We left Edinburgh on Saturday (May 19th) morning and took three days to get to London and catch our flight home from Gatwick airport. First stop as we crossed into England was Alnwick castle. Pronounce 'annick' by the natives, though they call the nearby river the 'Aln.' Hmmmm. It also happens to be the castle where many of the outside scenes in Harry Potter were shot. We didn't tell the kids any of this and just waited for them to recognize it. They didn't. Though to be fair it doesn't look a lot like the Hogwarts you actually see in the movie, only if you are good enough to recognize small parts of the castle. The castle walls where the broom flying lessons are held, the archway that Hermione stomps her way through and where Hagrid drags a Christmas tree, the inner yard where Harry and Ron crash land Mr Weasley's car. What we didn't expect was that the castle is actually still the residence of the Duke of Northumberland and we toured some of the rooms where the family resides when they are there. Because of course it isn't their only home! It was a little surreal after seeing all the castle ruins over the past two weeks to then walk though a currently inhabited one, complete with flat screen tv, beanbag chairs, and Coca Cola in the immense library.
From there we moved on to the ruins at Corbridge Roman Town and then to Hadrian's wall! I have wanted to see Hadrian's wall since I learned of its existence, which, sadly was when I studied Roman history as an adult with my children. We were able to walk along it for awhile, though our time was a bit limited that day, but we could also see a long stretch of it from the road as we drove. And the ruins at Corbridge were amazing. At the end of our day we were in Liverpool, clear on the other side of the island from Edinburgh and hardly a direct route to London, but Fionnula is a huge Beatles fan and so we had a mission to accomplish in Liverpool.
Sunday we really did try to go to church. It was our last Sunday of our year of travel, and we arrived at the ward building only to find it locked and deserted. Presumably it was stake conference somewhere. With no real way to find the meeting, we went ahead with what was to be our post church plans and took a self-designed and -guided, driving tour of the essential Beatles sites in Liverpool. This resulted in a series of fantastic photos of Fionnula posing in front of each of the band members' childhood homes, as well as at the Penny Lane road sign, the Strawberry Fields gate, and a statue of the whole band down by the docks. It was a lot of fun and Fionn was absolutely thrilled. We finished our day in a tiny, extremely basic, one room rental in Oxford, where Ronan and Liam slept sideways in a double bed, feet dangling off the edge, in order to get maximum bed width and avoid accidentally touching one another in their sleep (just in case there was a blanket buffer down the center though).
Monday, we ate a giant English breakfast at a cafe downtown and then explored Oxford for a few hours. We toured Christ Church college and cathedral, including a few more Harry Potter filming sites. The Divinity School at the Bodleian Library is both the hospital wing and the ballroom dance class, the entrance hall at Christ Church College is the entrance hall at Hogwarts and Hogwarts' great hall is inspired by the dining hall also at Christ Church. We finally found ourselves a candy store that sold sherbet lemons and learned that they aren't, as we had thought, exactly the same thing as lemon drops just with a different name, rather they are similar to lemon drops but with a center of tart, fizzy stuff that pours out once it has disintegrated enough in your mouth. We watched rowing teams practicing and researched how the Cambridge college system works (I think I finally have a good grip on this, its basically the same thing as the house system at Hogwarts, but on a larger scale). We also learned that its cheaper to go to Cambridge than many US schools. We finished up our explorations of Oxford by driving by a house with a giant shark diving through the roof and then headed on to our bed and breakfast near Gatwick airport. Where ate a weird dinner of leftover foods that we still carried with us and instant noodle pots we picked up at the store, turned in our rental car, and repacked and weighed everyone's luggage.
Then Tuesday we flew nine hours straight from London to Denver Colorado, where my father met our seriously late plane and where we experienced the depravity of an American public bathroom. But it was great to feel the Colorado sunshine again and to find my sweatshirt still stashed under the passenger seat in our very own, very spacious, Honda Pilot (Olaf), and to drive home to Mom's on the right hand side of the road!
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