Exeter and Cardiff for a laugh

Dwight Peck's personal website

Cornwall and Devon in the autumn

Whenever things start to pile up and get on top of you, it's time to take some time off and go to Cornwall.

Exeter and not Bristol and Cardiff instead

You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.

We're driving up from Devon South and intent upon stopping in at Exeter to visit the dead people.

Kristin ducking just in time.

Some lovely corners in modern Exeter

The Exeter cathedral

The tea room in the Exeter cathdral -- even the scones and crisps are semi-sanctified.

Soldiers and wives perpetually praying, and not able to stop. All the wives wear suitable eternal-nightgowns and the guys take their long sleep in full armor. 'Live by the sword, sleep on the sword.' (Earl Hugh died in 1377; Margaret, a scholar, mother of 8, and granddaughter of King Edward I, died in 1391.)

Another couple, in much more comfortable eternal-sleepwear

The great theatre of anxieties, Exeter Cathedral, with one of the best collections of elaborately dead stereotypes along the walls and alleyways I've seen so far.

Oh man! The family paid the sculptor for this?

The instinct to just pull out your weapon and ask questions later survives us.

Armored heroes stacked up

-- Can I get somebody just to close my eyelids?

-- I'm really sorry about everything.

Ex-bishops queueing horizontally

A dedicated military life come to this! The sword is stuck!

-- I'm not one of them. I'm unarmed.

The less armored personnel of the cathedral

The Exeter cathedral square, and the teenagers eating lunch there, and their burger wrappers almost everywhere

Exeter cathedral with serious snackers. Except for the man on the left, everyone in this photograph is eating.

Tourists soaking up the Exeter ambience

The quay below Exeter. Now we're on for Bristol, with only a day left to romp around in before giving it up and going home.

Checking our stocks (as if!) at the Acorn B+B mere inches north of the Bristol Airport -- only one day left to luxuriate in British culture, such as it may be at this late date. And then we turn the automobile back in, buy a cellophane sandwich at half the cost of the onboard specimens, and get flown away.

Cardiff

Our last day -- Cardiff. We tried to visit nearby Bristol but couldn't find a parking space in an hour's circling the centre city, so we bolted for Cardiff in Wales, and this is Cardiff.

I toured the Cardiff Castle whilst waiting out the rain on a running trip to the Brecon Beacons, Forest Fawr, and Pembrokeshire Coast Path a few decades ago, and now I'm playing the "bad memory game" of doublechecking the reality later. Bad news.

The ancient castle keep, now in the middle of the present castle precinct. The kid is a hired extra.

There are paparazzi wherever you go these days.

The keep, a classic Anglo-Saxon motte-and-bailey, with moat

The more commodious, later buildings within the castle precinct.

A stark reminder.

Assaulting the castle keep

Kristin making new friends

The inside of the keep. Visiting here in 1987, I followed a gentleman guide (in the days before audio-guides) who was leading our group of tourists and narrating room to room with colorful anecdotes like "this is the room that Mary Queen of Scots slept in the night before her execution". Good fun, but it changed my views of the epistemology of history.

Downtown Cardiff from the castle keep. A medieval oasis.

Kristin on the stairway queue

The ubiquitous military motif. With trumpet fanfare everywhere. As always.

Last day, dash to the EasyJet