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Singing in a Drought's Abundant Rain in Exeter, Devon

Singing in a Drought's Abundant Rain in Exeter, Devon

By: John C. Dyer, UK Correspondent

 It was raining the morning I set out to visit Exeter.   

It has long been said Britain has weather not climate, a nod to the weather’s changeability. But a new British reality is unfeasible drought punctuated by untenable downpours, leading to floods that seem to defy all expectations that come with the word, "drought."  It is the second year of a British drought severe enough for water use restrictions in some parts of the country.  But the South West, my destination, was on flood watch due to record downpours.   (Photo left "Vintage Exeter Roof in Rain"  by John C. Dyer, May 2012)  

Incidentally, because of the weather’s changeability, traveling in the UK requires at least two essentials- an all weather coat and a sensible pair of shoes.  You can get by without an umbrella, but not the coat. The weather can change from sunshine to storm within a half hour.  Sensible shoes are critical. You may see women dressed in 5 inch heels. This custom is called “fashion.”  But for the traveller, high heels may be the truest symbol of British austerity- not austere, in fact ostentatious, but undoubtedly horribly uncomfortable, especially walking along all those hills.  Wear sensible, comfortable shoes with great arch support. Your knees will thank you in the morning. 

A Journey by Rail (with travel tips)  

I set out from St Annes. The rain formed beautiful droplets on Spring’s new blossoms, foreshadowing hope for a holiday more enjoyable than the rains might have suggested possible.  

St. Annes is a community within the community of Lytham St. Annes. While neighbours the two towns have a different feel to them.   (Photo left "Sated Tulip" by John C. Dyer, May 2012)  

This summer that feel will be busy.  Golf’s biggest professional tournament comes to the Royal Lytham Golf Course, which runs like a green belt through St. Annes.  I shop Marks and Spencer. Their St. Annes outlet is hardly larger than a US 7/11 convenience store. It is always busy, but they estimate during the tournament as many as 10,000 people will shop there each day. Whew. 

I traveled to Exeter by rail, with an overnight stop in Bristol, Somerset.     

Rail has the place in British life air travel has in California. I have often seen BBC  interview the Chancellor , the shadow Chancellor or the leader of the opposition during their routine rail commutes between their constituencies and London.  For a visitor rail presents the advantages of dependability, wide access through the country, good directions for a new user, and, in First Class, comfort.   

As an example of how user friendly it can be, when I arrived in Preston to make connections for Bristol I learned that my connection had been delayed due to a safety problem further up the track.  Even as anxiety set in, the cheerful crew at the highly visible information booth set the old codger’s mind at ease. They explained to me just how to deal with it. They permitted me to use their telephone gratis to call my wife to advise her of the expected 20 minute delay.  Although I missed the scheduled connection in Bristol as a result, I just caught the next train with the same ticket. It was all quickly sorted by the onboard ticket taker.  With trains departing every 30 minutes I didn’t really notice a difference.  

Rail’s main disadvantages are relative lack of luggage space, particularly for large items, and crowding during peak hours.  For visitors who prefer a low fat, low cholesterol diet I suggest you consider buying your own prior to the journey. You will not find your diet choice either on the train or in the stations.  If you want to avoid noisy crowds and cell phones try for the “quiet car.”  

If you travel by rail with a reserved seat you will receive two tickets, one for the trip and one for the seat.  You must hold on to both. Both will be checked, predictably just after you decide that they aren’t going to bother this time.  Expect your ticket to be checked when you first set off and as you attempt to leave the station platform area. In fact, your ticket is your exit pass from the station. Don’t lose it.    

Other than that, trust the system, sit back, and enjoy the many sights and sounds of the journey. A rail journey in the UK is in-of-itself an adventure in discovery.  

As the train departed St. Annes the loudspeaker announced destinations.  I drifted bemused and amused by the pronunciation of "Oswald Twistle," a stop further down the line.  In this reverie it finally occurred to me the British are entitled to pronounce "Oswald Twistle" as they do, without an American saying to himself “how cute” or “how quaint.”  I don’t know if this was a transformative insight or just the haze of waking at “O Dark Hundred” to begin my journey.  (Photo Above "Impulse Power, Scotty" by John C. Dyer, May 2012)  

I soon settled in, watching the beautiful green, rolling countryside with its fields dotted by free ranging cattle and sheep, listening to the symphony of dialects spoken around me.  I remember registering just before nodding off that the “ot” in “Not” in a Glasgow accent  is pronounced “oh” as in French. So Not is “No.”   

Bristol

Victoria met me in Bristol.  We stayed overnight in Bristol before leaving for Exeter. 

I described Bristol at length in a previous post. One of the UK’s most vibrant cities, it is a blend of old and new. The Queen Elizabeth Hospital Boy’s School dates back to the time of Elizabeth I. 

The new flats and shopping areas of the redeveloped docks all came after Victoria moved away 20 years ago.    

 

 (Photo Up left  "Queen Elizabeth Welcomes Thee"; Photo Left "Brisol Port Flats" By John C. Dyer, May 2012)  

 

John Cabot was one of Bristol’s heros.  Memorials to his contribution to Bristol’s glorious past dot the city, from Cabot Tower 

to a bronze statue overlooking the dockyards.   

(Photo far left "Cabot Tower Bristol"; Photo left "Cabot Bronze" by John C. Dyer, May 2012)   

This sculpture symbolizes the vibrant unity of Bristol’s past and present. Cabot’s character-filled face gazes across the new development.   

His character filled hands rest casually crossed before him. He seems to tie together Bristol’s glorious past, vibrant present, and promising future. 

(Photo far left "Cabot Surveys Bristol Channel"; Photo left "Cabot Bronze Detail" by John C. Dyer, May 2012)       

 

When is a River Not a River?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe  


I’ve been walking along a nearly dry river lately, and I’ve had lots of company, including dogs with cold noses and cyclists who startled me because I didn’t hear them approaching on the smooth new pavement.  I’ve also encountered joggers, speed walkers, assorted chums strolling and chatting, skate-boarders and people pushing baby carriages—a microcosm of the community, in fact, some in good shape, some in need of much more walking or much less eating.
 
Visitors scoff at the Santa Fe river, especially when it has the Gobi-desert-in-miniature look.  But even when the river is more or less running—in the spring, after a big rainstorm, when water is being released from the never-quite-full-enough reservoirs upstream, the scoffers aren’t impressed. “Santa Fe trickle?” they suggest, with a sneer.  “Santa Fe dribble?” 

How Much Water Is Necessary?

When is a river really really a river?  When it’s broad and deep and has a strong flow to it, unlike those poor relations dubbed streams and creeks?  When it can’t, safely, be waded across? Is it still a river when, intermittently, it’s reduced to a few stagnating pools?  Or when it masquerades as an arroyo, even as its invisible underground perennial seepage supports a verdant, jungly sort of bosque (think of the ultra-poetic English word ‘bosky’) that snakes across a landscape of sparse scrawny vegetation? 

When it's had as little recent connection with H2O as the supposed rivers on Mars?

Northern New Mexico has a few rivers that never occult themselves.  There’s the Chama flowing into O’Keefe country from Colorado, the quick-descending Nambe River transporting snowmelt from Santa Fe Baldy, the Rio en Medio with its charming waterfalls, the Pecos River descending from the Eastern side of the Sangre de Cristo mountains.  And, of course, there’s the Rio Grande which flows to the west of Santa Fe on its way to the Gulf of Mexico, performing for 1000 plus miles its task of dividing the U.S. from Mexico. 

None of these rivers can compete with the Mississippi or the Amazon or the Nile or the Rhine, or even the Ohio, but water is the stuff of life.  Wherever it appears, in whatever form, in whatever quantity, it’s cherished.  And so, the city of Santa Fe has, little by little, over the past few years, thumbed its nose at financial bad times and extended the Santa Fe River Trail. 

When I finally got around to checking out the new portion a few weeks ago, I was impressed by the amount and quality of the work that had gone into the project.  Shortly after, as usual at this time of year, the flow was turned off.  Just in time for tourists to peer into it and guffaw, “That’s a river?” 

Why does the river get turned off? 

Pure necessity.  Dams on the river impound water for non- spiritual, non-aesthetic needs.  If the reservoirs behind those dams aren’t full enough (and the other sources upon which the city depends are equally depleted), faucets won’t flow and toilets won’t flush. Good citizens hereabouts are vigilant year round water conservators, because they are denizens of the high desert. No one ever got rich farming this land.  Not the original peoples.  Not the Spanish colonials. Today New Mexico is one of the poorest states in the union.  

Insufficient rainfall is the culprit.  Even in the wettest years there’s not enough water to maintain Eastern-style green lawns, and the most conscientious limit the frequency and duration of their showers.  I’ll confess.  I’m good about the no-lawn regimen, but pretty profligate when it comes to showering during a hot spell.

Ducks and Little Girls

Although the watershed for the reservoirs in use today are off bounds to casual hikers, to protect our water supply, such as it is, anyone can walk atop the earthen remains of a late 19th century dam and see the marshy remnant of that reservoir (photo above), now home to a quackery of ducks and a colony of beavers, who are industriously at work on their own damming. 

  This a favorite place for local bird watchers, and  a mile-long path encircling the pond connects with Santa Fe’s extensive system of urban trails.  Santa Fe is a walker’s paradise, even for those who don’t fancy hiking at the higher altitudes.

The most delightful moment during my first morning on the new portion of the  Santa Fe River Trail was encountering a little girl splashing in a pool below a newly constructed rocky step down. Although the pool was not much larger than a couple of bath tubs,  to that little girl at that moment that little catchment of water was her own special place.  She flopped.  She splashed. I was tempted to shake off my sandals and wade in, but I settled for vicarious pleasure instead.  My intrusion would have destroyed her magic. 

Re-Creating a a Proper Bosque

By the time I managed to find time for another walk along the river, there was even less of it, water-wise, and the farther I walked downstream (so to speak) the drier it got. Toward the end of the new improved trail, the river bed was completely dry, which was good, actually, for me.  I could see the extent of the new stone work, the embankments to hold spring’s rush of snow melt, the placing of rock to manage the river’s descent toward the Rio Grande, the shapely channels for runoff from an occasional gullywasher of a rain storm. Without water, it was beautiful, like sculpture.  Also visible was the well-worn old path, ducking under a brand new footbridge, leading the more adventurous on toward the Rio Grande.

Unfortunately much of the newly improved mileage is shadeless and bleak.  Too many bulldozers have been at work.  However, once all the scrupulously re-introduced local vegetation takes hold and gets to thriving again in habitat from which it was displaced by ruthless alien species, the Trail will truly fulfill its ecological as well as its recreational promise.  No more salt cedar, for instance.  This giant weed has lovely plumes of delicate pink flowers, but it needs so much water that a stand of salt cedar can dry up a small stream.  Also mostly gone: the ubiquitous Chinese or Siberian elms that were imported in the 19th century and flourished because they require amazingly little water for their size.  To replace the interlopers: hundreds of cottonwoods and river willows. It may take ten years, but a new, wholly native bosque will eventually flourish here.

Meanwhile, back in the heart of Santa Fe, the river may gurgle and burble, or it may go dry, as it is right now, but if you're walking along the heavily-shaded stretch of river, you might very well be thinking, "Desert?  What desert?"

Honeymoon in America Off the Beaten Track in and about Woodland, California, Part 2

By John C. Dyer, UK Correspondent

(This is the second of a two-part photo story by John C. Dyer.  The first can be found here.) 

Davis, California

  The City of Davis is best known as the home of the University of California, Davis a world class institution. But it is also a marvelous place to visit in its own right, especially appealing to those who like a traditional city center and village atmosphere. (Photos left: "Village House" and "Detail Village Garden" by John C. Dyer, August 2011). (Photo right "City Street" by John C. Dyer, August 2011)

It is at once charmingly quaint  (Photos left: "Tea house," "Tea for Two," and  "Orange Square" by John C. Dyer, August, 2011).  

 

 

 

Davis is the home to a busy Farmer’s Market, one of the first in the modern Farmer’s Market movement, featuring entertainment as well as veggies for its many customers.  But of course, the University is never far from sight. (Photos right: "Uni student" and "Farmers Market Scene by John C. Dyer, 2011).

 You really could not make Davis up, but to the English eye it offers all that a town centre should, small local shops and restaurants, walking and biking the norm and the Unitrans double decker, vintage, iconic London Routemaster buses.  The farmers’ market is very impressive after the cholesterol loaded offerings of a much smaller market in St Annes. 

University of California, Davis

The campus of the University of California is a delight to visit.  Cork Oaks shade its central square .  Multiple sculptures intrigue the walker (Photos left: UCD campus and photos right:  Intrigue, Using Your Head and Shoe by John C. Dyer, August 2011). The campus consciously connects with England, using London buses for transport and decorating the station with an old Telephone Booth.   Putah Creek winds through campus. (Photo left: "Phone Box," by John C. Dyer, August 2011.

 UC Davis' Horticultural Heritage

The University displays its horticultural heritage with a breathtaking display of trees, plants, and flowers buzzing with bees. 

(Photos above: "Beezy," "Purple Whisps," "Pink on Pond,"by John C. Dyer, August 2011)

Photos right: "Delicacy" "Fire bush," "Redwood," "The Rose," "Trumpets," by John C. Dyer, August 2011.)

  

Labour Day saw a handful of students and very little bike action.  Two days later it was no longer safe to walk in a daydream for cyclists asserting their right to the cycle paths and young people swarming around the town and campus. We bid adieu as the students began to arrive for the Fall.

Honeymoon in America Off the Beaten Track in and about Woodland, California

By John C. Dyer, UK correspondent

(This is the first of two off-the-beaten track  photo stories by John C. Dyer.  His marriage and honeymoon took place August 2011. Several photos were taken by his wife, Victoria Buchan Dyer and are so identified.  Enjoy.)

Woodland is a long way from Lytham St. Annes, Lancashire. It is located near Sacramento in California’s huge central valley.  Probably not anyone else’s first choice for a honeymoon. But ours was delightful and rich with memory making moments. 

We chose Woodland for family. My daughter and grandchildren live there.  So does the brother of Victoria’s  American “sister.”  

I had not seen my Woodland family for some time. Victoria had never met them.  I arranged for my son to fly in from Seattle, making the occasion a family reunion.   

Victoria had not seen her “sister” (an exchange student in Victoria’s childhood home in Dorset) or her “sister’s” mother and brother in ages.

As it happened, Victoria’s brother’s daughter and my granddaughter are friends.   It was all a happy coincidence. This happy coincidence gave me the opportunity to introduce Victoria to my past haunts.

In describing our experiences to you, the toughest decisions have been what to leave out. Let’s start with my experience of trying to enter the country on a British passport.

Security

Sadly, I cannot show photos of exciting bits of our journey. Security, both at the train stations and the airports overrode our best photographic intentions.

The interesting thing was how much more cumbersome security is for a Brit entering the US than for a Yank entering Britain. I found this out by accident.  In a senior moment I thought the US Embassy had told me that I had to enter the US on my British passport.  Other way around. Before a friendly US TSA agent clarified, I had gone through an electronic Visa, 4 passport checks and 2 luggage checks. Victoria had gone through a pat down.  Coming into Britain I had just gone through one of each and no one other than Victoria touched me.  

The friendly US TSA agent also explained an unexpected benefit - as my wife, Victoria would not need a green card.   But it was not until we were safely back in Lancashire before Victoria breathed again. She kept expecting a Border Patrol agent to demand she produce a green card.  It is quite usual for a Brit entering the US to wait in line, fingers crossed hoping they will not give the wrong answer to a simple question and be immediately deported.

Sacramento 

Many tourists visit Old Sacramento, especially during Jazz Festival each May.   Old Sacramento features many fine restaurants, including the Firehouse  and the Rio City Cafe to name just two.  (Photos right "Old Sacramento" by John C. Dyer  and "Old Sacramento Exit" by Victoria Buchan Dyer, August 2011) 

We did visit Old Sacramento and ate at the Rio City Cafe, which overlooks the confluent Sacramento and American Rivers. These rivers etch Sacramento, joining just to the North of Old Sacramento.  (Photos left of "Firehouse Restaurant" and "Rio Cafe" Sacramento, CA  by Victoria Buchan Dyer, August 2011)

Happy New Year

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

 

 

Another of the Season’s obligatorily warm and rosy hope pieces

By John C. Dyer

It’s that season again, hope, goodwill among men, obligatory. It occasions all sorts of uncharacteristic behaviour.

Thousands see the inside of a church only during this season, Easter, and Mother’s Day. The pews fill with vacant, ecstatic smiles and Oris Root. 

Television trots out Christmas Carol, or, in a nod to modernity and comic relieve, Scrooged, but the message’s the same. Everywhere, candles glow white and gold.  On cue the media brings forth those delightful colour commentators the media seems to warehouse for such occasions, to pronounce thoughtful, wise but suitably empathetic commentary on topics ranging from soup kitchens to homeless. They might even display an income distribution chart safely tucked away the rest of the year.

Old rock stars release compilations of old rock stars singing old Christmas standards. Or Old Country stars, to taste.  If one is too cultured for these, there’s the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Vienna’s Boys Choir, or Jim Neighbours in Honolulu. On the other hand, if one was stamped “different” from birth, there is, of course, Celtic Women. The ringing in my ears is the every present sleigh bells ring-a-jing jingling in perpetual loops at my local coffee shop.

Everyone and everything has become bloody, nauseatingly warm and rosy.

There is coincidentally a sudden torrent of religious piety from literally unbelievable sources.  It certainly spins the dial of politics.   Prime Ministers lecture clerics on the proper role of the church. That role is, of course, to reinforce the politician’s concept of social order.  It is, above all, not to question his government’s policy, especially if that policy is to screw benefits scroungers. I mean, what is the church for, anyway, if it isn’t moral order? 

Occasionally a politician may correctly cite a section of Scripture for the meaning for which it was written.  On these occasions, it is invariably from somewhere deep within the law and order portions of the Old Testament. The passage is invariably irrelevant to anything to do with the teachings of Jesus, serving to offer the politician a loose cloak of retained if vague memories from Summer Church  School. 

But I should be more charitable. It is Christmas. It is hard to remember that musty old book through the haze of all those parties at college. What college is for, but that’s another rant.

I think it may pay to be Jewish, Moslem, Hindu, anything but Christian during these Prime Ministerial moments of piety. Especially if you are sufficiently accursed to actually have read the teachings with a thought to understand them. You find what is left of your teeth ground to the root overnight.

This season of obligatory hope and cheer can be very hard on people.  Where have I heard that before?

The above-it-all mutter about the true meaning of Christmas beneath their breaths, refusing to be corrupted into rampant consumer lust, an easy virtue in this time of austerity. There are gifts of hand made items instead. Still gifts, but you were expecting maybe Scrooge, were you? The seasonally affected grasp a blanket. Maybe if they pull the covers over their heads it will all go away. 

BBC and CNN dig into the warehouse to produce a psychologist or two to explain, as if for the first time and to a four year old, the impact of the season on some.  At such times I recommend firmly stepping away from the channel, switching to DVD, and starting a good movie. I recommend What About Bob for this occasion. Go with that.

But one basic truth remains concerning the impact of this season on affect. No one remains unaffected. The obligation to be cheerful meets the least naturally cheerful time of the year.  The warehouse is sure to disclose an expert in myth to explain that the holidays were always designed that way in response to Solstice, or something like that.

This year we have the additional elements of worldwide war, famine, political upheaval, and disease. In short, situation normal. Well no, not quite normal. There is that little thing called the onset of another Great Depression.  There, that ought to do you for this bloody cheerfulness business.

I suppose it is time for the schmaltzy, hope-in-the-darkness turn to the narrative.

Just as I am about to protest, I will not do yet another schmaltzy, hope-in-the-darkness turn in the narrative, a little voice opens up inside my head. It sings “Little Drummer Boy,” the Black Eyed Peas version. 

Are those candles I see before me? 

I can see row on row of little white candles set inside red glass votives, glowing yellow in the darkness, casting their reflection across a golden oak railing, highlighting a statuette of a Virgin and a child. No, I am not Roman Catholic. But I do have memories of a desperate moment in my life where the only thing between me and oblivion was such an alcove. 

I’m humming now.  Damn, I’m all bloody, nauseatingly tingly warm and rosy. 

It happens every year at this time. The truth is, it has nothing to do with what is going on outside or inside anyone else but me.  Hope is an internal mechanism not an externally caused event.

Hope is also not faith. Faith is a term we give to behaviour acting on a commitment acting on a deal with the divine, often entered into so long ago we have little retained memory of the event.

Hope is a well spring of energy that picks us up when we fall down. Hope is a Toddler getting up to walk again.

Many of us tonight occupy that uncomfortable and ill defined place between letting go of what has been and did not work, or did work and is completed, and finding something new and exciting with which to begin again, vaguely suspicious it isn’t out there.  Our discomfort is nothing beside that of the multitude who will never again find a new and exciting anything. But it is our discomfort. 

Pretty much like clockwork the new beginnings come. 

But maybe not this year. The West at least, if not the entire globe, rolls into this year’s holiday season in a somber mood. The mood music is more 1812 Overture in fear of a Night on Bald Mountain than Silent Night. We seem at times to be holding onto a rope, wanting to cling to it just long enough to make it through New Year. We expect that the other side of New Year we must let go, and that when we do there will be no safety net beneath us.

Anyone who said this was not a scary time would be giving false comfort. It is a scary time. 

Anyone who said this is all going to work out, it will all be fine, would be giving false comfort. We don’t know how it will work out.

But that has nothing to do with hope, or why this season brings hope. This season brings hope because hope is the healthy response to the insurmountable challenge.  And hope has proved itself.  It has moved our species forward, time and again, against seemingly insurmountable challenges.  

No one can guarantee the future success of you, yours, the nation, the world, life as we know it.  But we can light a candle in a votive. That candle’s glow may cheer someone who  has come anonymous and alone in a desperate moment.  That cheer may become hope, and it is hope that moves us forward to beat the odds.

But what is objective physics of hope? Where’s the science to the religion?  Empathy may be the divine wind, sympathy the still, small voice.  But acting on these, and you acting accordingly, constitutes the true G*d particle in the physics of hope.

 

Somerset Trip Day 3: Bristol, The Metropolis

By John C. Dyer, UK correspondent

Over a million and a half people call greater Bristol home.  First chartered in 1155 AD, its busy port sent explorers and migrants all over the globe. 34 cities across the globe bear its name.  (Photos left and right by JC Dyer, summer 2011)

Bristol is the seat of one of the UK’s major universities, the University of Bristol, (Photos right Bristol Student Union and Bristol U Art Department by John C Dyer, summer 2011) a rival to its esteemed colleagues, Oxford and Cambridge.

Bristol is a survivor, reborn as a modern city from the rubble of the Battle of Britain.  After over 850 years rich in history, Bristol remains vital. It is figured to be among the five cities in the UK best positioned to re-emerge strong and vibrant from the current recession. 

Yet an ancient spirit still weaves through its hilly streets. (Photo left: "An Old Spirit" by JC Dyer, summer 2011)

Bristol’s special meaning

Bristol has meaning for both my partner and I.  For her, it was her first professional and family home, the birthplace of her daughter. For me, it is the scene of Dyer dramas both ancient and modern.  Victoria guided me among her favourite haunts.

Queen Victoria still presides over Bristol Cathedral (Photo right by JC Dyer summer 2011).   The Cathedral exterior is young relative to Wells, Exeter and Salisbury (Photo left by JC Dyer, summer 2011), but its Chapter House (meeting room) is Norman. (Photos left by JC Dyer summer 2011) .  

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Cathedral’s windows and interior are new, the originals casualties of the Blitz, but detailed in the magnificent old tradition. (Photos left and above by JC Dyer, summer 2011)

Its cloisters have an ancient feel. (Photo left by JC Dyer, summer 2011)

The dark stone Cathedral shelters a unique garden graveyard (Photo center left by JC Dyer, summer 2011), which like many English graveyards is oddly inviting.  So inviting, in fact, a picnic area nestles among the graves (Photo far right by JC Dyer, summer 2011). 

We were hungry, so we gave the area a once over.  But we soon left. Victoria knew the man buried most immediately next to the picnic grounds. We hiked up a hill to the Cafe Rouge. Victoria knew a cafe not far from the Cathedral which she prefered to show me. (Photo left by JC Dyer, summer 2011). 

Lunch was lovely.

Tummies satisfied, it was on to the Bristol City Museum.  A WWI vintage airplane dominates the entrance (Photos right by JC Dyer, summer 2011). 

The museum holds a vast array of treasures, sculptures  (Photos left by JC Dyer, summer 2011) and mummy cases among my favourites.  Even more favourite than my usual beloved Impressionists and dinosaur bones.

After over an hour of wandering the Museum, it was time for afternoon tea.  We beat it to one of those many side streets that so feature in a British town, the ones that make a village out of a city.   My partner knew of a little cafe with excellent tea and cakes, the Primrose Cafe (Photo left above by John C Dyer, summer 2011).  We enjoyed a pot of tea each, cake, and the intriguing surroundings (Photo right above by John C Dyer, summer 2011). 

Somerset Trip Day 2, Bath

By John C. Dyer, UK Correspondent

Braced by Costas Cappuccino, Victoria and I approached the entrance to the Square adjoined by both the Cathedral and the ruins of the Roman Baths. It was early.

Street musicians made their way to their posts as we entered.  A bicycle parked next to its street musician owner advertised a performance schedule that evening.  ( Photo left: Bath Cathedral -"Through a Portal," photo right center "Beside One Musician", photo right "Street Musicians Take Their Places" by JC Dyer, summer 2011)

We were distracted by one of the objects of our quest in Somerset, a shop selling Wedding Rings. But they were not the hand crafted type we sought. (Photo left "Wedding Bands, by JC Dyer, summer 2011)

The Cathedral rose majestically at the Square’s other end.  As we gazed at the towers of the Cathedral extending toward the sky as if in praise, a woman’s voice filled the Square with the most unexpectedly rich Soprano. Tourists and locals stopped what they were doing and listened. (Photos center right "The Voice" and "Bath Cathedral" by JC Dyer, summer 2011)

 

Both Victoria and I felt our spirits soar with the Voice.  As if ushered along by it we entered Bath Cathedral.  I gasped at its interior. (Photo left "Bath Cathedral Interior by JC Dyer summer 2011).