Month: August 2023

Canterbury to Yorkshire

After Salisbury, we headed off to Canterbury. We saw the place where St. Augustine of Canterbury set up the first Christian mission to Britain after he was sent there from Rome. Nearby is St. Martin’s Church, the oldest, still-worshipping church in the English-speaking world. In the evening, we got some fish and chips take-out and enjoyed it in the green space at another nearby church.

The next morning, we went to Canturbury Cathedral for their morning service and then headed north to Scotland.

Our plan on the first day in Scotland was to see the castle in Edinburgh. Unfortunately, we didn’t take into account that the fringe festival was going on and the place was a tourist zoo. All tickets were sold out. We decided to head over to Stirling to see the castle there.

We were staying in Dunfermline, just north of Edinburgh, where Queen Margaret of Scotland, who is the person our church in Winnipeg is named for, lived. We saw the abbey she founded and the place where she was laid to rest.

We said goodbye to Scotland, rented a car at the Edinburgh airport, and headed south to the district of Yorkshire. That afternoon we spent a wonderful two hours at some ruins along Hadrian’s Wall, the wall Emporer Hadrian built to protect their territory in Britain from the “barbarians” in the north.

Our home base in Yorkshire was a house in a small village called Dalton. From there were made a number of day trips. The first was to a creamery in Hawes where they make cheese. The next day we went to see Raby Castle.

Tomorrow we head south to London.

Oxford and Salisbury

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Our first days on our trip to the UK were spent in Oxford and Salisbury. Oxford is known for its prestigious university and has been a place of higher learning since the first European universities were created in the 13th century. We stayed in the dorm of Mansfield College, which is a relative newcomer on the scene, having been established in the 19th century, and took the opportunity to explore some of the many colleges and important historical sites associated with the city and university. Here you can see us on the tower of the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, having a look at the city from above. It wasn’t Lyndon’s favourite activity—he’s afraid of heights.

After a day and a bit at Oxford, we headed off to Salisbury. We made the trip by train. For whatever reason, the trains were all extremely busy. We almost didn’t fit our on last one, and didn’t even have room to take our backpacks off.

Salisbury is an old city near some of the oldest sites of human activity in the UK. We took the shuttle bus out to the Stonehenge, which is believed to have been built 4500 years ago. It’s hard to believe that a pile of stones could attract so many tourists! That evening, we went to a choral evensong at the Salisbury Cathedral. The next day we toured the cathedral as tourists. What an amazing place.