Our digs in Frome, a 17th century publick house. My friend Jeff and I stayed here to celebrate our friend Jeremy's wedding last NYE to the lovely Penny. They postponed the wedding reception until Midsummer. Frome is a lovely town on the Avon (I am told "Avon" means "river," so to refer to the "river Avon" is redundant, redundant). Eminently walkable and very friendly, it was marred only by too many "To Let" signs along the main drag, indicative of our recent economic blitzkrieg.

But once in From, it is possible to get almost anywhere else you might possibly want to go:

Edinburgh, Morita Art and Guesthouse. Caroline and I stayed here for two days with the delightful Kozo and John and their bizarrely wonderful collection of 19th Century Scottish ceramics - and very wonderful paintings, which covered every wall of every room.

My first post in this picture series was of old Edinburgh, and can be found further down. Today I present http://www.morita.co.uk/

About a century apart. First, a peek into the Beatrix Potter Garden in Dunkeld, Scotland. She spent childhood holidays here. Then modern day Inverness, with a McDonald's on one side of the street, and Poundland (British version of the Dollar Store) on the other.

My friend Patty assures me that, whatever I may think I see on my site, the pictures and captions are actually in the spaces in which I placed them. That said, I'll start off today with a counterpoint to the picture from yesterday. Patty told me she had photographed the river from a tower of Conwy Castle. Here is one I took of the countryside:






Earlier, Melissa and Mauri and Jeff and I climbed nearly to the summit of Corfe Castle, only to discover that the gates were chained for the night so we settled for supper in the village of Corfe and a taste of scrumpy. Which none of us liked so much, Rick Steves' enthusiasm notwithstanding. Corfe Castle dates from the 11th century. In the 17th century, it was ably defended by "Brave Dame Mary" Bankes, wife of royalist Sir John Bankes, against the Parliamentarians. When the castle finally fell, it was rendered useless as a fortress by strategically placed explosives - some say it was to be certain that the royalists could never use it again, others maintain the Parliamentarians were so outraged at their narrow victory over a castle full of women, that they destroyed the castle in a fit of pique.

Whatever, we arrived too late to explore the grounds, but not too late for some marvelous pictures of ruins at sunset, complete with livestock:

Let's try this again. Only one picture per entry.

Conwy Castle in Wales

is (the Wiki) on the north coast, built between 1283 and 1289 during King Edward I's second campaign in North Wales.

Conwy replaced an earlier stronghold that had been destroyed by Llywelyn the Last in 1263.

I wonder if folks called Llywelyn "the Last" before or after his demise.

Someone talked me into visiting Bodiam Castle during my first circumlocution of England in 2005. Castles weren't really my thing. Romantic and all that, but if I couldn't put a piece of literature or history with it, a castle didn't make my list. I had learned, however, that even as historically irrelevant (to me) Bodiam Castle may have been, the journey there was worth the price of admission as it took me down a country lane which convinced me that the literary landscape I was looking for could still be found.

My daughter Caroline was all about the castles for her first foray beyond the bounds of London. Wales is awash with them, not because the Welsh themselves were besot with castles. Quite the contrary. Most Welsh castles were built to house the English garrisons and keep the Welsh in check. Nevertheless, today these castles are kept in check by the Welsh and visits are parceled out for those who wish to visit them in exchange for coin on the realm.

Bath: On either side of the entrance to the Abbey Church at Bath, angels climb or descend Jacob's Ladder. The Roman baths of Aquae Sulis are just to the right of the Abbey.

I went there in 2005, and pictures can be found at http://s21.photobucket.com/albums/b257/Lucelucy/Revolutions/#!cpZZ3QQtppZZ20.

This time I was in Bath to change trains and run errands. I found a T-Mobile store to provide me with a British sim card and phone number. My car rental was out of Bath. And of course, I always wander about wondering what Jane Austen would have thought of modern life.


This little lady is called Miss Temperance. She is pouring out a jug of water, and is backed up in that endeavor by Holy Mother Church on the one hand and Sulis, the Celtic goddess of the springs, on the other.








Bath was inundated with the decor theme of painted lions as public art. This one was in a bookstore window.











The chia pet lion was in the park.

And so was Mozart. All in all, it was a lovely day. Jane would have liked it.

First Class LA to London:

Remember those first episodes of Weeds? Is Agresic down there anywhere?

First impressions of First Class, however, was that there were too many amenities between me and the window. I'm in it for the landscape.






East LA. I didn't know it was an ACTUAL wasteland. Oh, wait. This is northeast OF LA. I don't advise going there without a camel.

I think this is what is called an alkali desert.









Grand Canyon, or thereabouts.














Chateaubriand. Need I say more? The service was excellent - so much so that when I didn't seem to require anything more the flight attendant asked me if I was all right? It was also the worst turbulence I had ever experienced flying, and I very nearly complained that I didn't think they allowed turbulence in first class, but wasn't certain the joke would really go over all that well.






England. A green and pleasant land. That phrase kept running through my head the entire time I was there. Wonderful waking up to see the green green fields of some of my ancestors unfolding below me.










And I really must introduce you to Isambard Kingdom Brunel, fabled civil engineer and architect of many of the first railway bridges. He's enthroned in London's Paddington Station, where I have arrived by train from Heathrow and am embarking on the London-Bath train en route to Frome in Somerset.