We're in Scarborough. We looked all over the place for the fair. All we found is a kind of touristy string of arcades and fish & chip stalls along the shore of the South Bay. Actually we found a really cool castle tour. This site has artifacts from prehistoric settlements in 1000 BCE, the foundations of a Roman signal tower, ramparts and towers by the Normans and improvements by King John (12th C), and a keep tower partly destroyed in the Civil War. We also found the church where Anne Bronte, Emily and Charlotte's sister, is buried.
We walked into Robin Hood's Bay yesterday afternoon, dipped our shoes in the North Sea and managed to wash some of the muck off them which resulted from walking through a mire up on the moor. The water in the mire was covered with a film of oil from the coal deposits around there, which stained our socks and shoes a sort of olive brown. It will take a heap of detergent.
We were pleased in Robin Hood's Bay to meet up one last time with our friends from Australia and Norfolk, people we met on the walk and spent enough trail time and pub time with to become friends.
We'll post pictures from the walk we remember to bring the cable so we can upload some.
We've been enjoying British TV. The BBC "Breakfast" program we watch has hardly any international news, but focuses keenly on local stories that American stations would normally relegate to a quick "human interest" spot at the end of the broadcast. Susan especially thinks her dad will like this: apparently England is being plagued by snails and slugs, chomping up flower and vegetable gardens. The government and private stations were all atwitter about it early this week. About the only reliable measure against them, they've found, is to set out a bowl of ale, into which the slugs climb and die. That her dad already knows. What might interest him is the name they have for the device: a "slug pub."
We've started a list of other vocabulary items that we'll no doubt start tossing into our speech when we get home.
Tomorrow we're heading for London by train to begin our "coach" (bus) tour. After that we check into our London apartment for 4 weeks!
We're both happy and healthy and we'll check back in when we can.
S&G
"What delight! what felicity! You give me fresh life and vigour. Adieu to disappointment and spleen. What are men to rocks and mountains? Oh! what hours of transport we shall spend! And when we do return, it shall not be like other travellers, without being able to give one accurate idea of any thing. We will know where we have gone -- we will recollect what we have seen. Lakes, mountains, and rivers shall not be jumbled together in our imaginations; nor, when we attempt to describe any particular scene, will we begin quarrelling about its relative situation. Let our first effusions be less insupportable than those of the generality of travellers."
Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen