two things to know about yorkshire: the accent is ridiculously hard to understand, and it is freezing cold and windy there 24/7. or at least it was this weekend, which made for some quite harrowing adventures.
okay, "harrowing" is a stretch but this weekend was chock-full of gothic creepiness so i'm just trying to set the mood.
our first stop was haworth, the town where the bronte sisters grew up. after a super exciting five hour bus ride, we arrived at our hostel in the little town and, i kid you not, it looked exactly like the addams family house. yeah. you can probably guess how thrilled i was to be staying there. but it was actually pretty nice inside. only marginally creepy, and much less sketchy than the hostel i stayed at in brighton last weekend.
after checking in, we all headed into town for dinner. like i said before, haworth is a little town. but when i say "little," i really mean "this town is so small, we had to call ahead and let them know we were coming so they would be prepared for the huge influx of 40 visitors." i'm serious. we had to split ourselves up into three groups for reservations at three different restaurants because there wasn't a place that could hold more than even half of us at one time. but the town was precious!
after dinner we made our way back to the hostel and since it was such a nice night, we sat outside and talked for a while. dr. moore gave us life and career advice, which was both super helpful and super confusing. long story short, she has me thinking about going into publishing again, but i'm not entirely sure that's what i want to do. but i'm not entirely sure that anything is really what i want to do so... guidance please. thanks friends.
the next morning we got up and set off for our great adventure across the moors. we were supposed to make a six mile hike to see the house that supposedly inspired emily bronte to write wuthering heights, but we didn't quite make it there. the professors, who were leading us (and were the only ones with maps), got a little confused about a mile into the hike and we got a bit off track. we found our way back to the trail pretty quickly but never reached our planned destination - but according to the professors, the house is nothing special anyway and probably doesn't actually have anything to do with wuthering heights.
the moors though... wow.
the hike was definitely my favorite part of the weekend, but it was not a perfect experience. i love cold weather right? so of course i don't bother to bring a jacket with me on a hike through the english countryside when the sun is barely out and it's hardly over 60 degrees. uh, yeah... it was chilly. and the wind up there blows with a vengeance. thank goodness my friend molly had an extra jacket with her that she let me borrow or i would have been pretty miserable.
also, i'm not exactly known for having great coordination. so that girl that slipped and nearly fell off the side of the mountain we were hiking? yeah, that was me. of course. how i was never voted "biggest klutz" in high school, i really don't know.
after our hike we had about an hour to poke around in haworth before leaving for our next yorkshire destination, so we made a quick trip to the bronte parsonage museum. the museum is inside the actual house that the bronte family lived in and is still furnished with most of their stuff. it was really cool. but very small and very crowded, so i had to get my severely claustrophobic self out of there pretty quickly. after leaving the museum, we boarded the bus again and set off for osmotherley, where we stayed for the night. osmotherley is tiny. really, really tiny. the entire town is made up of about two city blocks. only slightly exaggerating. it is an itty bitty town. so once again, we had to call ahead and prepare the town for our arrival. we split up for dinner again; i ate with about 15 others in a pub called "the golden lion." (hey adpi! there's lion stuff all over this country. you should all come here.) it was delish. after dinner, i was completely exhausted, so i pretty much went straight to bed. i'm sure i missed out on the crazy osmotherley party scene... yeah.
the next morning we got up and set straight out for whitby, the final stop on out whirlwind yorkshire tour and the setting of some major scenes in dracula. i still haven't read the book, but apparently some pretty creepy stuff happens there. guess i'll find out soon enough. whitby was the quaint, adorable seaside town i was hoping for on my trip to brighton. it was small but full of life and just so cute! i wanted to stay there forever. kind of. it was also FREEZING. and the wind was just outrageous. i know, i know, you're all reading this from texas, where it's been over 100 degrees for over 20 consecutive days, and you all hate me right now. but i know very few of you like the cold either, so give me a break. please?
whitby is known for two things: dracula and jet jewelry. jet, as i learned this weekend, is not actually a stone, but is formed when decaying wood is put under extreme pressure. interesting. anyway, they sell the stuff everywhere in whitby, so most of the girls in the program came back at the end of the day with pretty black jet rings or necklaces. the real reason we were in the town though was, of course, for its dracula connections, so we all climbed the 199 steps to st. mary's church and whitby abbey, where apparently a bunch of important stuff happens in the book.
the abbey was built in the medieval period and is now just a ruin, but it is still so beautiful. even in it's decay, it appears sturdy and commanding. you can tell it had a real presence in the town back in it's glory days.
the abbey and the church are on top of the west cliff of whitby and overlook the whole town. the view from up there was really fantastic.
in case you haven't picked up on it yet, i really love views from high places. they just take my breath away. every time.
after spending a few hours in whitby, we once again boarded the bus and headed back to oxford. i spent the entire five hours reading jane eyre. oh my goodness. this book. it is phenomenal. i literally could not put it down. i know this is probably really confusing to some of you, since you've probably heard me declare at least once since reading it for the first time in the 8th grade that "i hated it with a fiery, burning passion," or something along those lines. i really don't know what was wrong with me back then, because i am absolutely in love with this book. i finished it last night and already want to read it again. if you've never read it, please please do so asap. if you don't like it, i'll buy you ice cream. just please check it out, for me, your giant book nerd friend.
i had a really fantastic time in yorkshire. it was really different from oxford and all the other places i've visited in southern england, which was really fun to experience. if you ever get a chance to go there, do it. and bring a jacket.
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