The Beautiful and the Welsh

I do actually take classes here in Bath.  I have a core course on Jane Austen, and a seminar course on Transatlantic Romanticism, or the English and American Romantic poets.  This weekend was seminar course study trip weekend, and each seminar headed off to go "study" on site.  All the other seminars headed to London.  However, my eight classmates, our professor, and the dean/director of the program, Jonathan, headed off to see places associated with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  In the true Romantic tradition, much of our learning for the weekend consisted of wandering through nature, though, to ensure we were not lost in the wilderness and therefore prevent lawsuit, our wandering had some structure to it.

The bridge from England to Wales.  That's the Welsh coast.


We started the weekend with a very brief dip into Wales.  (Very brief as in under 2 hours.)  We visited Tintern Abbey, another ruined old abbey that was absolutely gorgeous.  It was also in such a scenic and beautiful place.  The title of this post may be a bit redundant as my two-hour voyage into Wales convinced me that nearly everything Welsh, except perhaps the language, is also beautiful.  We started by reading the Wordsworth poem that prompted our visit, named very informatively "Lines, Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey..."  If you are now interested in educating yourself in English literature or becoming more cultured, avail yourself:  http://www.rc.umd.edu/rchs/reader/tabbey.html.

Here are some pictures of us reading.  Very pensive, very Romantic.

We were then left to explore the abbey.  I suppose you'll want some pictures, and I'll assume that, cultured and intelligent as you all are, you'll want to hear a little of it's historical as well as literary significance.

AHHHH!  WELSH!

I understand the danger a lot more because this sign is warning me in two languages.

The Abbey was founded on May 9, 1131!  That's a pretty long time ago, kids.

These are the cloisters!  Cistercian monks lived here under the Rule of St. Benedict!

SO PRETTY!  This is taken from the cloisters of the church.

Flowers on ruins.  Windows upon windows.

Me with another set of scenic ruins.  TRIBE PRIDE!!!

Pretty.

General splendor.  Unfortunately, this place also fell victim to the Dissolution of the Monasteries.  "On September 3, 1536, Abbot Wyche surrendered Tintern Abbey to the King's visitors and ended a way of life which had lasted 400 years" - Wikipedia

This place was so beautiful.  I could have stayed all day long!

Pretty

Stairs to somewhere secret.

MARY!

Every was in both languages!

Again, it was so beautiful!

The Abbey from across the River Wye.

 

A dove also alighted on the beautiful ruins.

That's all for now.  I'll try to post again soon.  I've taken well over 1,500 pictures.  I'll try to get them up on Facebook when I get back.  But for now, it's final paper week in Bath.  Off to Oxford tomorrow, then London on Saturday!

Also, more information about the Cistercians can be found here, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03780c.htm, if you're interested in joining or just interested in history.

Glastonbury Tor

This was actually part of the Stonehenge and, as the title might suggest, Glastonbury trip.  This place was, in two words, completely awesome.  It was quite a hike (over 500 vertical feet, though we obviously didn't climb vertically), and a crazy number of stairs.  It wasn't that bad at all though, really and, once at the top, it was well worth it.  From the top of the Tor, you can see the surrounding countryside so well!  It's amazing.  There were some truly spectacular views.  The photographs are good, but they can't even begin to demonstrate how beautiful this place was.

For starters, let's get an idea of what this hike even looked like.  If you look closely you can see a tiny little building.  That's where we were headed.

Note little building and fellow American students.

Here's the building a little closer up, and SHEEP!!!

Now you're probably thinking:  What is that building?  Why is it there?  Jane, please tell me the significance of this location!  If you're just showing us this because you think it's pretty, that's kind of lame.  Obviously this place has an awesome historical and mythological background.

OK.  So a brief bit of history.

The building at the top of the Tor is the ruins of St. Michael's Church (or the second St. Michael's Church).  Before the church, there was a non-Christian, Anglo-Saxon fort.  After the fort, the first church was built as a part of a medieval Christian society in the Dark Age.  This was destroyed by an earthquake on September 11, 1275 (precision!).  The second church was built (a rebuilding of the first) in the 1360s and survived until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539.  As I wrote in my previous post about Glastonbury, the abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, Richard Whiting put up a fight to the dissolution and was hung, drawn, and quartered on the Tor on November 15, 1539 (precision with the dates again!)

The Tor is also associated with Avalon, the place where King Arthur went to heal from wounds sustained in battle.  Arthur came to Avalon by boat, but this location is a plausible one even though it is landlocked because it used to be an island surrounded by marshy area.  Recall that Arthur and Guinevere are also said to be buried at Glastonbury, though at the Abbey and not at the Tor.

Enough history and Arthurian legend!  More pictures!

A pretty heart made out of grass.  I guess it's cute.  I mean if you believe in love and all that.  (I kid, I kid.)

Some sweet countryside from a grass-eye view.

Window out of  ruin.

Countryside.

This person is me.  Me with some beautiful English countryside.

Storm clouds over pretty countryside.  :(

Me with two new friends!  Elibet and Dana!  And I'm making an awesome expression.

Sunny on one side of the Tor.

Still sunny.

What the heck?  See the rain on just the other side.  But!--the heart thing again.  That is to Q-U-T-E!

The view walking down.  Countryside to the left.

The view walking down.  Town to the right.

I am a selfy expert, mainly because they're funny.  This was before crazy wind and drizzle started.

Walking down into a thunderstorm.

I'll also include, for your amusement, some photos of the local wildlife!  There are three kinds of animals in England: birds (of all sorts), sheep, and cows.

Cows in Glastonbury.

Sheep in Glastonbury.

I took no pictures of birds.  I hate those things with the fire of a thousand suns.

Well that's all for now!  I'll be sure to offer a prayer tonight for anyone who makes it to the end of this blog entry, so if you're reading this, congratulations.  I'm headed to Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare, this weekend!  I'm pumped to see Macbeth at the Royal Shakespeare Theater!!!!  Anyways, there will be more soon.  This blog is losing any sense of chronology, but I hope it's retaining all sense of awesomeness!

Tintagel - Birthplace of King Arthur

Our first stop for our weekend in Cornwall was Tintagel, the alleged birthplace of King Arthur.  Legend has it that Arthur was both conceived and born there.  There is also a cave known as Merlin's Cave.  Richard, Earl of Cornwall built a castle there in 1233 and the ruins remain to this day.

When we went it was rainy and windy and rather cold.  The weather is reflected in the pictures.  It was truly English weather you could say.  It reminded me a bit of Frankenstein and the Gothic elements of Northanger Abbey, which we just finished reading in class.  Anyhow, pictures follow!

Merlin's Cave is around the corner.

Other pretty caves.

The scenic bay looking out on the stormy Atlantic.

Another pretty cave.

Awesome very blue water!!!

Pretty!

Yeah.  Proof.

Check out the person on the top of the cliff.  It almost looks like a picture.

Scenic ruins.

Looking through the ruined window at Merlin's Cave.

Daisies!!!

My prof took this picture.  Weird.  Me + scenic ruins + tad of sea + random other tourist.

So stormy.

Scenic ruins on the walk down.

A door to the SUPER STEEP walk down.  Note the sea behind it that you could quite easily fall into, but I'm being melodramatic.

The land and the sea.  Very pretty.  Sums up the general natural splendor of the place.