Today I’m off on a journey to a town called Leamington Spa (pronounced Lemmington Spa). I’m going to meet a friend of Patrick Tribble’s named Lynn McWinnie. She’s a real mover-shaker in the world of Bach Flower Remedy healing, and has other esoteric interests, including Astrology. Any friend of Patrick’s is bound to be cool, and I’m looking forward to meeting Lynn. She’s graciously offered to show me around her neck of the woods for a bit.
Truth to tell, I only barely have an idea of where Leamington Spa is. I know it’s to the NW of London, on the way to Birmingham, but that’s about it. I don’t know anything about the town or area, and wouldn’t have gone up there except that it’s where Lynn lives. I take the train up, and it’s another lovely journey through the English countryside. The hawthorn trees are all in bloom, the grass is coming up so lovely, and the fields are dark with crops.
Spring in the English Countryside
There are hills up here, too, which is a nice change from the flat city. Farms and ranches spread out all around.
Farmhouse on a Hill in the Countryside
Lynn and I have never met, so we’ve told each other via email what we look like and she told me what type of car she has, but when I get to the station, I don’t see her. I go walking through the small car park looking for a black VW with a grey-haired woman, but I don’t see her. She’d said it’d be too expensive to call, so I never got her phone number. This makes me worry just a bit. What if we miss each other, or what if she’s forgotten I’m coming today? What will I do? But now I do see a woman getting into a black car as if to leave, so I run over, calling her name quite loudly (not quite yelling, but almost). Thankfully, it is Lynn. She thought I’d missed the train and was going to go recheck her email. I’m so glad I caught her!
We go back to her house for a quick bio break, and then head out to various places she wants to show me. Here’s a shot of us her husband took in their back garden:
Lynn and Me at Her House in Leamington Spa
Lynn and I immediately get into wonderful conversations—about her work with Bach Flower Remedies, about Astrology, about the nature of healing people and teaching others how to do it. She knows about, or knows personally, many of the high-level people with whom I’m studying. Within 10 minutes of knowing Lynn, I’m totally into her.
Tibetan Center
The first place she takes us to is quite a surprise. In the middle of the countryside, surrounded by fields with sheep and cows, is a Tibetan Center. There are meditation classes, a small café, and a shop, which is the centerpiece of the Center, as it were. The place is run by Alain Rouveure, a Frenchman who’s been in the UK for many years. According to Lynn, Alain used to be an extremely successful stock broker, or financier, or some such thing, but left all that and started traveling to Tibet. There he met artists and crafts people, and he decided to help support them by creating a venue for their wares back in the UK. He bought up some farmland and built a beautiful center. And I hear the Dalai Lama wanted to come visit him, or give him an award, or something, for the work that he’s done in bringing artists here and helping them sell their stuff.
Tibetan Center Near Leamington Spa
The Center has rugs, prayer flags, blown glass, and some of the most beautiful silver jewelry I’ve ever seen. Now we have plenty of Tibetan stores in our area at home, but this one really was special. I even bought myself a necklace. Have to support those Tibetan artists, you know. I thoroughly enjoyed the energy, the shop, and maybe most of all, the setting.
Tibetan Center Café Space
Irises in the Tibetan Center Garden
The Roman Road
When we leave the Tibetan Center, we drive on a road that was originally built by the Romans. Lynn knows all about it and tells me details as we drive along, following the same path that Roman charioteers had gone. I have images of emperors and their great retinues, marching soldiers in battle skirts and sandals, toga-clad ladies carried in lectica (portable couches or chairs), slaves carrying supplies. It’s such a simple road now, it isn’t hard to imagine the asphalt as stones…
The New Covering on the Old Road
Compton Verney
The next place on Lynn’s lovely tour of the area was Compton Verney. This is an old estate that’s been turned into an art gallery (see http://www.comptonverney.org.uk/?page=home). It’s surrounded by gorgeous grounds, with a lovely little lake, and bits of forest.
Compton Verney House and Grounds
Compton Verney Lake
Lynn and I eat lunch at the gallery café and then go for a walk in the wood down by the lake. It’s a perfect afternoon for it.
Me by trees at Compton Verney
Kenilworth Castle
Another sight Lynn wants to show me is Kenilworth Castle. Here’s part of the informational signage in front of the castle:
Sign Explaining Kenilworth Castle
And here’s what the castle looks like a bit closer up.
The Castle Itself
Around the castle, in the early 13th century, they built an earthen dam to enclose a mere, or lake, that was used as a defense to keep the castle safe. I took this picture while standing on that same dam, more than 800 years later.
Stream in the Fields at Kenilworth Castle
Stratford-Upon-Avon
We leave the castle and head for Stratford-Upon-Avon. I’m so excited. I had no idea we were near there. Shakespeare’s birthplace and the place where he’s buried! Oh wow!
On the way there, Lynn explains the difference in the Elizabethan and Tudor architecture to me. I’ve always loved Tudor buildings, with big beams holding stucco or plaster outer walls. They usually have mullioned windows, too, another architectural feature I like. The earlier style (Tudor, from the 1480’s) has rough-hewn beams, and the facades of the buildings are uneven. Later, during the period when Elizabeth I had followed Henry VIII to the throne, the architecture became more sophisticated. The beams were smoother, and placed more symmetrically on the building. The facades and dormers were even and also symmetrical.
Early Tudor Buildings with Rough Beams and Uneven Walls
Inside of a Hotel in an Early Tudor Building
Early Tudor Building with Thatched Roof
Later Elizabethan Buildings with Smooth, Symmetrical Beams and Decorations
We walk around the town a bit. It’s full of old buildings and history. We sit for a drink at a little pub called the Dirty Duck that’s just across the road from the theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon. Then we head over to the church in which Shakespeare is buried.
The Church in Stratford-Upon-Avon
Shakespeare’s Grave Marker Inside the Church
I find myself quite moved to be in the town in which Shakespeare was born, and where he’d come to spend his last years. Looking at his grave, I send up thoughts of gratitude to him—for all the joy he’s brought so many people for so many hundreds of years, for all his insights into humanity, with its triumphs and its failings, and most of all, for what he’s done for the English language. As Bernard Levin so marvelously put it:
If you cannot understand my argument and declare "it's Greek to me", you are quoting Shakespeare. If you claim to be "more sinned against than sinning", you are quoting Shakespeare. If you act "more in sorrow than in anger", if your "wish is father to the thought", if your lost property has "vanished into thin air", you are quoting Shakespeare. If you have ever refused "to budge an inch" or suffered from "green-eyed jealousy", if you have "played fast and loose", if you have been "tongue-tied" - "a tower of strength" - "hoodwinked" or "in a pickle", if you have "knitted your brows" - "made virtue of necessity", insisted on "fair play" - "slept not one wink" - "stood on ceremony" - "danced attendance" on "your lord and master" - "laughed yourself into stitches", had "short shrift" - "cold comfort", or "too much of a good thing", if you have "seen better days", or lived "in a fools paradise", why, be that as it may, "the more fool you", for it is a "foregone Conclusion" that you are "as good luck would have it", quoting Shakespeare. If you think "it is high time", and that "that is the long and the short of it", if you believe that "the game is up", and that "truth will out", even if involves your "own flesh and blood", if you lie low" till "the crack of doom" because you suspect "foul play", if you have "teeth set on edge" "at one fell swoop" - "without rhyme or reason", then "to give the devil his due" if the "truth were known" for surely you have a "tongue in your head", you are quoting Shakespeare. Even if you bid me "good riddance" and "send me packing", if you wish I was "dead as a doornail", if you think I am an "eyesore" - a "laughing stock" - the "devil incarnate" - "a stony-hearted villain" - "bloody-minded", or a "blinking idiot", then "by Jove" - "o lord"- "tut, tut!" - "For goodness sake" - "what the dickens!" - "but me no buts" - "it is all one to me", for you are quoting Shakespeare...
So I offer up my gratitude to the Bard, as a speaker of English, as a reader, and as a writer. I look at the book that has the official registry of Shakespeare’s birth and death in it, and thank the World for bringing us this gift, for letting him survive the plague (unlike two of his brothers), for letting him channel the stories in such a beautiful, eloquent, funny, philosophical way. I’m nearly in tears from the feelings washing over me.
But it’s time to go. We spend a bit more time looking at the church, and I buy a few lovely postcards. Then we head back to Leamington Spa for a nice dinner at a Thai restaurant. After dinner we go to the train station so I can head home. It’s been an absolutely perfect, perfect day. Lynn is marvelous, the sights were thrilling and interesting, and the countryside was some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. My eyes are full with beauty, my heart is warmed with new friendship. Ahhhhhh.
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