On the Train from Carlisle, Northumbria, September 20th
Once again, not enough time there to do more than a quick look round, but its a pretty city and our hotel was a Best Western affiliate, the Cumbria Park. Very comfortable old antique four-poster in the honeymoon suite — disturbingly, all the framed art in the HONEYMOON SUITE was of newborn babies or young children! Eeeeyaaagh.
However, it had a full sized tub/shower and room to swing a very small and cooperative cat in the bathroom… and also the biggest one on the trip thus far (the Tower Thistle bathroom remains to be seen). We had a very good dinner “in” (in the dining room), a full-bore garden-decor room with plenty more antiques and lots of “prettiest pub” awards over the bar. Our morning the next day started with yet another great English breakfast, but no beans, please, we’re American (YAGEBBNBOWA), and then back to the Victorian station at Carlisle for the run (a “Great Railway Journeys of the World” type of route) into Skipton for Grassington.
Afterwords: April 2, 2004
This is getting ridiculous – there’s no excuse for not carrying on and finishing the thing, except that I have a boatload and a half of Yorkshire photos coming up that have to be sorted over and fixed and resized in Photoshop. And there’s a lot of that got left out of that short entry on Carlisle.
First of all, we had no problems on arrival in Carlisle, other than not having a place to stay. This actually wasn’t a serious problem; Carlisle is a nice city to wander around in by foot, because a large area of the central core area is pedestrianised. We arrived at the station and figure out where the Tourist Information Centre was and set off, dragging the rolly-pollies behind us. The TIC was in an older building in the center of a large plaza area – the volunteer staffer found us a place to stay that was a short walk away. After some dickering about price we ended up in a honeymoon suite – it was more than we needed to pay per night, but I wanted a bigger room, and something nicer than a shoebox. I know I’ve been harping a lot on the size of things in Britain — there’s small and charming, and then there’s cramped and inconvenient, and often after a few days’ travel the one becomes the other. I was ready for something that was not small and inconvenient.
The only sight we saw of the Roman walls (Hadrian’s Wall historically ended at Carlisle) were some earthworks by the river. However, the city is laid out in a pleasing way – you can’t always put your finger on it, but it was logical, had lots of straight lines, and I think maybe the street grid is very old indeed. The hotel turned out to be a bunch of rowhouses that had been knocked together into one hotel over many years – however, it was very well done and each section had antique furniture in the public areas. Also, there was a very nice collection of antique glass in a cabinet over the front desk, which brought back a childhood memory.
My aunt Florence used to collect it, and on visits to Steamboat Springs when I was a kid, one of my jobs was to clean her glass collection and wash the glass shelves. She kept it all “out” on window shelves, and it was really beautiful when it was clean and the sun was shining. Much of that collection was sold off after she died to keep her son Marty going — Marty had Down syndrome and functioned pretty well, but he couldn’t support himself or make house payments doing odd jobs for neighbors and the local drugstore. So only a few of the pieces are still in our hands (Marty died a few years after his mother of a heart attack). Some of them look a lot like the pieces in the collection at the hotel, so it was pleasant to look them over and feel like they were familiar objects to me, so far from home.
The room contained an antique bed – we know this because the certificate giving the bed’s provenance was posted in the wardrobe. In fact, I think it’s the first picture on
this page from the hotel website.
After dropping the bags off, we walked back into town to do some shopping. There are no photos at all from that day… I think we took a break from being snap-happy tourists. However, it was in Carlisle that we bought the only souveniers and gifts for our trip – as I said before, it’s a nice city to walk in and there are a lot of nice shops along the main streets and tucked into little shopping arcades on either side. We had a pleasant chat with a gentleman in an antique shop where we bought a couple of horse brasses, and a Highland thistle letter opener for Steve. The proprietor evididently decided we were “all right” after we bought the things, and tipped us a wink.
“Would you like to see my security system? It’s very high-tech,” he said. Well, that sounded intriguing, so he brought out a large Chinese vase and shook it gently.
It jingled. He had put a couple of belled cat-toys inside. All of the larger vases and jars had such security systems installed – it was just enough to let him know that someone was handling something they shouldn’t, if he was in the back of the shop or was otherwise engaged.
We asked him about a place to eat, and he exhibited his sack lunch as he explained that he rarely left the shop during the day. So we wandered off into one of the many courtyards giving off of the shopping arcades in the area and found a sandwich place.
Sadly, it was one of those disappointing experiences that I pretty much put down to being my own damn fault. I made the mistake of thinking that a “BLT” in England was the same thing as a “BLT” in the States. My bad. Now, if I had just ordered a chicken tikka sandwich, or something else that’s unknown in the States, I probably would have been perfectly happy. But no, I had to have a BLT – meaning a couple of slices of toasted bread, crisp bacon, fresh tomato, crisp lettuce, fresh mayo. What I got was plain bread, a big floppy slice of thick greasy ham, slimy lettuce, and a couple of packages of salad cream on the table. As the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has it: “Please avoid at all costs the little sachets of salad cream to be found at service stations and cheap eateries, as these are often poor imitations.” Imagine that quote read by someone with a Peter Jones-y sort of voice, and it’ll sound right.
Good God, I went to the Hitchhiker’s Guide site to check one little detail and lost an hour of my life! Very sneaky of them. I ended up registering and everything.
Anyway, we idled along in the shops after our (burb) lunch disaster, which was in an otherwise bright and pleasant place with modern art on the walls. Eventually, David and I found ourselves in a jewelry store, because I needed a new wristwatch and my birthday was coming up. He got me something I liked very much – the wristband was based on a design by Charles Rennie Mackintosh (similar to Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs in feeling, but more curvilinear). I’m very happy with it and wear it everywhere. It always reminds me of the Britain trip.
We didn’t have any opportunity to check email while we were in Carlisle, so we were both anxious about whether we’d have any access while in Grassington for the week. David needed to make sure that all was well with the professional discussion lists he hosts, and I just needed to know that Stuey was doing all right.
The next entry will be very long, as it includes a longer journal entry and lots and lots of photos. So many, in fact, that I may have to do them as thumbnails. It was in Grassington that we finally got to do the most walking, and even so we were hampered by the lack of transportation. But again, that’s for the next entry.