Whizzing through England

The morning we left Ilmington was beautiful. We went for a walk after breakfast, and enjoyed seeing the church and having a lovely conversation with a man out walking dogs. He told us details about The Apple Tapestry in the church that had been made by people in the parish about 10 years ago to highlight how the area had once been full of apple orchards. The man with whom we spoke, David Greenwood, is a calligrapher. He was responsible for putting the names of the 89 apple varieties around the edge. Here's Larry's picture of The Apple Tapestry:

From Ilmighton we drove to Gloucester and thoroughly enjoyed visiting that beautiful cathedral. We were especially enjoyed the tile work in the chancel, or presbytery. You can see good pictures of the biblical scenes therein on the Gloucester Cathedral website: www.gloucestercathedral.org.uk. Click on the Virtual Tour link on the left side and look for "Presbytery."

From Gloucester we went to Portsmouth. On the way we stopped in the little Village of Down Ampney. This is the birthplace of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and he named his beautiful hymn tune to "Come Down, O Love Divine" after this village of his birth. That is my favorite hymn, and it was lovely to visit this simple church.

After a difficult time finding our B and B in Portsmouth (it turned out we were one block away when we thought we were lost!) we had a great Indian meal. On Saturday we headed out into a beautiful day to go see the HMS Victory. It was really cool - much bigger than I had expected, although Larry was well acquainted with the dimensions. It is almost holy ground in England, with a brass plaque on the deck in the exact spot where Nelson died. Kind of reminded me of visiting the Alamo. Here's a picture of the Victory: We had a wonderful time walking all over Old Portsmouth - lots of walking! - and saw many interesting things. We ended the day with a great meal in a Turkish restaurant.

Today we went east from Portsmouth en route to Canterbury. We stopped at Sissinghurst Castle to see the famous gardens begun by Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson in the 19030's. It was beautiful even in its winter-spring plainness. We would love to see it in full bloom.

Our day ended with our arrival in Canterbury, with the attendant difficulties of finding anything in a car in the these ancient towns! But we finally figured out how to get into the Cathedral Close where we are staying at the Canterbury Cathedral lodge. It is right next to the Cathedral in the Close, and tonight we have a beautiful view of the lit majesty of this awesome structure. We attended a rather tedious Evensong which included the installation ("collation" they say) for the Archdeacon of a new area of the Diocese. It was rather powerful to see a bishop sitting in his chair in that place that has seen bishops (and archbishops) come and go since the 6th century! We found Larry's putative ancestor, Archbishop of Canterbury John Moore, in the carved wall of the cathedral. And we joined our daughter-in-law Sarah Murdoch who arrived today in England to research Rick Steve's Great Britain. She arranged to begin her journey in Canterbury so we could all meet up. After a tour of the cathedral we had a very good dinner. It was a lot of fun to be together! Here we are in the cloisters of the cathedral:


Across the Channel tomorrow!