England?

Tintern Abbey

Church graveyard

August 22, 2007-Going Where?

When we got into the car to leave Betws-y-Coed, our two guys proudly told us they did an expert job of packing the luggage. They called themselves “Two Men and a Trunk.” For those of you out of our area, Two Men and a Truck, is a moving company. Karen also deserved bragging rights. Her bladder control was stellar last night. When we were joking about the sheep to mountain size ratio, she began to laugh uncontrollably. For those of you who remember, one of my emails from Florence, Italy told of how she wet her pants during a giggling bout there.

We had directions from an on line map service that proved to be overly optimistic in estimating driving time on these roads. They didn't take into account that there might be other cars, that some roads were too narrow even to warrant center lines indicating lanes since there was no room for two lanes, and they certainly didn't take into consideration prostrate sheep huddled against the foot of a hill next to the road with their rumps and tails infringing on our road space. David's only comment at that sight was, "Lamb chops."

The inevitable happened and we stopped for gas. The advice we'd gotten when using a petrol station was not to look at the pump or the receipt. We didn't listen. We peeked. We're driving a VW Jetta. It took the equivalent of just under 10 gallons and we paid the equivalent of $76. That's almost $8/gallon. That wasn't half as scary as the sign posted before a bridge we had to cross that warned, "Weak Bridge." That sobered us up after that bridge collapse in Minneapolis.

Tintern

It was a schizophrenic day. We thought we were going to be in Wales as we drove to Tintern in the South. Our goal was Tintern Abbey of the poem Wordsworth wrote in 1793. David said he saw a sign welcoming us to England. We pooh poohed him. Surprise! We thought we were only going to Ireland and Wales but found ourselves in England and stayed there most of the drive. We rode along the border and the only way we could tell where we were was to see if the signs were bi-lingual or the "Slow" stenciled on the roads also said "Araf." Our hotel, the Speech House is a charming inn and is also in England. It served as Charles II's hunting lodge in 1676 and later was converted into a meeting house and court house.

We swallowed hard and worked our way through the Forest of Dean, about 20 roundabouts, and on into Tintern. Tintern Abbey was a 12th century abbey built along the River Wye for the Cistercian monks. We'd been to the Abbey about twenty years ago and thought the Ciminis would love it. We remembered how much we enjoyed their audio guided tour and were relieved to see they still offered it. What an experience! Gregorian chants were the background for the narrative as we walked through the ruins. The sound effects were so vivid that when we heard a bell ring to call the monks to dinner we took our headphones off to listen thinking it was tolling in real time. Exterior walls are pretty much intact but the roof and floor are gone. There was the omnipresent green scaffolding rigged for the re-facing of the main exterior wall so we had to buy a post card rather than use our cameras. The decay is partially the erosion of time but mostly the greed of the villagers. When Henry VIII stripped the church of its authority and power in 1530 the locals stripped the churches of anything they could carry away. That included building materials.

We were supposed to meet Michael, a colleague of Karen's who lives in England. He was driving in from London. We were told that we could eat lunch at a hotel across from the Abbey, but they'd stopped serving until dinner. We decided to try to find the spot where Wordsworth sat to pen the Ode. We knew he was on a hill overlooking the Abbey and that he was in a cemetery. We thought he sat among Jewish graves. The proprietor of the hotel didn't know anything about the story but he directed us to a church ruin and graveyard up a hill behind the hotel. When Michael arrived we all started climbing the path but realized it was in the wrong direction. Ron and I took off up another trail while the others waited below. We did find the church and an ancient cemetery. The grave stones were mostly too weathered and deteriorated to read but we could make out a word here or there. I became excited when I made out what I thought was Hebrew lettering on one marker. It turned out that with the blurring of the letters I was really reading the word "died" backwards. Ron and I diligently went from stone to stone scrambling through knee-high grasses and avoiding sunken graves trying to discern the markings. We never found any sign or symbol of Jewish occupancy. There was a man sitting alone basking in the sun and we questioned him about the Jewish presence but he'd never heard the tale either. Nevertheless we enjoyed our hike and adventure. I'm sure Wordsworth had the best view from up there but in the intervening years the trees had grown up forming a screen. We got great shots of the valley, and cemetery but none of the Abbey. Besides, that scaffolding would have been in the way.

We never got to Cardiff and the seaside town of Penarth we'd hoped to see. Too many diversions. Too little time.

A sad update. The body of the 9- year old boy who fell in the river in Betws-y-Coed was found.

Again, to end on an upbeat note. We followed Michael and his GPS guided car to our hotel. He got lost and had to call the hotel for directions. It did my heart good. At least natives are confused by these roads too.

Tomorrow we leave the hotel at 6:30 AM. We don't believe the driving times on the directions anymore and are leaving plenty of time to get lost, return the rental car, and get to our flight to Dublin.

Toby