England - Honister Slate Mine, Eagle Sculpture

England - Honister Slate Mine, Globe Sculpture

This place was neat because of the sculptures everywhere - not just the lone and double figures featured in the last couple of posts, but everywhere you looked there was a creation made from what they took out of the mountain.  There were large ones and small ones, this being one of their bigger examples.

England - Honister Slate Mine, Double Figure with Shed / Lost on Horseback

This shot was taken the second time we went to the mine, when it was less rainy and foggy.  Since Andrew and I had more time just to bum around the place I took the opportunity to take a short walk down the mountain road, where this was captured.

One of those funny moments in life happened also, as I encountered an older English gentleman, also a tourist, who was walking down the same road looking for his wife after having lost her; she vanished while their group was in the gift shop.  He asked me if I saw a lady that looked like this and was wearing that, but I could be of no help.  He was stressed because the bus was about to leave, but chuckling at the same time because, he said, it happened all the time, and I couldn't help but laugh a little with him (not that it ever happens to me).

I got lost once, sort of, on the back of a horse.  I was five or six years old, and the family decided to rent horses for a trail ride in Oklahoma, next to Lake Texoma where we vacationed every year for a while.  Knowing that I was afraid of the big animals they arranged for me to be on the kindest, most gentle horse, whose name was Bill.  I remember clearly starting down the trail, me behind the parents and my two older brothers.

Well, we weren't even gone fifteen minutes before Bill made a decision to go back home.  True to his nature, he very gently and slowly turned around, not giving a moment's thought of the nervous kid on top of him.  And he remained very gentle through the whole trip back, going against the current of the rest of the group, even after I panicked and started screaming and crying and kicking for him to turn around and rejoin the group.  Nope, in spite of all that we loped along and made our way clear back to the corral, but not before stopping once to munch on a snack by the side of the trail.  And for a while, since we were going in the opposite direction of the others, it was just Bill and me, and mountain lions and bears and all sorts of dangerous animals in the wilderness.  I was never so glad to see the corral where we'd started from, and where Bill dutifully stopped so the handler could finally get me off of his back.

I got lost another time, in an airplane, when I was much older, but that's for another day...

England - Honister Slate Mine, Double Figure Fog Shot

At the other side of the ravine was this sculpture, supposedly of adult and child.  Cropped it down to just the fog shot to create the preliminary card below:

England - Honister Slate Mine, Fog Shot with Silhouette

...and to double our fun, let's throw in a silhouette!  An all-time favorite from the trip.

England - Honister Slate Mine, Quintessential Fog Shot

A quintessential fog shot of an isolated figure...my kind of pic.

England - Honister Slate Mine, Lone Figure

As mentioned yesterday, the first day we were there provided perfect opportunities for some great fog shots.  Don't know whether this figure was supposed to represent a person or what, but found it to be intriguing due to its form and isolation.

England - Honister Slate Mine, Front Sign

While on our initial tour of the area we stopped by this place, the Honister Slate Mine.  It was foggy and wet that day, which yielded some great shots, but we vowed to come back and explore some more hoping that the weather would be better.

And it was.  A few days later, after my driving confidence improved, we returned and I was able to duplicated many pics, this time without the fog.  Before it was all said and done, between the two trips there, this place ended up being my second-favorite next to the Abbey shoot.

England - Pencil Museum in Keswick, Exit Display / Sandwich Shop Conversation (sort of)

With this shot we'll end this series on the pencil museum.  Afterwards Andrew and I lunched with a sandwich in a little café they had next to the gift shop.  It was here that I learned something about the British character.  Upon seeing the Bigger Cahoona parked on the table as we were eating, a kindly older gentleman with his wife was passing by and asked what kind it was.  After telling him, he made a remark about how nice it was, etc.  I, being a clueless American, took this as a sign that he wanted to have a conversation about photography.  Didn't take me long to observe that that wasn't the case at all, and that he probably couldn't care less about anything beyond a direct answer to his question.  Andrew observed the same thing last time he was in the UK - the beginning of a conversation initiated by a stranger doesn't mean that it needs to lead to a real conversation at all...

Next stop - a slate mine!

England - Pencil Museum in Keswick, Graphite Carvings

I shot this one and got the intended result, using bokeh for effect while focusing on just one in the foreground.  Little did I know at the time that each of these guys is intricately carved with a UK landmark!  Wish I'd caught on to this while there...

England - Pencil Museum in Keswick, Fit for a Queen

Queen Elizabeth made a fiftieth-anniversary visit to the factory when they gave her the twin to this pencil; according to the display plaque they only made two of these.

England - Pencil Museum in Keswick, Pencil Display

England - Pencil Museum in Keswick, Luxury Set

Always in love with color, stooping down to get just the right angle on this one was a no-brainer shot to try for.  It was also a no-knee-er, as getting down and staying at the right level involved sacrifices.

Right side of set below, and whole enchilada below-below:

England - Pencil Museum in Keswick, Pencil Pattern

They had several old pencil-making machines on display in the main area, set up as if they were in the middle of a run.  This shot was cropped in to reveal the pattern made by the stack of unfinished pencils in one of those machines.  Black and white of same below:

England - Pencil Museum in Keswick, The Test

After we paid the entrance fee the girl behind the counter gave us each a pencil as our ticket.  But that wasn't all.  She next gave us a clipboard with a test, to be marked by our ticket as we read through the exhibits.  The prize was a special pencil set if you got a 100.  I was incredulous, but everyone took it quite seriously and no one that I saw made fun of or mocked it, even the kids that were there (as they probably would have in the U.S.).  Andrew dutifully took a clipboard but I declined, preferring to busy my hands with the Bigger Cahoona.

Pictured above is an older couple engaged in marking their sheets, as is Andrew below (he got the prize):

England - Pencil Museum in Keswick, Entrance

While on the tour that inaugurated our journey the bus passed through Keswick, where our guide pointed out a pencil museum.  We didn't stop there on that day, but Andrew and I thought, Well, they have a museum about pencils of all things, so we gotta go to the pencil museum.

Most would think a museum that focuses solely on such a mundane item as a pencil would be blasé, if not funny, but we found it to be interesting, and taken very seriously by the Brits that worked there and the Brits that were there visiting as tourists.  And who's ever been to a pencil museum?  Andrew and I can now say that we have...

Picture of him opening the pencil van in a very manly fashion:

England - Grasmere Phone Booth

Now that nobody uses a phone booth, every wonder what they did with those big red boxes in England?  An awesome assignment of purpose while preserving these historical emblems...

So this concludes the Grasmere series.  There is something else worth sharing about this little town, though the images captured of it weren't blogworthy, and that is the gingerbread.  The wife and I were watching The Great British Baking Show on Netflix and one of the episodes featured the world-famous gingerbread of Grasmere.  We were going to be here anyway so it was a no-brainer to give it a shot.  Andrew and I got in line on the day of the tour and bought some for everyone back home.  I honestly didn't think it was very good, but since it's one-of-a-kind and so world famous felt it worthy of the time and expense to bring some back home.  Turns out no one else thought it was very special either, but we all can say we've tried something uniquely English.

England - Hay, but Not Stacked, in Grasmere

You don't have to go far outside of Houston to see big round bales of hay out in the fields, harvested in the fall.  Because of this, fall is one of my favorite times of the year, as the smell of the newly-mown grass wafts through the air, especially in the morning before there's much wind.  One of my favorite memories of Nacogdoches is walking outside of my little country cottage on a fall morning to be greeting by this fragrance, enhanced by the wet still air.

So naturally I was curious to see these things in England, bales shrouded entirely in black plastic.  Since it's fairly humid there, wondered if it doesn't promote the growth of mold, etc.

England - A Very Nice House in Grasmere

Ahh, this is it...the perfect English house in the countryside.  Six fireplaces no less, and satellite TV.

England - Grasmere Rooflines #2

England - Grasmere Rooflines #1

England - Nestled House in Grasmere

England - A Quaint Little Restaurant and Shop in Grasmere

England - A Couple of Quaint Shops in Grasmere

Guess this is the supermarket in town, with a fellow emerging after a few minutes of shopping.

It's amazing that a town of this size would support a store centered on jigsaw puzzles, but here it is (below).  Thought of my grandmother, who, though she lived her entire life in the U.S. was about as English as you can get, complete with a large rose garden in her backyard and always a jigsaw in progress on a card table.

England - A Couple of Quaint Streets in Grasmere

Very typical of the little towns that we drove through in the rural north of England, hugging the left of the road while trying not to smack into a house or a shop.

 

England - Grasmere, Crossed-Log Grave Marker

One last graveyard shot before we go into town a bit...

England - Grasmere, Wordsworth's Grave

Not only was William Wordsworth buried here, but his family as well.  Our hero is to the left of the middle bunch below:

England - Grasmere, Wordsworth's Memorial

The words here make it seem as though William Wordsworth was an introvert (as am I).

Wordsworth described Grasmere as "The fairest place on Earth", and it's easy to see why.

England - Grasmere, Daffodil Garden Gate

You would think that beyond this door are daffodils and other flowers, butterflies, and happy creatures frolicking about.  And there are.  But the walkway you see leads behind a church, where there is a graveyard holding the remains of none other than William Wordsworth.  Happy gardens and graveyards...two of my favorite things to shoot!

And this is a place where one got away.  Andrew and I were walking along this pathway when I spied a spectacularly beautiful butterfly resting on a bed of white blooms, which made the awesome colors stand out even more.  Would have been my best butterfly shot ever, but I was too slow to think!  By the time I realized the value of what lay before us it was spooked by our presence and flitted away...

England - Grasmere, Wooden Buck

This guy greeted us as soon as we got off the bus.  Think the antlers are real, but the buck and his companions are, amazingly, carved out of a single tree, the stump of which is still in place:

England - Grasmere, Fall Colors / The Bush Family

For this trip we departed on August 31st and returned to Houston on September 8th.  Though in Houston the fall was still months away, we were treated to an early one here in the Lake District National Park.

This is in the town of Grasmere, one of the many that we visited on our first day's tour and one of the places that Andrew and I chose to revisit on our own.  Thus, some of the posts in this series were captured on the tour and others several days later when we returned.  A very small, quaint little place that, it turns out, has a bit of history.

Speaking of history, woke up this morning with the news that President Bush - "Bush 41", as they say - has died, aged 94.  Surely a great man and dedicated public servant, but even more than his presidency I respected him for two things: his role as vice president under Ronald Reagan, arguably the greatest president to serve in my lifetime, and for the great family that he raised.

I, like all Americans, had learned about his love for wife and family.  Of course I've never really interacted with any of them, though I do live in Houston, but his son Neil gave a talk to a small group of us one time about three years ago.  It was at the Houston Christian High School, with which the Bush family is heavily involved.  Chenjean and I did some volunteer work out of there one summer by hosting two Chinese students for an extended weekend.  At the conclusion of their time with us there was a gathering of all of us - maybe 20 or 25 host families - at the school, which included a meal and "graduation" ceremony of sorts.  Neil Bush spent the entire time as part of the group, eating with us and then serving as keynote speaker at the ceremony.  He was introduced as a businessman and, being a Bush, represented the family as benefactors of the school and exchange program.  Of course we were all eager to hear about his experiences as both son and brother to U.S. presidents.

I never got the nerve to approach him to introduce myself and Chenjean, but am very sensitive to a person's vibe, and generally a good judge of character, and felt the man's positivity and dedication to service any time he got near.  Then when he spoke it really came out...an energy and drive that was sincere and not at all dependent on his incredible pedigree.  He did tell some stories, mostly about his dad, that you wouldn't hear anywhere else, which was interesting.  But what struck me most was when a picture of George Sr flashed up on the screen behind him:  the president had very recently cracked a neck bone at their summer place in Maine, and gave the thumbs up for the press when he recovered well enough to be wheeled out of the hospital.  When his son Neil turned and looked at the picture behind him something happened that took us all by surprise.  His voice cracked, his lip started to quiver, and he could not speak for a full ten seconds.  Tears began to well up in his eyes, and he glanced apologetically at us as he gathered the composure that would allow him to continue with his talk.  During that time you could have heard a pin drop, and from that moment I did not see the son of a president, or the brother of a president, or even a prominent businessman, but a man who loved his father very much and was beyond words with thankfulness that he was still with us.  I am tearing up now just writing about it.

He did manage to finish the talk, and stayed to interact with the exchange students, the host families, and anyone that wanted a picture.  As it so happens, we left at just about the same time, Neil Bush walking by himself about 20 feet in front of us, cheerfully whistling a tune on his way out.  As he drove past us in the parking lot, with the passenger side window open to let out the summertime heat, I gave him a thumbs up and said "Thank you!".  To my surprise he heard me, gave a thumbs-up back and loudly replied, "No, thank you!"  As I watched him pull onto the feeder road of Beltway 8 and go his way, I thought about how those other drivers have no idea who is driving in their midst.  But I did.  I knew that their roadway neighbor is a son who loves his papa very, very much.