Europe Trip: Eyam

On Day 6, we woke up in Eyam in the Peak District. We were blessed with sunny weather. We were offered full English breakfast, but had cereal and toast instead. I sure ate a lot of toast on our trip.

I went to MOPS with Mary, our hostess, right next door at the church's ministry center centre while Jeremy explored a little. MOPS was a lot of fun...it reflected Mary's personality--warm, welcoming, full of joy and laughter, and definitely not rigid or flashy. I will write about it in more detail on our FCF MOPS blog.

The backside of the Rectory, where the Montgomeries live. I'm not sure why we didn't get a picture of the more welcoming front side.

After MOPS and lunch with Mary and Andrew at Eyam's Tea House (I'm not sure there was another choice...that's how small Eyam was), Mary took me on a little tour of the area around Eyam. Our first stop was Curbar Gap...where we recreated this scene from Pride and Prejudice:





We continued our chick-flick (actually, chick-book) themed tour with a stop at Haddon Hall, which (according to an employee) has played Thornfield Hall in 4 Jane Eyre movies.



Haddon Hall wasn't bigger or fancier than any of the other castles or palaces we saw, but what I loved about it was that everything in it was authentic. Mary, my hostess who lives in a 500-year-old house herself kept admiring how old everything was, so I knew it was special.

The panel says something like, "Drede God and Honor the King"

I just couldn't help picturing Rochester's crazy wife up there!

This is broken but says 1589...it's just so old! The individual panes of glass are tilted to create prisms in the sunlight. Someone offered me a job there...because I knew how to push play on the DVD player (that was playing Jane Eyre, of course).

Back in Eyam, Andrew took Jeremy and I on a tour. Eyam is special because of its plague story. In 1665, the plague was raging in London, but it hadn't spread to the more rural areas of England. A tailor in Eyam ordered fabric from London and, it is believed, fleas came out and he died of the plague within a week. Soon, many villagers were ill, so people began to make plans to leave Eyam. In an act of self-sacrifice and surprising unity, the former rector and current rector of the church (Andrew's church) convinced the villagers to quarantine themselves in order to prevent the spread of the plague to the surrounding areas. People from outside the village brought supplies to certain drop points, and money was left in water or vinegar for payment. Many villagers died, some cottages still have signs in front of them listing how many family members died...one family burying 6 out of 8 of its members, a family of 9 in which all members died. But, the plague did not spread outside the village's boundaries, and the church today is a testimony to the sacrifice of one man's life for another.

This is an 8th-century Saxon cross. Good thing we watched "King Arthur" before we came so I could have an idea who the Saxons were. Accurate, I'm sure.

There was a stained glass window in the church depicting the plague. It showed the tailor getting the fabric, then dying, the leaders meeting to decide what the town should do, and a girl and boy who were courting--she was from Eyam and he was from another village so they are depicted standing across a stream from each other...she died and he did not.

Andrew took Jeremy and I through a partition and into a back area inside the church to go up to the bell tower and roof. We left an old lady tourist standing in the sanctuary clutching her purse and scratching her head, wondering how to sign up for THAT tour.

Jeremy ringing the bells. I guess that's how big he smiles in the dark, because he doesn't usually do that in the light. I should catch him with the flash more often.

We spent such wonderful time with Mary and Andrew (and Harriet, who is 14)...such warm conversation about so many different topics and a comfortable-ness that was such a nice surprise. (I hope they felt the same about us...they're probably reading this :))

Not a great picture, but trying to capture the memory of our fellowship with Mary and Andrew.

The warm glow of these candles represents how I felt at their house :)

After departing from the Montgomeries, we headed north to Durham. It was rainy.

We bought pastries at a bakery and ate them in the rain. I had something called a Flapjack. Not what you would think, but a delicious oat bar dipped in chocolate.

A bridge. In the rain.

Durham Cathedral...you've got it...in the rain.

We went to Evensong service at this cathedral. It was an interesting experience. The Hunchback of Durham looking very regal in his robes and carrying his sceptor (what for? Jeremy asks) with his three teeth, solemnly invited us to join the others in the quire (the area in the center of the cathedral where the nobility or monks or somebody used to sit). It was sort of cartoon-y and haunted house-y at the same time. Evensong had a worshipfulness about it at times, but at other times, it seemed a mockery. I thought it was strange to say "God save the queen" in church. One of us was definitely being checked out and it wasn't me. I was mostly concerned with not having a coughing fit in a huge echoey cathedral.

In medieval times, if someone committed a crime, they could come to the church and knock on the door with this knocker and they were given shelter and had 37 days to get their business together...to make restitution or to flee.

Bridge. Rain.

Double rainbow! What does it MEAN???

After Evensong, we headed on to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and got a room at a reasonable but slightly strange hotel. We asked the friendly but eccentric girl at the front desk for a recommendation for a nice place to eat dinner, but when she enthusiastically suggested the Chinese Buffet at the mall ("It's lovely. It's really very lovely"), we decided to find something on our own. We ended up at a cool little pub eating pizza and listening to the coolest live band called "The Moochers" playing covers of The Specials and Johnny Cash.

Next Stop: British Heritage Blitz, Edinburgh (on a lovely Saturday night)