My Dream Trip, Week 2

Week 2 continued in Edinburgh (pronounced Edinboura). 

First thing Saturday morning we drove out to Rosslyn Chapel in Midlothian.

We listened to a tour guide give a history of the chapel

and tell about the filming of the DaVinci code which took place there.

The tour guide was a darling Scottish lass.

Afterwards we went up to talk to her and ask some questions.

I told her I had ancestors from Midlothian and did the church have a register?

She asked me the names I was looking for and I told her Adams, and Moffatt.

Well, guess what the tour guide's name was.. she was a Moffatt.

Anyway, I'm sure we are distantly related and
btw the church register was at home with one of the clergy ;(

What a gorgeous chapel.

One of the more interesting stories from the chapel:

One of the more notable architectural features of the Chapel is the "Apprentice Pillar, or "Prentice Pillar". Originally called the "Prince's Pillar"  involving the master mason in charge of the stonework in the chapel and his young apprentice mason. According to the legend, the master mason did not believe that the apprentice could perform the complicated task of carving the column without seeing the original which formed the inspiration for the design.
The master mason travelled to see the original himself, but upon his return was enraged to find that the upstart apprentice had completed the column by himself. In a fit of jealous anger, the master mason took his mallet and struck the apprentice on the head, killing him. The legend concludes that as punishment for his crime, the master mason's face was carved into the opposite corner to forever gaze upon his apprentice's pillar.^[8]

 The apprentice pillar

This is the room in the basement where the DaVinci code final scenes were filmed.

We wandered through the cemetery beside the church looking for family names

and we found quite a few Moffatts.

It was a beautiful cemetery

We drove back into Edinburgh and walked on the Royal Mile to the 

National Museum of Scotland

I saw this sign in a restaurant window along our way.

Yup, Haggis was featured in almost all the restaurants we visited.

Mary Queen of Scots tomb

Tom's new car

Anyone know who this celebrity is??

It is Dolly the first animal to be cloned.

More couch dresses

After the museum, we wandered up to the castle on the hill

Edinburgh is such a cool city.

Edinburgh castle.

It was a little chilly that day, I was thankful for my scarf.

William Wallace of Braveheart fame

We spent the afternoon and evening seeing the sights of Edinburgh 

and shopping on the Royal Mile.

Sunday was a fabulous day.

We went to church at the Edinburgh 1st ward which is right in 

the city center.

Our friends, the Haws family, moved to Edinburgh for work 2 years

ago. Tyler was called as Bishop shortly after they arrived.

Tyler was Taylor's YM president, and later on I team taught early morning seminary with him, 

and I taught their cute oldest daughter Grace piano and in Young women's.

They have a wonderful family and they have all just loved living in Scotland.

We stayed for all 3 hours of church and we really enjoyed getting to know

the people in their ward.

Everyone was so friendly and there were lots of 

investigators and students.

It was a great ward.

Jayna had invited us to their house after church

for dinner.

She made Scottish soup, Cullen Skink with smoked haddock,

it was delicious!

They made this cute sign to welcome us.

After dinner we drove through the Lake district,

on our way to Preston England.

 Where my ancestor's came from

 Yup, we drove through that small alleyway

 Our hotel in Preston

The Lake District was beautiful!!
Monday morning  we got up bright and early and drove to the
Preston Temple

It was a bright, blue sky day.

We wandered around the grounds
and took some pictures and talked
to a really nice older missionary.

It was Monday, so the temple was closed.

Next time we will make time to do a session.

We drove to Liverpool, where the Hathaway's had arranged to meet with some

friends who live in Wales.

The Hathaway's met these friends, Bronwyn and Geoff,

on a cruise a few years ago. 

We met them at the Livepool pier and they gave us a grand tour.

This is a statue that the church donated to Liverpool that represents the 

emigrants that came through Liverpool on their way to Zion.

It's pretty cool!

We found the fab four, aka the Beatles who happened to be from Liverpool.

Some of the buildings in Liverpool

We went inside the Maritime museum and it

had a great exhibit on the emigration through Liverpool in the 1800's.

Liverpool has a ferris wheel, not quite as big as London's.

We found the Beatle's museum but decided we didn't have time 

to make the cost worthwhile.

We had lunch with Geoff and Bronwyn then hit the road and drove to Conwy Wales

through some beautiful welsh countryside.

Conwy castle is amazing.

So much medieval history

Conwy Castle is a medieval fortification in Conwy, on the north coast of Wales. It was built by Edward I, during his conquest of Wales, between 1283 and 1289. Constructed as part of a wider project to create the walled town of Conwy, the combined defences cost around £15,000, a huge sum for the period. Over the next few centuries, the castle played an important part in several wars. It withstood the siege of Madog ap Llywelyn in the winter of 1294–95, acted as a temporary haven for Richard II in 1399 and was held for several months by forces loyal to Owain Glyndŵr in 1401.

It is right on the water.

 

The village of Conwy

 This bus barely made it through this underpass

 We then made our way to Caernarfon, Wales

 where we found our Bed and Breakfast.

Wales is just gorgeous.

We wandered around the city and the Caernarfon castle, 

watched the sunset

and then had a delicious Welsh dinner complete with sticky toffee pudding.

The next morning we explored Caernarfon castle,

where Prince Charles was crowned Prince of Wales.

This is the view of Caernarfon from the castle

Caernarfon Castle, often anglicized as Carnarvon Castle, is a medieval fortress in Caernarfon, Gwynedd, north-west Wales. There was a motte-and-bailey castle in the town of Caernarfon from the late 11th century until 1283 when King Edward I of England began replacing it with the current stone structure. The Edwardian town and castle acted as the administrative centre of north Wales and as a result the defences were built on a grand scale.

 We left Caernarfon and drove through Snowdonia National Park on our way to Cardiff

 Did I say how beautiful Wales is?

Do you see the green dots on the sheep? That's how they brand their sheep.
They spray paint them with different colored dots.

We ate our lunch on the road.

Who knew Spar had some good picnic food?
Tom and Evan discovered chicken on a stick.

Tom took a picture of this butcher carrying this sheep into his shop.

Welsh is a very difficult language to speak and read.

 We made it to Cardiff and drove around the castle, then checked into our hotel.

 We hurried and drove out to Glanmorganshire where Evan, Melissa and Tom all had ancestors.

We found the church where Evan's great great grandparents were married 

and the custodian, let us into the old church.
The church was closed and it was a miracle he was still there and he gave us a grand tour.

It was pretty cool to see all their family names in the church.
 

 
We ate dinner at a pub, the White Hart, in Glanmorganshire.
It was really good!

 The next day, we drove from Wales to the Cotswolds,
it was so beautiful!

 We drove to Bath and wandered around.
Bath is such a beautiful Georgian city.
This is the royal crescent.

 The Roman baths were found under this building.
People are lining up to go inside.

 There was a darling gift shop across the street with the cutest tea pots.
I might have had to buy one.

This shot is so pretty it looks fake.

I remember my Mom giving me a bread recipe for Sally Lunn's bread.

I didn't realize she was from Bath.

We drove from Bath to Cornwall and ran into a traffic jam on the way

(there was a car accident)

and once we got to Cornwall it was foggy.

Thankfully by the next day, the fog had lifted and it was glorious!

We had a delicious cornish breakfast at our B&B.

My favorite thing was this bruleed porridge.

Doesn't sound that good, but it was delicious!

See that little pitcher?

It was filled with cream and you'd crack the sugar

on top of the porridge and pour that baby all over it.

Yum! I dream about that porridge.

This was also served at breakfast.

All English/Scottish breakfasts are served with mushrooms and

After breakfast we drove to Boscastle and checked out the stone harbor walls 

built there in 1584.

The rock work is incredible!

It is so amazing to see the tide come in and lift the boats and then the

fishermen head out to sea.

What a gorgeous place!

We walked out to the point and it was a picture taker's dream.

We spent a lot of time looking for Poldark

see those stone walls protecting the harbor?

Next we drove to St. Nectan's Glen.

Oh what a fairyland we found.

We hiked about a mile and half into this beautiful misty waterfall. 

 We found these logs with pennies hammered in.

The hydrangeas in England are glorious.

We had to put these "wellies" on to hike into the falls 

to keep our feet dry.

Next we drove to Port Isaac aka Portwenn

from the PBS show Doc Martin

We bought a Cornish pasty at a cute shop that had pictures on

the wall with the cast members from Doc Martin

We took our pasties to the port and had a picnic.

We even found Doc Martin's house

Again it is so beautiful it looks fake.

Next it was off to Bodmin to continue our search for Poldark.

We found the jail he was imprisoned in

and some beautiful countryside

We took a walk through the cornish farm country.

 I love these old rock walls

 We drove through so many tree tunnels.

 This was our bed and breakfast in Tintagel with views of the ocean.

This rock post office is the oldest post office in England.

The ruins of King Arthur's supposed castle was right down the hill from our B & B

We took a walk at sunset and the light was perfect for some more gorgeous pictures.

We then walked to this old church on the hill

We sadly checked out of our B & B and drove back through 

Cornwall and the Cotswolds

to Avebury as we headed back to London.

Avebury (/ˈeɪvbəri/) is a Neolithic henge monument containing three stone circles, around the village of Avebury in Wiltshire, in southwest England. One of the best known prehistoric sites in Britain, it contains the largest megalithic stone circle in the world. It is both a tourist attraction and a place of religious importance to contemporary pagans.

We chose to go to Avebury rather than Stonehenge because you can't walk around the stones 

at Stonehenge.

It was pretty impressive looking at the stones that were placed there

and the mounds that were dug thousands of years ago.

We stopped and checked out Windsor castle.

I wish we had had time for a tour.

This is the town of Windsor. 

We did some shopping and then got back in our car

and drove to our hotel right by Heathrow airport.

We got a little lost on our way, but eventually made it.

We spent our last night at another delicious Indian restaurant.

The next day we boarded our flight for the US.

Goodbye UK, we love you and can't wait to go back!