Chicken Stew, Old Manuscripts, and Mountains: The Lake District

This is the first time I've brought my laptop with me on one of our adventures.  Hopefully it'll be safe! We're staying in a hostel so... eek.

The last two days have been fantastic.  Other than the REALLY REALLY long hours of riding the bus that is.  

DAY 1

The original tolls

View from the bridge

 Our first stop was Ironbridge.  I happened to write a report/give a presentation about it way back in the prep class so I was so excited about it.  It kinda accidentally volunteered to talk about it last night in the meeting but this morning when they called me up I had a fit of shyness/forgetting everything I knew so I didn't.  But I was very excited.  I don't think anyone else was too excited.  I get excited about weird things sometimes.  But I never lack for entertainment! 

The pillar next to where President Hinkley and the first missionaries in England preached next to

Our next stop was Preston.  We went for a bathroom break... in the England MTC!  The MTC president is the uncle of one of the girls in the group so they took us on an awesome church history tour.  I'd like to fill in the details but my paper is upstairs.  We saw President Hinkley's apartment where he got the letter from his dad telling him to forget himself and go to work which was especially cool because the MTC president's wife is President Hinkley's daughter.  We saw where the first baptisms in England were and the rebuilt bridge two men raced across to see who would be baptized first.  We saw a few more things too but I can't quite remember.

The park where thousands of people gathered to hear from the missionaries

President Hinkley's apartment where he got the letter from his father telling him to forget himself and go to work.

After Preston we were running a bit late so we hurried and checked into our hostel then met in our official meeting spot--a parking lot--for half of us to go to Dove Cottage, William Wordsworth's house!  I'm very fond of Wordsworth because we have the same birthday (which is coming up soon, by the way, in case you need time to go shopping) except he was a few years older than me.  They served us authentic food from his time.  The curator toasted us with ginger beer or squash.  It's pretty cool because this is the first time they've ever done this meal.  We were able to toast our own bread with toasting forks, had crackers with potted trout (not my favorite), chicken stew of the Coleridge eyelash fame with cream (so good!), mushrooms, and potatoes.  They were all Wordsworth family recipes and had to find ways to get ingredients or replacement ingredients for the things we don't use anymore.  It was so cool.  There was no electricity of course so we did it all by candlelight.

DAY 2

A bad picture of us working with the manuscripts 

A glimpse of the town

We were a little nervous about what we were going to be doing.  We had about eight hours planned to be working with manuscripts but we had no idea what that meant and we weren't sure it was going to be much fun.  It was so cool though!  At the end Matt closed his eyes and asked us to raise our hands if we thought it was fun.  Everyone raised their hands.  Impressive considering how nervous we were about it!

The first part of the morning they showed us old books, but not just any old books.  First editions or at least very early editions of works by Keats, Shelley, Byron, and of course, Wordsworth himself.  They passed them around and let us handle them.  They also told us about how books were made.  Did you know that when you bought a book back then you would have to bind the books yourself?  That was so you could make your whole library match.  We had a snack (dainty little English treats leftover from the night before) and then we moved on to trying to read the letters that he and others had sent.  It's a lot different from an email.  There was so much more to letter writing than I ever guessed.  It was so cool to see the letters and the thrill of finally being able to read what they said.  Or part of what they said anyway.  After lunch we went on a tour of Dove Cottage.  I can't really remember what happened next because I was struggling not to fall asleep.  The coolest part of the day was when they gave us a sheet out of Wordsworth's journal where he jotted down a poem.  We were given a later edition and had to try to find the lines from the second in the first.  Deciphering his handwriting plus trying to find all the lines when he had moved them around was hard but I loved it.

After we were done, I went to a vegetarian Italian place for dinner and then went to bed.  I was getting pretty tired.

DAY 3
This was Group A's day to go see the Lake District.  Our first thing was a nice relaxed walk.

 There were sheep everywhere, by the way.  And lots of lambs too.

 And sometimes some cool carvings.

 Or a shack to frame the most beautiful places so you could see them better according to an old view of nature.

 And sometimes you'd see CDs hanging from trees, scratch your head a bit, and move on because you have no idea what that was about.

 And sometimes you come across French gardening in the middle of gorgeous nature scenes.

 And sometimes you can go see William Wordsworth's other house.  The outside anyway.

 And the church where he worshiped until he died

 We went for a quick lunch break where I had the most amazing hot chocolate ever.  Marshmallows, chocolate shavings, and whipped cream in Cadbury chocolate.  Yum.

 The before pictures.

 The after picture.

 Next we hopped on the bus to go to Beatrix Potter's house.  And I saw a baby bunny.  Let's call him Peter!

 And then I took a picture with Matt's daughters because I love them.  But my coat bunched out really strangely.  Darn.

 And they liked having pictures taken of them.

 So we had to take a bunch of pictures of us making crazy faces and then randomly taking the picture.

 After we were done there we went on a longer hike.  We found proof we were in Wordsworth territory on a shop:

 We passed by their graves

 We then did a very speedy hike.  I love hiking when I can take enough time that I can breathe and don't have to keep up with people.  Yeah, that didn't happen.  Luckily it wasn't a long hike.  While they went off exploring, I sat down and admired the view.  And the moss.  Because I love moss.  If I had decided to go into botany, I would have wanted to study English moss because I think it's fascinating.

 Moss.  And Taylor's boot because she wanted a picture of it.

 And here is me stroking the moss.

After the hike was over we went to a place called Thorney How for dinner where we met up with the group who did the manuscripts that day.

Fun Moments:

"Don't be weird in front of Aylea!"-Matt's youngest daughter to his oldest daughter

The hostel guy asked if anyone smoked.  He was very impressed to be in such a large group of college kids with no smokers.