Scotney+ Oxford
I would kill my fiancé to get married at Scotney Castle.
There was a wedding happening later that afternoon, so when Cecilia, Nicola, and I came to the National Trust site in the beautiful white regency era dresses Cecilia had made, we had to clarify to a lot of people that we were not part of the bridal party. The dress was gorgeous and I also wore Cecilia's Victorian poison ring, or as it will one day be known, 'Exhibit A.' It has a little compartment for storing the necessary pills and were apparently were quite popular back in the day. The castle in the backyard was built in 1378, rebuilt in 1580 in Elizabethan architectural style, but when the new castle was built higher on the hill in 1843, they intentionally ruined the medieval castle to make it a piece of their garden. It has a gorgeous moat around it, a secret priest hole where Thomas Darrell hid Father Richard for 7 years, and was surrounded by a magnificent garden. I could not stop taking photos.
We also went to Sissinghurst Castle Gardens, climbed the towers there and wandered about the garden and took MORE photos! It was fun having a day feeling like I'd walked off the set of Pride and Prejudice.
For the beginning of the week, Nicola and I took the train to Oxford for a few days and stayed with Lizzie. I met Lizzie eight months ago on the plane over from Canada where she had just finished a vacation and we talked for a good portion of the flight. As we were getting off, she gave me her address and said I should visit her in Oxfordshire, and I finally had the opportunity. I'd been to Oxford previously, when Rachael, mom and I were in London we had done a day of Windsor and Oxford but I was happy to have more of a look around. We did a free walking tour that really underlined the 'town and gown' mentality and history behind it, college rivalries, as well as all the famous and crazy alumni of Oxford. We did the interiors of Christ Church, climbed the Harry Potters stairs, and the Divinity School which was used for Hogwart's infirmary. Besides the Harry Potter locations, the history of the colleges is amazing. The longevity of the dining hall was obvious from the hundreds of portraits hanging on the walls, old deans and monarchs, starting with Cardinal Wolsey. I can now say that I've studied in Oxford as I read over my study notes on the bus, that counts, slightly misleading but accurate.
There was an exhibit at the Bodleian library that I loved so much, I went back again the second day. Shakespeare's Dead, had tons of gorgeous books looking at the questions of life and death in his work and his world. It was really cool to see a lot of stuff that I recognized from class and feeling like a smarty pants that I knew it already. Next door there were also original watercolours Tolkien did for the Hobbit and C.S. Lewis' first map of Narnia. We stopped at the Eagle and Child pub again, and the wandered through as many colleges as we could get access to - looking like students helped. Oxford's amazing, it's weird thinking that so many of the people I'm passing on the street are insanely smart, especially the students. I'm a student, I live with students, I know how stupid we can still be. It's such an amazing city and I was so happy to have a second go of it. Lizzie was an amazing host, I would have never expected to have been invited to a stranger's house before I even stepped off the plane, and she was such a lovely person to spend time with and talk to.
