Oldwineaux in Europe

I know it has been some time since my last post.  Anyone following this blog must either have insomnia or little else to do right now. So where did I leave off? Right, massaging the sore muscles from my partially completed Walk Across England (WAE).  Here is where we are going next. The week after the WAE (which was the last week in August) I visited Whitby and Cambridge, retrieved my bicycle (thank you Caroline), and prepared to fly from London to Paris for a ten-day excursion to western France before flying on to Bulgaria.  That France visit included Giverny, Mont Saint Michel, a hop on a ferry to the Channel Island of Jersey (and back) for a couple of days, Saint Malo (forget about Carcassonne), the American cemetery at D Day beaches, and, last but not least for the religious among you (surely there must be one or two), mass at Chartres Cathedral en route to Paris. And let's not forget visiting the enormous cathedral in Bayeux. ...

Years ago Alfred Wainright trekked across northern England.  He began in Saint Bees which lies next to the Irish Sea and trekked 192 miles eastward winding up in Robin Hood's Bay which sits on the shore of the North Sea.  This has become one of the most famous hikes in England. It is largely unsignposted (translate, easy to get lost), goes though the Lake District National Park, the Yorkshire Dales National Park, and the North York Moors National Park.  To make the hike more manageable there are companies that will book your lodging for each night, transport your luggage daily, and even arrange for the B and B to prepare a daily packed lunch to keep you fed as you trek along.  For those of us who don't hike much there are even packages that increase the total days so you hike fewer miles each day and rest days built in along the way.  Now, who wouldn't want to take such a hike through the bucolic Lake District and over heather carpeted moors? Well, me for o...

Before heading to northern England to do some hiking I stopped in London for a few days.  It has been a couple of decades since I was there and I wanted to revisit a couple of sights.  I checked the British Museum.  Lord Elgin's Parthenon marble frieze is still there, no doubt to the consternation of Greece.  The Tower of London still houses the Monarch's crown jewels and about ten thousand other tourists and I filed past to view them on a steamy August afternoon.. But the hands-down most memorable part of my visit was to Kensington Palace.  For sure the King's and Queen's chambers were sumptuous. It's nice to be able to afford several large Tintorettos and such to adorn the walls.  The 'Queen Victoria Revealed' exhibit was a bit of a letdown.  This is no doubt because I was immersed in the lives of Queen Victoria and Albert in the recent PBS series which as usual was an over-the-top Brit production.  But what stole the show and the hearts of ...