Things my Tour Guides Told Me

I had the privilege this month of taking a group of terrific college students to the UK for a literary tour of England.  Our itinerary: London, Windsor, Oxford, Winchester, Stonehenge, Bath, Stratford-on-Avon, Thirsk, York, and Cambridge. 

It’s not like any of these locations are obscure—you might think Thirsk is the outlier in this list of great English towns, but you might know it better by its fictional name of Darrowby, the home of James Herriot the Yorkshire vet—so Google will do a better job than I could of providing great photos of iconic buildings and vistas.  Instead, here are some of my own favorite shots of the places we visited, interspersed with little nuggets shared by our splendid tour guides (accuracy not guaranteed)!

Big Ben on the Thames.  True to form, like almost all the major monuments I have ever visited, it was under scaffolding.

Westminster Abbey

According to our guide at Westminster Abbey, Winston Churchill reportedly drank a Magnum of champagne a day.  This has nothing to do with anything; I just think it’s remarkable.

Until very recently, there were no toilets in the abbey, so during coronations and weddings, which lasted for hours on end, men were issued a bottle and women were given what our guide described as a cradle.  Now that's commitment.

Tourists getting their picture taken in King's Cross

King's Cross Station, much to the dismay of commuters, is now a major tourist attraction.  Since the actual space between Platforms 9 and 10 is a modern contraption of metal and glass, some enterprising soul has glued a trolley to an out-of-the-way expanse of brick so that Harry Potter fans can have their picture taken “going through the wall” at Platform 9 ¾. 

Picadilly Circus. He's a bit dwarfed by the Underground sign, which is closer to the camera, but you can see the silhouette of Eros against the neon backdrop.

 

A carousel on the south bank of the Thames (the London Eye in the background, of course)

Saint Paul's and the Millennium Bridge

Swans at Eton

All the mute swans (the ones with orange bills) belong to the queen.  Apparently they count them every year so that she knows how many she has.

The Windsor Guildhall

Christopher Wren designed the Windsor Guildhall so that the portico was supported by pillars only on the outside.  However, people were so sure the thing would collapse that Wren was forced to add pillars at intervals under the roof as well.  He had the last laugh, though: the pillars don’t actually touch the ceiling!

Windsor Castle

The flight path to Heathrow goes right over Windsor Castle.  Strangely, the queen seems not to mind.

If you can't read the caption under the Turf Tavern sign, it says, "An Education in Intoxication."

Just about every town has a pub that claims to be the oldest in England.  The one at Oxford that makes that claim is the Turf Tavern, where lots of famous people have become inebriated and where Clinton very famously “never inhaled.”

The ceiling of Divinity Hall, Oxford

 We donate money to organizations to have our names put on bricks in the sidewalk.  In the late Middle Ages, apparently people donated money to have their initials and crests engraved in the ceiling.

The Radcliffe Camera, seen through the window of Divinity Hall, which is where Professor McGonagall taught Harry and Ron to dance in the fourth movie

A lonely lamppost oddly placed in the middle of nowhere at the university where C.S. Lewis taught.  Inspiration for Narnia?

The crypt in Winchester Cathedral

Usually crypts are where you bury people.  You can’t bury people in the crypt at Winchester cathedral (Jane Austen is buried upstairs) because it floods when it rains—as shown here.  Instead, they put a statue in the middle of the floor, which is occasionally submerged up to the knees.  I think it looks like he’s checking his phone.

Memorial to William Walker in Winchester Cathedral

William Walker almost single-handedly saved Winchester Cathedral by laying an artificial foundation underwater when the original foundation was flooded and shifting.  He worked alone in the dark for six years.

Apparently they gave the sculptor a photo with two people in it; he naturally assumed the one in the diving suit was Walker and happily produced a statue as tribute to him.  Unfortunately, Walker was the other guy in the picture, and for a long time there was a statue on display of the wrong person.  Eventually someone paid to have a new sculpture made with the right face (complete with the bushy mustache).

A tiny carved face on the choir screen of Winchester Cathedral

The "Round Table" in the Great Hall, which is all that remains of Winchester Castle

This isn’t the real Round Table of Arthurian fame.  It’s a late-medieval reproduction, painted in Henry VIII’s time (hence the Tudor rose in the middle).  Clearly he didn’t get the democratic idea behind the roundness of the table, because Arthur (who looks rather like Henry, if you can get close enough to see) is clearly at the supposedly non-existent head of it.

Stonehenge

I love the destination sign on the buses that go between the car park and Stonehenge: “TO THE STONES.”

Marlborough Buildings, Bath

Jane Austen didn’t like Bath.  However, she set several of her novels here: these are the Marlborough Buildings, where Colonel Wallis and his wife live in Persuasion.  According to our guide, these homes were built as a windbreak to shelter the Royal Crescent, the row of apartments where the posh people lived.

Pulteney Bridge, Bath

If you recognize the weir below Pulteney Bridge, it’s because in the recent film of Les Miserables, it doubles for the Seine in the scene where Javert (Russell Crowe) commits suicide.  Apparently the dummy they threw into the water for filming disappeared in the current and hasn’t yet resurfaced.

At the Georgian Tearooms, Bath

I’m usually not one for food photography, but this was such a pretty little cream tea (tea and a scone with preserves and clotted cream) I thought it was worth commemorating.

The Roman Baths, Bath

They have holographic films playing around the baths to show how people would have used them in the Roman era.  Shockingly to American eyes, half the people in these films are completely naked, though shown exclusively from the back.

Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare is buried, Stratford-on-Avon

Shakespeare’s grave doesn’t make for an interesting photo because the inscription (“Good friend, for Jesus’s sake forebear to dig the dust interred here…”) only reads right-side up if you’re standing at the altar facing the congregation, which of course they frown on unless you’re the minister.

Shakespeare's birthplace, Stratford-on-Avon

Graffiti isn’t new.  We saw people’s initials carved on churches all over England—and even on the coronation chair in Westminster Abbey.  At Shakespeare’s birthplace, people started scratching their initials on the windows as soon as the place became a tourist attraction.  The oldest windows have been removed and put in display cases, but we spotted initials dating to the 19^th century on these.

A set from the TV series All Creatures Great and Small, now housed in the old garage of the veterinary surgery in Thirsk

Snow in the Hambleton Hills, Yorkshire

More snow on the Hambleton Hills

York

The River Ouse, York

York is probably my favorite city in England.  That’s not something a tour guide told me: I came up with it on my own.

What the tour guide did tell us was that a York chocolatier invented a delightful chocolate-covered wafer called Rowntree’s Chocolate Crisp that took the world by storm—but not until its name was changed to Kit Kat! 

The British and American recipes are different, apparently because when they were first produced in the UK they had to use powdered milk, which gives them almost a malted flavor.  Which recipe is better depends entirely on which side of the Pond you’re from.

A table for the cost of gowns for the various college of Cambridge University

The Eagle Pub, Cambridge

The Eagle pub keeps its upper window open all the time.  According to the story, a little girl burned to death in a fire in that room because she couldn’t get out the window, and it’s kept open now so that she’ll never be trapped again.  On a lighter note, Wilkins and Crick, two of the discoverers of DNA, apparently did as much work in this pub as they did in the Cavendish Laboratories down the street.

Godfrey Washington's memorial plaque in Little St. Mary's Church, Cambridge

George Washington’s great-uncle was the vicar of Little St. Mary’s Church, where he was buried in 1729.  His family coat of arms looks suspiciously like a two-toned version of the American flag, doesn’t it?  And their family mascot was the eagle….

A road to the river in Cambridge

Peeking through college gates in Cambridge

Punting on the River Cam

I have lots of fun pictures of my students (including a bunch from the epic snowball fight we had on the day we visited Thirsk!), but for the sake of their privacy I won’t post them here.  It was such an honor to travel with them, and I’m grateful that they gave me an opportunity to share this lovely country with them—even if it was in the middle of winter!

On the Thames, London