Travel Day

On July 10th (yes, I am very far behind in reporting our travels) we flew from London Heathrow to Zurich, Switzerland, for the next leg of our trip.  Traveling is very stressful these days, but, worrywart that I am, I had additional reasons to be stressed.  

I had purchased tickets for the National Express bus from Bournemouth to Heathrow.  Since it was an international flight, I thought that it would leave from Terminal 5, the terminal at which we had arrived in England the week before.  However, there are international flights that leave from other terminals.  Terminal 5 is for British Airways, and we were flying on Swiss International.  Our flight was to leave from Terminal 2.  Terminal 5 was the first stop on the bus route; Terminal 2 was the next stop.  Would we be allowed to stay on the bus an extra stop?  Or would we have to find another way to get from one terminal to the other.  It might be a problem if we were running late.  My cousin Kevin and blogger Gary assured me that there would be no problem.

Our bus was to leave from Bournemouth just before 8:00 AM.  Kevin drove us to the station, and we said our farewells.  The bus arrived on time.  I asked the driver if it would be a problem if we stayed on for an extra stop.  He said that actually it was not permitted, but that he would turn a blind eye to the rules.  He put our luggage in the section of the compartment for Terminal 2.  So, the first reason for stress was a non-issue.

I also worried that our bus would arrive late at Heathrow.  The journey by bus was supposed to take two hours.  That would would give us almost four hours before our plane for Zurich was scheduled to leave.  However, I had read reviews of the bus company that told horror stories of hours' long delays due to snarled traffic.  As it turned out, the journey went smoothly, and we arrived at Terminal 2 at around 10:00 AM.  We checked our luggage and passed through security with plenty of time to spare.  We had even more time because our flight was delayed by over an hour.  We had a meal at one of the restaurants, and waited for our gate to be assigned.

Heathrow Terminal 2

At last we boarded our flight, took off and were flying over London.

The flight is a short one... about an hour and a half.

We were soon making our descent over the Swiss countryside.

We sat on the north side of the plane so we did see the Alps through out window.

We landed at Zurich Airport, but our journey was not over yet.

We had to buy tickets to go from the airport to the Zurich Hauptbahnhof (the main train station).  From there we bought train tickets to take us to the nearby city of Uster where my cousin Brigitta lives.  She and her husband Peter were there at the station to take us to their home.  The sun soon set on our long travel day.

A Charming Coastal Town

On our last day with Kevin and Sue, they took us to the picturesque town of Lymington.  It is a port where the Lymington River flows into the Solent, the strait of the English Channel which separates Isle of Wight from the mainland.

St. Thomas's Church is the main Anglican parish church.

As in many British towns, the main commercial street is called "HIgh Street".

Lymington's High Street is lined with buildings dating from the 18th and 19th centuries.

We stopped at a pasty shop on High Street.

A pasty is a turnover typical of Cornwall and Devon.  It is traditionally filled with meat, potatoes and onions.  It has a distinctive "D" shape with a thick, crimped crust on the curved side.    Miners in Cornwall would take pasties to work to eat for lunch.  They could eat the filled portion of the turnover and hold it by the crust with their dirty hands.  We all agreed that the pasties from this shop were exceptionally good.

From High Street a narrower, cobblestoned street leads down to the harbor.  It is lined with restaurants and tourist shops.

We sat on a bench at the water's edge and enjoyed our pasties.

That evening we went to nearby Mudeford and had a lovely farewell dinner at an elegant hotel restaurant.  The next day we were to begin the next leg of our journey and fly to Switzerland.

Our thanks to Kevin and Sue for their warm hospitality and for making our days on England's southern coast so enjoyable.

A Castle That's Not a Castle

On one of our walks with Kevin and Sue, we passed a local landmark, a building known as Highcliffe Castle.  In fact, it is not a castle but a grand manor house, and it does not date from the Middle Ages, but rather from the 1830s.

As we approached the house with its Gothic revival architecture it looked a bit like a cathedral.

 What looked at first like the facade of a church was a grand carriage entrance.

And instead of a cross, there was a statue of a stag with a banner on top.

Originally, a mansion had been built on these grounds by the 3rd Earl of Bute in the 1770s.  It was built on the cliff overlooking the English Channel.  However, the house stood for only 38 years before erosion of the cliff destabilized it.  The Earl's grandson, Lord Stuart de Rothesay built a new house farther in from the cliff's edge.  He imported masonry, stained glass and oak timbers from Normandy and exquisite French furniture that were spoils of the Napoleonic Wars.  The "castle" was completed in 1836.

After Lord Stuart's death the house was passed on to his widow and then his daughter.  A distant cousin later inherited it.  The mansion hosted many notable visitors, including Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany in 1907.  The "castle" was rented out a number of times.  The most famous tenant was U.S.-born entrepreneur Harry Selfridge, the founder of Selfridge's department store in London.  Although he was only renting the house, he installed modern bathroom and kitchen facilities as well as central heating.  The building was eventually sold, and served as a children's home and as a Catholic seminary.

In 1967 there was a devastating fire, and the house deteriorated into a ruin.  By 1998. the house was restored, and today it is used as a venue for weddings and other events.

The is an inscription in Latin from the Roman poet Lucretius along the exterior of the building.  It says, "Pleasant it is, when over a great sea the winds trouble the waters, to gaze from shore upon another's great tribulation."

We Finally Meet

Not long after I started my blog in 2013, I started reading a blog called "The Mexile".  It is written by an Englishman by the name of Gary Denness.  Gary began his blog in 2003 when he took his first trip to Mexico.  Subsequently he lived in Mexico City for several years where he taught English.  During that time he fell in love with a Mexican lady, and they married.  Before I had started reading his blog, he returned to England.  He and his wife now live in Bournemouth.

Although we had never met face to face, over the years we got to know each other in a way  through reading and commenting on each others blogs. He and his wife have traveled extensively.  Although there are a few countries that I have visited, such as Switzerland and Norway, that they have not seen, the list of nations that he has visited far surpasses mine.  When they traveled back to Mexico a while ago, we hoped that we would be able to get together and finally meet.  However, it didn't happen.  When he learned that I was traveling to England, and that my cousin lives just down the road from Bournemouth, we decided that this time we had to meet!

That meeting occurred last Wednesday, and ironically, he suggested that we meet at The Cat and the Fiddle, the historic pub where we had dined the night before.  We had really liked the place so we had no objections at all.  He and his wife drove to my cousin's house and picked us up.  We had drinks and snacks at the pub, and what was supposed to be a short get together stretched into several hours.  We literally closed the pub.  Gary is just as interesting a chap as I had  imagined from his blog, and his wife is equally charming.  We talked and talked, and they were sorry that we were not staying longer in England so that we could get together again. It was truly a pleasure to meet them.

I guess that we now have two reasons to return to that corner of England... to visit my cousin and his family, and to see Gary and his wife again.

Not the best picture, but, as you can see, Gary is a very tall fellow who barely fit under the low ceiling of the old pub.

You can visit Gary's "The Mexile" by clicking on the link in my blog list.

 

         

A Medieval Church

On Wednesday Kevin and Sue took us to one of the most historic buildings in the area.  In the town of Christchurch there is the church of a medieval priory (or monastery) that dates back to the 12th century.  The large church rivals some English cathedrals in size.

By 1150 a basic Norman-style church had been completed, but over the centuries additions and renovations resulted in a mixture of styles.  We were unable to visit the entire church because services were being held in the Lady Chapel at the far end of the structure.  Nevertheless, it was a very impressive building.

One of the oldest parts of the church is this doorway with a Norman arch.  It is called the Prior's Entrance because this was the personal door to the church for the head of the monastery.  It probably dates from 1140.

This marble baptismal font from the early Norman period probably dates from 1200.

The wooden choir stalls are known as "misericords" from the Latin word for compassion.  They are not really seats, but they provided the monks, who had to stand through the services, a little bit of support.

They are superb examples of medieval woodcarving.

  Stained glass windows in the church

Another Member of the Family

I would be remiss not to mention another member of my cousin's family... their black Labrador Lily.

 

We fell in love with Lily.  She is a very sweet, friendly dog who greeted us with a wagging tail and kisses.

The Cat and the Fiddle

On Tuesday evening, Kevin and Sue took us out for dinner at a nearby pub not far from their home.  The place is called "The Cat and the Fiddle".  It claims to be more than 400 years old and one of the oldest pubs in England.  It stands on the site of a hospice run by monks in the 11th century.  In the 19th century it was a favorite gathering place for smugglers and highwaymen.

A modern addition was built onto it, but the original building still has a thatched roof.

   

I ordered a very traditional, British dish... their home-baked meat pie.  The pie of the day was chicken and leek.  It was served with gravy and mashed potatoes with spring onions, roasted carrots and greens.

It was a lovely evening with delicious food and good company in a historic setting.