It's only a pencil

 

On our way home to Gloucestershire from a family visit in Dorset this summer, my brother in law surprised me with a turn off the A-road near Salisbury, Wiltshire. What's he up to? The track climbed and turned until we entered a parking area at the top of the world, overlooking the chalk downland called the Salisbury Plain. 

We were at Old Sarum, an iron-age hill fort, a man-made defensive mound dating to 400 BC (the age of some of the Greek sites I visited shortly afterwards.)

Seeing a good location, the Romans, Saxons and Normans and the Plantagenets in their turn used and developed the strategic hill. The weight of history, indeed. Today English Heritage protects, manages and interprets the site. 

As we alighted from the car I scanned with sky with excitement. As if the prospect of a history visit wasn't enough, nature was brewing up a dramatic storm.  We crossed a wooded bridge over the imposing mote, climbing up to the ravaged stone walls. Goosebumps - electricity in the air, a history 'first' .

We entered the gate, paid admission at a tiny office and shop, and entered the almost deserted courtyard of the storied castle. 

Within five minutes thunder rumbled, the wind began to pick up and I could feel electricity in the air. A flash and another, and rain began to splatter the hard stones. My companion continued to read information panels but I headed downhill to the tiny building. Within seconds a dramatic storm hit, a hurricane wannabe - torrents of rain, wind blasting it sideways, a disconcerting light and sound show. 

To distract ourselves we gave attention to the warm dry gift shop - well-deserved attention, as it turned out. Some fine craft, intelligent gift items, a good bookshop with several volumes on Eleanor of Aquitaine, as an example. A final rack with school trip bits - some handsome frdige magnets, decals and the like. A container of pencils decorated in an appealing Celtic design drew my attention and I left with a fistful. 

I have given a few pencils away - but several I keep in the kitchen by my notepad, and there is something about the sinuous curves of ancient Celtic artwork that draws me back to this place and that day.

The storm lasted until I'd made my choice of Eleanor of Aquitaine book. The sun came out, and we  resumed our exploration of the site. Did that all happen? The pencils take me there.

English Heritage has produced this fine short video which saves me a lot of writing, and you a bunch of reading, and thanks to a pesky drone, provides views I can't even....

Each time I travel I come come away with homework. I have a pile of fine books collected this year waiting for the winter hiatus - on Croatia, English history and Greek art. Like this visit to Old Sarum, every visit to dear England reveals yet more history I am wobbly at. At some point I'll share my English Civil War discoveries, and hikes with my English 'brother'. A long winter might not be all bad.

A Little Pot

 I don't buy souvenirs. I am decidedly not a shopper. Photos and memories, and some wonderful new friendships are more than enough keepers from any travel. And stories.

With the occasional exception. And that means "something for the house" as mom used to say. I love little bowls and pitchers, so my quick browses through Italian ceramic shops have always yielded a brightly handpainted, useful little container of some sort.

 Then I fell  under the spell of Mostar. In another post I mentioned falling in   love with the area of Bosnia and Herzegovina that we passed   through on our way to the city.

 Once we parked in the Catholic Croat west section of the ancient   city - in the pouring rain - and crossed over the Neretva River to   the predominately Bosniak Muslim east side I was captivated.   We  shuffled on the slippery marble paving stones of the historic Old  Bridge, the Stari Most - and into history. Although our guides   seldom offered much detail on the tragic events of the 'homeland   war' of 1992-1995, I have read that the ethnically rooted war has   left deep scars, about which I am unqualified to comment.

The 'iconic' (for surely this somewhat overused word can be justified here) Mostar bridge has seen a lot of history, and some of it has been difficult. It was first built in the mid-1500s, commissioned by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent during the Ottoman era, Mostar developing into an Ottoman frontier town during that empire's inexorable move north and westward.  

looking Eastward

The bridge captured world attention, standing amidst the devastation of the 1990s war, until tragically in 1993 it was destroyed. Stari Most was faithfully reconstructed and re-opened in 2004, using as much of the original material as possible.

I have read that most of Old Mostar was badly damaged or destroyed during the war.  The Old Town area was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005 after contributions from the committee enabled restoration or rebuilding of many of the historic structures. The area and the bridge are symbols of reconciliation. 

This YouTube video takes you along the Old Town main pedestrian street, which our guide called Coppersmiths' Street, ending on the approach to the bridge, heading back west.  You can see the marble pavingstones, the ancient shop fronts, the occasional look over the river. But, sadly, you can also see the reality of life in Old Mostar - tourists.

Which is where I come in. Fascinated by a visit to a simple mosque, an historic Turkish home, and a wander through exotic  squares and lanes, I was captivated by the work displayed along the street. There were numerous studios featuring copperwork classes, and showing traditional and modern forms of copper art, largely relief work. 

My heart fell for a tiny turned and incised copper and enamel-work lidded container, reminiscent of the traditional copper Turkish coffee sets I saw along the street.  It was light as a feather, almost within my budget, and wanted to come home with me. It sits on my window ledge, and every day reminds me of this fascinating and heart-breaking place. 

Rhapsody in Blue and White

 It's an absolute cliche, the smooth whitewashed walls of  Mykonos houses, the sparkling blue of the Aegean. It's marketable - on sale at a souvenir shop near you. 

Yet the colour of that place stimulates the senses right now in a way my favourite deep cedar forest cannot. And it definitely calls me on this crazy blustery rainy November day, prevailing colour - grey. So, here's some blue and white. 

Suspended in Air

 Some things defy description. And yet I'm about to try.

I recall a fascinating big old book in my high school library, filled with blue grey illustrations from old paintings or lithographs of the wonders of the ancient world.

 I have looked for this book often on Abe and Thrift booksellers, hoping to experience again the sheer wonder that I felt while browsing its pages, escaping the fractious high school realities just beyond Mrs. Rabnett's library doors. The hanging gardens of Babylon were in those pages, the Pyramids of Egypt, and I expect, the monasteries of Meteora.

A short month or so ago I visited the countryside of eroded sandstone conglomerate pinnacles above Kalambaka in Thessaly, northwestern Greece. Now, that alone would have broken my amateur geologist's heart. The landscape is formed of an ancient seabed, shrugged upward into a high plateau by the uneasy earth, then eroded along vertical fault lines by water and wind - a process covering sixty million years or so. This is a place to stop, to contemplate eternity and one's small moment in it. 

early Meteora cave retreats

This timeless place drew contemplatives to it over centuries. The (relatively) easy to work stone led 5th century monks fleeing the conquering Ottoman's persecution to scale the stone walls (we witnessed modern-day rock climbers, much better equipped, on the rock face) and live hermit lives in caves. In 1340, so the accounts go, a monk started building the first of what eventually became 24 monasteries atop the pinnacles. He named the place Meteora, "suspended in air", closer to God I suppose.

There's so much information online, including video tours - quality uneven. This one is short and close-captioned, sparing wind noise and tourist chatter. 

This post is struggling because I'm trying to share facts - history, geology, Eastern Orthodox spirituality and religious art - magnificent fresco, mosaic, gold-glittering icons. Some of the riches are on display in the basement museum. Of course, the church was off-limits to photos. 

But what I want to tell you about is awe. The utterly transcendent, strange, numinous beauty of the place. And maybe, for this post at least, all I can do is just this, post these glimpses in no particular order, and leave you here:

open to visitors on selected days

195 steps - modest dress code

until the 1920s steps everything and everyone
 was brought up by rope, basket, ladder, trust

museum in former refectory

Jiggety-Jog

 

A very short week ago .... I am waiting for the sun to rise over the Aegean from my hotel balcony on Mykonos.

And a day later, the emerging sun is softening the sky east of my little deck at home, Dad's little maple with its Oh Canada pennant flying. And I contemplate (because I am too slowed down to do much else) the marvel of travel

Some thoughts on alighting, after two weeks and a lot of ancient ground covered in Greece. Full disclosure: this solo traveller was in the delightful company of three fellow traveller/friends first encountered in Italy in 2023, when this all began. I even had a most copacetic room-mate, whose photo I have promised not to share, although she features often in our various site visits, wanderings, shenanigans and general lying about. 

So, in no particular order, and without apologies despite feeling very rusty at this writing thing...

Home is the same. It is we who change with travel. 

We oughtn't to complain about the discomforts and inconveniences of flying. Instead, why not contemplate the sheer fact that we can DO it? Just ask Icarus - it was once just a dream.

Solitude that first morning was a gift, after two days of teeming airports, tourist crowds and the insufferable drone of  giant aircraft engines.

The world is  pretty much the same where ever we go - and I don't mean because I saw  an Ikea in Athens (looks great in Greek) and  a Tim Hortons in Birmingham.  

And my little condo home is feeling really good...for now. Time to unpack all I have seen and done and felt this lovely long spring, summer and fall of travel. Bear with me.

My Summer Vacation

 "My summer vacation." Remember the moment the teacher presented that writing prompt on the first day back at school in September? No? Me neither. We were farm kids. She knew not to ask. Our families didn't vacation. Vacation was a self-starting, free-ranging adventure across acres of fields, forest and bayshore. 

Pitts Landing, Madoc

 I'm taking a break from foreign travel posts today - I   have a dozen Croatia stories in draft form - to savour   a week I've recently enjoyed in a nostalgic summer   cabin in the Madawaska Valley, which began life at a   cottage resort operating from the 1930s to 2017 -   evolving all the while as guests' tastes and   expectations changed over the decades.

My hosts told stories of the way it used to be, tiny guest sleeping cabins, a main building offering showers and three hearty linen service meals a day prepared by local women, lazy days on the long lawn stretching down to the sand beach on a warm shallow lake.  A community, a summer family, to which people would return year after year. Simpler times, we're fond of saying, but it's true. A summer colony.

My cottage for the week was one of the original sleeping cabins, extended and modernized into a delightful small home from home by my hosts.

Do their stories bring back the coming of age movie Dirty Dancing, wholesome chummy Kellerman's Resort and the 'too old for this' daughter? In case you're nostalgic, here's the Kellerman's anthem from the film, thanks to YouTube. (Incidentally, Kellerman's is still operating!)

The Madawaska visit, and my hosts Janet and Donald's stories resonated for me, releasing a flood of summer memories.

Lakelands - courtesy PEC Archives

My visit took me back to summer jobs ar two family resorts in Prince Edward County. One, called Lakeland Lodge is now only a picnic spot in Sandbanks Provincial Park. There are panels with photos of 'the way it used to be.'  I remember the main lodge, a dining room, not fancy, but still shining dark floors, white tablecloths and silverware, curtains blowing in the breeze off the lake. I got only brief glimpses; I was kitchen staff. I remember the cook, an impressive woman, who made the most delicious chocolate sauce, a rare treat. In lodges like these, kitchen staff were often farmers' wives getting paid for work they 'trained for' cooking gigantic meals for itinerant farm help, the celebrated 'threshers'. Indeed, the owners were farm people too. Here's a post I wrote about Lakelands on my now retired blog AncestralRoofs and here's an account with photos.

2012 - the old restaurant, dance hall already demolished 

  My next summer job, at Lake on the Mountain   Resort, had tiny cabins on the lake, a dining hall, and   lots of history, including an unfortunate racially   motivated bother on the occasion of a visiting dance   band in the 40s or 50s. By my time the dance hall   had evolved into a cafe with soda fountain, a la carte   fare and a juke box with dance floor. But still, we   had a farm wife cook - and a good one too. By that   time I had graduated to harried waitress. And now   LOM has become a 'destination.' 

  I researched and wrote a story on summer lodges in Hastings County for the vanished magazine Country  Roads, July 2016. Thank you Nancy Hopkins, it was a joy to work for you. I met Grant and Gayle who ran a family style tourist lodge, Pitts Landing near Madoc. The summer colony had evolved from a farmhouse offering accommodation to visiting fishermen into providing small cabins which became privately owned family cottages, second and third generation family returning to spend their summers at the lake. Memories upon memories. 

(If you follow the Country Roads link, and read to the end of the article you'll find the Pitt/Ketcheson cottage story.)  Gayle has given me permission to share these photos of the property.  

I've always been fascinated by the early days of summer holidays, the late 1800s - when folks travelled long distances (with trunks!) by train, excursion steamer and canoe or wagon to summer in Muskoka, Algonquin Park and idyllic spots like Bon Echo Lodge on Mazinaw Lake. That provincial park does a fine job of interpreting the era in their museum and on panels around the property. 

Many years ago, Prince Edward County lost an historic lodge of its ilk, Lakeshore Lodge (link takes you to my AncestralRoofs blog story.)  I've time travelled to cottage resorts at  Twelve O'Clock Point, Presqui'le point, Crowe and  Moira Lakes and so many more again this week, thanks to my little cottage holiday.

So, that's the way my mind worked as I sat in the yellow Muskoka chairs overlooking Lake Kamaniskeg last week. Find the 'Lakeside Cottage Getaway' on AirBnB. I know, tourist guilt. But no local accommodation was harmed in the creation of this retreat.