The unexpected connection and other oddities in England

We are just back from a two week vacation in England. We spent a week in London where we've been many times and then a week in Yorkshire, which was new to us. We saw a lot of fun and interesting things including an exhibit at the British Museum on the Silk Roads, an incredible exhibition titled "Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers" at the National Gallery, and an amazing display of Monet paintings of London at the Courtauld gallery. We also saw several West End shows and enjoyed them all. Those were all things we planned and expected to see, including several that we had booked in advance thanks to Clay's incredible trip planning. 

Those things were all great and I loved them, but what I really love when we travel are the unexpected things that just pop up, things we just happen to stumble into. There's a company called London Walks, which hires really good guides, who both know their history and are equally talented story tellers. We've taken many of their walks and this time took one focused on a part of London called Bermondsey. It's not a tourist hotspot. We were the only Americans on the walk, the other handful of people were all Brits, Londoners mostly, just out to learn about a different part of their city. One stop on the walk near the waterfront was an old warehouse, how converted into very pricey condos, at a place called the New Concordia Wharf. The guide proceeded to explain that the wharf got its name because of the vast quantity of grain that was imported there originating from Concordia, Kansas. 

Concordia, Kansas is not a hugely significant town even in Kansas, so finding that it had been significant enough that something in London had taken its name came as a surprise. It's particularly significant to me, moreover, because Concordia is just a bit north of Delphos, Kansas, where my mother's immediate and extended family has been farming, mostly wheat, since homesteading the land after the Civil War. I think it's safe to assume that some of their wheat ended up at this location in London. While that may not be a highly important historical fact, it was unexpected, surprising, and personally very relevant to me. 

I've included in this post some other unexpected but interesting things that we encountered on this trip, not necessarily the highlights or main sights that we saw, but some things that we saw unintentionally. 

These next pictures are from York Minster, the cathedral in York. It's old, big, beautiful, and interesting, but we happened upon a vocal group that was rehearsing in the chapter house. Stained glass, a beautiful ceiling, and incredible acoustics. We sat and listened for a bit.

I'm not real sure why we stopped in Knaresborough, but Yorkshire was full of pretty little towns and villages and we stopped in several of them. This place caught my eye and we went in. It's exactly what you'd think, a rescue group that takes in exotic species and tries to re-home them. There were many varieties of snakes and other reptiles, exotic birds, and some kind of non-native skunk. The place was packed full of cages using every possible inch of space, but there were a lot of volunteers working there too, including a nice young man who gave us an informal tour winding through a narrow pathway through and around all the cages. Unlike the U.S., they are prohibited by law from feeding live rats and mice, or any other live food to the creatures in their care. We declined the offer to hold a snake but left a nice donation. 

The most common wildlife we saw in Yorkshire were pheasants. We saw these at a place called Fountains Abbey and they seemed almost tame. They were so abundant throughout Yorkshire that they also were the most common roadkill that we saw. 

We spent one night in the town of Ripon. When we checked into the place we were staying we were told that there was a town crier who made an appearance by the monument in the square at nine o'clock every night. I went out to see him, joined by one other visitor to the town. The guy appeared in costume and blew his horn from the four corners of the monument. He then explained a bit of the history, which goes back hundreds of years, but I don't remember any of the details, except that it is and has always been a paid position, he's employed by the town.

Our route through the Yorkshire dales was interesting. This was a cloudy, foggy day, which didn't produce a lot of beautiful views, but it was very atmospheric and fitting for the scenery and the cultural landscape. It's a very rural area, full of narrow, winding roads bordered by dry stone rock walls just inches from the road. On the way out of some small town our route was diverted by something blocking the road and ended up driving through a very rural area of open range. We encountered one handmade sign warning drivers to watch for sheep and lambs that were settled down very near the road. We didn't see the lambs but the sheep were plentiful. 

This stop was Bolton Castle. When we were paying our entry fee the person told us that there was falconry demonstration that was about to begin in the garden. We went there first and spent more time there than we did exploring the ruins of the castle. There were quite a few birds of prey housed there, a private collection, but the demonstration used a Turkmenistan owl and a hybrid falcon of some sort. It was very interesting, entertaining, and totally unexpected at a castle ruin. 

Our last stop in Yorkshire before returning the rental car and catching the train back to London was at Castle Howard. This is where Brideshead Revisited was filmed, as well as a number of other things. It's a huge old estate still privately owned and occupied so they do anything and everything they can to make money to maintain the place. Much of it is open to the public and the tour was great, but the unexpected part was the garden center. It was a good sized commercial garden center and even in October there were a lot of plants for sale. The flowers in the first picture are something called Calluna, I'm not familiar with them. The second picture are cyclamens, and they are pretty common potted plants in the U.K., particularly because they are blooming at this time of year. They are available here too, of course, as greenhouse grown plants, but I think our climate is too hot and dry for them. They are a native Virginia wildflower and I've seen them in the woods around here, but I've never seen one bloom. Here they were being sold in flats, basically like bedding plants, and were very reasonably priced in a place where nothing else was.