UK Roadtrip: James & Jill's Wedding

We have come to one of the highlights of the trip, and also the reason why we went to the UK in the first place: my friend James's marriage to Jill on Saturday 24 July.

The weekend started with old friends being reunited for dinner and drinks on Friday evening, except for James who was busy sorting out the last details ahead of the big day, understandably. French Céline, Swedish Karl, me (i.e. Swedish Anna) and English James* met back in 1998-1999 when we all lived in the same place in London, in a long-term stay hostel/student house in Notting Hill**. Spanish Diego, now Céline's husband, also lived there for a while but for a much shorter period than the rest of us; though enough time for him and Céline to hook up! :) We have been pretty good at keeping in touch over the years. In the beginning, until 2002 or so, it was much easier as most of us still lived in the UK, but since then it's maybe been once a year at best, usually for someone's wedding, and we have also met on one-to-one basis so-to-speak. All of us gathered for Céline and Diego's wedding in Barcelona (where they live) back in 2004 or 2005 and again for Karl and Anlaug's wedding in Norwegian Telemark last year and now for James and Jill's (Karl and Anlaug recently had a baby girl so Anlaug had to stay at home this time unfortunately). And hopefully all will make it for ours!

Peter, Kalle, Diego, me and Céline

James and Jill got married in the cute little Danby Wiske church near Northallerton, Yorkshire, dating from the 12th century.



And here comes the bride!

Vows


Signing the registry at the end of the ceremony

Newlyweds!

The little bridesmaids or flower girls and page boy as they are sometimes called

Céline with daughter Maïwenn

Some English churches has a tradition at weddings whereby the local children secure the gates of the church yard by tying them together (though in this case I think the best man arranged it but the little bridesmaids guarded the gate for a while). The gates and more importantly the newly married couple are not released until they have thrown some money (coins) over the gate (or to the children). This is called "parrying up".

Cutting the ribbon after having paid their dues


You can't have a wedding without confetti!

After the wedding everyone went to Jill's parents' house in Danby Wiske for a reception. They have an amazing garden that, impossible to believe, was just a dirt field three-fours years ago. It was just perfect for a reception. Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the garden as such. At the reception there was a (senior) orchestra playing and we were treated to Pimm's (naturally) and finger food...

Jazzy


The children enjoyed the music

...and wedding cake of course. It was beautifully decorated with flowers from the garden and local fields.

Cutting the cake

After the reception we drove to Headlam Hall about 40 minutes away for dinner where we first continued to mingle while the newlyweds had their official photos taken.

We also had our photo taken :)


...and Céline kept her daughter occupied


Peter even fell asleep for a while :)

Once dinner was on it followed the usual English tradition whereby all speeches are held one after the other after dessert and not spread out throughout the dinner as in Sweden. The other difference is that in England only three people make speeches; the father of the bride, the groom and the groom's best man (a bit too male-dominated if you ask me, but when you are in Rome...).

James's speech

A tradition that is probably the same everywhere though (?) is the wedding waltz though James and Jill's dance was more of a slowdance than a waltz :)

The seating arrangements are also different in England (and other countries) compared to Sweden. Instead of mixing everyone at long tables (which means couples don't sit together), partners are seated not next but close to each other at round tables. Our table was called the "International table" and seated our little group of friends as well as Jonathon and Ingrid from South Africa (but living in London) and an English guy (can't remember his name). On this particular occasion it was a good set-up though, since we don't see each other that often and want to make the most of time spent in the same location.



Then there was dancing of course. The children were quite active on the dance floor before it was time for bed (which was not that much earlier than the rest of us as English weddings tend to finish a midnight and this one did too).

Peter, Céline and Kalle go crazy

Final picture: wedding details

* Céline has lived in Spain for several years and is married to Spanish Diego (who grew up in Brazil); Karl moved to Norway with his family when he was only ten years old and studied and worked in England, Germany and Sweden before moving back to Norway two years ago or so (he married Norwegian Anlaug last year); I have as you know lived in the US, England and Belgium - quite an international bunch! James is the odd one out I guess who's really just lived in the UK :)

** Great location, great friendships, but the food was abysmal and the (shared) showers... Hope things have improved somewhat since then.

UK Roadtrip: Whitby & Robin Hood's Bay

Time for part three of our UK adventure (part one and part two for reference): the Yorkshire coast where we visited the coastal town Whitby and the seaside village Robin Hood's Bay.

Approaching the coast from the moors

Whitby is situated at the mouth of River Esk, which divides the town in two parts, spreading up two sides or cliffs on the narrow valley carved out by the river.







The east cliff is dominated by the ruins of Whitby Abbey and St Mary's Church. The east cliff is at quite a distance by road (by foot, not car) so to visit the abbey or the church one has to climb the 199 steps of the church stairs or use a footpath called "Caedmon's Trod". However, when we were there the bridge between the west and east side was closed and only a boat ride, so we skipped the church steps.

Peter with the east cliff and St Mary's church on top (blocking the view of the abbey behind)

The beach below the west cliff; only a few children braved the (we assume) pretty cold water

On Whitby's west cliff is a statue of James Cook, who served his apprenticeship in the town (with the obligatory dove on his head!)

Whitby seems to have pretty amazing barbers, with the reservation that results may wary (lower right corner in case you haven't spotted it)!

Before we left Whitby we took a detour to the east side to look at the ruins of the abbey, though just from afar.

Robin Hood's Bay is a small fishing town just south of Whitby where Robin Hood is said to have hidden ships in case he needed to make a quick get-away. The houses in the town supposedly have hidden rooms and other spaces where smuggled items could be kept. While it is unclear if Robin Hood really visited the town, it was very much involved in smuggling in the 18th century.

Peter tries to illustrate the steep street leading down to the village centre; parking was above except for locals

One of many little alleys

The beach in Robin Hood's Bay

Look out for the next part: Durham, Warkworth and the Northumberland coast; but before that a post about James and Jill's wedding, the reason we went to this part of the world in the first place!

UK Roadtrip: York & Yorkshire Moors

Back home from Nice and time for my second post about our UK roadtrip (first here)!

We said goodbye to our friends in Wales and headed back to England and to Yorkshire where our first stop was York. In old York we only had time for dinner and a walk around but we hadn't planned to visit any museums there anyway so a few hours was plenty. Like Chester, York is a walled city, founded by the Romans (though the wall is medieval), and was also a (Danish) Viking town for a while, Jórvik. As you can see in the photos below York has pretty little streets, called Snickelways. One of these, the Shambles, is a narrow medieval street, lines with shops and tearooms (and pubs of course), which was once the butchers' street. Shambles takes its name from "shamel", meaning the stalls or benches on which the meat was displayed, some of which, including hooks, can still be seen. The current look of the street(s) is from the 1400s.

Cute shop windows


Beautifully adorned building and window

The geography of the world through a tube map

Peter being silly in front of Clifford's Tower, a remnant of a 13-14th century castle and the city wall

We spent the night at Manor House Hotel in West Aukland, County Durham, a hotel which would be our base for the next few days. The Manor House was once Henry III's hunting lodge and apparently there are ghosts around (they didn't say if it was the King himself or someone else...), but we didn't notice anything, maybe because we don't really believe in such things...

The following day (Friday) we steered the car towards the North Yorkshire Moors, or the North York Moors, as they are also called. The moors are one of the largest areas of heather (ljung) moorland (characterised by low growing vegetation on acidic soils; hed in Swedish) in the UK - covering almost 1,500 km² - and it has been a national park since 1952. First, and before we had entered proper moorland, we stopped at Rievaulx Abbey, the ruins of a Cistercian monastery from the 12th century.

As you can see, the cathedral must have been quite something back in the day




Pretty flowers among the stones

Lunch was had in a small village called Hutton-le-Hole where the sheep grazed by the road between the church and the pub!

After lunch we entered real moorland. It was quite uphill getting there but going down was even worst; we had to drive in first gear! It's difficult to take photos that really illustrate how steep it really was though.

Surrounded by heather


Don't want to run down a cute lamb!


Hilly, beautiful landscape


Taking some time to look at the world and reflect

Next episode: Yorkshire's coastline

Returned to the Maldives?

Today was spent at the beach in Beaulieu-sur-Mer (we went there two days ago too but after only two hours it started raining - went shopping instead!). Beaulieu, like many towns on the Côte d'Azur, are located at the foot of the mountains, which makes for dramatic scenery. But if it wasn't for the mountain, you'd think we were back in the Maldives.



Via Anna's iPhone

Dinner Nibbles with a View

Via Anna's iPhone

Nice in Nice

First proper day of our holiday in Nice, France (yesterday was just about getting here, grocery shopping, unpacking and napping; needed but not much fun). Today we've spent a few hours on Nice's pebbled beach - don't want to overdo it on the first day, especially since our tan from the hot weeks in July (in Sweden) went away in Britain... - and now we're relaxing on the balcony. Tonight we'll just do dinner at home and continue being lazy...


Via Anna's iPhone

UK Roadtrip: Chester and Anglesey

Thought I'd better start early (if having been home for three days still qualifies as early?) with showing some holiday photos. I usually leave it pretty late and I still haven't posted all the pictures I wanted to show from the Maldives or our holiday in the US last year. Call to self for improvement!

As you may remember we decided to spend a week in the UK while we'd be there for my friend James's wedding. The wedding was held in/around Northallerton in Yorkshire, a part of the UK neither of us had never visited before, so we decided to fly in and out of Manchester and then make a "loop" north and back south from there. Our first stop was Chester, a pretty town outside Manchester (we didn't feel we had to see Manchester particularly, besides I've been there before, albeit very briefly for a Spice Girls concert...), where we stayed at a cute little B&B called Mitchells of Chester. We arrived around dinner time so after a quick check-in and inspection of our nice room...


...we walked to town (max 15 min walk through a residential area with pretty brick houses) for some sightseeing and food (Italian chain restaurant Piccolino that I can also recommend).

Chester has a number of medieval buildings, although some of them are Victorian restorations, and many remnants from the Romans who once founded the city. It also has one of best preserved city walls in the UK.


Chester has something unique for Britain apparently. The so-called "rows" consist of buildings with shops or dwellings on the lowest two storeys (hopefully illustrated by the photo below). The shops on street-level are entered directly from the street (or are even a few steps below street level) whilst the ones on the first floor are entered behind a continuous walkway.


In addition to the rows, Chester's most famous landmark is probably the Eastgate Clock, said to be the most photographed clock in the UK after Big Ben.

We had planned to visit more of Chester the next day, but thanks to that wonderful modern phenomenon that is Facebook, my friend K. (originally from South Africa but living in the UK since ten years) saw that I was in Chester (thanks to another wonderful modern toy, the iPhone, and the app Gowalla, which enables you to log where you are and link it up to FB), and quickly sent me a message saying she and her husband N. and their six-month-old daughter I. were in Wales, only about an hour's drive from Chester. I had known that were going to be in Wales and I had meant to e-mail her our intinerary but I had neither realised how close Wales was to Chester (duh! as Chester borders Wales) nor had got around to sending her our plans before we took off. K. asked "do you really want to drive all the way here, I know you have a lot of driving ahead of you?!" but how could we not go and see them when they were so close! So after breakfast we set off through the worst downpour I have experienced for years and were soon reconnected with great friends that we haven't seen for almost two years! And we also got to meet little I. for the first time! After hanging out at the house (N's parents' house in Anglesey, the north Welsh-speaking part of Wales) for a while, the rain stopped and the sun came out and we headed to the little town of Beaumaris (which I have visited before back in 1998 or 1999).

N. and I enter Beaumaris Castle

Mandatory group shot, sans Peter who had to stay behind the camera

Peter connects with I.

Beaumaris beach and pier

I'm quite proud of this "catch"! :)

Next post will be about Yorkshire!