I am actually back at Merton

The second week of the program started today, but this is the only picture I've taken at the college—the gates to the Fellows Garden on a perfect summer afternoon yesterday.

I have enough pictures from Yorkshire and more recent excursions to go through, and I think I've already photographed every square inch of Merton by now.

Sunday bird blogging

A rook perched on one of the sarsen stones at Stonehenge yesterday.

It's not a great picture, but at least I had a longer lens this year, so it's better than the tiny starlings I photographed there last year. At the time, I wrote, “I don't imagine I will ever get to post a picture of birds at Stonehenge again,” but I'll gladly make it a habit if I can.

Saturday reflections

It's surprising to me that it's only been two weeks since I took this picture—it feels like forever ago.

This is from the hot Sunday when I got lost in Oxford and at one point found myself in a tunnel underneath the Rewley swing bridge. It was kind of creepy actually, but the reflections were nice.

One more Yorkshire landscape

A last picture from the van as we drove through the Yorkshire Dales last weekend.

It's a little less "picturesque" maybe...

 ...but this is my favorite picture from Grassington: a side street off the main square, stone buildings, and a couple of bicycles.

More Grassington

I had a coffee and a scone at the Stripey Badger. Worth it just for the name, but the scone was also excellent.

Grassington

We took our midmorning break in this village in the Dales, which is now famous for starring as the fictional town of Darrowby in the latest TV version of All Creatures Great and Small, which has apparently done for the Yorkshire Dales what Outlander did for the Scottish Highlands. Apparently the producers picked Grassington because all they had to do was change the signs on the buildings and hide the cars and it would pass for the 1930's.

Over hill, over dale

A few pictures taken with my phone from the van as we drove through the national park.

The dales are a series of valleys nestled between hills of moorland in the Pennines, and 95% of the land in the park is privately owned. There are towns and villages and many, many farms, with fields of sheep bounded by dry-stone walls, and old stone barns.

I was expecting something wilder and more uninhabited, but what I got was beautiful and bucolic. Also, our lunch stop was at the Wensleydale Creamery, where they have a free tasting room: Wensleydale with cranberries or apricots or mango and ginger, cheddar with caramelized onions or pickled onions or chili. I didn't need lunch or dinner after sampling everything at least twice.

The journey from York to Oxford yesterday was long and frustrating; the heat has caused massive problems on the rail systems, and I ended up taking an Uber from Birmingham after my train to Oxford was cancelled and the next trains were repeatedly delayed. But I got here. I checked into my hotel, successfully retrieved my suitcase from storage, and was only twenty minutes late to dinner with a Merton friend. I'm moving into Merton this afternoon and will be happy to stay put for the next three weeks.

Sunday bird blogging

A great horned owl from the aviary at Bolton Castle in North Yorkshire. This feel like a bit of a cheat, since not only was the bird a captive, it was also on the wrong continent. (Great horned owls are only native to the Americas.)

I got out of York for the day yesterday. Last summer I'd booked a day trip to the Yorkshire Dales from York, but I decided to skip it this year when I was rebooking everything. I reasoned that there was enough to do in the city and I wanted a more relaxed schedule. But when I was sitting in my hotel room Friday night after the hot, crowded day that felt 72 hours long, I thought, Hmm, I wonder if it's too late to book that trip to the Yorkshire Dales?

It wasn't, and it turned out that a day driving through beautiful countryside and charming villages was exactly what I needed. It wasn't quite as hot yesterday, but outside of the city the weather was merely pleasantly warm, and we saw sheep and ate a lot of cheese and visited this castle, where Mary Queen of Scots was held prisoner for six months in 1568. (I did not attempt to climb the series of stone spiral staircases going up to the chamber where she lived. It would have taken me longer than six months to get down again.)

I've really lost all sense of time. The Minster bells have been ringing nonstop for the past half hour and it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that it was Sunday.

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 as dizzy as I was.)

The Quire

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.