In His Footsteps: October 2013

The trip continued in...

Swannage. I got to dip my feet in the English Channel! And eat fish ‘n’ chips with my fingers. J Also, we sang our final concert here. We had a wonderful audience and it was truly a grand finale.

It felt pretty much just like the Pacific... cold!

Salisbury. Probably no visit to south-western England would be complete without Salisbury. The room Tara and I shared was incredibly floral in every way and had a heated towel rack in the bathroom! The cathedral, my favorite of all, has the tallest spire in England. The marble pillars on the inside are actually bending slightly from the weight of the roof and spire, but somehow it manages to seem slender, graceful and elegant. Stonehenge was a highlight of the day here as well. It was pouring rain, but that simply added to the mystique and spectacle. Massive boulders of unknown origin, set up by unknown people for unknown reasons, shrouded in swirling mist for time immemorial.

London. In the evening a group of us went for Italian food and then to the musical “Spamalot”. Being a Monty Python spoof of King Arthur and the quest for the Holy Grail, it was over the top, ridiculous and a fun experience! My only other desire in London was to visit the British Museum, which we did the following day. So many artifacts that I have seen in textbooks were there on display. I think we gasped every time we turned around

East Indian treats with Samuel in London!!!

Buckingham Palace in the evening

Rosetta Stone...

To finish off the trip with every spare minuted full of activity, we were able to visit Windsor Castle on our way to the airport. A memorable way to say goodbye to a country where I now have so many memories! :)

The End

Since trying to describe the whole two weeks of our choir trip to England in detail would just be much too overwhelming, I am going to share some of the highlights and my favorite moments.

Meeting the choir in London. I flew from Zurich to London and arrived at Heathrow Airport a couple hours before the rest of the group. When they finally arrived it was so fun to reconnect with choir buddies, Tara and Carolyn, and anticipate the next two weeks together!

Cambridge. This was my favorite university town (the other university town being Oxford). It was pleasant, friendly and full of history. I think it could be intimidating to study in a place where so many “great” people have made important discoveries. And where history goes back 800-900 years! We had our first concert here and discovered that old stone churches have no attached “facilities”, making it necessary to traipse down the road in our choir gowns to the church offices where there was a washroom and place to leave our things. This discovery inspired the following limmerick:

There once was a country called Britain

With which we were all very smitten.

But what does one do, when there’s only one loo*,

For a choir of 30 to fit in?

~C. Taylor~

A life-size statue buried headfirst in the ground

The Mathematical Bridge

York. Sunshine, a river and cherry blossoms, could anything be more lovely? Carolyn was amusingly excited about the national railway museum, which did turn out to be very cool. We rode in a simulator from London to Brighton in 5 minutes! The Cathedral was magnificent and I found a Beatrix Potter store with all sorts of Peter Rabbit & friends items J Having roast and Yorkshire pudding in Yorkshire was a special experience, and of course visiting Castle Howard.

Castle Howard

Oxford. I suppose English weather had to turn English at some point: it turned rainy and cold on our walking tour of this university town. Perhaps why it didn’t appeal to me as much. But Carolyn, Tara and I found delicious Thai food for supper, and I could have stayed in the bookstore for a week and not seen everything!

We're famous!

Statues displaying an array of facial hair styles...

Exeter. Here we sang in a most stunning cathedral, but it was also the coldest venue we performed in. The pianists pulled out a hairdryer to warm their frozen fingers before having to play! From Exeter we took a trip out to Dartington where our director, Mary Kennedy, did her music studies. An excursion to Exmoor National park was also on the itinerary, complete with climbing a tor**, seeing wild ponies and visiting the place where Conan Doyle wrote “Sherlock Holmes: the Hound of the Baskervilles”.