VA in PP's mantilla

Because she's worth it :)

Bloggy contents

Hullo and welcome! This is the spot where PP and VA can show off their holiday photos this year.

Because blogs work the wrong way round (so to speak), this is a little contents page for your ease and delight. Or something like that.

1. Introductie!


2. Pre-holiday prayers and The Journey


3. Buckfast Abbey, Holy Trinity Church and Combestone Tor


4. Stanbrook Abbey, Part I


5. Stanbrook Abbey, Part II

This post will be updated as the photos come up.

This blog is supposed to be in both English and Dutch, but that takes a lot of brain power, and I'm not big on brain power right at the moment. Sorry! Perhaps I'll get round to that later.

May God bless you in all you do.

PP

ETA: I've been asked a couple of times if people can swipe these photos. My policy (for want of a better word) with regards to these is this: if you mention that I took them and hold whatever copyright exists and/or means on the internet these days, not you, I don't mind. Blogger doesn't allow hotlinking, so you should keep such a bit of blurb if you're so enamoured with them that you want to save them somewhere else.

Alternatively, just pass the link to the blog around. If I wanted to keep them private, I would have put them up on Flickr or something and been really stingy about who had access.

Love and prayers,

PP

Stanbrook Abbey Part II

A faithful companion, talented in looking after rosaries and decade rings, sitting with us on the train from the Westcountry to Worcester.

Incidentally, whilst we didn't see much of the city, we're led to believe - by the stonking great big and beautiful Cathedral sitting on the bank of the River Severn, mainly - that Worcester is a hellish place to visit, even if you have no interest or business in Stanbrook. We walked down the main shopping street (albeit at a quarter past seven in the morning) and it seems to be quite gezellig.



Without further ado, Stanbrook!

These views of Stanbrook will have to be a big exercise in detachment, because the community are planning to move. You can read this on their website (I've linked to it from the sidebar on the right). They've purchased a place in North Yorkshire and are seeking a buyer for their property. It's a bit gutting for lots of people - including VA and PP! - but the decision has been made (it was made years ago, so it's not as though they're rushing into anything) and it's going to happen.

So enjoy the pics and remember that nothing material on this earth is forever.

Unlike Buckfast, where you can get a glimpse of the monastery depending on where you stand and if you know in which direction to face, Stanbrook does a pretty good job of presenting one side of the building to the world and utterly deceiving (ok, that word's quite strong) people as to how big it is. There are, I'm told, four cloisters in the monastery, two of which look very similar (which could be tricky for a new postulant finding her way around....).

Benedictus montes, Bernadus vales amabat.

There does seem to be some kind of time-space-warp thing going on between the retreat house and the church when one's inside the enclosure. I'm sure that I and Sister Julian left St. Mary's at the same time for Midday Prayer, but that she got there before I did. Or perhaps she just jogged there - but that would be contrary to the Rule, right? Oh well. I like my time-space-warp-thingy theory.



This is the entrance to the monastery. We pressed the bell to get in to visit the Bookshop, although we were sorely tempted to pull that bell-thingy-doo-daa and see what happened, but eventually decided not to. Immediately beyond here are the parlours.



The East end of the Abbey church and, on the left, the visitors' chapel.



The entrance to the visitors' chapel. Once again, apologies for the blurriness: I offer again the explanation given before.

Beyond this door there are some shelves with the Office folders that visitors may use should they wish. It can get pretty complicated! Stanbrook - how, I'm not entirely sure - manage to get the whole Psalter done in one week with just five Offices each day. Talk about hardcore (we don't have Desert Fathers sitting atop of poles doing it in one day anymore...)!



Herewith all the photos of the monastery visits. VA returned home to the Netherlands and I trundled back to the Westcountry. I have some more pictures of Dartmoor, from a day I spent out walking, but I'm not sure whether I should post them here, because this thing is entitled PP en VA op vakantie, after all.

Reader feedback is welcomed!

Stanbrook Abbey Part I

Blogger is having problems with uploading photos, so I'll publish this post now and get the rest up when I can.

What is it with monasteries and lavender?! Not that I'm complaining, as I love lavender. If I wasn't the furthest conceivable creature from a "green-fingered person" I'd be growing it galore.



A view of St. Mary's: the retreat house. It has a great library with not one but two old Roman Breviaries. VA and I were, all of a sudden, oh-so-tempted to brush off our Latin.

I think St. Mary's was originally built with a chapel attached (my random reading-memory coming into play again). At the time the Abbey church hadn't been built and another one of the monastery's buildings was serving as the oratory. However, for visitors this meant a walk across a garden inside the enclosure, and so St. Mary's was built with its own chapel.



You've got to love noticeboards which tell you the exact time the bookshop is open. Oh yes, and the other very important pieces of information about the Office times, and the Ordo for the week. But yes - BOOKSHOP!



St. Mary's has its own oratory which guests can use. VA and I kind of commandeerd it for Rosary, second Rosary (akin to second breakfast, so beloved of the hobbits), Little Hours and more Rosary. And roping other people into Rosary. And singing salve regina afterwards.



A shot of my room in St. Mary's. I'm deliberately not showing you the other picture of the room that I have, in which there's a stack of books that I'd accumulated by this point.



The courtyard garden. Please pardon the blurriness; it was about twenty past five in the morning and I challenge anyone (who isn't some kind of BBC professional or something similar) to be able to hold a camera steady at that hour.



All too soon it was time to leave. Here's my stuff, ready and waiting for the bus to Worcester (tip: why on earth would a sane person schedule a visit to end on the Assumption?!). Yes, that's a Cologne 2005 bag. venimus adorare eum Emmanuel!



VA and her Swords. The small one on the left is very small and very cute. Please note the Benedictine medal on the one on the right. Tee hee.



The definitive proof:

Buckfast Abbey, Holy Trinity Church and Combestone Tor

At last, some pictures of a monastery! The photos of Buckfast were taken at different times of day, so no, the sun does not race back and forth across the sky at Buckfast.

The Abbey church from the, uh, North-West-ish. Yes, it is this beautiful in real life.



The West end of the Abbey church and the entrance to the Monastery and monastery guest house. Just beyond the door is also a parlour with a fantastic chair that seems to be a favourite for sitting in when hearing Confession.



A shot of the west side of the monastery. On the right is the Abbot's Tower - which was part of the original Cistercian House. It survived the destruction of the Abbey in the sixteenth century (the monastic guesthouse was originally the mansion house built after the Reformation with materials from the original Abbey - hence the difference in appearence between these two parts and the rest of the House). In between the guesthouse and the Abbot's Tower is the library.



A closer (but not by much) shot of the door to the Monastery. The emblem above the main doorway is PAX.



Looking towards Southgate, the "outside" guesthouse, where women as well as men stay. This building is part of the old medieval complex; it was one of the guesthouses of the old Abbey. The archway was (and still is!) the southern entrance into the monastery complex.



The beginning of the "Abbot's Way". This trail across Dartmoor, marked by stone crosses, led from Buckfast to Buckland Abbey, another Cistercian abbey on the West side of the moor. Like all other religious houses in the country, Buckland's monastic life was cut short at the Dissolution and passed into the Drake family (of Sir Francis Drake fame). It is now owned by the National Trust.



Buckfast attracts many tourists each year, and on the "public" side of the Abbey church there's much for them to visit. In particular there are three gardens, of which this, the Lavender Garden, is probably my favourite. This is the statue of Our Lady holding the Child Jesus which looks over the garden, which has dozens of different types of lavender growing in it.

Our Lord has unfortunately lost his arms in this statue. There's probably a whole story behind that. I do know that the following exchange was heard between two visitors in front of the statue:

A: Who do you think it's a statue of?
B: Victoria and Albert.



Buckfast owns some hives and the honey produced contributes to the Abbey's income. Brother Adam did much work in the last century in bee-keeping and a new breed of bee, the Buckfast Bee, was developed. This breed is, I'm told, sturdy, produces lots of honey and is very resistant to disease. I believe that most of the Abbey's hives are up on Dartmoor, where there are fewer risks of interacting with other bees.



A wider view of the Lavender Garden.



Holy Trinity Church stands atop the hill between Buckfast and Buckfastleigh. A church has been there since pre-Reformation times, and was the local parish church. At the dissolution the Abbey's bells were confiscated and placed in Holy Trinity's tower.

In 1992 an arson attack left the church roofless, and the decision was made not to restore it. However, the tower and belfry are still in working order. VA and I walked up here one afternoon after having absconded (tee-hee!) from the Abbey to get Fish Shop Chips.

This is the cross atop the east end of the church.



A window in the North wall.



The South aisle entrance and porch. The South and West side of the church are surrounded by the graveyard.



The East end, where the High Altar stood. You can see the old piscina on the south wall of the sanctuary. I find this to be quite a poignant photo.



Fr. Sebastian offered to take us onto the moor! This is Combestone Tor, to the north of the village of Holne.

Dartmoor is characterised by tors: years of weathering (and it gets pretty wet and windy up there, it's wonderful!) wear away the softer earth and rock, but the granite underneath, being that much harder, remains for much longer. But there will be more shots of tors later....



Of course we all tumbled out of the car and started scrambling up these granite outcrops, whilst Fr. Sebastian looked on bemusedly. The scene must have been somewhat reminiscent of a Dad taking his over-active teenagers out on a trip.




Dartmoor is beautiful, wild and desolate. I love it up there! Like the ocean, you have to respect it, because if you're not sensible then it can pick you up, thrash you about and leave you for dead (which is actually pretty likely by that point). But yes, more on Dartmoor later.




As proof that VA and I were really at Buckfast:



It's only fitting that the parting pic for this post is of the Abbey church.

Our Lady of Buckfast, pray for us!

Pre-holiday prayers and The Journey | Voorbereidende gebeden en De Reis

Mijn gebed-hoek ("God-hoekje") bij mij thuis. Completen rulezzz.

My prayer corner ("God-hoekje") at home. Compline rocks my socks.



Vliegtuig uit Iran. Tsja, mensen moeten wat doen tijdens de lange wachten op Schipol.

A plane of the fleet of the airline of the Islamic Republic of Iran.



Beenruimte op de vliegtuig!

Legroom on the plane! Dutchies, you see, are taller than your average human being, and on cheapo budget airlines this makes for an uncomfortable flight unless, like us, you are a) shrewd (common amongst Dutchies like VA) and b) very good at tactical queueing (common amongst Brits like PP). However, we were lucky and managed to get front row seats. Hurrah!



Wordt vervolgd!

Introductie!

Dag dag lieve mensen!

Binnenkort kunt u hier foto's zien van onze fantastische vakantie die net afgelopen is. Even geduld alstublieft!

---

Hullo people!

Very soon you'll be able to see photos here from our fantastic holiday which has just ended. Please be patient!