Nottingham Castle

Nottingham Castle, like many others in the area, was built in 1067 by William the Conqueror following his coronation after the Battle of Hastings.  It was first constructed of wood and then rebuilt in stone nearly a century later by Henry II.

I didn't read my guidebooks very well prior to our visit to Nottingham, however.  The castle was destroyed after the Civil War of 1651.  In its place now stands a palace built by the Duke of Newcastle in the 1670s.

Today, the palace is an art gallery and museum.  It houses most of Nottingham's fine art collections, galleries on the history and archaeology of the area, and outfits and artifacts of the Sherwood Foresters, a local army regiment formed in 1881.


I had heard, however, that the castle (museum, whatever) had a nice children's room.  And indeed it did.

We spent several hours down in this basement play room.  Cooper cooked lots of meals.

And dressed up as a Tree Monster.  (The tiger costume is his; he chose the tree mask to complete the ensemble.)

The castle was built on a huge sandstone hill, and underneath the castle are man-made caves and tunnels, dating back to the 1300s and including a wine cellar and a dungeon. 

We took a tour of the caves, which included about 300 steps, give or take a few.

Cooper loved the texture of the sandstone.

While we were in Nottingham, we had planned to visit Sherwood Forest, but I wasn't feel well.  So we saved that for another (hopefully sunnier) day.

Cooper and Jack

Fast friends:

Jack stayed over at our house one evening while his parents were traveling and entertaining some friends.

In absence of train track or roads, we made our own with tape.

Cooper "reading" Little Miss Naughty to Jack.

Alan took the boys on a walk to feed the ducks.  They found every puddle and speck of mud along the way and jumped and splashed and dug right in it.

Walking back to the apartment. 

And you should note that Cooper's pants really aren't dark gray. They are (or rather were) light gray prior to the water and mud.

Relaxing with a little Bob the Builder after a hard day of getting dirty.

Planting the crops:

National Railway Museum

Several toys that Cooper has chosen to buy here (one at Poundland and one with his birthday money) have been trains.  And he's expressed regret that we couldn't bring his train set from Baldwin City.  So one morning, he and I hopped the train up to York to visit the National Railway Museum.  He liked walking around looking at the various trains on display.

A quick word about the outfit.  Remember the really clever lion mane that I created for Homecoming?  This is what's left of the vest after I cut off the hood.  He picked it as his coat this day.  And the mask (which I think is a raccoon but Cooper calls a fox) came in a package of eight masks purchased as part of my unsuccessful search for a legit lion mask.  He got more than a few strange looks this day, but he was pretty easy to keep track of.  I just kept saying "does anyone see the boy in the fur?"

There was a playground at the museum, but it was positively crawling with kids.  We went during "half-term break," which is sort of like an early spring break when the kids are out of school for an entire week.

 (Can you see fur boy sitting calming in the train?)

Cooper really enjoyed the Thomas mechanical rides.  He also found a double-decker bus to sit in and "drive."

In honor of half-term break, the museum had Wizard Week, which included lots of Harry Potter exhibits.  Cooper liked the owl display and he got to hold a tiny owl on his arm.

The biggest draw of Wizard Week was an honest-to-goodness steam train billed as the Hogwarts Express.  Here she is in all her steamy sooty glory.

I mentioned the possibility of riding on a steam train when I was first telling Cooper about the museum. I started to second guess myself when I saw the long queue (look at me -- I'm talking British!), but Cooper was adamant. And to his credit, he did a fantastic job being patient the entire one hour and 15 minutes we were in line. Yup. 75 minutes waiting in line to ride a train.  After that wait, you'd think it would be fantastic, right?

Holy cats, it was lame.  The ride lasted just shy of five minutes.  FIVE minutes.  That's less than 300 seconds, people.  And the train literally just went backwards out of the station for 2.5 minutes and then reversed direction and pulled back in.  There was nothing Hogwarts about it -- no announcer saying anything wizardlike, no theme music, no posters in the train cars.  And this was the scenery for our magical journey:

Hogwarts better up its game if it wants to continue drawing students to its wizard school.

Finally, like most places we go, we visited the gift shop where Cooper selected a green steam train (with lights and sounds!) to complement his collection.

A week in the life...

Monday: Moustache Monday as part of the college's homecoming festivities.

Tuesday:  Toy gun?

Nope.  Toy starter pistol for the race Cooper organized around our apartment.  Take that, childhood obesity epidemic.

Wednesday:  Homecoming!  Cooper was asked to be the mascot for the Harlaxton Lions basketball team.  Our school color is blue, so I had Coop wear his Blue's Clues outfit and I went on a hunt for a lion mask.  I ended up buying a fur vest thing at a charity store and then cutting off the hood for Cooper to wear as his mane.  On top, he wore his king crown.

Coop attended the pregame pep rally and got the team fired up with a "ROAR!"

Wednesday night:  The Spring 2011 Harlaxton Homecoming Court:

King Phil Collins (#24), Queen Josh Rydberg (#7) (don't ask...), and Prince/Mascot Cooper.  (Coop actually got the second highest vote total to be King!  Better watch your back, Phil!)

Thursday:  I found the McDonald's!  It has free wi-fi, so I worked there for an afternoon.  I also ordered a large Diet Coke.  Apparently size inflation hasn't reached England yet.  The large I ordered was only as big as the mediums back home.

Friday:  Coop wore his tiger costume for the first time.  It's one we brought from home, but he hadn't yet worn it around the castle.

Whew.  Busy week.


[Note:  The author has taken some artistic license with the precise timing of all of these events in order to make the narrative flow better.]

Afternoon tea

So we're in England where they drink a lot (A LOT) of tea. Unfortunately, I don't particularly care for tea. Or coffee. So, just like at home, I pretty much constantly have a Diet Coke bottle in my backpack.

One day, the college had a formal "afternoon tea" for us in the Great Hall, complete with yummy little finger sandwiches and desserts.

I'm very sorry I wasn't quick enough to get a picture of his "after" face, because it was hilarious.  Apparently, Cooper isn't a big fan of tea either.

He much preferred his own tea party:

Getting everyone's cup and place (it's not a saucer, thankyouverymuch) ready.

Cheers!

A batch of miscellaneous pictures

This chocolate bar showed up in one of our sack lunches:

I ate it (and liked it!) just to spite them.

Alan's got an extra-curricular activity.  He and three other faculty/spouses serve as barristas every Monday and Wednesday afternoon, whipping up lattes and cappucinos for the students.

It's become very popular, particularly since the drinks are free!

"Hey look -- this car says my name!"

And this sign says Daddy's name!

One place we stayed had bunk beds and Cooper was in love!  He spent lots of time climbing up and down the ladder and standing on top of the bed.  Luckily, the beds were wide enough that I could sleep with him on the top bunk to keep him from falling out.

Every morning, Coop and I wait outside to catch the 10:10am shuttle into town.  At that same time, Alan is usually working in the library, so Coop stops to chat with him (hanging out the window) before we leave for school.

Cooper and I with Pastor Jones Eyles from New Life Fellowship, our church in Grantham:

And finally, a photo from this morning -- Alan's 44th birthday!  Coop and I picked out some fun presents: a Superman hoodie, Heat Force thermal socks (2.5 times warmer than regular thermal socks!), a hot water bottle of his very own, and a fuzzy blue cover for his hot water bottle.

(Can you tell that Alan's been cold every minute of every day since we've been here?)

Lacock and Castle Combe

One good thing about bus tours, like the one we took to Stonehenge and Avebury, is that they often take you to out-of-the-way places that you probably wouldn't make time for by yourself.  And we got to see some really sweet little English towns.

First up, Lacock (pronounced Lay-cock, though I prefer the original pronunciation of Lack-uck).  Lacock is unique because it is owned by the National Trust, a non-profit organization supported in large part by the government.  Up until WWII, most of the town was owned by and passed down between the heirs of only one or two different families.  During WWII, however, property taxes became so high and the town manor was in such poor shape, the owners simply donated the manor and the village to the National Trust, retaining rights of occupancy for their family.  Today, the 1000 residents of Lacock pay rent to the National Trust, and most of the houses are lived in by people whose families go back several generations.

We had lunch in Lacock at The George Inn, a pub that dates back to 1361.

"See our famous dog wheel" -- what's a dog wheel, you ask?  Good question.  It's this:

In the 18th and 19th centuries, this wheel was hooked to the spit, on which a hunk of meat (or a pig or something) would hang over the fire.  A small dog with short legs (think corgi + dachshund) was placed inside this wheel and poked with a stick so that he would run in the wheel (like a mouse on the wheel in his cage) which would turn the spit which would spin the meat so it would cook evenly on all side.

The George also had stocks in the backyard.

Lacock attracts visitors predominantly because of its "unspoiled appearance" -- most of the houses were built in the 18th Century or earlier, and there aren't annoying things like tv antennae mucking up the view.  It has therefore become an ideal setting for filming movies or television shows, including Pride and Prejudice (1995), Emma (1996), and The Other Boleyn Girl (2008).
 
Below, Paddington is standing on the fence of a house that played a part in the Harry Potter movies.  Do you recognize it?

It's the house in which Harry's parents lived -- the house he was to have grown up in.

We next drove through a village called Tiddlywinks, which made me giggle, on our way to a small (pop. 350) village called Castle Combe (pronounced coom).  Like Lacock, Castle Combe is well-known for its tranquility and attractiveness.  In fact, in 1962, it was named the Prettiest Village in England.  The village houses are all typical of this area, constructed in stone with thick walls and roofs made from split natural stone tiles. The properties are many hundreds of years old and are listed as ancient monuments. 

Also like Lacock, Castle Combe has made an appearance in some tv shows and movies.  The 1967 film Doctor Dolittle (with Rex Harrison) was made in Castle Combe, and this little brook was turned into a bustling fishing harbor with boats and fishing nets and plastic cobblestones.

Just a few months ago, Steven Spielberg was in town filming an upcoming movie called War Horse.

We also poked our heads into St. Andrew's Church, which is home to one of the very few English medieval clocks still in use.  In the 1400s, the story goes, wealthy businessmen (wool merchants) gave money for the church to build a clock tower.  The church decided against "wasting" the money by putting a four-sided clock up in the tower because very few people could actually tell time.  Instead, a local blacksmith built this faceless clock and it was placed inside the church at the base of the tower, where it still sits today.

More impressive than the clock itself is the fact that it still keeps accurate time.  It's driven by the large hunk of limestone on the right (partially obscured by the wood post). Once a day, the electric motor on the left hoists the stone back into position for another day's run.

A trip to Bath

The beauty of a three-day weekend, I've discovered, is that you can travel on Friday and Saturday, and then spend Sunday resting and recuperating and doing laundry and enjoying church.  We're trying to take advantage of that.

One thing on our "must do" list was Stonehenge, just because it's, well, Stonehenge.  So we planned a Friday-Saturday trip to Bath and booked a bus tour from there to get us to and around Stonehenge.

We first had to get to Bath, which involved a cab ride to the Grantham train station, a one-hour(ish) train ride to London, a tube (London subway) ride to a different train station, a one-and-a-half-hour train ride to Bath, and a half-mile walk to our hotel.  Interspersed with all of those train rides was much walking through very large London train stations.  Traveling is tough when you have small four-year-old legs.

One of the train stations was Paddington Station.  We had read a book or two about Paddington Bear, named because he was found by Mr. and Mrs. Brown in Paddington Station, so Cooper was excited to look around Paddington Station for a "polite-mannered bear behind a bike rack."  Whaddya know, there's an entire display of Paddington Bears that you can buy. 

We did.

Once we got to Bath and checked into our hotel, we scouted out a restaurant for dinner.  We ended up at a pizza place with fancy-ish (but not very hearty) pizza.  And then we ordered this for dessert:

Dough balls with a bowl of Nutella for dipping!  YUM!

On to more well-known and important things than dessert.  (But seriously, warm dough balls dipped in Nutella were amazing.  I licked the bowl clean.)

Stonehenge evolved over several construction periods.  It was begun about 5000 years ago, around 3000 BC, with circular hill with a ditch lining the inside, approximately 360 feet in diameter.  The stones were moved to the area to form an inner circle beginning about 2500 BC.  The larger stones, some of which weigh over 40 tons, are sarsen stones (a type of hard sandstone) likely transported to the area from over 20 miles away.  The smaller stones are bluestones, which came from a location over 150 miles away.  The alignment of Stonehenge coincides with the sunrise and sunset on the summer and winter solstices, suggesting that it was established to acknowledge and presumably celebrate those events.

It's fairly astounding to imagine people building this structure at a time with the most sophisticated tools were deer antlers and the shoulder bones and jaw bones of cattle.


We also visited Avebury, another stone circle formation near Stonehenge.  Avebury is perhaps as much as 500 years older than Stonehenge, but they are considered contemporary structures.  Avebury, however, is much, much larger.  Much more spread out.  The outer circle is formed by a hill approximately 12 feet high, and is lined on the inside by a 17-foot-deep ditch.  This outer circle is nearly 1400 feet in diameter (compared to Stonehenge's 360-foot-diameter outer circle).  Alan took this picture standing on the the hill that forms the outer ring of Avebury.  Just below, you can see the ditch that also runs the circumference of the monument.

Inside the ditch is a ring of nearly 100 sarsen (sandstone) stones.  In addition, there are two smaller rings of stones inside the larger one.  And you can actually go touch and climb on the stones!  Cooper and Paddington did:

It is unknown why Avebury was built, though some suggest it was a great temple to hold ceremonies relating to fertility (both of the land and of the women).

Another unique feature of this area was the series of giant white horses on hillsides.  The white horses, carved into the chalk hills, range in size from 45-feet high to over 360-feet high.  They were created for unknown reasons, perhaps as an emblem of the local people or for ritualistic/religious reasons.

The oldest white horse in the area is probably 3000 years old, but the rest were carved within the past 300 years.  The newest white horse in this county was created to celebrate the new millennium (11 years ago).  At one time, there were 24 such figures in Britain, 13 of which were in this area (Wiltshire County).  Eight are still visible and they get periodic upkeep, including a complete overhaul every five years, to keep the chalk from getting too overgrown and gray.