Displaying items by tag: travel england

As one of the millions of people who have loved all of the books and television serials of James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small, All Things Bright and Beautiful and All Things Wise and Wonderful, I have been entranced by the Yorkshire Dales.  After recently visiting London, my husband and I took the M1 north to see for myself the place that I had been so inexorably drawn to.

Hiking toward the summit of Pen Y Fan, third tallest peak in Wales, the burden of keeping up with long-legged leaders forced my head down as I gasped for air. It wasn’t until I got to the summit that I finally looked around. That’s when it happened – I became captivated by the net-like pattern across the valley slopes. Also likened to spider webs or embroidery work sewn into the hills, the pattern is formed by hedgerows – the patchwork quilt of ancient people of the Bronze Age that has survived Norman occupation and the more recent accommodation of modern farm equipment.

I’ve been to England twice before, to the beautiful Georgian city of Bath in particular, because as a Jane Austen aficionado, a “Jane-ite,” if you will, that’s what we do. We follow in her footsteps, we look for the Jane connection, and we read each of her six novels (and the juvenilia, the marginalia, and the letters) as if they were travelogues.