Poor Me, at Holyrood Palace,
before I entirely lost interest
in Mary, Queen of Scots.
Behind my head is Arthur's Seat
where there was a raging fire
that took 22 fire-engines from
all across Scotland
five days to put it out,
although you can't actually see it here
because the smoke is so clean and clear
it looks like a cloud.
All I can say is that having taken around 7,500 shots was better than last year, when our combined photograph tally was over 18,000 and most shots were of the same things. We really seemed to have learned since that nightmare because we now say "I'll get this one" so we don't have a zillion duplicates.
But for an overview of our journey, it goes something like this: Edinburgh, Newcastle, lots of stops at little towns along Hadrian's Wall, Hexham, Carlisle where we picked up a hire car and drove through "ratbag backroads" as we quickly learned to call them - gosh, they quickly get annoying - to Newcastle again, then a romantic jaunt up to Gretna Green from Longtown, then Whitby, Scarbough, Durham, Cambridge, York, Haworth, Sunderland, Monkswearmouth and Jarrow, then back to Newcastle to drop off the car, then a really nasty train ride back to Edinburgh. Oh, and then over to Amsterdam for several days.
As you know, this trip was all about hubby exploring his roots, with him taking a hike along Hadrian's Wall - a long held ambition of his, although not mine so I didn't go - thrown in for good measure, and a little side trip for me to see the Fiji Exhibition at the archeology museum in Cambridge.
However, despite this supposed trip being all about Keith and his roots, I saw no reason to share his quest. At the start, MY mission was to track Mary Queen of Scots through all the places she stayed in Scotland and England, but she quickly started to annoy me. Honestly, she really is the Britany Spears of the Elizabethan Era, and it got so I was rooting for Elizabeth and Mary couldn't be treated badly enough for my taste, the creepy little git.
So, yes, I quickly gave up on the pretty little moron, and that was particularly easy once I discovered Priories and the early Christian monks, and after that it became all about them, however I quickly ended up only being interested in Cuthbert and Bede because they were the only two who didn't seem treacherous and nasty. There is something particularly ugly about monks playing politics, isn't there!
But isn't Celtic Christianity interesting? And so very "Da Vinci Code"! I'm just so sorry we didn't make it out to Lindisfarne, although perhaps that is for the best because I really didn't know enough to get the most out of that journey. I need to read a lot more on the subject before I take on this particular quest again. Our next jaunt perhaps?
However I did make one particularly odd discovery about these Celtic Monks that I don't know if I should share with everyone now or keep private so I have something new and exciting for my PhD thesis. What I discovered is so totally out-there and something no one else seems to have realised. Perhaps I should share it because it's very exciting. Or perhaps not. I'll decide later once I find that set of photographs.
Anyway, the great news about developing this passion (and potential PhD topic) is that knowing about The Judgement of Whitby - where the Roman Catholics trampled over the Celtic Christians and destroyed them even before the Vikings did their worst - meant that we could combine that with our planned "Quest for Captain Cook" because Keith and I both adore him, and both Quests were easily combined. And it matched our third Quest too - our "What Fijian treasures can be found in England?" - because we knew that some of the sailors who traveled on those first journeys with Cook had donated their private Pacific collections to the Whitby Museum and we thought that those may have included various Fijians objects, and we were indeed right because they indeed had some lovely objects, although that's a blog for another day.
And then, if we weren't already richly blessed with missions and quests, we threw in a little Richard III and "who murdered the little princes in the tower?" with our trip to York. And since I don't intend to blog on that, I'll tell you now that I decided it was Margaret Tudor who had the princes murdered, but because Keith also thought so, I took up being obstreperous and kept claiming it was The Duke of Norfolk.
Oh, and while in York there was a brief side-quest to visit the Bar Convent of Mary Ward because, while at university, I once did a paper on how cynical and self-serving the various European witch hunts were and that included a huge section on Mary Ward since she came so close to being burned as a witch herself - for attempting to set up a secular convent for clever and intellectual girls who were too frail for marriage and children - because it meant that a lot of dowry money would be staying in the hands of women which those vicious and sinister aldermen of York didn't want to see happen. And yes, I had copies of the actual minutes of those meetings of the York Town Council to make my case.
And then we did a brief Bronte Sisters Quest which turned out to be so interesting I will be blogging later about our discoveries.
Gosh, in England and Scotland you are absolutely spoiled for all-consuming interesting Quests to go on, aren't you? Untold layers of wonderful history and most of it still there for the looking.
Hey, perhaps I should put together a "Witch Hunt Quest" and trace through the worst of those vicious and cynical attacks on women. Oh, and speaking of fabulous quests what was particularly funny was that an old friend from Fiji, Paul, was also traveling around England at the same time as we were and was always very close to us but, alas, we kept missing each other. However when he mentioned he was on a "Boudicca Quest", tracking down and traveling in the footsteps of his great heroine, I was all immediately "Me too, me too! I want to go on a Boudicca Quest.", so that's now on the bucket list as well.
Also came across a book "On the Trail of William Shakespeare" and was overwhelmed with longing to take that quest as well.
I will be blogging these various stories once the photographs are sorted out, so do drop back. For now, however, I have some serious work to do. And I should say we do have some amazing photographs. I'll show you one just for now, to whet your appetite:
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