The magic of Keswick and the Lake District

After leaving Cambridge, we drove north and then west to the Lake District of England--into Beatrix Potter, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Coleridge country. A sense of magic pervades this part of England; it’s the feel of the place--unstable weather, hilly landscapes and mountains, pristine lakes, shifting clouds, the greenery, the sunlight and the way it infuses the colors of the hills and the sky with a certain vibrancy and crispness. The drive into the Lake District is a pastoral scene unto itself; gray stone farmhouses dot the landscape here and there, and sheep abound.

About sixteen million tourists visit the Lake District each year; July and August are presumably the busiest months since most people have summer vacation then. We visited the Lake District the week before summer vacation officially started for most of Britain, which enhanced the experience for me because we did not have to deal with masses of people at all junctures. On our eight-mile walk around Derwentwater Lake, we met perhaps a total of twenty other walkers during the four hours it took us to complete the walk, which suited me just fine. I liked the feeling of having the lake almost to ourselves. There is a wildness here that feels untamable; it emanates from the geographic nature of the land. I liked the feeling of undisturbed nature about me, of wandering down to the water’s edge and looking out over the vast expanse of lake, of stopping to listen to the wind blowing through the trees, of just being a small part of it.

It’s hard not to love a place that has small towns with names like Bowness-on-Windermere, Ambleside, Grasmere, or lakes with names like Buttermere, Ullswater, Derwentwater, Windermere, or mountains called Helvellyn, Scafell and Skiddaw. We stayed three nights at the Lairbeck Hotel (run by Malcolm and Jennifer Hutchinson) located on Vicarage Hill road in the town of Keswick (the ‘w’ is not pronounced), a short walk from the town center. The Lairbeck is a lovely Victorian country house hotel that enchanted me from the moment I walked through its front doors and into the vestibule (http://www.lairbeckhotel-keswick.co.uk/homepage.html). Jennifer greeted us and showed us to our room, the School Room, which had a window seat with a view that overlooked the beautifully-kept garden. A window seat! Anyone who knows me knows that I always wanted my own room with a window seat when I was a child. Our stay here was pleasant and relaxing, with friendly hosts and a great breakfast in the dining room with a garden view to look forward to each morning.

scenic view from the front of the Lairbeck Hotel

The Cumbrian market town of Keswick is a find in all ways, with lovely scenic views and a variety of interesting boutiques, pubs, cafes and architecturally-interesting houses. And of course the meals at several different pubs; the food was consistently excellent (in our opinion). The first night we ate at The Inn at Keswick (http://theinnkeswick.co.uk/) in the town center; I had the Cumberland sausage and mash, and my husband had the lamb hot pot.The following nights we ate at the Pheasant Inn at Keswick (http://www.pheasantinnkeswick.co.uk/), right down the road from our hotel. I tried the Lakeland beef and Cumberland ale pie, and my husband ate the Fish Pie—both were excellent, in addition to the variety of beers available. The homemade tomato soup was also excellent.

We were not in Keswick long enough to do all the walking tours I would have liked to do (only two days), but we did manage the Derwentwater Lake walk as I mentioned above, which took us about four hours (I'll post photos from this walk in my next post). Besides this walk, we drove down to Bowness-on-Windermere on one rainy afternoon and through the towns of Ambleside and Grasmere (home to William Wordsworth). We did not manage a visit to Dove Cottage where Wordsworth, his wife, and his sister lived, although we did visit The World of Beatrix Potter attraction in Bowness-on-Windermere. This was not her actual home though; she lived at Hill Top farm in Near Sawrey, Hawkshead, Ambleside; on a future trip to the Lake District, Hill Top farm and Dove Cottage will be two of the first stops. Beatrix Potter was an impressive woman; world-famous author of children’s books and a wonderful artist, but also an astute businesswoman, who owned fourteen farms and four thousand acres of land in the Lake District, which she willed to the National Trust when she died. It’s not hard to understand why this area enchanted so many writers, poets and artists. I definitely want to return here and explore it some more. 

On our way to Newcastle-on-Tyne, where we took the ferry to Amsterdam for our return trip home, we drove through the outer edges of the Westernhope and Middlehope Moors, in the area near Stanhope, a small town located on the north east side of Weardale. This was a rather unexpected detour, as our GPS somehow pushed us in this direction in its quest to get us to Newcastle via the fastest route. Driving over the moors was breathtaking but also a bit spooky. You could see for miles--desolate and rough land that stretches out forever in all directions. Not another car to be seen for miles. If you broke down out there, you could probably wait for hours for help. Again, there were many sheep out grazing on the moors, and some of them had come right up to the edge of the road, which made driving rather hazardous at times; my husband found it stressful. Driving this stretch of road in the dark would not be something I would like to do. We made it in one piece (and without a car breakdown) to Newcastle and reached our ferry on time. Now at home a few days later, the magic of the entire trip remains with me, happily so.

Snapshots of Cambridge life

Our Holiday Inn hotel in Cambridge was located on the outskirts of the city, so that we enjoyed a nice walk along the Tins bicycle- and foot-path in the Cherry Hinton suburban area whenever we walked to the city center. The Tins runs on the North side of the flooded chalk pits (three big lakes) that are the subject of much discussion in Cambridge at present. There is a movement spearheaded by Steve Turvill, owner of the Italian deli Limoncello, to make these lakes (currently fenced off to the general public) available for swimming, boating and fishing. It seems like a good idea, since there really is little point in keeping them fenced off when they could be enjoyed by all. One of the lakes is located on land used by the Territorial Army; this land in particular seems quite popular with brown rabbits. We saw many of them through the wire fence, especially during the early evening, eating grass and vegetation, and seemingly unfazed by the presence of pedestrians and cyclists traveling along the Tins. Brown rabbits were also visible outside the dining room windows of the hotel when we ate breakfast. I've never seen so many rabbits in one place except on the island of Gressholmen in Norway (the subject of a recent post). 

Every time I've traveled to England (about six times if I recall correctly), I've been met with good weather--blue skies and sun. Most of the country's inhabitants will tell you that it rains a lot in England, so that my experiences of good weather have been the exception and not the rule. So I accept that I've been lucky. One of the advantages of good weather was that I was able to take a lot of photos in Cambridge during our walks around the city. Snapshots of Cambridge life--enjoy!

University building

punting on the river Cam

Cambridge idyll

houseboats on the river Cam

The Fort St. George pub on Midsummer Common 

Cambridge Botanical Garden

A walk down memory lane

I am A New Yorker in England at present, in Cambridge to be specific. My husband and I are on vacation, and this year, we decided to return to the place where we first met twenty-six years ago. We met at a scientific (flow cytometry) conference that was held at Cambridge University (scroll down to end photo). The majority of the lectures and parallel sessions were held at Trinity College. It was my first time in Europe, and my first opportunity to attend an international conference. I arrived alone in London a few days before the conference, and made my way to the Belgravia section of London where I had booked a room at a small boarding house run by an immigrant Italian couple. I spent those days touring London, Bath, and Stonehenge on my own before heading north to Cambridge by train from King’s Cross station. It was an exciting time—making my way around London and taking day trips from London by bus at a time when internet, cell phones and social media were non-existent. 

The first time I was in Cambridge, I became completely captivated by the city and the university. I soaked in the university atmosphere. What made the experience complete was being able to live in a dorm room for the week of the conference. The room was austere, fit for a monk, containing a bed and a desk and chair, and not much else. The bathroom was down the hall, to be shared by the inhabitants of the dorm rooms on that floor. The dorm building was a stone’s throw from Trinity College, so it was a pleasure to wake up and to walk across the street to get breakfast in one of the main dining rooms with long tables (think Harry Potter at Hogwarts where he and his friends sat at those long tables, and you’ll get the idea). This is where we ate breakfasts and dinners—formal affairs where the food was served from the head of the table and passed along down to each diner. I remember some really good dinners—roast beef and roast lamb with different sauces. The organizers of the conference made sure that we experienced real university life. I spent some time wandering around the city’s many bookstores; the end result was that my luggage became much heavier, and I ended up having to ship the many books I bought back to New York as I could not haul them around for the rest of my stay in England. After the conference was over, a colleague and I took the overnight train from London to Edinburgh and toured Scotland for several days, before returning to London for the trip back to New York. I met my husband a few days before we left Cambridge, and we managed to spend some time together wandering around the city and getting to know each other before we returned to our respective countries. The rest, as they say, is history.

Yesterday, we wandered down the same streets as we did when we first met. We discovered that some of our memories of what transpired many years ago were faulty, whereas the walk through the city brought back other memories that had been buried. We stood on one bridge overlooking the river Cam and watched the amateur punters trying to steer their boats in the right direction in order to avoid crashing into other boats. It brought back memories of punting with my colleagues from Memorial Sloan-Kettering; my former boss was the designated punter, and he did his level best to keep from falling into the water and ruining his leather jacket and shoes. He managed that amidst our laughter and teasing. My colleagues also joined me for a traditional English tea with scones and clotted cream at a tea house in the city center; my two wishes upon landing in England, both of which were fulfilled, were to experience a traditional English teatime and to eat fish and chips. We also enjoyed a beer together at the Eagle pub that Watson and Crick (of DNA fame) frequented.

Today, we met an old friend, Judith, whom we both know from the time when she did her doctorate in Norway; she and Charlie kindly made the trip from London to Cambridge, and we met at the Fort St. George pub/restaurant on the Midsummer Common for lunch. It was a beautiful warm sunny day and three hours passed in pleasant conversation. On parting, we made plans to keep in touch and hopefully they will visit us in Norway at some future point.

One of my ‘bucket list’ wishes is to take a summer literature course at Cambridge University. I have already found some online information about the different courses available. It would be a real privilege to study at Cambridge, even if only for a few weeks, and I hope it comes to pass.

These photos of Cambridge University are from 1987, and were taken from the tower of Great St. Mary's Church, which provided me with wonderful views of the university buildings and city. The photos of the Bridge of Sighs were taken during our punting trip on the river Cam. 

notice the beautiful lawns 

King's College

Bridge of Sighs, St. John's College

Bridge of Sighs

The island of Gressholmen

This past Tuesday was another warm summer day in Oslo; blue skies with some clouds, even rather hazy toward the early evening. Perfect boating weather. My husband and I ended up out on the Oslo fjord for a few hours, first sailing past Tjuvholmen and Aker Brygge, then Rådhusplassen, and then around the island of Hovedøya where we sometimes end up if we’re in the mood for a really good seafood dinner. But this time we had taken dinner with us to eat on the boat—shrimp, a loaf of bread, and mayonnaise. We ended up docking at the guest marina on the small island of Gressholmen. It didn’t take the ducks and geese very long to discover that we had bread on the boat; they swam up to the boat to get some handouts shortly after we docked.

Gressholmen is a nature reserve with many types of wild flowers and plants; up until 2007 it was also home to thousands of rabbits, but they were unfortunately done away with so as to preserve the natural vegetation. The reason given for killing the rabbits was that they decimated the vegetation. I’m not sure this was the only reason, but who can argue with the nameless authorities and bureaucrats who make these decisions? The rabbits weren’t hurting anyone; in fact, they were one of the main attractions of the island. Cute, and tame enough so that they would hop right up to you as you walked along the island’s many narrow dirt paths. That happened to us any number of times. These days the island feels rather empty without them.

I took a lot of photos that evening, as the lighting and the weather were perfect. Some are of the island’s flower and plant life, some of the bird life, and one photo is of the summer restaurant, Gressholmen Kro (http://www.gressholmen.no/index.html), that we frequented much more often during the 1990s. It’s possible to get dinner here; we drank our after-dinner coffee here that evening, walking up from the boat to the kro and along the way stopping to look at the many wildflowers. And then back to the boat to greet more of the ever-present bird life.

Geese near the boat

Dirt path on the way to the restaurant, where we would often meet the rabbits when they were still alive

Wild rose bush

Wild rose

View of Oslo from Gressholmen

Wild roses

A twig that looked like a snake

Gressholmen Kro

Beautiful song and video

I heard this song by INXS on the radio the other day, after many years of not hearing it played. What a beautiful song! And the video is also, having been filmed in Prague, which is a lovely city. 

I love the lines:  'Cause we all have wings, But some of us don't know why'. There's something to reflect on--the knowledge and awareness of having been given great talents and gifts that should be used, but not knowing exactly why they were given to you. I love the vulnerability and honesty in those lines. That's how I choose to interpret them. 

"Never Tear Us Apart" by INXS

Don't ask me
What you know is true
Don't have to tell you
I love your precious heart

I
I was standing
You were there
Two worlds collided
And they could never tear us apart

We could live
For a thousand years
But if I hurt you
I'd make wine from your tears

I told you
That we could fly
'Cause we all have wings
But some of us don't know why

I
I was standing
You were there
Two worlds collided
And they could never ever tear us apart

In praise of fathers

I am reminded of my father at different moments in my life; I can be reading a good book or watching a movie, and suddenly I’ll think of him and want to talk to him about the book or the movie I know he would have liked. I remember our long walks on hot summer evenings when I was a teenager, just him and me, ambling slowly along Broadway in Tarrytown, down as far as the Sunnyside estate and then back. We always had something to talk about. Or I’ll remember him toward the end of his life, when illness had weakened him and he had become a fragile man. Those are the ‘memories that bless and burn’, as my mother used to say. I am reminded of him and of all of the elderly fathers in his generation who are still alive, today on Father’s Day. Some of them (like my friend Jean’s father whom I look forward to seeing each year on my annual trip to NY) are sick and struggling to get well; I send my best wishes for a good recovery from across the ocean. They are always in my thoughts and prayers, but especially today. They are a part of a generation that is fast fading away; many of them served valiantly in WWII and that experience shaped the rest of their lives. They might have married and had families, but they also shared camaraderie with their fellow soldiers, the depth of which none of us will ever really understand. Most of them were sparse with details concerning their wartime experiences. My father was no exception; we knew he was stationed in England and that he helped load bombs onto planes (the reason for his chronic back problems), but that was the extent of it. There are some photos to that effect. What he mostly imparted to us was his feelings about England--how much he loved the country and the British people. That’s what he talked about, and that’s what stayed with him many years after the war. He kept in touch with an older married couple he met there, and they would write him long letters telling him about what was going on in their little neck of England. Sometimes they sent pictures of their son and his friends. I remember the letters he received; they were always on blue airmail paper (still available at Amazon, of course: http://www.amazon.com/Kikkerland-Mailblok-Airmail-Paper-Block/dp/B004VNAOT4). I remember that paper, having written a number of airmail letters, and I can remember the excitement I felt about receiving an airmail letter in the post.

The thing that strikes me about my father now, when I think of him, was how willing he was to share his life with us. He was not a selfish man when it came to his feelings and thoughts. That is what I remember about him today, on Father’s Day, how his willingness to share his feelings and thoughts helped to create a family life that I remember to this day. Because the latter is not possible if its participants shut down, close themselves off, make themselves remote to those around them. It is not possible to be fully private and to be an active family member. I think my father found a good balance; he was a reserved man in many ways, but he was also a social one who looked forward to gathering the family at the dinner table in the evenings when we were growing up, to good conversation, and to holidays when his brother and sister would come to visit. Ours was not a perfect family; there were the requisite family dramas and squabbles as in most families. My parents didn’t always tackle them as well as they should have. But that’s not what I remember all these years later. What I remember is my father coming home from work and us children rushing to greet him at the door. Or his taking us to the Westchester County stamp fairs so that we could get interested in stamp collecting (his hobby that eventually spurred the rest of us to start our own collections). Or his taking us to the Sunday afternoon classical music concerts at the Washington Irving junior high school—classical music was another love of his. Or his willingness to discuss nearly any book you might want to discuss with him; if he hadn’t read it, he would read it so as to form an opinion about it. He left this world far too early, but what he shared with his family remains with me forever. Happy Father's Day to him and to all the fathers I know who take the chance and are willing to share their thoughts, feelings, and pastimes with their families.   

A blue-sky day

This past Tuesday, I left work early in order to enjoy the sunshine, the warmth, and the gorgeous blue sky. I was apparently not the only one who had that idea; there were many people who left early that day. It was an exceptionally nice summer day in Oslo, even though it's not officially summer yet. I was lying out in the sun, looking at the sky and the life around me. The colors of the green trees and the lilac bushes in the yard where we live against the blue-sky backdrop were vivid and lovely, and as usual, I took some pictures. Enjoy......

Loving movies

I’ve been a movie-goer for what seems like forever. I can remember the wonderful feelings associated with going to see films as a child; the anticipation, excitement, the experience of sitting in the theater waiting for the film to start—all of those feelings are still with me now whenever I enter the movie theater, many years later. I love sitting in the dark watching the big screen, waiting for the magic to start; no matter how many possibilities exist for watching films in other formats, nothing will ever replace the wonder of the big screen for me. The first two films I can remember seeing as a young child were Snow White, a Disney animated classic, and That Darn Cat starring Hayley Mills, whom we all wanted to be at that time—cute and adventurous. My mother took us to see both films at The Music Hall in Tarrytown. I can remember the long line to buy tickets that stretched around the corner onto Broadway—parents with their children. Hayley Mills also starred in a film called The Moon-Spinners, another favorite of ours from 1964, but one that we saw as a two-part television series several years later on ‘The Wonderful World of Disney’ that ran on NBC if I remember correctly, at least at the time when we were children. As a family, we went to see Oliver! (1968) and The Twelve Chairs (1970); my parents wanted to see these films and I remember struggling to understand the latter film, an early Mel Brooks comedy about the search for jewels hidden in one of twelve dining chairs. But understanding Oliver Twist’s life situation was not so difficult—you could relate to his misery as a fellow child or at least imagine how it must feel to be orphaned and alone in the world. Understanding the brutality of the relationship between Nancy and Bill Sikes was more problematic; not surprising since violence between lovers was not something we knew much about or had seen as children. I wanted to see Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, which came out in 1968, but my parents would not take us to see it, probably because it had to do with young love (and sex) and my parents did not want us getting ideas in our heads about such things. So I didn’t get a chance to see it until I was in my early 20s. Getting a chance to see a film that you had waited to see for a long time wasn’t like today where you could just rent a film from Netflix or download it from iTunes. If you knew that a film was going to be shown for a limited amount of time, either in the theater or on TV, you made plans to see it, because you never knew when you would be able to catch it again.

I am one of those people who enjoy doing post-mortems on films I’ve seen—dissecting the plot, the symbolism, the movie’s philosophy, what it all meant, the characters, the acting—all of it. Very few people I know enjoy doing this to the degree I do; you come out of the theater and ask, ‘What did you think of the film?’, and people will respond, ‘I liked it’ or ‘It was very good’, or some such comment. But it’s hard to get most folks involved in a long discussion about the movie. And that has to suffice, because not everyone likes doing movie analyses like I do. I’ve tried, and there are few takers. My father was one of those people who enjoyed discussing movies in detail; he was my conversational partner when it came to the arts—literature, movies, plays, music. Movies are entertainment for most people; they are for me as well, but I like being jolted out of my comfort zone by a movie, and I like finding out why. I want to know why some films provoke me, why others intrigue me or make me sad, how symbolism in one movie reminds me of another movie or of a book I’ve read or a song I’ve heard. I like how film music can trigger nostalgic feelings that remind me of people from my past or a book from long ago. I like the interconnectedness of different art forms, and the fact that I can make the connections if I want to. I want to connect the dots—it seems important to me to do so.