Category Travel
York Minster IV – The Tour
Like most churches, York Minster depends on volunteers to provide much of the labour that needs to be done. The tasks though for the 500 volunteers can be rather different from what you would find in most churches. I’ve never been asked to give a guided tour of my church, though on occasion I have […]
York Minister III – The Undercroft
Underneath York Minister Cathedral is a wealth of information, an historical museum with information that spans almost two millennia. For me that alone was worth the price of admission to the cathedral – the magnificent architecture and artwork were a bonus. This is a site with a rich history – the cathedral having been constructed […]
York Minster II – Renovations
Our visit to York Minster Cathedral stirred up conflicting emotions, to put it mildly. I still haven’t worked through exactly how I feel about the place. I was impressed by the dedication to worship and Christian witness. But the financial implications of maintaining such a heritage building are staggering. Certainly I recognize its historical significance. […]
York Minster I – Evensong
Sometimes it is the little things that catch your attention. In this case it was a worn step. Stone is a pretty durable substance. I can only imagine how many hundreds of thousands of feet it must have taken to leave an impression, to wear down the step in the choir of York Minster Cathedral. […]
On Horseback
Going through some of the photos from this year’s European vacation I noticed that there were pictures of horses almost everywhere we went. Not real horses though. Except for the ones in Caen Castle, these horses were intended as accents to the statues of the riders. So thinking that a picture is worth a thousand […]
Richard III
When we were in York, England, this past summer local people were still a little put out over the final resting place of Richard III, who died at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. Richard’s bones were discovered two years ago (identity confirmed through DNA testing) beneath a parking lot in Leicester. Sic transit gloria […]
The Fountains of Bucharest
In 1989 we moved to Monrovia, Liberia where we lived for 10 months or so. We planned to stay longer, but a civil war broke out and we eventually had to leave. Touring downtown Bucharest in the summer of 2014 reminded me in some ways of our arrival in Monrovia 25 years before. We were […]
Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917
I really didn’t want to go to another museum. I had been to the In Flanders Fields Museum twice in five years, and didn’t think the recently renovated Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917 would offer anything different. I was over-ruled. Turned out I was right. And at the same time I was wrong. Our hosts at […]
Watching The World Cup
It is arguably the biggest sporting event in the world, even bigger than the Olympics. Also held every four years, the FIFA World Cup dominates most of the world for a month or so – pretty much everywhere except North America. Here the sport that the rest of the world refers to as football has […]
Greyfriars Abbey, Dunwich
It is in what could be considered the middle of nowhere, definitely off the beaten track, though admittedly there were a lot more people around in the 13th century. In rural Suffolk you can find the ruins of a medieval Franciscan friary, founded in 1277 and in use until 1538. I assume it was closed […]
random thoughts from lorne 
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