Looking towards heaven

Just outside the Quire, looking up at the vaulted ceiling underneath the central tower.

I won't be getting my Yorkshire pictures sorted and processed any time soon, but I looked for this one because I remember taking it and thinking, Oh I like this. That ceiling is almost 200 feet high, and looking up at it literally made me giddy. (I started to fix the distortion in the central part of the ceiling, which should be square, but decided to leave it because seemed like the image should be a little dizzy.)

The Quire

Two pictures from this afternoon: looking from the middle of the Quire towards the main church, and the stalls where the choir sat this evening. (I got there early so was lucky enough to get a seat in the stalls next to the choir instead of in the large seating area at the far end.)

This is where all the daily services are held, as though that huge cathedral sitting on the other side of that doorway is just an anteroom.

York Minster

I started to write “I got to York yesterday” then stopped. That can't be right. But yes, I got here yesterday, but for some reason it feels much longer.

It's quite hot, for one thing, and though I was surprised and grateful to find a small portable AC unit and a Dyson fan in my hotel room, they are taking up most of the free floor space in a room that wasn't that big to begin with.

The other nice thing about this hotel is the location—I knew it was close to York Minster, the famous cathedral, but wasn't expecting the impact of having that enormous magnificence in my face every time I stepped outside, grabbing all of my attention the way the AC unit has grabbed all of my hotel room.

I spent some time wandering around there this afternoon, enjoying the relative cool along with the really wonderful architecture, and then went back for Evensong this evening. It wasn't surprising that the service matched the surroundings: exquisite harmonies in a chamber behind the main church called the Quire (Choir) that's bigger than most churches.

I'd been feeling kind of indifferent about York; it's beautiful, and if the old streets around the Minster have far too many of the dreaded cobblestones, they're charming, and at least there are no hills. But it's very crowded, and very hot, and going anywhere and seeing anything seems to require So Much Effort.

Not the Minster, though. That's worth it.

Brontë Parsonage

I spent the morning in the parsonage museum. Though I had seen some of the exhibits in New York several years ago, it was definitely very different seeing them in the rooms where the family actually lived. I'm too tired to post much tonight—it was hot today, and I tried, mostly successfully, to walk a little on the footpath behind the parsonage and through the field full of sheep beyond.

This was something I hadn't seen before and I found it very moving: Charlotte Brontë's wedding bonnet and veil.

She was such a complicated person; brilliant, yes, but petty and self-righteous and occasionally dishonest. She was an artist, who turned her tragic family history into literature, but also used it as kind of a performance when her growing fame brought her into contact with women she admired and wanted to impress. (Maybe it eased her crippling shyness and consciousness of how physically unattractive she was. People described her as a strange small woman with missing teeth and tiny hands. Most of them didn't really like her.)

Her friends and her father were disapproving of her decision to marry her father's curate when she was 38 years old, but it actually gives me more sympathy for her, when so many of her actions inspired an active dislike. To have lost all of her siblings, to find herself alone in the parsonage except for her father, and to have this chance. Why wouldn't she take it?

And she was apparently quite happy, but died less than a year later from pregnancy complications in the room where I saw this bonnet this morning.

Haworth

What a charming place.

I meant to come here last summer, after the Brontë course at Merton, when I still remembered all the ins and outs of the novels and the family history, but I got sick and went home early.

So I decided to try again this year, and do it before the program starts next week. It was easy to plan—I booked the same hotels I'd reserved last year, adding a couple of extra nights so I could go slow on my bad knee. And since I'm coming back to Oxford afterwards, unlike last year when I planned to go to London from Yorkshire and then home, I don't have to carry a month's worth of luggage with me. I left my big suitcase in a luggage storage place in Oxford, and crammed a couple changes of clothes and some clean underwear into my backpack.

I had to take three trains and a taxi to get here from Oxford, and delays caused by a strike meant that I had to hobble as fast as I could to platforms on the other side of every train station and I still missed both of my connections, but at least I wasn't dragging a suitcase.

The train I finally caught for the last leg, from Leeds to Keighley, was extremely local. We stopped every five minutes at places with names like Bingley and Woodlesford and Wakefield Kirkgate. (After having gone through Derbyshire on the first leg and blowing a mental kiss to Lizzie Bennet, I was amused to see another Pride and Prejudice name pop up. Why, hello Mr Bingley!)

But I made it, and after basically being held hostage in my apartment for the past couple of months with a knee that refused to navigate my four flights of stairs, it's reassuring to find that I'm still able to do this. Go places. See things.

I'm staying at an inn at the top of Haworth's steep, cobbled main street, and I can actually see the moors at the bottom of the hill from my window. The other picture is a footpath behind the Brontë Parsonage. The cobblestones and uneven ground are challenging, and I'm not going to be doing any hikes on the moors, but that's okay. I'm here.

Oxford

I did not think I would make it here. I'm not entirely sure I have.

It was hot and muggy (not New York hot, but hot) and I managed to get lost not once, but twice, and ended up walking more than I should have trying to find my way back to my hotel, and now I'm in that state of nerve-jangling jet lagged tiredness where I have to keep reminding myself where I am. But the photo evidence (a bridge on Castle Mill Stream) suggests that it is really Oxford and I'm really here.

Leaving New York

Looking down Seventh Avenue Friday night, towards Madison Square Garden where apparently some kind of wedding was going on.

The street closures had made traffic a nightmare all day—and it was over 100 degrees—so I cancelled my appointment at the DMV and spent the afternoon packing with the air conditioners blasting. I took this picture through the window of the Uber to JFK; the thunderstorm was brief but fierce.

View from Clava Cairns

I love Scotland. Maybe next year I can go back.

Mistaken identity at Clava Cairns

This was one of the pictures I'd never processed—me walking next to the main cairn.

I didn't really look that closely at it, apart from wondering whatever happened to the bag I was carrying since I don't remember it at all.

Then it occurred to me: Wait, who took this picture? I was there alone; the driver I'd hired for the afternoon was waiting for me outside the park. I realized that this wasn't me, this was some other woman with baggy jeans and a gray hoodie and a camera around her neck. (You can also see her off to the side in the previous picture of the cairn.) But I honestly thought it was a picture of me.

I found another picture from that day, obviously taken by the driver, and I was wearing a red jacket, not a gray one.

The jeans, alas, were just as unfortunate.

Flashback: Clava Cairns

The most famous of a group of cairns around Inverness. I posted pictures at the time (here, here, and here) but here's another that really shows the ring of standing stones around the cairn.

Flashback: Inverness

A spectacular day on the river Ness in 2015.

Sunday bird blogging

Another flashback to Hilton Head and a great blue heron.