2023 England and Edinburgh Day 6: Georgian Theatre Royal and Durham Cathedral

We both slept poorly again, so dragged ourselves and our small appetites down from breakfast. E had pastries and toast while I opted for (thick) porridge with honey and a strawberry compote (which I ate around) for breakfast. While eating the fire alarm went off and whooped for about 15-20 seconds – “the basement is NOT on fire” our waitress assured us. Well that’s nice to hear.

After breakfast we packed up again and drove to Richmond where we found street parking that, coincidentally and appropriately, was directly in front of the Richmond Theatrical Society offices. From there we walked the short distance over to Georgian Theatre Royal where we found ourselves with a private tour of the theater. Was kind of funny to hear the operators having the same challenges as any other theater company – we shared some of our experiences with our guide. When we finished there were a half dozen folks in the lobby who had arrived to take the tour immediately after ours. 

A recreation of the original footlights at the theater.  These candles would be placed in bowls of water to enhance the illumination via reflectivity and then hoisted up to stage level.  The (tiny) orchestra pit is on the other side of this.  Out of view, just to the left of the guide, was the working trap door elevator used to lift an actor up through the stage floor.  In design and construction it was almost a exact copy of the elevator Hal Stephens built for our Iolanthe of so many years ago.

The oldest known surviving scenic elements in the UK.  These small (about 2' wide by ~7' tall) beautifully painted flats would be slotted into wooden tracks on either side of the stage and could be slid in/out of view for scene changes.  There were 4 tracks (still present), each with three slots, located OSL and OSR of the stage, allowing for up to 12 different scenes to be preset.  

The backdrop corresponding to the flats.

Our curiosity fulfilled, we then drove to Durham, making a stop at a Services turnoff along the way to add about 11L gas (about 2.5 gallons). We decided to do this on the way since the quick on/quick off access of the motorway services would be easier to navigate than trying to fill up at a station in Durham.

Pre-trip planning really paid off for Durham. In late June I realized that our plan for the Castle and/or Cathedral required parking in a place where there’s, frankly, no parking. Darn those tiny little medieval lanes! So I quickly reviewed their websites and concluded that the best solution was to use Durham’s Park and Ride system which is designed for just this issue. Basically, the city runs three different parking sites, one of which (the delightfully-named Sniperly Park and Ride) was very close to The Kingsbridge Inn, where we were planning to stay while overnight in Durham. So we’d park the car upon arriving in Durham, grab the bus that ran every 15 minutes, and make the short ride to be dropped off at Durham Market Square at the north end of the peninsula where the good stuff was. We’d have about a 10 minute walk to the Cathedral, but since we’d be getting to the area around lunchtime it was a good excuse to stop at Bell’s Fish Shop for our only (officially) scheduled F&C luncheon.

Some of the statues of Durham Market Square, as we're walking to lunch at Bells Fish.  The closer statue is Neptune, while the horse and rider is of Charles Vane.  Yeah, I don't know who that was, either.

The building labeled "Town Hall" is apparently the town hall.  See how I'm using context cues to draw conclusions as to what is around us?

A closer look at Charles Vane.  I assume he's the dude, but maybe he's the horse?

Got into Durham and drove straight to the park and ride where we caught one of the buses into the central core of Durham. From there we walked to Bells. At Bell’s we had a choice between restaurant and takeout…uh, I mean takeaway. Since we’re now old farts we decided for the more sedate pace of a sit-down restaurant. While waiting for our food I pulled out my phone and purchased tickets to a guided tour of the cathedral, as we’d realized from our experiences at York that having a guide made the experience so much more rewarding. Our food was quickly delivered (Cod for E and haddock for me) and we had more than enough time to eat, pay, and make the short walk to Durham Cathedral, arriving about 20 minutes before the tour was scheduled to start. 

Heading toward the Cathedral (and College) after lunch.  Even on this narrow street there were a small number of cars working through the crowds.  

As we got closer the street got a bit narrower and the slope got a tiny bit steeper.  Although a lot of umbrellas are in view, the "rain" was no more than a few drops.  It was mostly just a constant "damp" rather than "rain".  This was pretty consistent weather throughout the trip.  Although we had our 3-in-1 jackets we most commonly used just the rain shell as it wasn't 100% necessary to use the fleece, too.  I wore my fleece mostly because it was easier than carrying it, not because I really needed it.

The view as we approached the Cathedral.  One of the main College buildings is off to the right.  There was some kind of Open House event going on today for the College.  We're not sure if it was for prospective students to see the place or it was move-in day for the current term, but we did see a small handful of meeters and greeters at various locations we passed.  It is next to impossible to tell what functions different buildings had - we might have been passing lecture halls, dorms, offices, or apartments.  It just wasn't clear to us.

About to enter the Cathedral.  It is about 110P and we have a ticket for a tour that is slated to start at 130P.

I don't recall what this was a picture of.  Since we haven't yet gone into the Cathedral it is possible that I spun around and took a picture of the College, or this is some other corner of the Cathedral.

We slowly walked around for about 10 minutes before deciding to make a bathroom stop, after which we joined our tour group. Oddly, we were never asked to show proof that we had purchased tickets. This was another excellent tour. They were quite busy – there were at least 2 other tours running concurrent with ours, including one that was obviously a bunch of school kids on an outing.

During the tour the guide happened to make a passing comment that implied that student housing at Durham College was a challenge for everyone. It happened to be an Open House for students on the day we were there – or perhaps it was move in day? We weren’t sure. But it was an interesting thought to wonder how housing was handled.

We wandered a bit aimlessly in the 15 minutes prior to our tour, so this was a pretty window that I have no information about.

There were a lot of people milling about, but I wouldn't call the Cathedral "crowded".  By going in mid-September we managed to avoid a lot of the tourist crush.  Nice!

Several of the columns at Durham have simple geometric designs in them.  These were apparently carved at the quarry, and then shipped to the cathedral for reassembly onsite.  The guide mentioned that a builder had told her that this meant there was a whole lot of waste material that they did not have to deal with at the building site - all the debris would have been left at the quarry. 

There was a significant development in building mechanics during the construction, which can (barely) be seen here.  The oldest arches in the church, seen on the right side of the photo in the foreground, are rounded Roman arches with their carved tracery.  Just beyond that, on the other side of the decorated column, is a newer Norman arch, which comes to a peak.  Norman arches can support more weight than Roman arches and are what allowed for things like vaulted roofs.  From context clues such as these historians and archaeologists can pinpoint when various parts of the building were built.

A memorial found in a random aisle.  Everywhere you go you see (at least) a memorial to World War I, and most places have multiple memorials.

Prior Castel's clock, the only wooden object known to have survived the Civil War.  The building was used by Cromwell to house Scottish POWs, who burned most things for warmth.  The story (most likely apocryphal) is that Scots didn't burn the clock because there's a large carved (Scottish) thistle adorning the top of it.  In all likelihood the clock was probably hidden in storage.  The clock originally had only a single hand, which is why there are only 3 divisions between each number.  The hand would indicate x:00, x:15, x:30, and x:45 rather than individual minute intervals.

Part of the pipes for the great organ.  There are apparently more than 4600 pipes.

We're about to enter into the tomb of St Cuthbert.  The wall plaques list all the church officials through history.  Thomas Wolsey's name makes a surprise appearance - he was Bishop here during the days of Henry VIII, although he apparently never visited.

The grave of St Cuthbert.  The statue depicts St Cuthbert holding St Oswald's head.  Oswald's head was, indeed, buried alongside Cuthbert.  Cuthbert's statue lost its own head during the Civil War, when it was sawed off.

This is the newest window.  It was installed in 2019 as a memorial to a university student who had died unexpectedly.

The tomb of the Venerable Bede.  Bede had no real association with Durham, having been a monk from Jarrow.  However, in about 1000 a Durham-based monk was determined to bring as many notable Northumbrians to Durham as possible.  He visited Jarrow and essentially stole Bede's remains from there.

In tribute and memorium to the Durham Light Infantry

A better view of Neptune, taken on our way back to the park and ride bus stop

Anyway, we eventually made our way back to pick up the bus that would return us to the park and ride to get our car. Lots of traffic. While it was only about 330P we think it might have been the start of local rush hour. Retrieving the car, we drove over to Kingslodge Inn, missing one turn but not a big deal. Big onsite car park. Checked in at bar and get key to room 8 – again! We were in room 8 last night at the Royal Oak Hotel in Ripon, too. 

Relaxing in our room at The Kingslodge Inn before heading for dinner.  We both had our phones and tablets with us.  Additionally, I had taken my laptop so I could have easier browser access.  This turned out to be a smart choice!

Our room

A view of the car park from our room.  This was, by far, the largest onsite car park we had access to.  

We reviewed our various dinner choice and confirmed that we were OK with the ½ mile walk and eventually set off for dinner at Gusstos, crossing the river. There was an Interesting water feature we saw from the bridge – it seemed more decorative than functional, although who knows?. Since we were a few minutes early we walked a (very) short distance past restaurant to the end of block and were amazed to discover we were back at where the park and ride bus had dropped us off for the cathedral! No idea we were THAT close! Dinner, consisting of several tapas choices, was good but not great – but we remained happy with our choices.

Post-dinner we popped into a Tesco Express store that was next door and bought two varieties of biscuits to take back to the room with us. E got some kind of Lemon Ginger sandwich cookie while I got milk chocolate covered sugar cookies. As we were walking out of the central dining street where we’ve just eaten we were struck by how dark it is. Another US/UK diff – in the US this whole street would have been brightly lit and all the restaurants would have been spilling light onto the street, even if subdued. Here, if you aren’t paying attention you could easily think your restaurant is closed.

A view of (I think) Durham College as we're walking to dinner.  For some reason I didn't really have a good sense of the geography of Durham.  We were stunned to discover that dinner was just a stone's throw from Market Square - so hadn't really registered the idea that we were walking in the direction of the Castle and Cathedral at this time of the evening.

A view from the bridge over the river.  Whether or not the water feature back there was functional or purely decorative was unknown.

And now here's the Cathedral peeking over the ridge as we're walking to dinner.  Once again, it isn't registering on my brain that our walk is taking us right back to where we'd spent the afternoon.

And here was are, post-dinner, having just come out of the Tesco store that was next to the restaurant, and realizing that we're on the other side of Durham Market Square compared to earlier in the day.  The Durham Town Council is just to the left of that tower.  We couldn't believe how close Kinglodge Inn was to this place!

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2023 England and Edinburgh Day 5: York Minster and Fountains Abbey

Breakfast at the Radisson Hotel in York was a more traditional hotel buffet, with the notable exception being that, in addition to the expected tray of scrambled eggs, there was also a tray of fried eggs. Neat trick! While E had the pork sausage, I had the (English) bacon. My recollection of the latter had me expecting more of a ham flavor, but these also tasted a bit more like pork sausage to me. Disappointing.

York has always been this trip’s “problem child”. By all rights we probably should have scheduled two nights in York so we could enjoy about a day-and-a-half in the city, but for reasons I had us arriving mid-afternoon and then leaving just before lunch the following day, giving us time to only take in two main attractions plus (perhaps) a couple of side attractions if things worked out. From the start I was worried we’d might have to cut some things short. (When we were deciding on whether to do many one-day trips with short drives in between vs basing ourselves in a single location and then making fewer longer drives on the way to Edinburgh, it was York that was the likely spot we’d base ourselves in for a 2-4 days if we’d selected the latter option.)

Anyway, we checked out of the hotel after breakfast (leaving our car still parked in the garage) and did the ½ mile walk to York Minster, walking along a portion of the city walls at one point. We went past the main entrance in order to see the Roman column and statue of Alexander the Great, then purchased our ticket just in time to join the 10A free tour. The tour was wonderful, giving just the right amounts of history, architecture, and explanation of many of the stained glass windows. We were really happy we’d taken advantage of it. From there, back to the hotel to pick up the car and make the (roughly) 60 minute drive to Fountains Abbey.

Approaching York Minster from the south

Closing in on the south entrance.  We arrived just prior to the 930A opening and didn't realize that this was the main entrance since the door was closed and no signs were out yet...

...so we went to the east side, which looked more inviting and where we saw a lot of people (already on some kind of private tour).

About 1/3 of the east side was undergoing structural work - apparently, one of the big windows and walls was unsound and being worked on.  This was all the scaffolding we could see from our hotel room.

A semi panoramic shot of the east side of the Minster.  York is a full cathedral, but it started as a minster (mission).  They've stuck with that name over the centuries.  Although it started Catholic, it became a non-denominational minster centuries ago.  This helped it escape the Dissolution of the Monasteries.  It also avoid significant looting during the Civil War because the Rebel commander who occupied York was a York native and loved the Minster, so he ordered his men to treat the Minster with respect. 

The Roman-era column outside York Minster.

The statue of Constantine the Great outside the east side of York Minster

Various views of stained glass windows at York.  Our tour guide did a nice job of giving us context for a lot of these.  This particular window, located just above the main entrance on the south end, includes the Heart of York tracery at the top.

The middle row of windows here depict the Apostles.  Panes 1, 2 and 8 each show two Apostles, for a total of 11 Apostles.  Pane 7 is SUPPOSED to have a 2nd head, but it was removed during a Victoria-era repair.  Although it wasn't 100% clear, the implication is that the missing head was Judas's.

These windows were found in the Chapter House.  Underneath are the seats lining the walls, each with vaulted ceilings above them that provide amazing acoutical reinforcement.  It was possible to hear everyone who was sitting in a seat even if they were clear across the room from you.  Some renovations going on in the room prevented us from confirming this, but apparently they have school groups sit down and experience this.

The Rose Window.  After the War of the Roses ended the victorious Lancastrian monarch commissioned this window for York - it very clearly shows the red rose of Lancaster rather than the white rose of York, and was a massive display of royal (Lancastrian) power to remind the Yorkists who had won.

Walking through The Shambles

Although we ended up deciding to have lunch at Fountains, there had been another plan initially. I thought that illustrated an interesting example of how things are different between the US and UK.

In the US, if you’re in a decent sized town you’d not only have a huge number of choices on where to grab a bite, but you’d not think twice about where you were going to park your car. OF COURSE the place you were going would have lots of parking just outside the door. Well, not so much in the UK. First, there’s not a McDonald’s on every corner, signage is much more discreet (so you aren’t going to see a place worth stopping for from half a mile away – you’ll be well past it before you even realize it was there) and whatever place you find is extremely likely to have no dedicated parking spaces. Even the street it is on might not have any parking since so many lanes are so narrow.

So I wasn’t prepared to “just wing it” and assume we’d randomly find a suitable place. There was just too much risk of passing something and then finding out that we’d passed the last option for the next 10 miles. Once again, Google and TripAdvisor to the rescue, with a small sandwich shop just barely on the outskirts of York that had a simple menu and an attached parking lot. I admit, when I looked at the Google Street View of the place I could NOT figure out how you actually were supposed to orient your car in the parking lot – even THAT looked different from American-style parking lots. However, this is how Brunches Sandwiches originally made the list. Kinda the best of a bad situation, but it would work.

I say “originally”, because later I had an epiphany. We were going to be visiting York Minster during the morning and would be heading to Fountains Abbey for the afternoon, arriving somewhere around 1PM. This meant we’d be walking back through The Shambles to check out of the hotel in late morning – so I decided to search for options we could stop at and pickup food to go. And here I found Henshalwood Deli and their amazing picnic lunches. Between the convenience of being on our walk back to the hotel, the menu, the prices, and the reviews it seemed almost too good to be true. Top all this off with the fact that Fountains Abbey is rated the 2nd best place in the UK to enjoy a picnic and this was a no-brainer! On the day of we decided that the Henshalwood picnic was massive overkill in terms of the food provided – we would have likely thrown 90% of it away – so we didn’t both stopping there and decided instead to eat whatever they were serving at the food service at Fountains.

An interesting thing I learned while looking up restaurants. I’ve long turned to Google Maps and made heavy use of the “Nearby” feature to find restaurants close to a hotel or attractions – and this remains a great method. However, I discovered that TripAdvisor seems to have 2-3x as many restaurants on their maps compared to Google. I’m not sure if TA has more “dead” places or not. It may be that (AFAIK) restaurant owners have to take responsibility for putting a pin onto Google Maps whereas (maybe?) TA restaurants can be added by anyone entering a review – so there’s more opportunities for a restaurant to get entered into TA’s database than Google’s? I don’t know if this is the case, but could be. Sadly, the UX of researching restaurants on TA is not great, so I’m not 100% sold on using in in lieu of Google.

At the Abbey we bought out tickets and then stepped into the restaurant for a bite of lunch. E had a cheddar and onion jam toastie while I had the ham and smoked cheddar baguette. Both of us pleased with our personal choices, and the sandwiches refreshed us without loading us down. We made the ½ mile walk along a lightly forested meadow trail down – sometimes rather steeply down – to the Porter’s Lodge, from which we knew a 2P free tour would launch. Inside the lodge was a model of the abbey along with some history, all with good descriptions of “just enough” details.

We joined the tour which wasn’t as good as the York Minster tour. It covered a ton of “this is what monastery life was like” and less “this is what you should notice as you look around” and while the guide was quite knowledgeable about her stuff she did have a tendency to repeat things. We still stuck it out for the hour before wandering around on our own for just a few minutes more. However, even with our great sleep last night we were starting to flag and, knowing that we were going to have to go UP the steep path to get back to the car we decided to make our way to the car and back to Ripon to The Royal Oak.

A panoramic view of Fountains Abbey ruins taken from the Porter's Lodge as we awaited the start of our tour.

More details of the abbey ruins.  I had thought that the ruins were the "draw" for this site, but it turns out that Studley Royal Water Gardens are the main attraction (and what earned this place its Unesco designation).  At the height of operation, Studley used that ruins as their hook to get more people to visit.  

The ruins of old guest houses next to the abbey.

Fountains Abbey had been a very successful Cistercian facility up until Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries.  At that time, following seizure of assets, he had all the roofs removed to prevent the monks from being able to return.  Fountains was essentially made uninhabitable and therefore fell into ruin.  

A view of the undercroft.  When the abbey was in operation, this area would have had many walls separating this into multiple smaller rooms serving many different purposes.

An aisle on the side of the nave.  At some point the arch in the background was in danger of collapsing so the monks stuffed it full of supporting materials.

A view through to the other side of the nave.  Huby's Tower pokes up in the background.

Huby's Tower, named after the prior who had it built.  It wasn't many years after the construction of this was completed that the abbey was seized by Henry VIII.

The cloister. The dark arch in the middle background led to the Warming Room, which typically had a fire going and would provide a few minutes of relief to the monks who would have had workstations lining the outer walls of the cloister.  Important documents (leases, landgrants, etc.) were kept in the rooms with the small windows on the 3rd level, where they'd be kept safe and dry due to the heat coming from the Warming Room.

The remains of the Chapter House, where the monks would have meet for administrative matters.  There were the remains of graves in what would have been the floor (or at least the surface that they walked on).  As part of the seizure of assets, Henry VIII's men would have dug up all graves to search for buried artifacts.

Some birds seen on our walk back from the Abbey

The Royal Oak is a pub nee 18th century coaching inn with rooms above the ground floor – so this was our chance to experience this very English form of lodging. The pub fronts a small one-way street without any real parking, so upon arrival we did the very English thing of making a parking space out of something that isn’t REALLY a parking space and walking in to check in. They gave us the padlock code to their private carpark, which is simply a field next to a building behind them, accessed through a very narrow alley. (I had to carefully thread my way between a brick wall on my right and a bag of garbage on my left as I drove between the two buildings lining the alley.)

Our room was on the 1st floor (thankfully not higher since we once again had to lug the luggage up stairs) and consisted of a king sized bed, a couple of nightstands, one chair, and one stool (which I’m sitting on as I write this up). The bathroom basically looks like the boys’ bathroom at our house. The window is open to a very nice afternoon outside, and we can hear the sound of passing traffic on the through street at the front of The Royal Oak. (The RO is just at the LH side of a fork in the one-lane, one-way road, with the RH fork being the main road and the LH fork not having any through access. Only vehicles with business on the LH side are supposed to be here.)

Our room at the Royal Oak Hotel in Ripon

The fork in the road right outside our window.  The far road is the main road, while the near road is limited access for those having business or residence on our street.  That road intersects another road about 200 feet to the left directly in front of Ripon Cathedral.

The funky chandelier in our room

Ripon Cathedral, at the end of the street outside our window

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