase now, but not the poncho." By the way, for anyone who needs to charge lots of devices on the road, know that the travel power strip with four USB ports and one regular port is super great!

Tomorrow, a visit to Dunster to see its famed castle.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Minehead

we regret to inform you

Blog Press seems not to want to upload photos. I'll try again tomorrow. In the meantime, if anyone knows how to solve this problem, would s/he please tell me?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Minehead

South West Coast National Trail

So First I could not get The keyboard out of French. Finally figured that out and it went info Spanish, now  it is in some from of terrible English unless it is still in Spanish only you can't tell when you are using the external keyboard. Switch to iPad keyboard is painful in this one star app. You type and it sputters and does all manner of annoying things. Especially bad is its autocorrect feature, the designer of which spoke a language known only to itself, apparently. Alex installed blogsy but I can't figure it out. It has an HTML side and a write side, which do entirely different things, and I am not prepared to fight with that.

So just a short, experimental entry to see what the crash factor is like here in England, which has nothing to do with England, or even Brexit, of course 'cause they have very good wi-fi here along with a superabundance of carbohydrates. There are some little grocery stores, well Seven Eleven kind of stores, near the hotel....this is London, by the way...where they do sell a few fruits but not one as a single vegetable. One little store is called a super store; it has a branch about two blocks away. This store and its cousin are tiny and sell mostly suitcases.

The day was great even though the hotel would not let me check in early. It was great because I, having discovered the perfect how to sleep on the airplane potion, slept the whole way over. Here is what you do. You take half an Ambien (for me that would be 2 1/2 mg.) and a half a Valium (another 2 1/2 mg.) and you are sound asleep until landing.

The phone was a pain to take care of, and I bought a package I am sure I don't need, but this way I can use data to my heart's content for the duration. Besides, the walk to the EE store was quite nice.

Afternoon spent at the Victoria and Albert museum. Gorgeous place they got there! You walk in and are utterly wowed by the sculpture corridor. Two special exhibits: Botticelli revisited, and an exhibit on underwear. Some of the modern Botticelli interpretations were interesting, but unless weird, nothing desperately memorable. The underwear exhibit showed lots of corsets. Other than being grateful that corsets are no longer à la mode, that exhibit, too was somewhat disappointing. Ok so there was that Swarovski bejeweled bikini and bra that was to be worn under a sheer over garment. Not quite sure what the event for that would be. Maybe having a few friends over?

I am waiting for a photo to move over from the iPhone, but it isn't being picked up, and I didn't take my camera with me today, so no photo of birds eating my carrot salad in the V and A courtyard. It was clear that they quite enjoyed the cilantro in it.

Before heading off to Minehead mañana, I have to say that part of the fun of this adventure has come from working with Encounter Walking Holidays. From my first inquiries back in October through all the planning, to the final details, they have been so accommodating and helpful, and efficient, and ever so personable. A public thank you, Damon, if you are reading this.

This is it for a photoless test blog, so that I can see if I can get the external keyboard to function properly.





- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad