Back to the Water

Water certainly seems to be the theme of my Bristol experience so far... the water is the first thing that I see when I look out the window in the morning. It tells me the weather (mirrored or rippling, sparkling or dull gray, dimpled with dots of rain or reflecting the sodium light of lamps still lit when I get up). The boat traffic on the river is also an endless source of fascination... In this, my last post for awhile (I head back to Eugene on Saturday, and will see many of you in the next month) I thought that returning to the water was appropriate.

Last Sunday was Susie and Eric’s last day with me... as it was sunny and clear in the morning, I suggested that we return to Bradford-on-Avon and follow the footpath along the canal back to Bath (a walk of about 9 miles). I had done the walk a couple of summers ago with Mark, Alison and my graduate student Isolde. The walk was different last weekend, with autumn gold and brown replacing summer greens and pinks. But the stillness of the canal waters was the same, the reflections from the water enhancing the colors of the trees above.

The path follows the Avon canal, which parallels the Avon River. Apparently “Bristol Avon” is the proper name of the river, to distinguish it from all the other Avon rivers in the UK - “Avon” derives from the Welsh word “afon”, which simply means river. The Avon is a twisting turning river... it starts in Gloucestershire and takes 75 miles to travel to the Bristol Channel (a 19 mile straight line distance). As noted in an earlier post, the lower part of the Avon River (in Bristol) is strongly tidal and thus poorly suited to regular boat traffic (hence the Floating Harbor). However, navigable rivers were a general problem in England, particularly when the Industrial Revolution upped the demand for transport of goods and services. For this reason, England was apparently the first country to establish a nationwide canal network. The project was started by King James (of the Bible translation fame... this year is the 500th anniversary! of that translation) in 1605 (same king, same year as the Guy Fawkes debacle). In this region, the Kennet canal was opened in 1723 and the Avon in 1727 - the two systems now join in Bath and become the Kennet-Avon canal between Bath and Bristol, where it marks the boundary between Somerset and Gloucestershire. For those of you who have read “The Map that Changed the World”, remember that William Smith was a surveyor for the Somerset Coal Canal Company (he lived not far from Bath)... it was his canal work that led him to construct his geologic map of the UK (one copy of which hangs in the tea room in the department). The most remarkable aspect of the canal between Bradford-on-Avon and Bath (at least for those of us from the western US) is that for much of the distance the canal sits high above the river, and actually crosses above the river in a couple of places... “How interesting” said Susie, “a bridge of water.”

The current canal system is used primarily for pleasure boats (such as Jack de Crow). The most common of these are the “narrow boats”, so named because of their dimensions (maximum width 7 ft; maximum length 70 ft), dimensions required for boats to fit through the smallest locks and canals in the national network. Some boats are rented (particularly over the summer); others are permanent homes, as indicated by the gardens, bikes, kids toys and hand-painted signs that make each boat distinctive. At this time of year most boats are moored, with their owners preparing for the winter. However, there were still some boats puttering through the canal system at a very leisurely (no wake) pace, steered by a tiller in the stern. It looks like a very relaxing mode of travel, particularly given the frequency of local pubs and picturesque towns along the way. Our walk wasn’t quite as leisurely, as the low sun created long shadows even in the middle of the day, reminding us of the early fall of darkness. We made it to Bath shortly after sunset. As we walked through the town, the lights of the shop windows against the darkness highlighted the charm of the famous Pulteney St. bridge across the Avon, which is lined with shops like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. We found a little tea house on the bridge where we could satisfy Susie’s passion for British afternoon teas, rest our feet, and gaze over the stair-stepped weir that punctuates the Avon’s flow through the city of Bath.

This weekend also boasted a glittering day, as Saturday dawned clear and sunny. I was hoping to crew in a sailing race that day, but the skipper had to cancel because his wife was sick. I satisfied myself with wandering down the harbor alongside the morning race, and then checking in on the afternoon race as a break from proposal writing! Saturday evening was North American Thanksgiving - an annual gathering of the numerous Earth Science student and staff members from the US and Canada...

Playing tourist with visitors

Remembrance Day today, November 13... The past week has seen poppies sprouting on jacket collars and today is a day of parades and services. According to the BBC, the poppy tradition was actually started by an American woman - Moina Michael - who wore and distributed poppies after reading the "In Flanders field..." poem by the Canadian doctor John McCrae; although the tradition has not stuck in the US, it has spread throughout much of the British empire. It's particularly moving here, where relict churches, in particular, provide vivid daily reminders of the last war.

This week started with a glorious Sunday - brilliantly clear with that special quality of light that is reserved for autumn. Eric, Susie and I decided to take advantage of it by exploring my end of the harbor and then downtown Bristol, from the 1st Sunday slow food market (where we bought pasties for lunch and sausages from the farm where Alison, Mark and I stayed a few years ago) to the waterfront, where we spent most of the afternoon at the M Shed, a free museum about Bristol. It is new and very nicely done, with lots to explore and a lovely rooftop deck with panorama views of the floating harbor.

We were too late to visit the SS Great Britain, so we wandered slowly back to my house, admiring the ever changing play of colors as the sun angle changed with the (too early) onset of evening. The colors even inspired me to play with Photoshop's filter options (a good way to spend way too much time on the computer!). 

Monday was rather dreary and seemed like a good day to visit Bath's Roman Baths and other indoor attractions. The Roman Bath museum is fairly new and extremely well done - I wish that Pompeii were developed in the same way, with some wall reconstructions and video reproductions of Roman life. Rather hard to believe the extensive developments here in such a far-flung corner of the Roman empire! Particularly attractive were the outside public baths, lit with torches, surveyed by statues of famous Roman emperors, and watched over by the looming Bath cathedral above. But I must say that my favorite insight into life here in Roman times lay in the curses scratched into lead sheets and left for Minerva at her temple... Curses that ranged from rants against people who had stolen clothes from the baths to more serious reports of stolen slaves, sometimes complete with a list of possible perpetrators (just to help the goddess out). We completed our day with a visit to the Jane Austen center, the Assembly Rooms and Fashion Museum, and finally tea at the famous Pump Room. And then while we were waiting for the train back to Bristol I received a text message from Isolde and Hannah inviting us to meet them at The Apple, a cider bar located on a boat that just happened to be located nicely between the train station and my house. From there we went to the Llandoger Trow pub (of Treasure Island fame) for dinner, to round out the tourist day!!

I was consumed during the rest of the week with preparing for my Faculty of Science lecture on Thursday, but Susie and Eric managed to explore many parts of Bristol and to go to Stonehenge (the most notable part of their trip being an encounter with a pheasant hunt, complete with dogs and guns, as they walked the footpath from Amesbury to Stonehenge).  But Friday afternoon we made it to the SS Great Britain (which, I must note, was launched on my birthday day in 1843...) The ship started as a luxury passenger liner, and then carried emigrants to the Australian gold rush, troops to the Crimean War, coal to San Francisco and guano to Great Britain. The ship eventually foundered near the Falklands, where she acted as a storage hulk for decades before being salvaged and returned to Bristol on July 19, 1970, towed in by the John King tugboat, which now lives at the M Shed and does tourist trips around the harbor, as mentioned in my sailing post. Another interesting connection that I hadn't realized is that the Gibbs family of Tyntesfield and guano baron fame actually owned the SS Great Britain and used it for their guano trade (after it ceased to be useful for passenger transport).

The Guy and the Green Man

This week’s post clearly has to include mention of Guy Fawkes Day (November 5), but to balance out ‘the guy’ I thought I’d also introduce the Green Man (more mysterious than Guy Fawkes).

A brief installment of encapsulated British history. We’ll start on Mar 24, 1603, with the death of Queen Elizabeth I. Her successor was the James VI, King of Scotland (who was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, a cousin to Elizabeth, and whom Elizabeth had put to death as a traitor), who became James I, King of England. Among the many who were unhappy with the new monarch were the Catholics, who wanted to install a  Catholic monarch on the throne (James’ cousin Arabella Stuart – Sir Walter Raleigh was arrested for his role in this plot). In 1604, James tries to arbitrate between the Puritans and the Catholics on the question of who decided questions of doctrine… from this discussion eventually arose the King James version of the Bible. Unhappy with this result, a group of Catholics, led by Robert Catesby (whose ancestor ‘the Cat’ was advisor to Richard III), hatched the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a (failed) attempt to assassinate the king by blowing up the House of Lords at the opening of the House of Parliament. However, an anonymous tip to a member of the House of Lords foiled the plot. On November 5, Guy Fawkes was discovered in a cellar beneath Parliament, guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder. Then followed gruesome torture and killings of some of the conspirators, described to us in detail by Mark (detail that I will spare you here). But the real reason for guy Fawkes day is an excuse for fireworks and bonfires (including a ritual burning of ‘the guy’, which I find just a bit disconcerting). [The day has also been claimed by anti-government activists – apparently some of the Occupy movement in London tried to march into Parliament Square yesterday.] 

But when in Rome… As there was no big fireworks display scheduled for Bristol, Mark looked up other options. We decided to go to Bradford-on-Avon, a lovely little town just beyond Bath. “We” included not only me, Mark and Alison, but also my niece Susie and her friend Eric, who arrived yesterday! We headed off by train in the mid-afternoon, so that we had a bit of time to wander around Bradford-on-Avon and to have tea, scones, clotted cream and jam at The Bridge Inn, a 16th century building (Susie, our resident historic preservationist, was fascinated by the various bracings on the building, which she described as ‘duct tape for buildings’).

The celebration was in a large field on the other side of town. The first thing that we were impressed with was the very elaborate guy, complete with torch and sitting on gunpowder boxes… he reminded me of Burning Man (which, I suppose, makes sense!). Sorry about the fuzzy photos but they will give you a sense of the spectacle. A couple of local bands played music – we were remarking on the youth of the players given the 60s music they chose to play, until Mark discovered that they were called “The Grateful Dads” – so we drank cider and ate pork sandwiches while waiting for the fireworks. One good thing about the early nightfall is that the fireworks could start early (at 7). The fireworks display was much more elaborate than any of us anticipated, and ended with lighting the guy’s torch, and then the bonfire itself (which was impressive in and of itself – large enough for us to feel its warmth, even though we were quite far away!). And then the fireworks seemed to continue all night. As we walked back along the floating harbor from the train station, the noise of the fireworks reverberated across the water and flashes of color appeared on the skyline to both the north and the south. I was even woken up around 5am by some particularly loud explosions, so I guess they continued all night…

  

The walk in Bradford-on-Avon took us past a quaint row of (formerly) weavers’ cottages high on the hillside, one of which had a ‘green man’ on the wall... as I had just gotten interested in the green man, I was thrilled, and so add a short addendum to the guy post.  “Green men” started showing up in England in the 12th century, but ‘foliate heads’ are apparently common throughout the Roman Empire, and date to the 1st century. Additionally, ‘foliate heads’ appeared in carvings in northern Europe before the Romans, and it has also been suggested that ornate Celtic designs bear resemblances to these leafy heads. In England, “green men” are not actually green, as they are carved in wood or stone - the green designation stems from the leaves that tend to sprout from their mouths and encircle their heads. The Green Man has become a sort of Rohrshach test for society ... from a symbol of May Day rituals to old age to mortality, the Green Man symbol has been adopted and interpreted across centuries and cultures. I like the fact that he just appears, tucked away in ancient carvings ... and seeking out famous green man carvings around England seems like a fun addition to other sorts of touristing!