In His Footsteps: The Places I've Seen: England (1)

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”.