Ryan's Journal

Heat stroke may have combined with something else; I’ve been feeling weird for a few days, and today while attending Sunday Mass at Canterbury I got incredibly dizzy and had to sit down, ironically at the same time as an older lady two rows in front of me collapsed, causing three ushers to rush over. While they were attending to her (she ended up OK) I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to make it, so once a path cleared I headed for the exit, stopping several times along the way to rest before I arrived back at the room, head-spinning and soaked in sweat. Whatever this is has come and gone a few random times today (although not as bad as this morning) and has me baffled, so today ended up being a rest day to recuperate before we head to Ireland tomorrow.

During the time at Canterbury I’ve been intrigued by an ancient pilgrimage route that starts here and eventually ends in Rome. I thought it would be neat to hike the 18 mile portion to Dover, but since I’ve been feeling odd decided not to push it. However, I’ve been searching everywhere for the stone that traditionally marks the start of the route. I’ve scoured every sewer cover and cobblestone around the cathedral, only to finally discover it hiding in plain sight right next to the cathedral entrance. I used to be reasonably smart, I swear it.

I’ve somehow managed to get heat stroke in England. England! Land of no sun and pasty white folks. Go figure.

The last couple of days were spent in Dover, a short train ride from Canterbury. Yesterday I visited Dover Castle, which dates back to the 1180s. Even today it’s an imposing structure, with an 83 foot tall main keep and walls that are as much as 20 feet thick. I was again impressed at the ingenuity of the medieval builders, but for anyone visiting, be warned that around many corners you’ll run into re-enactors who are really into their jobs. Surprisingly the castle fortifications continued to be used during wars with the French and through WW2, so amidst ancient walls are anti-aircraft guns and tunnels where the evacuation of Dunkirk was organized.

After intermittent rain and sun at the castle I was feeling a bit odd, so I checked into my hotel for the night, laid down on the bed, and woke up 14 hours later. This amount of sleep isn’t normal, so it’s either heat stroke (my head is a nice shade of red) or a bit of the flu. I wasn’t going to let that interrupt vacation, however, so it was off to the White Cliffs first thing this morning for a lengthy hike among flowers, tons of birds, the odd rabbit, and an occasional cliff view. I suspect that the splendor of these cliffs is best viewed from sea or air, but it was still a relaxing stroll through the English countryside. Now I’m back in Canterbury, resting again, in the hopes that whatever is sapping my energy decides to go away soon.

Just another day in England having a pint in a pub built in 1370 and roaming around in a 1000 year old cathedral. Yesterday started with a stroll outside of town to see St. Martin’s church, reportedly the oldest English-speaking church in the world (“built before 597”). It was early in the morning so the church was closed, but it’s got an atmospheric graveyard around it that I shared with only one other person, an old British fellow who probably expected to be alone while he did his morning tai-chi.

From there it was back to Canterbury Cathedral, where I asked one of the volunteers about the shiny black stones used for building many of the walls on the grounds. He didn’t know, but unbeknownst to me he apparently activated the Canterbury volunteer network bat signal, and from that point onwards any time a volunteer saw me they asked if I was the gentleman who wanted to know about the stones (they are flint, which is one of the few hard building stones found in the local chalk deposits). I ended up chatting with a lot of elderly British folks on this visit.

Thursday was the choir’s one day off, so a group decided they wanted to go punting, which is British for “ride on a boat”. The river here is crystal clear – the chalk formations act as a massive filter – and four of us took an hour ride, gondola-style, through a small nature reserve and under ancient tunnels in the city; life could clearly be worse.

After a bit more roaming about on the city’s ancient Roman walls and through the narrow streets, we finished the day at the Parrot, a pub located in a building that was built in 1370. In America that building would be some sort of national monument, but in England it’s simply a good place to get a pint and some sticky toffee pudding.

Today was the last day in London, and the plan was to visit the British Natural History Museum, but first, the walk there led through Hyde Park, which has become one of my favorite places in the city over the past few days. On this particular morning a couple dozen swans were lounging next to the lake, and they couldn’t be bothered to move for any of the bikers or joggers going by; you could easily get within a foot of a giant bird and it wouldn’t so much as look sideways at you. I liked these swans.

While I’m generally a fan of natural history, with so little time and so much to choose from the British Natural History Museum might not have made the cut were it not for the incredible architecture. The entry hall of this building was amazing, with mosaic floors, different plants painted on the ceiling, high arches, dramatic staircases, nature-themed sculptures, and stained glass windows. AND there’s a friggin’ blue whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling! I was a fan and spent a lot of time roaming about this entry hall to see it from every possible angle. While the rest of the exhibits were interesting, the architecture was far and away the highlight.

From there it was off to meet Audrey and the rest of the choir folks in Canterbury, and this one is another cathedral that I really like. It was built in 1077, and visitors are free to roam almost everywhere, so I went down to the crypts, to the ruins of the monastery out back, and all over the interior of the cathedral. The choir sang Evensong, and unlike any church I’ve ever been at before, the congregation sits in a gallery on either side of the choir, so you hear the singers from only a few feet away. I went to bed tired last night after another quite memorable day.

Yesterday’s adventure was a day trip out of London to visit Stonehenge, Bath and “a secret place”. I’m not normally a fan of group trips, but there are limited options if you want to see Stonehenge, so I picked a 15 person bus that was ranked well on Tripadvisor and hoped for the best. The guide was actually great, she left us alone to roam at the destinations, and having a small bus meant we could take backroads instead of the highway, which was amazingly scenic.

I’d visited Stonehenge in 1997 when it was a pull-off next to the highway and you simply got off of the motorway, parked in a dirt parking lot, walked a bit, and then admired the stones from a few feet away, kept back by a small rope barrier. Things have changed dramatically since then, with the highway relocated, the paths around the stones much farther back, and 1000x the number of people. It was still a really neat place to go; it combines history and engineering, two of my favorite topics, while also giving a druid vibe that I fully support.

Following the visit with the stones we were off to Bath, a city that still feels very much like it must have in the 1600s. I didn’t actually visit the “bath” that gives the town its name – I saw it in 1997, and rather than being a Roman bath it’s actually a Victorian estimation of what a Roman bath might look like – but did roam all over, admiring some truly impressive stone buildings. Our guide did a short walking tour where she shared how the waters from the hot spring were renowned for having “magical” healing properties and how Queen Anne swore that after drinking the water she felt revitalized, but today scientists believe that long ago many people suffered from anemia, so a shot of mineral-rich hot spring water would have simply given them the iron they were lacking and thus a massive energy boost.

For our last stop we were sworn to secrecy on its location, but it was one of England’s best preserved old villages, with rules in place to prevent any alteration of buildings. Doors and ceilings were low, there wasn’t a single beam or roof that wasn’t warped or sagging, the church was ancient, and one of the pubs dated back to the 1300s. I had a pint at a pub that was “only” a few hundred years old before we returned to the bus for our trip home. All in all, spending the day seeing ancient wonders and historical villages made for one of the better Tuesdays a person could have.

The days have been very full so far on this trip, which hasn’t left much time to process photos, but hopefully a few will be ready for upcoming entries. Sadly, on a day that saw visits to Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London, the photos are still on my camera and I’ve not had a chance to look at them yet.

Audrey left for Canterbury yesterday, and after seeing her off to the train station I made my way to Westminster Abbey, only to see a sign at the end of a long queue stating that tickets for the day were sold out. Never one to miss a Gothic Cathedral, I discovered that purchasing a single day London Pass got me in without a ticket, and thanks to the miracle that is the internet I was in the door a short time later. The grand cathedrals always put me in awe, obviously from their historical and cultural significance, but mostly from their engineering; these things were built hundreds of years before Columbus sailed in a time where they didn’t have steam engines, much less electricity or other modern machinery. The stone was carved by hand, it was lifted hundreds of feet in the air by hand, and the craftsmanship was so good that 800 years later it’s still standing solid, all from a time when people were being burned alive for witchcraft and books had to be copied by hand.

From Westminster I made a visit to the Tower of London. I was in England once before in 1997, and we visited the Tower, but it was an incredibly short visit, and I honestly don’t remember much aside from the fact that we skipped the Crown Jewels due to the line. This time I had several hours and made sure to see the Crown Jewels, but maybe because I’m an American I came away thinking that it was all a bit silly; it’s hard enough to take politicians seriously these days, so trying to imagine Kevin McCarthy or Joe Biden with a scepter in his hand or a fuzzy crown on his head? It’s obviously neat to see the world’s largest diamond and so many other precious objects, but I couldn’t help thinking how odd it is in today’s world to still have so much wealth tied up in jewelry, golden serving plates, and other showpieces. What I did love about the Tower was the history, and (again) the engineering. They built a massive stone fortress a thousand years ago with fifteen foot thick walls, rising 100 feet into the air, and did it all using just brute strength and ingenuity, and I spent a lot of time roaming around looking at walls, doors, beams, and everything else that has stood on this site since it was built in the 1080s.

The day ended with an adventure on the subway, otherwise known as the Tube, otherwise known as the Underground, where I ironically had to take a line named “Overground”, I assume because it was mostly above-ground. After (mostly) successfully navigating two subway transfers and a bus trip I met a friend for drinks and Indian food, as well as much laughter, before again (mostly) successfully navigating the public transit system back to Victoria station and the hotel.

After avoiding saturated fat for months I expected that I would need to relax my diet during this trip, but I was not prepared for the “English Breakfast Bap”, which is apparently a fried egg, two massive sausages, and three strips of bacon on a Brioche bun. It was tasty, and so far I haven’t had a heart attack, but we’ll see how tomorrow goes.

Following the cholesterol-with-a-side-of-grease for breakfast I walked the two miles to the British Museum, a place with so many impressive artifacts that it could easily be split into a dozen separate museums. Luckily I had read a suggestion to book an off-hours tour, so I entered with a group of about twelve other people an hour before opening and we had the Egyptian galleries to ourselves before the mobs descended. From there much time was spent battling through tour groups in the midst of archaeological treasures, but entering a room to discover the impressive statues that once adorned the Parthenon, or seeing the remnants of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, made it much easier to ignore the hordes shoving their way past.

After five hours at the museum fatigue was setting in, so I rambled home through St. James’s Park (no pigeon friends this time), past the guards in the fuzzy hats at Buckingham Palace, then rested for a bit before taking off for our next adventure. Audrey’s friend Brian Kehew is apparently in London at the same time as us, and while Abbey Road studios isn’t open for tours, they do open for lectures two weekends every year and have called in Brian and his friend Kevin to give those lectures since they wrote the definitive book on the Beatles’ time at Abbey Road. So yet again following our “never say no when Brian calls, because it will be awesome” rule, we met at Abbey Road at 5pm and were ushered through the locked gates with about 100 other Beatles fans to hear Brian and Kevin give a 90 minute lecture on the history of the studios from Studio 2, which is the studio in which the Beatles recorded almost all of their music. I hadn’t planned on visiting Abbey Road, but sitting in the room where so many great songs were born, and hearing the inside scoop on how it happened from a friend of ours, will be a very cool memory.

2023’s big adventure is underway. We left Los Angeles at 5pm yesterday, slept for somewhere between 3 and 7 minutes during the 10.5 hour flight, and arrived in England where we proceeded to roam all over Central London. In a city known for its history, culture, architectural & religious monuments, and impressive museums, the day’s highlights were a flock of overly-enthusiastic pigeons in St. James’s Park. In my defense I’m hitting the British Museum first thing tomorrow morning, and we arrived at Westminster Abbey too late to go inside, but that being said, the birds were a lot of fun today.

Many more adventures should follow over the coming three weeks.