Act X- Best Trip with the Worst Beds in England

Hi all!

Kurt and his bird-friend

Yes I know I skipped my weekly post last week. The week had been relatively uneventful and, with the kids now in school, I was eager to get working on some long-furloughed projects. Highlights of said week were a small festival at Parker's Piece which featured the largest inflatable slide we have ever seen, another tea at The Orchard where a cheeky song-bird ate scone crumbs out of Kurt's palm, and our first official college dinner, at Clare Hall (not to be confused with Clare College)

Boys at the Country Fair on Parkers Piece

The university system here at Cambridge is a little bit different than the US system and we are still piecing together our understanding of it. I suppose a good way to think about it is to recall the Hogwarts House system- everyone attends Hogwarts School but their house determines where they live and some of their activities. When one applies to Cambridge, they first select a course of study and then a college. Their lectures can be taught by professors from any of the colleges but the practicums of these same classes that are taught only by their college's fellows and taken only with their college's students. So basically your college delineation decides where you live and your study groups. In the same way, the lab Kurt is working with is made up of graduate students from the various colleges though the lab head, Professor Keyser, is associated with Gonville Cauis College.
  Anyway, one of Kurt's colleagues, a research associate name Jaehanger, invited Kurt and I and Alice (another person who works in his lab) to one of the periodic formal dinners held at his college, Clare Hall. Luckily we were able to get another grad student to watch the kids and so were able to enjoy this grand college tradition, one that works to build the community of the college. Clare Hall is an off-shoot of Clare College and is one of the newer colleges in the university. Therefore we did not get to dine in one of the grand old oak lined halls but the food was still delicious and the company was second to none. We briefly met the head of the college but mostly spoke with Jaehanger who is from India and Alice who is a native Britain. We had a great time and hopefully made a good enough impression that maybe we will get invited to a few more before we have to go.

 We are nearly to the half-way point of our time here and a few weeks ago, worried that we were not making the most of our time, I hastily planned a trip to Stratford-Upon-Avon. I think I mentioned in one of my first posts that, this time around in England, I am going to embrace my cliche Shakespeare-fandom and just nerd-out with the bard as so many other tourists have done before me. But I am also aware that there are others in my traveling party that do not yet share my love of Mr. Shakespeare and so I coupled the trip with a return visit to one of our favorite spots on our 2013 trip, Warwick Castle, a 12th century fortress located just north of Stratford, also on the Avon.
 

On our way to Warwickshire, with the aid of our rental car, I planned a short stop at the Cambridge American Cemetery, a memorial to Americans who died in or around England during the Second World War, located on the outskirts of town. This is a little jaunt that I have wanted to make since we arrived, but my Uncle Fred warned me that it might be kind of tricky on the bicycle due to the decrepit nature of the bicycle lanes this far out of town. How does Uncle Fred know about the bicycle lanes in this remote part of Cambridge you might ask? Well it is because, Fred's father, Clarence, is buried at the Cambridge American Cemetery. Clarence was my Grandma Katy's first husband and so I have no blood ties to him and know very little about him aside from the fact that his nickname was 'Happy' due to the nature of his personality. This endears him to me immediately but I also felt the need to visit him out of respect for all those that fought in WWII and also for my Grandma Katy, who was the closest grand-parental figure in my life. The cemetery itself is beautiful with a tranquil reflecting pool and neat rows of white grave-markers, but it also has a new visitor center, opened in 2014 that serves as a mini-WWII museum so that even those who do not have a specific plot to visit can get a lot out of a visit to the place. Uncle Fred is right though- definitely would have been a bit of a harrowing bike-trip with the kids.
 
  After a smooth drive through the Midlands, we arrived in Warwick to the rest-stop hotel that I booked as part of a package deal with Warwick Castle. I had hoped to reserved one of the medieval glamping tents on the castle grounds but Kurt reminded me that those were simply out of our price range and so I dropped our booking into the lower category. Foolishly, I assumed that any hotel endorsed by the castle would have been somewhat vetted as far as comfort and cleanliness. While our Days Inn room was clean and much more spacious than the room we had in London, its beds were, it think it is safe to say, the worst I have experienced- like sleeping in a thin-bottomed tent at the base of a mangrove tree. Luckily the room came with some extra pillows so I was able to build a small barrier between my spine and the springs but definitely had to swallow a few ibuprofen before storming the castle in the morning.

Warwick Castle, has had many owners since it was first founded by the Anglo-Saxon princess, Aetheldreada but its current incarnation is a restored living-history resort that gives visitors a taste of various medieval arts and practices with some outright fun sprinkled in. We took the boys here when they were one and three years old but it turned out that they were much too young then and did not get much out of it. Ages six and eight turned out to be near-perfect however and we we stayed from gates-open to gates-closed with everyone wishing we had more time.  Highlights of the day were the trebuchet launch, the charismatic archer-historian who offered to shoot an arrow through Klaus' stuffed cat, and the fantastic falconry shows.

Despite a light drizzle, the whole family was so captivated by the falconry show which featured several types of eagles, vultures, owls, and kites, that we came back for the second show of the day, completely missing our chance to walk the incredible castle walls.     

Klaus at Warwick 2013 and 2018

 

On Sunday, after a second round of ibuprofen for my spring-weary back, we arrived at Shakespeare's birthplace in downtown Stratford-Upon-Avon. This lovely, quintessentially Tudor structure is believed to be Shakespeare's childhood home, making it the most likely place that he was born. The building also served as his father's glove-making workshop and also, with a later addition, his family's pub and inn.   

Klaus with Poor Yorick in the background 

 

  Our early arrival time allowed us a leisurely stroll through the cozy spaces of the house and afforded us a fair amount of the docents' time. (Just as a side note- congrats England on your crop of museum docents! They are a wonderful bunch and have really put a shine on all our tours.) The boys enjoyed working through the free kids workbooks that came with admission and, upon exiting the house, we came across a small acting troupe employed by the sight to preform famous scenes from Shakespeare's works. When they asked for requests I proposed one of Malvolio's speeches from Twelfth Night and they did not disappoint.    

 

 Shakespeare's Birthplace is run by the Shakespeare Trust which operates several other bard-related sights and offers an affordable family-pass that is good for admission to all of them. When planning out the trip it seemed to me that we had time for two of these sights. I selected the birthplace for me and, to appease the kids, I thought Mary Arden's Farm (Shakespeare's mother's family farm), a "working Tudor farm" might appeal to some of their interests. To seal the deal, there just happened to be an Apple Festival going on at the farm on the date we were thinking of. This proved to be a great idea and we had a thoroughly good time at the farm. We fed the animals, tasted freshly pressed apple cider, and played with some medieval toys all before lunch. Then while enjoying some delicious sandwiches and tea from the cafe, we watched a Punch and Judy- style puppet show. Kurt thought the puppets were creepy (they were) and the hurdy-gurdy accompaniment irritating (it wasn't) but the boys were captivated, Klaus laughing louder than anyone else in the audience.

Free face-paint!

After lunch Leif and Klaus got to try their hands at the hand cranked pottery wheel and we all got to make some clay tiles using medieval designs collected from all over England. With a stack of tiles in hand, we watched the blacksmith at his trade for a good forty minutes, played with the giant chess set, and caught yet another falconry show! This time the presenter was an owl named Scruff and, if we thought we had gotten close to the birds at Warwick, it was nothing compared to the proximity we experienced with this bird who often brushed us with his wings as he landed on our picnic table.  While we marveled at Scruff's silent flights and bright orange eyes the falconer related some interesting historical facts about falconry. Apparently there were very strong laws (with accompanying punishments) about who could own and use what sorts of birds of prey. Higher classes could have falcons or hawks while peasants were only allowed kestrels, who caught smaller and less desirable prey. Owls however were a bit of a loophole for the smart peasant as they existed outside this classification. Get yourself and owl,son!

 

  After that our weekend was pretty much spent and we drove home well-satisfied to Cambridge to rest-up before our next adventures this week with Kurt's mom, Dale, and our neighbor from Gettysburg, Hannah. 

Kurt and Scruff