Only in England...

It is nearly 10 pm here and I am just now finishing my post. No, I was not busy today. I was just stuffing my face with the delicious pulled pork I made from my leftover Sunday dinner pork roast. It was delicious and I am sorry to say totally worth putting off blogging for. 

Aaaaaanyway...

My favorite British TV personality and comedian is a man called Stephen Fry. He is shamelessly hoity-toity but still doesn't take himself seriously at all. He is Hugh Laurie's partner in crime (Laurie is known to his American audience as House, M.D.) and they wrote and starred together in several comedy series here. He is currently the host of my favorite show, QI. 

QI is a sort of quiz show with Jeopardy-like questions. The pivotal difference is that all of the contestants are comedians. Here is a clip of it:

QI-Astronomy

Stephen Fry recently did a show for the BBC where he traveled to all 50 states in the US. It was a wonderful series and after the series aired he did an interview on a nightime talk show where he made an interesting observation. He made the comment that we have  a wonderful phrase in the US, "Only in America" which he said is remarkable because it really captures the essence of the American spirit. It usually refers to situations like when a man rises from poverty to success or when someone invents a fantastically useful tool. There is always a sense of optimism when you use the phrase "Only in America".

Fry said that by contrast, whenever you say "Only in England" it usually means something terribly disappointing has happened. In some ways I experienced this briefly on our "mini-break" to the Lake District but only for a fleeting moment and in the end the amusement outweighed the disappointment.

On the third day of our trip the weather cleared up as much as it was going to and compared to the impenetrable fog of the past two days it was all we could really ask for. I had the spectacular idea that I wanted to see the Irish Sea coast. So, I got out my guide to the Lake District and our Garmin GPS unit (here they call it a "sat-nav") and I put in the postcode of the nearest seaside town on an A road. I figured because it was a road on the map it must be alright and since the town was also on the map there must be something there as well.

It is a credit to Jason's driving ability that we got there and back in one piece (that and the sat-nav) because the road we were on was approximately the width of a sidewalk (or "pavement" if you are English) and there seemed to be a hairpin turn every couple hundred yards as well as steep 15% grades. It took us nearly an hour to travel about 20 miles. 

I had hoped in vain that I would see a spectacular West coast sunset that would rival the lovely sunrises I see out my front window but when we arrived this is what we saw.

After driving through what can only be described as a ghost town we came upon the only living things on the beach. These sheep. This is when I muttered "Only in England..."

The beach itself was actually pretty neat. The whole beach was covered in smooth stones in every shade of gray, white and brown. Sadly I did not get to see even a hint of a sunset since the drive took longer than expected and even had we arrived earlier the clouds were so thick I doubt there was anything to see.

Overall our trip was fantastic. We took a cruise on Windermere which is England's largest lake and I took some nice photos. Here is a link to the photo album.