Gloucester & Sheffield
Compared to where we had been, our last two destinations in England are considerably less glamorous—and well off the tourist track. But that’s fine with us, of course. Our goal here has been to see not just the gorgeous and amazing places, of which Europe abounds, but also to experience more normal, everyday versions of the countries we’re visiting, which tell a more honest story of life there.
Our first stop, Gloucester (pronounced GLOS-ter…go figure), is a small port city in the southwest of England, only a few miles from the Welsh border—and, I learned later, the small Welsh town where I spent Christmas in 1999. What did I know about Gloucester before we arrived? Only that it is the namesake of the street and tube stop nearest where I lived in London’s west end in 1999. That’s probably because Gloucester was once one of the more important industrial centers west of the capital. Of course, in a country as old as England, almost every city has a rich story to tell. Gloucester was originally founded by the Romans in AD 48 as Glevum, and continued to be an important town through the Saxon and Norman eras. Henry III was crowned here in 1216, and King Edward II is buried in the cathedral. A key moment in the English civil war, the siege of Gloucester, played out here in 1643. Blah, blah, blah.
The city is most famous for its fabulous cathedral, dating from the 11th century (and built on the site of an earlier abbey from the 7th century). And what made this cathedral famous? Well, Harry Potter of course. Scenes from several of the movies were shot in its elegant cloister. Of course, there’s far more to it than that. Even after seeing Salisbury Cathedral and Bath Abbey, we were still blown away by this soaring yet delicate structure, which completely dominates the skyline of the city. Griffin and I spent quite a long time there one morning, exploring. A docent pointed out a somewhat hidden spiral staircase which took us up to the “Tribune Gallery”, a second level along the inside perimeter of the church, where we could look out over the nave and get a closer look at the stained glass. One of the biggest windows contains a famous curiosity: not a king or a saint or an angel, but some commoner with a stick playing something that looks remarkably like golf—but this was created over 300 years before the first images of golf appeared in Scotland. Behind this stained glass window is a small, hidden passageway across the width of the nave, called the whispering gallery, so named because you can whisper something in one end and hear it clearly on the other, which Griffin and I verified. Fun stuff.
But did we really need to see another church? Why did we chose Gloucester? Quite simply because it’s the nearest city to the Cotswolds on a major rail line, where Amy’s sister could drop us off on her way back to Bath and then London. Staying in a non-tourist town like this has its advantages, like the price of accommodations. Amy had found a very unique Airbnb called the Judges Quarters, a large, ornate hall with 30 ft ceilings that has been converted into a 2-level apartment, the high walls decorated with some appropriately large modern paintings. It was one of the grandest places we had yet stayed, but also one of the cheapest, and included free popsicles. Bonus!
The Tuesday morning we arrived was our first gray, overcast day since arriving in England, which is certainly beating the odds, but made us less enthusiastic about sightseeing. We headed out anyway, starting at the docks. The huge riverside warehouses which bustled with sailors and stevedores a century or two ago are now being slowly converted to restaurants, museums, and shopping centers as the city reinvents itself. But it was all rather quiet when we were there. We also wandered around the old city center, adjacent to the cathedral, where we found plenty of evidence of its medieval heritage, including dozens of centuries-old, listing Tudor buildings sandwiched between considerably more modern (and straight) edifices. It was definitely less polished and more working class than all of the places we’d been thus far, but there were still plenty of interesting shops and restaurants, and it had a certain charm to it.
There’s not much to tell about our remaining day and a half there. Amy and Griffin did some shopping and worked on Griffin’s schoolwork by the docks when the sun emerged. It was a nice change of pace. Griffin and I spent a lot of time at the large park next to our apartment, where we got to hang out with some precocious local kids and watched an adult amateur cricket team practicing, even as it started to rain. Amy caught up on work. I worked on this blog.
We decided we liked Gloucester. Should you include it in your UK travel plans? Nah, probably not.
From there, we caught a train up to Sheffield, in the center of the island. The city is apparently known for its outsized role in the Industrial Revolution, its once-thriving steel industry, and its university. Despite its industrial heritage, Sheffield is a surprisingly green and leafy place today, with over half of the city’s area given to green space. We were here to visit an old friend, Serena Corr, who was Amy’s roommate in Santa Barbara many years ago. Serena, who is very Irish, and her husband Eddie, who is very English, are brilliant scientists and professors who teach at Sheffield University, but you’d never know it from their good natured, down-to-earth, self-deprecating dispositions. We hadn’t seen them in years and were excited to spend a few days catching up, especially since they now have two boys right around Griffin’s age. They also have a large, beautiful old home, named “The Poplars”, on a quiet street in the hills around Sheffield, where we whiled away 3½ relaxing days.
Since the weather was perfect, almost hot, and it wasn’t getting dark until almost 11 pm, we spent a lot of time outside. A good amount of it in their back yard, where we discovered that Griffin is an excellent archer (on a children’s archery set, of course!). We also enjoyed lots of hikes in the bits of forest that are all over town (Sheffield boasts 4.5 million trees), including a jaunt through the woods to their local pub for dinner our first night. The next evening, Griffin and I tagged along with Eddie and the boys to rugby practice at the community sports grounds, where probably a hundred children of various ages gathered with their parents—the kids to learn rugby, the parents to watch and drink beer! It was interesting to see (and talk to a few) families from this solidly middle class English town. On Sunday, all of us wandered down to a popular little local attraction, a miniature railway built and maintained by railroad enthusiasts, which opens to the public for rides and picnics on the weekends. A wholesome little diversion!
We also spent a lot of time just kicking it at the house. (After months in Airbnb (mostly) apartments, it was nice to chill in a fully stocked home.) In his basement, Eddie has set up a surprisingly high-quality home movie theater, and we indulged in a couple of fun evenings down there, munching on popcorn, drinking to excess, and watching Paddington 2 with the kids and the wonderfully clever Danny Boyle film Yesterday, set in the UK and featuring all Beatles music in its soundtrack. Highly recommended.
But we did finally venture out of the neighborhood on Saturday, catching a bus north through the rolling green countryside and a few adorable villages. Our destination: the very impressive Chatsworth House. Home to the long line of Dukes of Devonshire, aka the Cavendishes, one of the wealthiest British aristocratic families, this grand estate must rival Blenheim Palace for the title of grandest private home on the island. On the way there, Eddie regaled us with stories of its extravagant construction, including planting an entire forest on the hill behind it to create a better backdrop, rerouting and straightening the river in front of it to create a more pleasing foreground, and demolishing the village of Edensor and rebuilding it behind a hill to get it out of sight. The end result is pretty stunning, as if the lush, oak-studded valley it inhabits was created by the Almighty just for this palatial home. Amy remarked that she had never seen such a stunning, storybook countryside.
Of course, it has been featured in various TV shows and movies, including The Crown, Peaky Blinders, the 2005 version of Pride & Prejudice with Keira Knightly (which we had just seen), and The Duchess, also with Keira Knightley. Interestingly, the title character of that last film, Georgiana Cavendish, was the duchess of this very house. She was a fascinating women, to say the least, notorious—as Wikipedia put it—for her “charisma, political influence, beauty, unusual marital arrangement, love affairs, socializing, and gambling“. Her story is worth a watch!
A lot of effort has been invested to maintain the home’s period splendor, including a recent £32 million renovation. And it shows, especially in the spectacularly baroque State Apartments, created centuries ago to host the king and queen (who never actually came) and restored to pretty much how they looked then. We enjoyed wandering through these and the many other wings of the house that are open to visitors, but a good part of it—nearly 100 of the 126 rooms—are still reserved as the private residence of the duke and duchess. Who, by the way, aren’t strict traditionalists as you might expect; in fact, they have penchant for the avant-garde. This is evident in the surprising pieces of modern art and eclectic furniture scattered throughout the house…as well as by several massive Burning Man art pieces installed on the grounds! “Radical Horizons: The Art of Burning Man at Chatsworth” is a 6-month exhibition, and boy, was it a surprise to drive up and see some art pieces we recognized from the playa (and had even climbed on) sitting here of all places, peeking out from amongst the oaks. Amy and I devoted some time to wandering amongst them lazily at the end of the day. I also spent some time getting a cocktail in the old stables, now a fancy café and courtyard, and wandering the more manicured parts of the gardens, while Amy, Serena and Eddie took the kids to the extensive playground and farmyard. These old manor houses are practically theme parks these days…but I guess that’s how they pay for the considerable taxes and upkeep! (Personally, I like the more creative approach employed in the very entertaining Guy Ritchie film The Gentlemen, which I watched while in London…along with Snatch.)
We enjoyed our lazy few days with Serena, Eddie, and their boys. About our only regret was that Griffin was a bit shy around their boys. For us adults, things felt just like old times, and it was easy to forget that most of us (myself excluded) were now important grown-up people with respectable jobs. At least during the week!
But Monday morning came around soon enough, and Eddie & Serena dropped us off at the train station on their way to the university. We had a long journey ahead of us to Edinburgh, Scotland, but we were a little worried whether our train would actually be going. News reports for several days were filled with dire warnings of an impending heat wave, predicted to reach an unprecedented 100° F in northern England. (You might have heard about it.) It was so unusual that the authorities speculated that the rails might buckle in the heat, and that trains might have to be suspended as a precaution. A notice at the station informed us that all trains the next day were in fact cancelled, along with many that day. Luckily not ours, but the unfortunate side effect was that it was packed to the gills with people, many standing in the aisles—and the air conditioning was no match for it all. Meanwhile, they limited the train to a maddeningly slow speed for the first hour or so. But after a while, we shed a few passengers and started picking up speed, and soon we were headed to Scotland in earnest. It was a beautiful ride, much of it along the northeast coast. We passed estuaries and rocky beaches, a holy island with a castle, and some lovely towns called Durham and Berwick-upon-Tweed, which I may need to visit someday. Too bad Amy slept through it all (a byproduct of her late work nights)!
Our adventures that day were far from over, but I’ll save the rest for our next post on Scotland!