Grave Expectations

It was Summer Bank Holiday this weekend. The name is an example of the famous English sense of humour.

I haven't had a day off since the start of June, so I was really looking forward to this. I wanted to whip my bike over to Holland again, but the weather was terrible for the whole week prior to the weekend and the weather forecast for the Netherlands was for 3 days of rain. I debated it up until 2 hours before the train to the ferry left, but in the end I decided to sit it out.

This is bad, because it inevitably leads to a feeling of copping out. If the weather turns out to be good, that's depressing because I've wasted an opportunity, and if the weather's bad, it's a depressing waste of a holiday.

So, what do I do to fight back against an impending sense of gloom? Hang out in a graveyard, of course!

I took a train to London to visit Highgate, which is the overgrown Victorian cemetery in the north of the city. I took my 50mm fixed lens for this one. It was really cheap, but it actually gives quite a good image in low light.







































It has quite a few celebrities, with Karl Marx probably being the most famous.

Although most of the graves are very old, there are still new burials. It appears that these days one must be a prominent figure to be buried there. There was one from 2010 that just said "MM was here". Can anyone guess that one?

This one caught me by surprise. Sad - his books were so good.



Let the record state that if anyone ever messes up the apostrophes on my tombstone, I want them beaten with a copy of the "Chicago Manual of Style".

Castles: Hever and Arundel

You know, the UK has some terrible weather, but this summer has been a ripper so far. It's been hot and has hardly rained. This is what I signed on for. I've got quite a good tan going, if you can believe it.

This is Hever Castle, which is one of the 3 "Kent castles" to the south of London. I went there for a day out with my friends D & T, ponst whose floor I slept when I first arrived in England.

Hever Castle

It was a wonderful, sunny day, but the castle was pretty quiet. That may've had something to do with England playing Germany that afternoon in the World Cup. I possibly enjoyed that day more than anyone else in the country.

Hever was the former home of Anne Boleyn. It has a hidden chapel, dating from when Elizabeth I was persecuting the Catholics. Having grown up on Enid Blyton novels, I'm fascinated by the idea of secret passages hidden in old buildings. This wasn't exactly a traditional "priest hole", but it was pretty cool.

A more recent addition is the water maze, which is a maze on raised stone slabs that trigger water jets when stepped upon.



After that, we rented a row boat and sploshed around on the lake. It was quite idyllic. Great day.

Last weekend, there was a special deal on train tickets heading south, so I took a trip down to Arundel Castle which is near the south coast. Hever is a bit of a toy castle, but Arundel is huge.

Arundel is the historic home of the Howard family, which included ... Anne Boleyn. Yeesh, that lass got around more castles than moats.

Arundel began as a fairly typical round Norman motte and bailey keep after the Battle of Hastings (1066).



However, it expanded dramatically over the centuries.





The day that I went happened to be Pirate Day, so I watched some displays of sword fighting and musketry, and saw "the Shadow", who is a highwayman. I wonder if she hates squirrels?

The Shadow

The castle was cool, but at 16 pounds, it was pretty damn expensive and large sections are inaccessible because the family lives there. The information is very much focused on the Howard family, while some sort of national context to the history might be more relevant to most visitors.

After I'd finished at the castle, I went to Arundel Cathedral. It's pretty big but I was unimpressed by the interior. In the foyer, they had an interesting biography of the current Pope, but it strangely skipped mentioning what he was up to in 1939-45 and in the 1980s. I wonder what Ratzinger was up to then? I'm sure it was something selfless and beneficial to mankind, but due to his modesty he doesn't want it mentioned. Great guy.

Arundel Cathedral

Scotland (VII): Mulling over Staffa

We took a boat trip to the Isle of Mull, and from there a second, longer boat trip out to an island called Staffa. Staffa has a cave called Fingal's Cave that has stone structures similar to those at the Giant's Causeway in Ireland.

It's famous in its own right, but also for a symphony that Mendelssohn wrote after visiting the cave. It is impressive. The volcanic stone has formed into patterns that look quite man-made.











Less expected, but more interesting, the island of Staffa has puffins. They spend almost the entire year at sea, and they can't land on the island or the seagulls will kill them. But the puffins know that if people are around, the gulls will keep their distance, so for a month or 2 each year, the puffins will come and land on the island if there are people around.

They are like nothing I've seen before, and they act quite tame. You can get very close to them.

Scotland (VI): Damn you, Campbells!

Pretty much every clan history in Scotland has the same ending:

"And everyone was living happily, until one day some Campbells came along and killed them, and stole their castle."

The Campbells were the Ngati Toa of Scotland; complicit with the English and ruthless. The most famous example of this was at Glencoe, where the MacDonalds were massacred by the Campbells in 1692 on orders from the English. There isn't a lot to see there, but we went for a walk through woods that were very pretty.

Stream at Glencoe

Highland Coo

At the south end of Loch Tay, we paused in Killin just long enough to sneak onto the burial island of the MacNabs. They were a bunch of tough-arses (the MacNab emblem is the disembodied head of one of their neighbours), but as so often happened, they were given a bit of bif by ... the Campbells.

The MacNab Tomb

The same thing happened to the MacLeans, whose Duart Castle, on the Isle of Mull, was taken and destroyed by the Campbells. It was rebuilt last century.

Duart Castle

Further into Argyll, we visited Castle Lachlan, the former castle of the MacLachlans. It was destroyed with cannons after the Battle of Culloden. It's a great castle to visit: there are few people and you can climb around inside it. It's a pain to drive to, though.









Slightly against rule, the MacLachlans had their land returned to them after the Campbells interceded on their behalf. Maybe I had those Campbells all wrong?