Lake District (Mhari)

I would like to inform you all that even though I didn’t go near Italy; yesterday I did see the ruins of a Roman bathhouse in the Lake District, in England. There wasn’t much left, though some parts were surprisingly well preserved.  I thought there would be signs telling you to stay off the ruins, but all there was was a sign saying not to climb on them because you could get badly hurt. Sadly, Sam did not get to see the ruins because he went off on a hike with my parents, while I spent the day seeing things with my grandparents.  We went to a very small town called Ravenglass, which used to be an important Roman port. It was near the farm where we are staying. The baths were outside the Glannavantra fort located on the cliffs outside the town.  I found the fact that the baths were out of the fort quite interesting because there were, no other buildings outside the fort. The bathhouse ruins were a half-mile walk from the town.

Today, we went to the Sunkenkirk Stone Circle from the Neolithic period, which my dad tells me, is Stone Age type time. The stone circle was in a field of cows, bulls and tourists. It is also known as Swinside Stone Circle.

We are communicating.

Later, we went to Ulverston and walked around aimlessly.
For dinner, we had pasta salad and leftovers. We all agree that the small trailer we are staying in needs a bigger pot but, I must say that 6 people, 4 of them adults, are a large group, not the usual number of people for a place of this size. For dessert, we had blackberry crumble with custard and Cadbury roses. The roses we picked up at Cadbury world, which I recommend you visit if you are in England. The blackberries we picked at the park in Broughton-in-Furness.

P.S. Cadbury World is in Birmingham, look it up on the Internet. J!!J!!J!!J!!J!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

P.P.S.I must tell you that we were just having supper and my dad asked me to get him the hot sauce he had bought. The sauce had a flip lid but he twisted the big cap and when he started shaking it so it would drip out faster but instead it poured out onto his potato a lot. He called them patatas bravas and ate them any way.  Bye.

P.P.S. don’t Mind my bad spelling.
P.P.P.S. I will have some pictures of the ruins but they are on my grandparent's camera and I will have to wait a few day's before postable.

Cumbria

(Lesley) We are in the Lake District with John’s folks.  We get to hike and walk everyday.  We have a good walk from our Caravan to Broughton-in-Furness, the town where we can go to the butcher, the post office and to buy our Kendal Mint Cake.  It is about 3 miles there, 3 miles back.  The first day, it was close to 5 each way because the footpaths are hard to follow.  We took a rather circuitous route.  We found a big blackberry patch in the park in town.  We have picked there twice and there are still plenty.  I love picking and eating blackberries; they are great for breakfast on cereal with yogurt. 

Much to Mhari and Ann’s delight there are sheep everywhere.  We hear them out our windows early in the morning and late at night.  We have beautiful big windows so we can watch them anytime.  Just as the sun sets, there is usually one or two standing solo on the top of the fell (hill).  We see their silhouettes against the sky; it is quite a nice sight. Mhari had taken her book out and sat amongst the sheep hoping for a chance to pet one.  (They are a shy lot).  The sheep up by the Fell road don’t even move over when we go by in the car so Mhari has tried to pet one, through the window, but her arm wasn’t long enough to reach down to the one laying, relaxing on the side of the road.   Speaking of driving, the roads here are so narrow!  There are passing places (just a slight widening of the road) every 100 meters or so as there is no space for oncoming cars to pass should they encounter each other on the road.  Sometimes the hedges brush both sides of the car at the same time, add to that the dry stonewalls, higher than car height, about a meter to either side of the car.  I drove yesterday all the way to Ulverston.  Pretty impressive considering I felt like I was driving from the passenger’s seat, and the gearshift was where the door handle should have been. Once we got into the town, I had John take over, to keep me from driving up any streets on the wrong side of the road.  He has taken so well to the driving here.  This makes sense, given that this is where he learned to drive, and it is in Canada where everything is backwards for him.  John is very appreciative of how well the English drive.  The density of drivers and the lack of space mean that drivers here have no choice but to be considerate, careful and predictable in their driving.  If Winnipeggers could do likewise, given the space we have, accidents would be rare.

Mhari saw some Roman ruins with John’s folks the other day. She did a project on Rome last year so I think she will actually put something on her blog about them.  She has been so busy soaking everything up and visiting that her blog still says we are in the Toronto airport.

Sam has been keeping up to John no problem on the hikes.  He is a mountain goat!  He takes big steps like his father and sprints past him to be the first to the peaks.  I can go forever, but not at their speed on the uphills.  I take smaller steps and stop to take pictures; I use the camera as my excuse for being 10 steps behind.

Sam also enjoys at least 3 breakfasts every morning.  He has a few bowls of cereal, followed by toast with Ann’s marvelous marmalade or Stanley’s jam.  Sometimes he then has a cooked breakfast with eggs and beans if they are offered.  And while hiking, I keep extra food in my bag to hand to Sam and Mhari if they start to fade. I had brought the extra Vector and Cliff bars that we had at home and they have come in quite handy. 

Everything is English here, so there is no problem with the language like in Iceland.  However linguistically there are some challenges for a simple Canadians.  There are: fells, dales, tarns, gills, becks, hows, haws, cairns, crags, scars, and there is bracken everywhere.  Fortunately for us John’s dad, Stanley, is very knowledgeable about many things, the roots of words being one of his particular interests.  Apparently most of the words I just listed are Scandinavian so would be well understood in Iceland.  No point counting the sheep to get to sleep here because that is done in Welsh.  The kids are learning a lot from discussions with Ann and Stanley, their grandparents.  As yesterday was the first day of school for Sam and Mhari’s classmates back home in Winnipeg, we felt we should formally start some home schooling so we had Mhari work on some spelling. Sam picked up and read two more Horrible Histories Books.  There are lots of titles here that weren’t available in Canada.

Temptations

(John)  I know I left England for really good reasons, but man, the sacrifice I made.  The Lake District is absolutely gorgeous and I can’t get enough.  But when I see the selection of beer available at give away prices I know that were I to return I would indeed be a doomed man. I would have to live under a big mountain and climb it every day in order to counteract my lust.  Yesterday I had an affair with an ‘Old Man’ from the Coniston Brewing Company, today I have trifled illicitly with a ‘Black Sheep’ called Riggwelter.  I have also daily toyed with Old Speckled Hens and Marston’s Pedigree.  I have even had cheap thrills with supermarket brands in stubby bottles that make Canadian domestics taste like a night home alone watching re runs of Bay Watch.  It won’t end there, the choice is endless and I have three weeks to go.  God help me!

M6 (Sam)

Hello, I am writing this from the middle of an M6 traffic jam near Wolverhampton. We are heading North-West to the Lake District to stay on a farm for a week with my grandparents. I’m really looking forward to this because the landscape is amazing and the hiking is incredible, my sister is also looking forward to it because there are lots of sheep.

Well, the traffic is clearing up now that we are in the country, but it still feels as if we are driving down Portage Ave in rush-hour despite being in the middle of the countryside somewhere between Birmingham and Manchester. For lunch today so far I’ve had a Scotch egg (hard boiled egg covered with sausage and bread crumbs) and I think I might have a bag of prawn cocktail crisps, or maybe Worcester sauce ones, I haven’t decided yet.

I still do not really fully grasp that I am not going home for a year. It just feels like I’m on a holiday to visit my relatives. I miss my cats a lot, though I know that they are in good hands with my grandparents in Winnipeg. My home-schooling has already begun: I am learning lots of things, like the other day when my dad taught me to fold empty chip bags into origami triangles. I also learned that whatever you wear can be fashionable as long as you walk with an air of superiority and meet hostile looks with an expression that says, “Oh my gosh, what’s your problem?” So today I went the supermarket wearing a plaid dress shirt, gym shorts, hiking boots and wool socks pulled up high. So, look for hipsters wearing wool socks and gym shorts in the weeks to come. I highly recommend it as a Back to School Look as I assure you will be the coolest kid in the class.

Kidderminster (Sam)

The other day we went to Cadburys (yes, chocolate) World with my aunt Mary, my uncle David and my cousins Reuben and Rachel. We had a great time and I’m not going to eat chocolate for at least a week now. At Cadbury’s, the samples they give are not mini, but full-size! And the chocolate they were selling at the store was really cheap, I bought 4 chocolate bars for about a $1.25. Some of the things we saw were tacky but it didn’t really matter when there was free chocolate to be had.

Family Time

(Lesley: Sept 4) At Helen and Dave’s we got caught up with Lizzy and Becky and met Lizzy’s boyfriend (also a Dave).  We ate Eaton Mess (a jumbled up Pavlova -mmm!) and ratatouille, a family favourite.  John rekindled his love of English beer.  Then after a few days, we packed up, said our thank yous and goodbyes.  Helen, Dave and Lizzy headed back to work and we moved on to another of John’s sisters: Mary, in Kidderminster (near Birmingham). 

Yesterday, Mary and David took us on a tour of Cadbury World and we ate lots of chocolate.  We wandered around Birmingham and the Symphony Hall (where every member of their family has played!)  We had a look round the Art Gallery, the canals and had supper out at a nice pizzeria.  Mary and David have a big garden as well so the kids: Sam Mhari, Reuben and Rachel have being shooting arrows, playing swingball, climbing the structures and playing in the blow up pool and waterslide.  We had a lovely picnic at the summit of Clee Hill, and walked round Bewdley and some other cute towns.  We have been singing too, and did a recording in their studio tonight.  It was very fun.  Mhari thinks she is a real star.  Sam’s voice is changing so he was jittery but thrilled.  It is quite the experience singing in a real recording studio.  David recorded several tracks with kids and adults.  He will have Mary add some violin bits soon, then send us an MP3 version.   I was a bit intimidated by the whole singing into a microphone thing, but whatever, I’ll get over it.  I can’t take myself too seriously. 

We did a British version of s’mores tonight over the BBQ: 1 British portion bag of marshmallows (18), skewers soaked in water (as marshmallow sticks), milk chocolate digestive biscuits (no graham wafers to be found in Sainsburys, Tesco or Asda), and Cadbury hot chocolate to drink while roasting marshmallows over the BBQ.  They were great! It’s all been great.  New adventures are in store for us tomorrow as we are on the move again. We will meet up with Ann and Stanley, John’s parents.  We are not likely to have internet access next week, in our caravan on the farm in the Lake District. Maybe Mhari will get a chance to write something for her blog (according to which we are still in the Toronto airport).  Maybe we will start some home schooling with the kids next week. Isn’t it back to school week? Yes, that might be a good idea.

Until next time, Lesley

Photos: Mary on top of Clee Hill, Close encounters of a fleecy kind, and Bewdley.

England (Sam)

Hello we have been in England for about a week now and we've been having a great time with all my British aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents etc.

We spent the first three or four days with my dad's sister Helen and her family in Murcott near Rugby. We went walking a lot, drank lots of tea, ate lots of toast and saw some scary cows.

On Sunday we had a family reunion, then on Tuesday we left for my Aunty Mary's house and will be staying with her for most of the week we have been having a great time all week playing with her two kids, we went for a great walk up Clee Hill and hopefully sometime this week we will go to Cadbury World.

Clee Hill

Our rental car (nicer than the last one I think

For more photos visit my parents blog.