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| Loki Stone - 8th Century - The only one in the UK and one of two in Europe |
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| The Church -- One of the Oldest in this area
Subtitle: Never On a Sunday
Which of course, isn't true. I have hiked on many a Sunday, but it reminds me of an old song from my childhood. Something about never on a Sunday, because that's my day of rest. And rest we did. I didn't get out of bed until 9 am when beckoned by Mr. Parris to go to breakfast. After some yummy eggs and mushrooms, we went back upstairs to our lovely room at Fletcher House and did this: NOTHING much. I caught up on all the Scrabble games on my phone seeing I had been repeatedly nudged by a number of people I don't even know. What is it with the nudging? Hint to on-line Scrabble opponents: I am hiking across an entire nation, not sitting on top of a computer waiting for you to make a word. (Whew! Glad I got that off my chest.) I also read a little, talked to Paul (because the Lord knows we haven't had any time for that recently [ha]), and spat curses at the Candy Crush Saga for bombing me repeatedly. Then we got up and went to church! The church at Kirkby Stephen is absolutely beautiful and has fantastic acoustics as well. The site had a Saxon church on it at 1100AD and the Norman church was built on the site in the 1400s. The ceiling is a beautiful wooden arch dating back to the Normans and has tile floors. Many items have been added to the church obviously over the years, much of its architecture dating back only about 300-400 years. There are all sorts of bizarre artifacts in the church including the Loki stone (photo above). For those needing a brushup on your Norse mythology (Heaven knows I do!), Loki was a prankster whose joke backfired and killed the son of Odin. This is a really bad idea. Loki was chained and kept in a dungeon. The carving depicts the captive Loki, is thought to date to roughly the year 900 AD and apparently was interpreted by local Christians as a bound demon and placed in the church. It's beautiful to look at and is one of only two such artifacts in Europe. The church has a Norman coffin, an effigy of a wealthy patron and his two wives with a fake tomb and even has a knight buried in it. The Mason Family Shield is also a part of the church ceiling. Paul's mom's maiden name and his middle name is Mason, so that was interesting to us. Also, there is a boar tusk in the church amongst the Bibles from the 17th and 18th centuries. Theoretically, this was the "last wild boar" shot in England (and definitely not the last wild "bore" in England.) It was buried with the shooter. Personally, I prefer not to be buried with a tusk, but considering how many of my family members are buried with some sort of University of Tennessee Football memorabilia, even though no one in our family was EVER on a team nor attended the university until the last decade, I guess I have no room to speak. I guess we have a right to it for throwing arrows at Johnny Majors, Phil Fulmer, and any other football coach, living or dead, whether we are still paying the fired coach or not :)! Okay, back to the matter at hand--the church. Lovely and definitely worth the visit. We then strolled up and down the only real street of this small town of about 2000 people, went in the church shop where Paul bought a "Keep calm and stroke a cat" keychain (I no longer worry that people will think I am a cat freak...) and topped it all off with a diet coke and a skulk around an antique shop. Then we returned to our hotel and did some more nothing for awhile. Dinner was at the Mango Tree, a small but tasty Indian restaurant. We had a great day and drank a beer recommended to me by friend Elaine Lebas. The name of it: Old Peculiar. Somehow, after 7 days of hiking, I am thinking of changing my name to match the beer!
Paul's Ponderings: It was indeed a lovely sunny day here, with temperatures in the low 70s. We can see the "nine standards" up high above us, where we will hike tomorrow. This is a set of very large cairns from the early 1800s built for unknown reasons. They are so large, they can be seen from miles away -- we saw them coming into town from the opposite hill, which must be at least 5-6 miles away, if not more. Tomorrow we go over the halfway point on the hike and have another two day rest in Richmond three days off, then finish out the walk. Kirkby Stephen is a lovely mid-England town to spend a day in. Tomorrow we start to cross the hills that drove the industrial revolution for the UK and therefore for much of the western world.
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