DAY 3

These next three posts are going to be in rapid fire sucession.

I know, I know, this is the longest, most drawn out tale you have ever had the misfortune to listen to. I will make quick work of Day 3 and 4 though, then I will tell you about the magnificently, marvellous Mark Horton march around Bristol.

Day 3: Off we went on Day 3 to a village about an hour away from our hostel. Not sure what the name of the place was, can’t be bothered with things like that, haha. We stopped to see a memorial to the soldiers of the village who had lost their lives in all the major wars from WWI to the present day. One of their boys died about 2 years ago in Iraq and he had his very own special spot on the memorial.

We then quick like bunnies scurried down the street a little ways to see a very old, some what derelict house built for one of the town tobacco trades men in the early part of the 1600’s. We thought that we were just going to see the outside, but since it was such a large and completely conspicuous group of us all traipsing around the front of the house, the heritage manager of the house came out and invited us in to have a quick tour of the place. Mark and his normal tour leader self were having a bit of a lay in and so the lady was able to conduct the tour herself. After our tour, our group met up with Prof. Mark Horton at a church just down the road to take a look some rather nice stonework detailing the shipping and tobacco industry of the town.

After taking a peak inside the church, it was back to the mini busses and Landies (Land Rovers). With our trusty Greg at the gears, we wound our way around and landed our vehicle of adventure to go into a fully restored smithy shop. Run by water wheels the tour guide (again not Mark, he was working on his computer at this point) was very informative and gave us a demonstration of the iron press and showed us how to make a shovel.After our tour, we all got to sit down and relax for the first time all day and have a “spot of tea.” Leanne and I were, at this point on a mission to find some cream tea (Cornish curdled cream, jelly, a scone, served with tea. It’s amazingly tasty!). The smithy shop had a teahouse and cream tea but they were very expensive so we opted out for the time being.

Back to the Mini bus we went once again; on to the coalmines and Morwellham Quay, a heritage site that is now officially “in administration,” closed. We arrived for Morwellham Quay's final day, very sad to see such heritage go away but as Nick Saunders keeps telling us, it just means a new leaf for archaeologist to explore and think about. In its heyday, Morwellham Quay would have been a really fun place for families to visit. We even got a mine tour! It reminds me greatly of the heritage sites that line the East Coast of our United States, James Town, Williamsburg, Mt. Vernon, and Plymouth Plantation.

We made our last stop of the day at a house just up the road from Morwellham Quay, for details about this apply to the author of this blog. We packed it in after eating fruitcake and drinking tea with the owners. Mini bus fun continued as we spent 3 hours playing 20 questions. Our mini bus got lost….again.

Adventure, Adventure

Day 2:

Hurray I have gotten sometime to write about the second day of the Exmoor trip! Quickly!

We got up and out of the hostel by 9:30AM. Driving on the road around the English countryside is always an interesting experience, especially where we were. Imagine the narrowest roads you can and then think about cars trying to come down and pass two mini buses and 4 Land Rovers……welcome to our morning :0) “Exciting stuff!” (Per Mark Horton). We made our way to the town of Bideford, where all the major voyages for exploration to the America's made port before setting sail. Here we got to climb aboard on of the last wooden schooner in the world, the Kathleen and May. We saw the sails go up, some of our maritime MA’s and MAASM (MA in Archaeology for Screen Media) students pitched in a hand to get them up and down, some even were so lucky as to get to climb the rigging. Then it was on to the church yard, where the first native American brought to England was buried, as well as Sir Walter Raleigh and Grindell (founder of the town). (Excavation of this area might be possible over the summer, WOOOO!).

Onward, we went to the Mayor of Bideford's offices and the Mayor himself gave us a guided tour of the cabinet rooms and the mayor jewels ("very impressive"). Along we all went with the Mayor and Mark as master and commander through the streets of Bideford. After a long tour of fun filled facts and Mark playing traffic warden we finally caught sight of our beloved vehicles (cough, cough) and set out for more fun adventures with Mark at the helm.

Much later than we had originally anticipated, we arrived at the Burrows, not sure what the name of them was, but they apparently they were the staging area for the American troops during WWII. Here the US troops did dry runs for their invasion of the beaches on the Normand coast (D-Day Invasion). An of you know that fun fact? Or that they used live fire and ammunition during the test runs and killed many of our own boys in the process? I didn't. Funny thing isn't it how history changes depending on who is writing it; they can add and omit information as they see fit. "Crazy ol' world i'n it?" (Johnny Depp- Jack Sparrow). Continuing on, we found remnants of barbed wire and jeep tracks. We, also, found old jeep parts and tires, German style barricades, foxholes, and cement crossing stations. About eight of us got lost while trying to find these things, of course. Mark was leading with a hand held GPS and we still couldn’t find our way back, mostly because Mark couldn’t figure out how to use the GPS lol Oh Mark. We walked on and on, until we finally came to a trail and thankfully it was the right one; leading us back to the rest of the group. After meeting up, we all walked back towards the vehicles, mind you Mark was in the lead, in the wilderness….we got lost. We some how ended up in the live military training zone and yes they had guns and live ammunition, not good. (Mark suggested that we tell them that the war was over and they should pack it in and go home. Not sure that would have been the best idea and nor did any of the other professors lol Mark is a bit of a handful but nothing is as much fun without him around. He brings the level of seriousness down so much and makes us all feel much more at ease. Its great to have him as a mentor). Anyway, we did eventually find our way back. We got in our respective vehicle and began the 2-hour drive home. Of course, our mini bus got lost, due to suboptimal navigation, over zealous chattiness with the driver and dark roads. We made it home an hour after everyone else, which was really lame, but in the grand scheme of things, it made very little matter.

Ok well all, that is it for now. I have class again in the morning and I have to get some reading and prep for the rest of the week, on top of ordering textbooks and doing laundry. Love you all lots and I am sorry that it is taking so long to get this entire story out but the important part is that you will have it all eventually. Miss you all!! BYE XxXxXx

Timed Out....

Had class today and tomorrow is going to be the longest day all semester, I think. I have class from 10am to 1Pm. Then I have a meeting with the rest of my classmates at our Drama department directors office for Lunch and a meeting at PM, then back to class until 5PM. 5:15PM starts my second class and that goes really until whenever it ends. So probably no new posts up until Thursday, because Wednesday is an equally long day (see below). I will get day 2 thru 4 up, but you will have to wait. I am very sorry, but my schedule is a bit crazy right now, as you can tell. Below is a list of what my schedule looks like for most weeks.

Monday- 10AM-12PM Materialities

2PM - 5PM Materialites

Tuesday- 10AM - 1PM Production in Pratice

2PM - 5PM Production in Practice

5:15PM - Documentary Histories

Wedn.- 10AM-12PM Materialities

2PM - 5PM Materialites

5:30PM Lecture/Seminar (Guest Speakers)

Informal Discussion (Pub with Profs. and Speaker)

Dinner

Thurs.- 10AM - 1PM Production in Pratice

2PM - 5PM Production in Practice

Friday- (TBA) Documentary Histories

Materialities Field trips? (Some but not all Fridays)

First of Many

Day 1:

Met Mark Horton of TIME TEAM, Bonekickers, and Time Flyers. He is the most unreal person in the world. He is really enthusiastic about everything and seems to have more knowledge in his one brain than most people put together! He is fantastically fun to be around and completely cool.

I tried to find a video of him for you but no such luck. Just take my work for it, he is unreal.

We started off at an Abbey (Cleeve Abbey), ordered by King Henry the 8th to be shut down in the 1500's. It turned into housing and then into farm buildings. It was acquired by the English Heritage in the 1950's and has since made its way to its present state.

After that it was on to find the lost town of Clicket. Lead by Mark Horton and Nick Saunders and a 200 year old map of the area (survey map made in 1890) we hiked down into a valley, across some farm land, through some bushes, over streams and finally started to see remnants of buildings that once made up Clicket. It took some deducting and Mark to tells us what these buildings had actually once been but at least our guesses were not completely wrong. We guessed that one was a house, it was, sort of. It was a Quaker meeting hall. That's pretty close, right? Some of them we had no idea what were, like the leat house (Definition: Leats generally start some distance (a few hundred yards, or perhaps several miles) above the mill or other destination, where an offtake or sluice gate diverts a proportion of the water from a river or stream.)We kept hiking down the valley until we found the lime kiln and the mill house. Then we found our way back to the mini buses and Land Rovers and hit the road again.

We made it to the Youth Hostel by 6PM, about an hour later than we had intended, and unpacked the food that was picked up for us while we were all traipsing through the wilderness of the English southwest. We got our room assignments and headed out to the pub for dinner. We watched Mark's documentary on Clicket and then an Episode of his show Bonekickers (in which there is a brilliant archaeologist who is a bit crazy and completely politically incorrect, modeled after Mark himself. lol Only Mark).

The End, for Day 1. Day 2, 3 and 4, along with my trip to Bath yesterday will be coming shortly but right now I have to go out and get some stuff for class and a book that my sister keeps buggin' me about. (Kris: I tried to get it yesterday and some how the book shop I ended up in was an all Christian book store lol they really need to mark these things more clearly.)

Out of Order

I will be back on Friday. I am off to Exmoor with my Department for an archaeology related field trip. Hope to have loads of stuff to post when I return.

You wanted them, Here they are.

Here are some pictures, since I have gotten a flood of e-mails asking for them. This, is Bristol, by bus.
The Cathedral Willis Memorial Tower

The Hippidrome Theatre (3rd largest stage in the world)
Bristol University BuildingMusic Dept.The City
The Harbor And again

The Bristol Suspension Bridge

More to come later...

Picnic and Foreigners

(Photo from top of Brandon Hill, no I didn't take it)Not too much for today, although I know that some of you are really relived to hear that, since it means that you don't have to spend as much time reading this as you would if I had something to say. Lisa, Jeanne and I went to this picnic of Brandon Hill, not too far from where I live. We met up that the Student Union building, dubbed the ugliest building in Bristol (at least that is what our tour guide from yesterday told us). There was a huge mass of us, international students, coming in for this picnic, most of them arrived yesterday since it was the main move in day for campus, I think. Anyway, we met a bunch of other students, mostly French with the exception of one girl from the Czech. We had lunch and that was pretty much it.

We went to the Bristol City Art Museum, which was a lot bigger than any of the three of us thought it would be. We also went to Bristol Cathedral and there was a live choir in there, like the ones that you think of when you see movies about the 11th and 12th centuries. It was really nice. Other than that we really didn't do much but walk around Clifton Village, in the northern part of Bristol. We are in desperate need of find a good place to eat that is not very expensive, because for some reason we always end up paying about $15 to $20 each to eat not particularly good food and that is just really not going to work for much longer.

Registration day is tomorrow, so I will be meeting my whole department and all the other students in my program. Then there is the faculty meet and greet and then a lunch with the department. After that it is on to the School registration (School of arts, department of Archaeology and Anthropology for those of you confused by the distinction). Then ending the day, meeting back up with Lisa for the new research and taught postgraduate program social at 5 PM. So I don't know, but I may not be writing tomorrow or for the rest of this week until Friday when I come back from my field trip to Exmoor (Field trip is Tuesday thru Friday). I am sure that by then I will have plenty of verbiage on my department, the people in it, and my experiences to fill your ears to the popping point.

If I don't talk to you, I hope that you all have a really great week and don't work too hard. Love you lots and miss you, of course! Goodnight from my end, since I have to make it to campus before 11 AM, which means that I have to get up much earlier than I have been. I am meeting Lisa at 10:30 so I really do have to get up! Bummer...