bright eyes + blue eyes

National Traffic Report

{posted by Ellie}

I always get a little tickled when I hear national traffic reports on European radio stations. They give national traffic reports on the hour on a lot of British, German and Swiss stations. I heard a national traffic report this morning and thought, ‘Can you imagine if we did that in America?’ It’d be like hearing this on NPR: An accident has caused delays on I-55 between Cape Girardeau and St. Louis. Traffic is backed up getting onto the George Washington Bridge in the direction of New Jersey. Motorists on the 5 in San Diego can expect slow traffic due to construction.

Me too.

{posted by Ellie}

Abbie, can I copy you in trying to do a picture and a sentence? I’m not sure that I can commit to every day, 6x / week, for three months. But I’m just going to start and see how I get along.

I now live in Switzerland and have a little baby, who is delightful.

Living in a Converted Church

There's a church right next to our flat. It looks like a typical, lovely Anglican church.

 But what church has a buzzer board on the front door?

The whole church building has been converted into flats.

The church community still meets, but not in the historic sanctuary. Now worship takes place in an adjacent (less majestic) building.

The church on our street is the first time I've seen a church converted into condos. Then less than a mile up the road, I noticed that another church is in the process of being converted.

 

England definitely has an abundance of beautiful old churches and not quite enough churchgoers to to fill the pews. That's not really new news. Of course, something has to happen to the buildings when the church body can't afford the building anymore.

I've seen churches converted into bars, theatres and cultural centers. The idea of living in a converted church is a new one for me. I've got mixed feelings about it. Obviously it would be incredible if the church buildings didn't need to be sold in the first place. However, I'd rather it be used as a living space than repurposed as a bar. What do you think about the matter?

Have You Eaten Warm Today?

One of the things I like about the German language is the expression ‘Warm Essen’. Literal translation: Warm eating. If you spend time in Germany, you’ll inevitably be asked by a German if you’ve already eaten warm? What they mean is: Have you already had your big meal of the day? Some people eat their substantial (usually cooked and therefore warm, except it can also be a big salad) meal at lunch, and some people eat it in the evening. On the other meal, most Germans eat bread topped with meat or cheese. But the general idea is that you eat “warm” once a day.

That’s kind of how we do it, too, but we don’t have an expression for it. It’s very useful. If, for example, you’ve been invited to somebody’s house, they might mention that you’ll eat warm together at lunch. Then you know you don’t have to plan anything for supper that night, because you can just eat a sandwich. Try it next time you make plans to get together with friends, being very clear about the general temperature of the food you’ll enjoy together.

I haven’t been back to Germany since we came over to England last August, but I know that all over Deutschland everyone is enjoying white asparagus these days. It’s eaten (warm, of course) with cured ham and buttered new potatoes. Absolutely sublime.

Royal Escort

My mom was over to visit last week. One of the things that we did was go to the wedding of a family friend in Ireland. In fact, this time last week, we were taking up the very kind invitation of the parents of the groom to celebrate the happy couple on the eve of their marriage. We dined in a 13th century castle tower. It was every bit as amazing as it sounds.

Because Ireland is the mama and papa of low-cost airlines, we could have just flown to Dublin and back for approximately 2p each. But we wanted to take the scenic route on at least one leg of the journey. We took the train to Wales, then spent the night in Holyhead on Anglesey, where we saw a sunset that was too beautiful to even attempt to capture on a photograph. We crossed the Irish Channel by ferry the next morning.

In my opinion, being on a ferry is fun. (Note: I do, though, have strong caveats about the kind of ferry that is enjoyable.) The ferry we were on was enormous and made me wonder what being on a cruise boat is like. For the two hour crossing, you could entertain yourself by watching a movie, eating at the restaurant, sitting in the sports bar, or watching the boat’s contrails from the back deck. We chose to do the latter as we left Wales.

And then, wait! What’s that zooming over from the Welsh horizon!?

Oh my goodness! It’s Prince William’s helicopter! He is stationed on Anglesey, after all.

Doesn’t this look like the Duke of Cambridge to you?

The helicopter tracked with the boat for about ten minutes.

Then they pulled over directly on top of the ferry and maintained that position for a few minutes before peeling away to return to Anglesey. We asked at the information desk if they knew what was going on. They said that they do this about once a week as a training exercise. Whether it actually was PW or not, we – and the other passengers on that side of the boat – had a lot of fun convincing ourselves that we were being escorted by royalty.

 

Quarry Bank Mill

One thing that’s interesting about this area is the history of the Industrial Revolution. There are so many amazing, beautiful warehouses around town. They’re all converted now, it seems, but you can just imagine what bustling places those mills once were. There’s a National Trust property in Cheshire, called Quarry Bank Mill & Styles Estates, that shows what mill life was like.

We took a tour of the mill and the apprentice house. The mill owners took orphaned and vulnerable children as apprentices. “Apprentice” is apparently the Victorian-PC way to say child slave labor, by the way. But the children who worked at the mill also did get some hours of education a week.

It was a hard life for those kids, but at least they had a roof over their heads.

The mill itself was powered by a river flowing nearby.

And it’s in a beautiful setting.

Inside the mill, there’s a lot of really well-laid out and interactive information about the history of the Industrial Revolution. The historic preservation team demonstrates how all sorts of these ancient cotton processing machines work, which is really cool.

Can you tell that I like educational field trip type things, as well as being in nature and social studies, too?

Strines-Marple-Romiley

Here I am coming at you hard and fast with Northwest England walk reviews. If you ever find yourself looking for something “off the beaten path” to do in the NW, then look no further than the Strines-Marple-Romiley circuit. We found a wonderful walk guide, which relies exclusively on using public transportation to see the beautiful English countryside. This walk featured no bogs, far and wide. Just birds chirping, brooks babbling and amazing scenery. Walks like these make people become Anglophiles.

The bluebells in were in bloom. BTW: Have you seen this amazing picture of bluebells in an English forest? [This guy’s a better photographer than I am.]

In (or near) the village of Marple, we found the most adorable pub, called The Midland. This is everything that a modern British pub should be. I think the best pub I’ve ever been to. Not stodgy in the least. We sat on the terrace, listening to the bees buzz around and the River Goyt flowing below.

Making our way further on the walk, we came to the canals that run through Marple and got permission to photograph a canal boat going through a lock.

Even though I feel sort of chained to a computer most days, I am really glad that we can spend some time in God’s amazing creation – and the things, like locks, that he’s given man the abilities to create.

Bassenthwaite Bog Walk

There’s a lovely place in the Lake District called Lake Bassenthwaite.

We wanted to walk all the way around it, which seemed pretty reasonable, given that we’d found a nice path to follow.

Then the path sort of petered out, and this is what the lakeside looked like. We decided to forge ahead, though. The only other alternative was to walk on a road, and you don’t go to the Lake District to walk on roads.

You’ve read about bogs, I’m sure. Like in adventure stories, perhaps. Well, now I know why bogs feature in adventure tales – it’s because they’re very challenging to navigate. Lots of avoiding brambles, ducking through branches, and stepping carefully to see how much the ground gives way. I had a good guide.

But apparently, I wasn’t a good enough follower.

Once the chance came, we left the bog and met some other walkers coming from the opposite direction. We asked them where the path they were on led. They told us where, but then warned, ‘It’s muddy back there, though… oh, well [looking me up and down]… but that doesn’t seem to put you off too much, does it?’

Peter Rabbit

I’m low on words to share this week, but I’ve got some pretty new pictures of Northwest England in Spring.

Just to reinforce for you that it’s a good thing for me to steer clear of trying to write for the blog at the moment, here is an example of what I am sparing you. I started to try and write this post with this: In my estimation, in comparison to winter, the charm of the Northwest in the springtime is statistically significant (p < .001), with springtime being considerably more charming than winter. Oh, statistics…. I’m going to be glad when this round of essays is done.

Over the long Easter weekend, we drove up to the Lake District for a daytrip. Some family from Germany was visiting. We tried to visit Hill Top, but it was closed.

But what did I see in the car park of Hill Top’s ticket house?

Why, Peter Rabbit, of course!

 

Lamb Adoption

I’m back with more about lambing in England.

Finally, right!? I know y’all have all been waiting with bated breath for the dramatic conclusion to lambing live. Well, at least I know one person is following (who also compared Lambing Live to shark week – a very apt comparison, I must say.) Hi, Mary!

To start with, I would like to tell you a little bit about lamb adoption. Sometimes adoption is necessary because a ewe dies, and sometimes farmers go out of their way to do an adoption. Sheep only have two teats, so two lambs per ewe is really the ideal in terms of productivity. When triplets are born, it is very common that one of the triplets gets bullied out and does not get enough milk to thrive. If triplets are born, farmers will try to take the most vulnerable lamb and put it onto a sheep who only had one baby, or who had a lamb die. There are two types of adoption.

Wet Adoption

The timing has to be just right for this, and this is only possible when a lamb is stillborn. The farmer keeps the ewe pinned down so that she never discovers her biological lamb. Then they get an orphan or triplet lamb and cover it in the birthing fluids of the stillborn lamb. Once the adoptee lamb has the smell of the biological one, they’ll let the ewe up to discover the lamb.

Twinning Adoption

They do this when a ewe has already bonded with a lamb, but that lamb died. They take the skin off of the dead lamb and put it on the orphan or triplet runt lamb like a little sweater vest. They leave the ‘twin coat’ on for 24 hours. Usually this works, but this adoption strategy is a bit more risky. The sheep is more likely to reject the lamb, which entails her headbutting and not allowing the lamb to drink her milk.

Moving on from adoption, Lambing Live also taught me a lot about other aspects of sheep farming, such as:

• How to build and maintain the beautiful stone walls that are such a feature of the English countryside.

Did you know that no more stone is being quarried to make these walls? They just reassemble fallen walls with the existing stone. Each wall is built with two sides, then the space between is filled with straw and smaller rocks. Specifically shaped topstones are reserved for capping off the wall. The walls are really important during lambing season, because lambs hang out near the walls because there’s better shelter from the wind there.

 

• Every farmer has his own herding dog. Two Marsden men farm up near Kirby Stephen, and each man has his own dog, who listens out for his call.
• Wool is pretty worthless these days, but sheep still have to be shorn every year. Every year, about 66 million pounds of wool are shorn off of sheep. 70% ends up in carpets. An oil in the wool, lanolin, is extracted and sent to fish farms for feed. Throughout the years, sheep were bred to have white wool so that it can be dyed any color.
• Sheep who live up on the moors and fells are ‘hefted’ – they have an instinctual knowledge of how far they can go and still stay in their territory. This hefting instinct is passed down through the generations. Foot-and-mouth disease, when it hit in the UK a few years back, interfered with this instinct. A lot of sheep were lost up on the fells because of that.
• Before a lamb or sheep is put out in open pasture, by law they must get a microchip tag.
• Farmers that want to sell ewes or ram as breeding stock must keep a lambing book to keep track of lineage.

And finally, the sobering end to lambing week: lambs who are sold for meat get about $60 – 70 at market. That’s without the mint jelly. Happy Easter lunch…