THURSDAY-Edinburgh - Carlton Hill

I was so taken with the site of Carlton Hill from our bus tour, we hopped off as soon as we could and grabbed a taxi.

"Take us up to Edinburgh Castle please!" I told the driver.

"What, over there?" he pointed in the opposite direction to what I now realized was indeed a very close-by Edinburgh Castle. I'd seen it several times from locations near our hotel, but having seen Carlton Hill, the famous Edinburgh Castle looked... drab. Dull.

"Ok," I said, "well, that place over there."

"What, Carlton Hill?"

"Is that what it is?"

"Yes," he said.

"That's where we want to go!" and we tore off. After a short hike up lots of steps, we mounted the hill.




Carlton Hill holds the high ground in Edinburgh with commanding views of the city and beautiful monuments. And almost no one was up there with us. We wandered around with about a dozen other people looking at a collection of monuments and buildings on the hilltop. It was beautiful.




No, we never did visit Edinburgh Castle. It just seemed anti-climactic to us after seeing Carlton Hill.

WEDNESDAY-Edinburgh - Royal Mile

It's very very very touristy here and very very very historical too. High Street and The Royal Mile are synonymous, by the way.

My favorite feature of High Street? The closes! Pronounced "KLOHS" not "KLOHZ".




Closes are narrow passages that pretty much only one person can fit through, like an outdoor hallway. They're dark, and even in the middle of the day a little creepy. Some are a city block long, some shorter, some longer. I just love them!




I was very happy to find James' Court Close, a close that opens into a lovely little residential courtyard called James' Court!

WEDNESDAY-Edinburgh - The Haunted Vaults of South Bridge

After a relaxing morning of breakfast and a massage, we headed for High Street, the Royal Mile, in Edinburgh. Ok... you're need some background to get the context for our tour.


The dark, dirty, cramped city of 1600s Edinburgh wasn't cool enough for the nobles and royalty. They decided to build a whole new Edinburgh right next to it in a fancy Georgian style (we call it Roman revival).

There was still a really cool castle, Edinburgh Castle, on a great craggy hill the old side. The nobles wanted a nice road to go up to it. They finished construction of the Royal Mile (High Street) in 1788 by building it right on top of some of the old Edinburgh.

To support this, they used not only some of the old city, but built 19 major vaulted chambers, some atop others. These vaults were originally intended for storage for businesses above; High Street was the first purpose-built shopping street in Edinburgh.

But the vaults tended to be pretty leaky and wet; not a great place to store stuff. So instead, rich Scotsmen used the vaults for whoring, gambling, drinking, and all kinds of naughty stuff. This brought some legitimate businesses like cobblers who set up shop in the vaults, but mostly a lot of criminals. It was a pretty nasty, vicious, and dangerous place.

In addition, the King decreed that poverty was against the law, so you could be sent to prison or even killed for being destitute. The poor of Edinburgh moved underground into the vaults.

A little economics to set the scene: a good candle at the time was about $20 in today's money. If you had that kind of money, you could get a room somewhere, no matter how nasty, above ground.

Yup, you see where I'm going; the poor living in the vaults had no light. They lived in complete darkness, often starving, searching the damp vaults for scraps of food someone might have dropped, some wine spilled, anything they could get. You can guess where everyone went to the bathroom as well. Not a great place to raise the kids.

By the end of the 1800s the vaults were sealed up 'for good' to end the horror down below. In the 90s the vaults were reopened and offered a treasure trove of artifacts from the time. They also created a great tourist attraction for Edinburgh -- a city regarded by paranormal researchers as the single-most haunted city in all the world.

Whew! There's your background!



We got a haunted tour of the vaults, meeting our guide (Liz) at the St. Giles Cathedral on High Street (Royal Mile). Liz was a hoot and knew how to tell a ghost story. She started out by picking two fellas from the crowd to dramatize how people were whipped and tortured for public viewing at this location. Enjoy some of this on video by clicking here.

Needless to say, I couldn't take a pic in the darkness of the vaults. Despite little LED lights set in the floor and candles posted here and there, it was just too dark and flash was not permitted because it would blind all of us if we did. Liz even led us around with only a candle. I was pretty impressed with the commitment to dark and danger in this tour. In the US we'd be scared of getting sued if someone tripped, or worry someone would light themselves on fire with the candles everywhere.


Serious, this was dark. I really had to concentrate to make sure I kept my feet under me on the uneven flooring and at times the ceilings were low enough I had to crouch while she told the story in that room.








Liz got everyone wound up with a story about some angry ghost that tells people to 'get out' there. Then calmed folks down with the ghost of a friendly cobbler. But... this cobbler doesn't like 'trainers' (sneakers/tennis shoes) and likes to tug the shoestrings of little children who wear them.

There were a fair amount of kids on the trip. The Brits are pretty indulgent with their kids, just like in the US, but I wouldn't call them over-protective. It was perfectly ok to them to bring their four year olds down in the dark to hear spooky stories.

The last vault Liz brought us all into was very small and had a very low ceiling. It was also the only vault on the tour that wasn't lit with little LED lights set in the floor, or any light at all. All we could really see was Liz's face lit by her candle.

She told us about a woman on a tour a few months ago who was in this room and walked backwards into the rear wall until she smashed against the wall. She stayed pinned, flat against it with a look of horror on her face. She finally screamed "NO!!!", tore free, pushed through the others on the tour, and ran from that vault.

Tour operators caught up with her back at ground level where she said someone had pulled her back against the wall and pinned her there. In a gravelly voice, that person had said to her, "get out."

At this point on our tour, Liz said, "and now... we need to get out," and puffed out her candle, disappearing down the narrow corridors. The thirty or so of us jammed into this now pitch-black, low vault didn't waste much time making an orderly exit.


The ghost stories were fun, but one of the things that really stuck with you after was the dank smell from the vaults. There's no fresh air down there and the mildewy, earthy, sepulchral smell seeps into your clothes and comes with you into the dark Scottish evening, reminding you the rest of the night of the Edinburgh that was and still is... just beneath your feet.

TUESDAY-Historic York

HISTORIC YORK. WALLED CITY FORTRESS OF KINGS AND LOTS OF CHURCHES.








There you go, that's pretty much the deal with York. Here's some cool pictures of the walls and churches.


Cool note on the picture of the church farther down the page: that little door under the windows on this church? That's called the devil's door. They'd open it so the devil would be able to quickly leave the child during a christening. Seems like the devil could come in that way too, but I don't fully understand all the boogie boogie of the catholic church. Maybe the priest put some kind of one-way hex on it or something like that.















By the way, remember those pictures of businesses I put in yesterday's post? The ones with dirty names? Well, when I found out the big bell in York Minster Church was called "Big Peter" by the locals, all the businesses with names like this one started to make sense.











You can make up your own double entendre about this street name. It also happens to be the longest street name and the shortest street in York

SATURDAY-Tavistock Inn in Poundsgate

After the Wistman's Wood, we had dinner at the Tavistock Inn in Poundsgate. A perfect, chilly twilight was just setting in as we pulled into the car park and saw this sign. I can tell you, we made sure to be very formal as we parked.




You may remember me talking about the Tavistock Inn in my entry on Widecombe-in-the-Moor. Tavistock was the first stop of the Black Rider (the devil) who was on his way to Widecombe to claim the soul of a man he'd made a deal with in Widecombe.




And yes, the ring burnt into the bar when the devil replaced his red-hot mug on the bar that October afternoon in 1683 is still there!!! I know it's a fairytale and all, but it was great fun to visit and get a picture of it :)




I had a lovely dish of Yorkshire Pudding with beans and sausage. Yorkshire pudding is kind of a cross between a Pizza Hut pan pizza crust and those tube biscuits you'd buy at the grocery store. It's crispy, buttery, chewy, and elastic. It's made from a batter that's poured into a hot tin with smoking-hot, rendered beef fat that's put back in the oven to quickly bake and rise. So yummy with the smokey pork sausages that are made here in Dartmoor.



A fun location and a great dinner!

SATURDAY-Wistman's Wood

The number one place I most wanted to visit in Dartmoor (and by extension, the number one place I wanted to visit on this trip) is The Wistman's Wood. This is located about a 1.5 mile hike along the side of a very steep foothill of two tors. The elevation doesn't change much, but walking along the edge of a craggy, muddy hillside for a mile and a half is exhausting! Luckily the weather was lovely!!! Very windy and chilly and overcast. Some of my favorite things :)

This small wood is what's left of what's believed to have been a vast forest that once covered large areas of Dartmoor during the Stone Age, almost a million years ago. If you're a Tolkien fan, think Fangorn Forest.

Scientifically speaking, the Wistman's Wood contains very short oak trees that occur nowhere else in Dartmoor. There are also mosses and lichen that grow no where else in the world. It's truly a scientific wonder. Even more amazing is how little the oaks seem to grow here. Most are only 10 feet or so tall and they've been that way for centuries, possibly longer.

In 1620 Tristram Risdon wrote that the trees were "no taller than a man may touch to top with his head." In 1912 a British geological survey party tried to walk the wood, but gave up due to the dense vegetation.




I can tell you, I can't imagine any way you could walk through them. The wood has grown up amid granite boulders. If you could pass through undeterred by the moss-carpeted, slippery boulders (and undeterred by the black adders that are said to be all over the moors, but especially in the Wistman's Wood), then you would most certainly be deterred by the wood itself.



The branches grow in a twisty way, like interlaced boney fingers. They weave together so low and dense, it's impossible to see far forward, let alone pass through. I think you'd have to slither along on your belly like the adders themselves.

In the early 1970s the trees were reported as being very distorted and on average 10 ft high, with occasional specimens over 25 ft. Trees marked from the 1912 expedition had not grown. It looks no different now from the 1970s description. Interestingly, we're in late autumn here, and there's not an acorn to be found on them or on the ground (I'd have surely grabbed a few). No young trees are spouting here, and with no acorns it seems unlikely any will soon.

Despite this, the wood continues as it has all these millennia and that may be one of the reasons it's such a mysterious place.

Legend says the woods are the dwelling place of the "wisthounds." These huge, black, red-eyed dogs are said to have a taste for human flesh (and souls) and prey on lost travelers out on the moors after sunset.

I can't speak to any mystical dogs of the devil. I _can_ tell you the Wistman's Wood on a dark October afternoon moves alternately between spiritual, beautiful, mysterious, and downright spooky.

I sat for some time on boulders just inside the wood, and as you look into the trees, they're sort of hypnotizing. There's so much to see, so many entangled branches and beautiful green mosses. You can tend to forget entirely what you're doing and the next thing you know, the sun has long set.

I tried hard to capture the Wistman's Wood in pictures, but I really don't think anything I got did it justice. I think as close as i can get is the video I took, that you can see clicking here. It's a place I will always treasure having the chance to spend quiet time in and an experience I won't forget.

FRIDAY-Widecombe-in-the-Moor

Widecombe-in-the-Moor was the place i'd originally wanted to stay in when we began planning our trip to Dartmoor. It's very charming, but also pretty touristy. Postbridge, where we're staying, is very very small (maybe 10 dwellings here) and nothing very touristy at all. We love it!




Ok, so Widecombe-in-the-Moor: very cool place. The old church, St. Pancras, is the main attraction there. This church, erected around 1540 is a gothic beauty with a very full graveyard next to it. Just the kind of Halloweeny stuff I love.




But if you want Halloweeny jackpot... St. Pancras is a really good one. The story goes: In 1683, on October 21st (just by chance the SAME DAY WE VISITED!!!) a dark rider on a black horse came into Dartmoor from the south that evening. He stopped at a tavern in Poundsgate for an ale. Locals watched the hooded figure toss back his ale and could hear it sizzle in his throat as it went down.

The dark man set his pewter tankard down on the bar, tossed the coins for his ale on the bar, and rode off. The barkeep and several patrons swore they saw cloven hooves for feet as he strode from the bar. When the barkeep looked down, she saw that the dark rider's coins had turned to dry leaves on the bar. The pewter tankard was still hot to the touch, and it left a ring on the bar that is still there today if you stop into the tavern in Poundsgate.

BUT THE STORY DOESN'T STOP THERE. (This story was about Widecombe-in-the-Moor, eh?) The black rider continued north as a very dark storm gathered about the moors surrounding the village of Widecombe. It's said his laughter was heard as he tore through town on his black steed, racing past St. Pancras church. At that moment, the fury of The Great Thunderstorm of 1683, October 21st, rained down destruction on the church. Lightning and ball lightning wrecked havoc on the building, blasting stones from the tower and reducing some to sand according to accounts of the time.

According to local legend, the thunderstorm was the result of a visit by the devil who had made a pact with a local card player and gambler called Jan Reynolds. The deal was that if the devil ever found him asleep in church, he could have his soul. Jan was said to have nodded off during the service that Sunday evening, with his pack of cards in his hand.

Four parishoners were killed, some died days later of their burns, and around 60 injured. Some had coins or keys melt in their purses. It's said that the dead still wander the streets of Widecombe-in-the-Moor on a dark October 21st night like tonight.

FRIDAY-Dartmoor - Bellever Tor

We were up bright and early today with a delicious full english breakfast again; never get tired of that, and I got to have poached eggs today! YUMM!!!!!!

We went carefully over our Ordnance Survey Map for Dartmoor and set off for the tiny hamlet of Bellever to find our trailhead to hike to Bellever Tor. We picked a path that was a bit further, but with some less incline to it for most of the way. What I didn't realize was what a steep incline it would lead us to once we got the the base of the tor.

What's a tor you say? Generally speaking, it's a very great big hill (Bellever Tor is about 1300 feet high), quite steep, and there's a great outcropping of granite at the top. This granite often looks like it's something man-made, like an old fortress or an ancient monument, but the tors are all natural, and Dartmoor has the most tors in the world.




We made our way a little over a mile to get there, and then up the very steepest side of the tor. The smoother incline we could have used for our approach was not on the map, and it would have meant a bridle trail we found very easy going down, but which would have been a death march to go up.











The path to Bellever Tor was gorgeous with old dry stone walls, the characteristic moss that is everywhere in the wild here, and little streams and brooks running down from the tor itself. We found our way to one of the many old hut circles out here on the moors. These are the bronze age foundations (5000 BC) of stone walled huts that would have had thatched roofs and timber walls around the encampment. It was so incredible to stand in the middle of this old dwelling that our ancestors lived their lives in so long ago.










Not long after the stone hut, we turned the corner, made several steep climbs, and made it to the top. It was... incredible. Bellever Tor is a tor of special significance for incredible views in every direction. I was pretty spent getting up there, but I was so excited that I quickly mountain-goated my way up 20 feet of granite to the tippy top of the tor. (Even Jeri was impressed that I had any spring in my step at that point, let alone clambering up as ably as i did).







So amazing. I attempted to capture it in some pictures here and with a video i took here. It's hard to do it justice. I also can't adequately express how pleased I was to stand in this place that had been an abstraction on the map and an exciting place only in my imagination.







During our lunch on top of the tor (a nice wedge of double gloucester with crackers, beef jerky, and an aero bar) some of the wild ponies came by to visit. Ok, only some of them were wild. Some clearly had ear tags, but others were just wandering out on the moors like us.




As we made our way back, we passed a very large bronze age settlement at the base of the tor and were humbled to think that the path we were walking down from the top of the tor had been walked for thousands of years; we were just one more set of millions of feet that had crossed that way through the millennia. The sites on our hike were a pure joy and I felt so fortunate to be there. What a great day!!!

THURSDAY-Dartmoor!

Today we headed off to the place I've been most looking forward to see: Dartmoor. It's a national park in England filled with moors, mires, bogs, streams, ancient stone circles, iron age village ruins, stunning views, sheep, wild ponies, charming pubs, and many legends of ghosts, beasts... and the devil himself.

On the way here, we got to enjoy the adventure of driving in Great Britain. We managed to get an automatic and Jeri volunteered to drive. She did an admirable job getting us to the East Dart Hotel in Postbridge while I navigated. No sheep were harmed on the way, despite their irreverent attitudes about road rules.










Dartmoor is more than I could have hoped. It's so lovely. Our inn is really awesome. I've had some good chats with the proprietors and learned a lot about the area already. We had a delicious late lunch after we arrived in the hotel's pub. We finished up with another wonderful sticky toffee pudding and had no need to eat dinner at all.




After lunch, we headed out to the clapper bridge over the stream nearby. "Clapper" is a construction style with slabs of local stone. This bridge is from the 1300s, over 700 years old. The newer bridge nearby is a pretty old one too, and lovely as well.




That's pretty much as far as we got since we decided today was going to be a chance to really catch our breath and recoup from lots of tours.

I'm writing this in the pub now at about 10PM having just returned from an evening stroll. One of the reasons I wanted to come here, aside from an amazing landscape populated with legends everywhere, is the dark.




Dartmoor is one of the darkest places of the planet. There's a scientific darkness scale from 1-9 called the Bortle Dark-Sky Scale. There are no places left on earth, aside from the south pole in deepest winter, that can still rate a #1 for darkness. There are only a handful of places that have a #2 for the Bortle scale - Dartmoor is one of those places. The bowl-shaped geography here makes the light pollution from cities outside the park almost absent.

So yes, my walk. I started off down the road from the East Dart Hotel. The darkness was truly impressive. I grew up in the midwest on a farm where it would get dark enough for the milky way to show up well. But this is a dark that falls across the land like a blanket.

Walking in this sea of pitch night, chill seeping into my bones, I started remembering all those legends. The devil on the moors, the ghost of some dead girl, the dartmoor beast... Then about four different types of owls started hooting and screeching out in the distance and I started getting the willies. I turned around pretty quick and made my way back to the hotel!

But it's lovely here, and I can't wait for more of this very quiet, very relaxed place tomorrow!!!