The drive to Scotland

Saturday September 15, a bright, clear, windy, and cool morning, we left our little cottage to drive to Scotland.  We chose to drive east through the Dales, which is also hilly country, but more rolling and less craggy than the Lakes.

Durham Catherdral

It is very much sheep country, with fewer trees as we headed east.  We were on a reasonably major road, so it felt wide enough not to panic every time a car or truck approached.  Our first goal was the town of Durham, which used to be a major power center in the north of England, but now is mostly a university town.  It was reasonably easy to drive into the town center and park.  The dominating feature is the Cathedral, which is huge and magnificent.  From early on, the bishops were the actual rulers of the area, not any earl or duke, and the bishop was known as the Prince Bishop. 

Durham Castle Tower

It was only a couple of hundred years ago that the crown officially regained administration over Durham.  St. Cuthbert is the patron saint buried in the Cathedral.  He brought Christianity to the North.  He is often pictured holding a king’s head because King Oswald’s head is also buried in the tomb.  I don’t know why.  The Venerable Bede, the 8^th Century chronicler of the early English church, is also buried there. 

Durham market square

The town also has a castle but there was a special event happening and we weren’t allowed in.  We were amazed to discover a La Tasca tapas restaurant to eat lunch in.  La Tasca is one of our favorite Rockville eateries.  We learned that La Tasca is a UK chain with over 50 locations here and fewer than 10 is the US.  We also were amused to come upon the market square which was quite busy on a Saturday with stalls and amusements.  A modern adaptation of a medieval activity.

Penshaw Monument 1

Our next stop was about 20 miles away to the Earl of Durham Memorial, more commonly known as the Penshaw monument.  High on a hill is a reproduction of the Temple of Hephaestus from Athens.  (It has sometimes been called the Theseus Temple, but that was an erroneous attribution.)  The temple in Athens is one of the best preserved, so it has been copied in many places.  We have a print at home of the reproduced Temple in Vienna, a lithograph created by August Julius Wetteroth in the 1850s. 

Penshaw Monument 2

He is a distant cousin of Ron.  We will also see a version of the temple in Edinburgh.  There is one in Dayton OH and Montpelier VT.

Now we continued up the A1 along the coast to our destination in North Berwick.  Along the way we could see the ruined monastery at Lindisfarne, where St. Cuthbert was prior and bishop.  It is a dramatic setting, but it was too late to drive over to see it.  Besides it is one of those places with a causeway to the island which is covered at high tide.

View from monument

We arrived at North Berwick (pronounced, we finally discovered, as berrick) about 5 o’clock, collected our key, found our apartment, and moved in, only to discover that the smoke detector was beeping every 30 seconds.  We walked back to the shop where we had collected the key and called the emergency number.  A human being answered and said they would fix the problem.  Then we walked on to the train station to check the schedule for Sunday because we wanted to go into Edinburgh for Meeting for Worship.  We found that the first train was at 12:30 while meeting was at 10:30.  Not auspicious beginnings!  However, when we got back to the apartment, the maintenance man was there and he replaced the alarm battery and turned on the heat and hot water.  So things began to look up.  We also figured this gave us an excuse to go out to dinner at the Indian restaurant we had passed on the High Street.

Earl of Durham plaque