UK 2014 - On the road again... Or, rather, 'Still on the Road'.

Our intention is always to share highlights of our travels as we go, but in reality we're generally too busy doing the traveling to write about it. So once again, this is more of a "looking back" post, but it's recent enough that we haven't had time to unpack yet from this trip!

We got back to Ireland in March. The weather wasn't too bad. The house wasn't too bad, either - only a bit of mold and a lot of musty towels, clothes and bedding. We had two weeks to get turned around and start the UK tour, and we spent most of that time scrubbing walls and running loads of laundry.

The one big disappointment was that after the very first shower on our return, the shower unit died. Blew a capacitor and seriously fried. Good thing we have a bathtub, too. As much as we like seeing our friends here, we didn't want to return to the days of showing up for visits with towels and shampoo.

So, leaving shower repairs for later but having taken care of the important stuff of airing and cleaning both house and caravan (because we'll have company starting to arrive very shortly after we get back here), we hit the road...

... and arrive in Liverpool.

Our first few shows were in the North of England, and we had one day early on when we decided to just be tourists for the day. This was after a show in Guisborough, so first off we walked up the street from our hotel for a look at the ruins of the old cathedral. This has to be the fourth or fifth time we've played in this town, and we never even knew this was here!

From there, the logical thing to do was head for the coast by the most scenic route we could find. Actually it looks a lot like our road in Ireland, except we can't see the ocean ahead of us when we're driving into the village.

We went the long way around, through Borrowby, to Staithes - a gorgeous little seaside town perched on the sides of a... is there an English term for fjord?

It was still early in the year, so the bright sun only warmed the place up a little bit

but that didn't make the beach any less popular.

Making our way farther north, we got to Northumberland. No work here, just a couple of days off between the shows in northern England and the ones in Scotland, and we wanted to spend them with our friend Liz.

And there happens to be this great little bakery in Allendale, which made a good excuse for a walk to pick up some savories for dinner.

Liz is a wonderful Appalachian dulcimer player. We went out for a session with her in a local pub just after we arrived, and spent the rest of our time there going around to visit (and play music with) all the old friends we bumped into there - Ian and Marilyn and Chris and Anne... and then we were out of time and on the road again.

Onward and Northward, here we are in Scotland. We arrived just in time for Easter with Steven and Elizabeth. And set out for another walk on another beautiful but chilly and windy beach.

Getting off the beach seemed like a good (warm) idea, but then, from the top of this hill, Steven pointed out North Berwick Law and suggested we go climb it...

Here's the marker at the top.

And here's the view at the top. There had been a whalebone arch erected here, and this is the modern, synthetic replacement.

I don't now how we got so lucky with the weather, but a few days later we were out sightseeing again (this time to Tantallon Castle, a semi-ruined mid-14th-century fortress). Look at that bright blue and green. In Scotland!

The rest of our time up in Scotland was a grand whirlwind of reunions with friends we hadn't seen in far too many years, interspersed with some really nice shows and amazing scenery, and then we were back in England. The bluebells hadn't been quite out yet in Scotland, but they were almost finished in Yorkshire.

In addition to the human friends we get to stay with, we also get plenty of feline and canine companionship along the way. Eska was the new puppy when we came to Birdsedge last year. She's still a puppy - a very BIG puppy.

Millie still thinks she's a puppy, too, but she has been around for awhile. She and her people, now in Manchester, used to live down the road from us here in Ireland. Fortunately Dave and Helen found a place right next to a very big park, so she still has open fields to run around.

The morning after our show in Louth, we went for a walk up the winding bell tower stairs to the steeple of the cathedral church. A good workout, and an even better view from the top.

And the prettiest bathroom window I've ever seen :)

Near the end of the trip we were back in Norwich, where this blog, and in fact our whole career and life together began. Norwich Folk Club meets in this lovely old Church Hall. And there's Bridget, coming out the door to greet us. 

Well, that was it. Round and round and up and down and back and forth, and the miles (and months) fly by. Now we're back in Ireland. Will post more soon. 'Bye for now.

Highlights of the 2011 UK Tour

We've been back in Ireland over a week already, and I haven't begun to sort through all the pictures I took on the UK tour. Didn't get much opportunity for posting along the way, so I'm just going to post a fairly random selection of snapshots of the trip here.One last load of laundry before we go. The weather was so nice in the week before we left we never even had to use the dryer. That's unusual for Ireland!

I didn't get any pictures of the lovely Arts Center in Glasgow where we had our first performance, but you can see some here.
After that we had a few free days to spend by the sea with two wonderful friends in Prestonpans, just the other side of Edinburgh. Okay, I know it's the Firth of Forth, not the sea, but it feels like a seaside holiday to me. Steven and Elizabeth and their sweet cats Midnight and Zorro have become part of our extended family on the road.

Our next gig was up in Fife. Steven and Elizabeth had been talking for months, since we first posted the date on our calendar, about making a pilgrimage to the famous Anstruther Fish Bar. Didn't sound like the best idea right before a concert, but the perfect solution presented itself... Stay at S & E's friends' house in St Andrews before the show, so we can pig out on fish & chips the previous day. Also turned out to be a great opportunity for a walking tour of St Andrews, which we'd never spent any time in before.



Taking pictures along Lade Brae Walk; the beautiful house we stayed in; impressive ruins in St Andrews; Anstruther Fish Bar (behind the ship).

The concert in the Town Hall in Crail was great fun, and Steven was right there on the front row getting pictures of everything we played on through the evening. Here's the double ocarina. And of course, Mike's lovely Larrivee guitar. In addition to all the instruments we brought, one of the resident performers played a couple of pieces on nyckelharpa. Wonderful!




We had a short stop in Yorkshire next at another of our UK home bases - Birdsedge. Perfect timing, too; the bluebells were out to greet us.





So then, we had a little extra time before we had to be in Dartmouth for Dart Music Festival (fortunately; that's a long drive).







And talk about perfect timing... There was a hurdy gurdy festival that weekend, right along our route. Okay, it wasn't the main route we would have taken otherwise, but I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to sit in a pub and have a jam with roomful of gurdy players! (Thanks to Bridget for posting this photo on the UK Hurdy Gurdy forum).



Dartmouth was the one stop on the tour that I managed to do a post about, so I'll skip that and move along...


Our next two shows were within easy range of, yes, another home on the road. John and Joy took us for a walk around the lake in a nearby park, formerly the grounds of a stately manor house. The house is now a hotel, and the lake is home to many birds.





All the baby grebes wanted to see if we had food for them, but their mother didn't want them talking to strangers.



Just look at her amazing feet!











A wonderful day, but pretty seriously breezy...

And another special treat - one of the resident players at Stockton Folk Club brought his hurdy gurdy. Which would have been a great chance to jam together, but mine's a G and his is D... Well, all the gurdy players will know what I'm talking about!

Anyway, continuing north, after a stop for our first ever show in Cramlington, we drove across to Allendale for a nice stopover with Liz and Terry. Who - would you believe - also had a friend who had a hurdy gurdy. So yet another musical evening fell into place on our night off. Dulcimers, both hammered and fretted, songs, Scottish small pipes, gurdies... Yay!

I'm realizing as I write this that we did a lot more walking on this trip than usual. Liz & Terry introduced us to yet another beautiful garden park, this one created from on old station along a former railway.






If you click on this second picture to enlarge it, you can even just make out Liz and me taking the high road while Mike and Terry walked along the rail bed below.






I was glad we decided to walk along the top of the cut, because otherwise we wouldn't have spotted this great rebar sculpture.







And then of course, when you've been walking in a garden park, you have to stop for a bit of tea and cake, don't you? This is England, after all! (So much for the benefits of all that walking.)






There was still one more stop, at a delightful acoustic music club up in Bellingham, but between drizzle and sniffles, the camera didn't come out again.

We made our way back to Ireland on a red-eye ferry, and here we are, back at work on the old stone house.

Dartmouth

We were in Dartmouth about 4 years ago, presenting a day of music workshops at an elementary school for the Dart Music Festival. The talk at the time was "must have you back to perform at the festival itself" or words to that effect. But of course we weren't going to be on this side of the ocean at the right time for it the next year, and these things soon get forgotten.

Four years later, here we are at last! We trusted the satnav to bring us in, so unexpectedly ended up taking a little ferry across the Dart to finish our journey into Dartmouth. But that was ok - we're used to ferries. This one was something different, though. It's just a floating platform that holds about 8 cars plus a few bicycles and pedestrians, and gets pushed across the river by a tug moored to the side of it. This first picture shows a ferry heading in each direction. The town rises up steeply from the waterfront; this photo was taken from the next street up from the quay.

The three people in the first picture about to disappear behind the building on the right of the photo are heading towards Bayard's Cove Fort.














We visited on our first trip here, and Mike's immediate reaction to seeing it was "this should be a music venue". So guess where our stage was at the festival...

It was an amazing place to play, with its row of archways looking out over the river, a solid wall of rock at our backs and only one entrance/exit - the one with the steps coming in from the left, with a big lamp over it. Too bad they couldn't have some seating in place. Anyone who wanted a seat had to bring their own. Our morning show - a family friendly tour of world music - was in a very nice, very modern arts center auditorium. And we had a look at another venue for some of the festival shows that we both thought was spectacular. I can't even begin to capture the elaborate detail of this ancient church with my little camera phone. The acoustics are just amazing. And there were seats! Maybe next time...

With a little help from my friends

You'd think it would be a fairly simple matter to get from Inistioge (County Kilkenny, Ireland) to Suquamish (Kitsap County, Washington), wouldn't you?

I research my transportation, buy air tickets... It's supposed to be the convenient way to travel. The last two times, though, for two different reasons, I'd had to get my tickets from Seattle to London instead of Seattle to Dublin, working out the London-Dublin part separately. The eastbound leg has gone ok each time, but getting back to Seattle last year starting with a commuter flight from Dublin to get me to the return half of my Seattle/London itinerary turned into a ludicrous string of hassles that left me stranded in London with no way home. Thankfully, two good friends - Kathie and Graham - lived an easy tube ride away from Heathrow. Their telephone, internet connection, printer, and fold-out sofa bed bailed me out of an impossible situation. The chocolate biscuits helped too :). The next day, a print out of my email confirmation of my re-scheduled flight failed to impress the airline's computer - no way would it issue me a boarding card - but the humans involved were able to give me a handwritten pass that got me across the ocean, as far as Minneapolis. There, what was supposed to be a short stopover turned to an hours long delay due to mechanical problems. By the time I finally reached Seattle it was past midnight, more than 24 hours after I'd been due to arrive, and too late to catch a ferry to the Kitsap Peninsula. Stranded again. Fortunately, I was just minutes away from another pair of wonderful friends - John and Lynne. And they have a couch, too! So I finished that journey two days late.

This year I was facing the same challenge of picking up the second half of a Seattle/London itinerary from Ireland. But since it had turned into such a drawn-out adventure last time, I decided to plan it that way from the start and make it fun. Couldn't just repeat last year's route, 'cause where's the adventure in that? And anyway Kathie and Graham had moved to Orkney in the meantime. But my friend Anneli had moved from Oslo to... you guessed... London!

Mike had been suggesting for a long time that we should do a day as tourists in Dublin, since we never go there except to catch flights or ferries. So to start the journey, that's what we did. We wove our way through crowded streets, past many exceptionally talented buskers (and a couple not so), admiring the public art and architecture until we were exhausted, spent the night near the airport, and in the morning Mike waved me off on the next leg of the journey.

Anneli's house in London is an easy walk from the city center, and she is an excellent tour guide. I took more photos than I know what to do with.
(Another album on Facebook may be in order.)


The next stop was, like last year, in Minneapolis. But this time I was in touch ahead of time with my cousin Jane, and spent the stopover in companionable conversation, catching up on nearly 15 years since the last time we'd seen each other.

Arriving in Seattle late in the evening, I was met by William and Felicia and whisked off to a comfy makeshift bed on a houseboat. The next day, after a good walk and some recreational tune playing, I was dropped at the ferry where I had arranged to meet Matt on his way home to the Kitsap Peninsula. Matt and Jenifer had stored some instruments for us while we were away, so I went home with him before getting a ride back out to my house. Jenifer had very thoughtfully packed up a bag of basic groceries for me - just some stuff they had to spare, she said. Which was great because I didn't have the time or energy to go out shopping with all that came next... but I don't feel like writing about that yet!