On the ipod

A clip from Pride and Prejudice, though not the ipod exactly, it's one of my favorite scenes from the series.  In this clip Lyme Park serves as Pemberley, the home of Mr. Darcy.

The clip is a little long and starts with the famous scene of Mr. Darcy diving into a pond on his grounds to cool off, both physically and emotionally.  For fans of this version of P&P it's the famous "wet shirt" scene, as Mr. Darcy walks from his uncharacteristic swim to encounter Elizabeth Bennet and her aunt and uncle touring Pemberley on a visit to Derbyshire.  It's followed by an attempt to be polite to Elizabeth and her family, to rebuild the relationship between them, and to show Elizabeth and Darcy beginning to respect each other and fall in love.

If you watch the clip you'll see Lyme Park images I've included in the previous post.  Specifically the scenes are:

--Darcy leaving the house more properly attired and walking down the steps in the courtyard.
--Meeting Elizabeth again on the Italian side of the house and walking down to the reflecting pond.
--Ascending the stairs by the orangery while talking with Elizabeth.
--Seeing her off at the entrance circle

Lyme Park

We left Castleton this morning to travel back to Leeds and stopped in at Lyme Park in Cheshire.  It's one of the major houses that the family passed on to the National Trust to preserve and maintain.  The house is well-known as a setting for historical dramas, most famously the 1995 BBC version of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.  Visitors are allowed to tour the house and grounds, although all of my pictures are of the exterior since pictures indoors are prohibited.  Lyme is also the original home of the Lyme Caxton Missal, published in 1487.

The two different sides of the building appear quite different--the front has a more Edwardian appearance, with the back and gardens designed in an Italian style.  The family Legh owned the property and built the buildings over many years.  At left is the side in which we entered the building.

This is the courtyard in the center--we entered the house through the door at the top of the stairs and wove through the building to view tapestries, paintings, and antique furniture.

The opposite side shows the Italian style, with columns and a long rambling lawn that leads to a reflecting pool and Italian garden.

The reflecting pond was quiet and peaceful.

This is the ornate Italian sunken garden adjacent to the lawn.

This is the view from across the reflecting pond, showing a full view of the building and the orangery on the righthand side.

This fountain stood in the center of the orangery surrounded by tropical plants.

Altogether the entire tour allowed a glimpse into a life distant from a typical experience but rich with history preserved as part of a national program to protect it.

On the ipod

Blackjack, by Carmen Ghia and the Hotrods.  I don't have them on my ipod yet, actually, but hope to upload them soon since they will be one of the summer acts playing at the cavern.

Peak Cavern and Derwent Reservoirs

We finished our cave tours today by traveling to Peak Cavern, just behind Castleton.  To get there we took a lovely footpath through a small street behind our hotel.

The entrance to Peak Cavern is known to be the largest cave opening in England and was historically used by people up until the early parts of the 20th century.  It was primarily used for ropemaking, since the temperature was relatively stable on the interior and it was protected from rain.  The ropemakers lived as true troglodytes, keeping livestock, their homes, and their families in the cave.

Our tour guide did a ropemaking demonstration, showing the process of taking the raw fiber and making ropes for the mining operations in the area.  Historically children as young as 4 were put to work in the caves helping to make rope or keep the animals that were rendered for tallow to waterproof the rope.

Most of the cave was fairly navigable with modern lighting and steps.  There were some low ceilings--especially in an area called Lumbago Walk.  Some areas were artificially carved out for a visit by Queen Victoria to see the cavern.

The cavern has been used for concerts and will host some summer concerts this year.  The natural acoustics of the cavern makes for a natural amphitheater.

The cave has underground rivers and a massive cavern called Titan (not accessible to the general tours) that was discovered in 2006.  The cave is actually even connected to Speedwell, which we visited yesterday and is .5 km down the road.  Water can flow into the cave and then drain through holes in the interior, which when raining occurs it makes a flatulent sound.  The sound gave the cavern its alternate name--the Devil's Arse.

After being underground we traveled a few miles over to the Derwent reservoir, formed by a series of dams that hold the water for the nearby towns including the large city of Sheffield.

The dams are quite beautiful in their architecture and each one is different.  This one, Derwent Dam, resembles a castle in structure.  This area was used for training by squadrons during World War II that planned to destroy German dams by bouncing bombs along the water to collide with the dam.  The account of this squadron was fictionalized in the film The Dam Busters.

Tomorrow we will leave Castleton and head for Lyme Park, which should be our last chance to see some of the Derbyshire countryside.

On the ipod

The Lark Ascending, by Vaughan Williams  I have seen loads of birds here in Derbyshire and numerous larks so far.  I have been thinking of this music for several days now.

Speedwell Cavern

Much of Richard's Cambridge group was together this morningin Castleton at breakfast after the arrival of the last two, Matt and Charlotte, yesterday evening.  Charlotte was up from London and her husband Matt managed to arrive delayed from China and turned it around quickly enough to catch a train in London after his flight and meet up with us here in Castleton.  Matt is a CFO for an African mining company and Charlotte works as an HR director for a graphics design firm in London.  Completing the group are Richard's friend Richard (we know him as Dickie) and his partner Rasa, along with their 10-month old daughter Elinor. Both Richard and Rasa work for the Royal Mail.  Dickie and Matt were ushers at our wedding.





Here are Richard, Rasa and Elinor.  My Richard was taking a picture for them at the same time as this one--I find it funny that the adults were looking at one camera while Elinor was looking at mine and smiling quite nicely.  We spent the day with them touring Speedwell Cavern.  Most impressive was the durability of a 10-month old managing to stay fairly cheerful in spite of going down into a cave, sitting on a boat in the dark, and staying strapped to her dad throughout.  She is thus far a very resilient child.

Speedwell Cavern is a former lead mine now turned over to tourism.  The countryside is full of abandoned mines but some have been put back into service for visitors.  Speedwell did not make money during its time and was abandoned, and once the pumps stopped the mine filled with water.  So tours of the mine now require descent down a long staircase followed by a boat ride on the water filling the abandoned shafts.

It can be a bit frightening in the dark on a boat when you don't know quite how deep the water is, how far underground you are, and in a space not much larger than the boat.  Quite often the boat tips a little far to one side and feels like it might capsize, or happens to run into the rock with a crashing sound.

The guides give a bit of history of the mine and its failure.  You reach the end of the cavern and then have to get off the boat and step into the area where below is known as the Bottomless Pit.  In the meantime a previous group gets in your now-vacant boat and leaves you in the cavern.  It does make for a bit of concern, perhaps, but fortunately another group does come along and you take their boat.  One wonders what happens to the last group in the cave, of course.

So generally it was not as full of a day as others but still some new sights.  Richard's parents arrived today from Leeds and we plan a second cavern tour tomorrow with them in Peak Cavern, otherwise known as the Devil's Arse.  We'll try to explain why that is once we've toured it.

Cave Dale and Mam Tor

We are in Castleton now, in Derbyshire.  We arrived yesterday and are staying for four days--two with Richard's friends from Cambridge and two with his parents.  The national park we are in is the Peak District, known for beautiful views and small historic towns.  The pub we're staying at is Ye Olde Nag's Head, a bit of a different name but known for a wide range of sausages to choose from and beers on tap.  Richard is working his way through both.

Today was a walking (hiking) day through Cave Dale, along the ridge above near some farms, and then a hike up Mam Tor.  The walk was beautiful and hard to describe the multitude of shades of green that could be seen in pastures and hillsides.  We travelled up through Cave Dale first with steep limestone sides in a dry valley.

At the top of Cave Dale was a continuation of the dry valley that might look familiar to fans of The Princess Bride.  It's the scene (linked here) where Buttercup learns the Dread Pirate Roberts is actually her Westley, previously thought to have died.  We took a short nap at the bottom of the hillside they tumbled down but did not re-create the scene ourselves.

There were lots of other walkers of all ages and group sizes, and a lot of students on hikes with what seemed to be school groups.  They were laden down with heavy backpacks but seemed to be having fun regardless.  We passed this farm and it was such a pastoral scene of a mother and her calf that is representative of the seeming peacefulness of these hillsides.

Here's the view of the hill we climbed--Mam Tor.  The name translates as "mother hill", and although it wasn't as steep as some climbs we've had in the UK it was still a bit of a challenge.  Looking at it from a distance it seemed like it would be tough (you can see some walkers already on the top).

Here is Richard when we reached the trig point, marking the top of the peak.

Here is a lovely view of Edale from the top (to the northwest of Mam Tor).

And a view of Castleon, for some perspective to see how far we'd walked to get here.

We walked back down and around the other side of Mam Tor, which is extremely unstable shales that are slumping down the hillside.  Hence why we walked up the other side of it!

The instability created problems with the road on this side, resulting in its closure.  It is accessible to hikers and bikes but not to cars.  Prior to the closure the road had experienced numerous re-pavings that Richard likened it to a sedimentary rock--perhaps tarmacadamite (according to what Richard himself coined at that moment to describe it).

Due to very sore knees we didn't go down in one of the bluejohn mining caves today, although Richard did buy me a lovely bluejohn pendant to keep his tradition of buying me lesser-known minerals as jewelry The name comes from a French description of the mineral's color "bleu jaune", or blue-yellow.  There are stripes of blue and yellow in the rock that give it the characteristic color.  Mine looks a bit like this, although it's square rather than round.  We'll visit a mine tomorrow, and possibly go into an abandoned lead mine that you tour by boat due to the water filling the previously-mined cavern.