ENGLAND, A CHILDREN’S LITERATURE TOUR, Part 1, Beatrix Potter, Guest Post by Cathy Bonnell

 

Hilltop Farm, Once Home of Beatrix Potter

My friend Cathy Bonnell, a retired school librarian who lives in Phoenix, Arizona, loves to travel and recently spent two weeks in England with her daughter Courtney, a journalist. Cathy has contributed previously to The Intrepid Tourist. I thank her for sharing her photos and report of her trip in July to London and the Lake District, with a special eye to connections with children’s literature.

Cathy in London

After a sleepless night in the sky, I made it to London and my daughter Courtney’s darling neighborhood, Belsize, for a two week visit. Early dinner in a little cafe steps from her flat and to bed early!

Chiluly sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum

The next day a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum was my first sightseeing venture —to see an exhibit of original art by author/illustrator Beatrix Potter. 

The tiny illustrations of Beatrix Potter were so thrilling to this longtime admirer and former elementary school librarian. 

Her sketchbooks and handwritten manuscripts were also shown at the museum.

Off early the next morning on the train to the Lake District, where we stayed in a lovely historic hotel in Bowness called Landeth Howe, once owned by Beatrix Potter. Two full days of small group tours took us to Beatrix Potter’s famous home, Hilltop Farm, now owned by the National Trust. 

The white gate at Hilltop Farm is original. 

The lush greenery and sweeping scenery of the Lake Country was a very welcome sight to this desert dweller.  Note a part of Hadrian’s wall in the background.

Such beautiful blooms were everywhere.

Castlerigg (similar to Stonehenge) in Keswick near Sawrey.  No one knows why they were built or by whom.

Rainy, windy and chilly day around the Lake District.

After three days in The Lake District we were back in London  

To be continued next week in Part 2.

HUILO HUILO BIOLOGICAL RESERVE: Volcanoes, Waterfalls and Towering Rainforests, Chile’s Lake District, Part 2

Huilo Huilo, Chile: On the deck at the top of the teleferico (aerial tramway) facing the volcano

On our second morning at Huilo Huilo we slept in again (getting used to the time change–five hours earlier than California), but got up in time to have breakfast and be at the stables for a horseback ride at 11:00.

During our horseback ride all the horses much preferred eating the daisies!

It was a warm spring day and flowers were everywhere. We rode through a field of daisies, lupins, Queen Anne's Lace, and wild roses, and then into a forest, before looping back through the flower field to the stables.

Before our ride we had taken a short walk to Salto Huilo Huilo, a magnificent waterfall located nearby.

Salto Huilo Huilo gives the reserve its name. In Mapudungan, the language of the Mapuche, Huilo Huilo means "deep crack" or "deep fissure"

The Spanish word for waterfall, salto, is from the verb saltar, to jump, and the masses of water were truly jumping over the brink to the river below, showing the power of nature in full force.

The tunnel provides access to the Salto de Puma falls through the thick foliage at the water's edge.

After lunch at a restaurant in Neltume (I had a churrasco sandwich–meat and avocado in a large roll) we drove to the trail head for another waterfall, the Salto de Puma, a longer walk ending in a path through a tunnel made of dried bamboo.

Salto de Puma. Although pumas, or cougars, are known to live in the reserve, they are rarely seen.

At the end of the tunnel is a dramatic opening to a platform in front of the falls, which thunders into the pool below..

View of the town of Neltume from the top of the teleferico. Neltume gets its name from two Mapudungun words meaning “To go to freedom” (Neltún: let free, Men: to go there).

We then returned to the hotel for a short rest before going to the cable car (teleferico) station near the museum for a ride to the top of the mountain. For dinner we had pizza in the cafe at the Petermann Brewery across the road from the hotel--where one can also see the vats where the beer is brewed.

The path to the waterfalls goes through a cave formed by a lava tube.

On our last morning, after another sumptuous buffet breakfast at the hotel, we checked out and headed back to Temuco, stopping along the way for one last walk–this time to a lava tube cave and then to another waterfall.

Rapids below the waterfall

The path was marked as a circular trail and ended up being much longer than we expected, descending to the river level to see the waterfall, then hiking back up to the entrance past an electricity generating station.
And then it was time to get back in the car for our ride back to Temuco and our flight to Santiago.Our three days in Huilo Huilo had been full of activities enhanced by perfect weather--warm but not hot and clear blue skies. We wished we could have stayed longer but it was time to go celebrate Christmas with family. It was the perfect beginning to our third trip to Chile.

Adventurous hikers could follow the path behind the waterfall, but risked getting wet!

For a report of our previous trip to Chile, in December 2009, when we went to the far north and visited the Atacama Desert, click HERE for Part 1, and HERE for Part 2. 

HUILO HUILO BIOLOGICAL RESERVE: Volcanoes, Waterfalls and Towering Rainforests, Chile’s Lake District, Part 1

Volcano Mocho-Choshuenco rises above Lake Panguipulli in Chile's southern lake district.

It was the first day of summer in the southern hemisphere. Birds were singing and a profusion of wildflowers blanketed fields and roadsides as we made our way toward Huilo Huilo Biologic Reserve at the base of the Andes in Chile’s lake district. (Huilo Huilo, pronounced, WEEL-oh-WEEL-oh, is a private for profit natural reserve and ecotourism project in southern Chile.)

Huilo Huilo is in the Patagonian Rainforest

We had landed at the Temuco airport, where we rented a car for the two and a half hour drive–made a little longer by our stop to take photos at the dramatic viewpoint on Lake Panguipulli toward the snowcapped volcano Mocho-Choshuenco, rising 2413 meters (about 7500 feet) into the blue sky.

The road to Huilo Huilo follows the shore of long Lake Panguipulli

After checking in at our hotel, we spent the next three days exploring the reserve, hiking, horseback riding, and learning about the unique life in this southern temperate rainforest. Plastic wristbands gave us free entry into most trails and facilities.

A spiral walkway around the atrium of the Nothofagus hotel leads to rooms facing the treetops.

This was a family vacation with our daughter, her husband, and their two teenage children, and there were activities for all ages to enjoy. We were staying at the Nothofagus Hotel, named after the tall trees endemic to the area. The hotel, built almost entirely of wood, surrounds a Nothofagus trunk and resembles a treehouse, with rooms looking out into the canopy.

Cheerful yellow plastic birds mark the trails in the Huilo Huilo reserve.

From our deck we could hear the roar of the river a short distance from the hotel. Before dinner we took a short walk along the river path to Salto de la Leona, one of several waterfalls in the reserve where masses of water from spring snowmelt were crashing over the edge.

A full moon rises over the mountains in the east (the Andes)

At sunset we went up to the roof deck to watch the sun disappear behind the volcano. Later, we watched the full moon rise in the east, so bright that it eclipsed most of the stars.

A herd of red deer gathers at feeding time. In December (spring in Chile) the male's antlers are covered in velvet.

On our first morning at Huilo Huilo  we crossed the road and  followed the trails (senderos) leading to the large enclosure where a herd of deer (ciervos) lived and to another smaller enclosure with a group of wild boars (jabali). We were able to observe the animals up close via raised walkways and they appeared quite oblivious of us.

A lively group of young boars, still with their striped coats, were frolicking in the enclosure.

We then walked around a large pond and its border of giant leaves to the nearby Volcanoes Museum.

Mapuche woman

Silver jewelry made by the Mapuche displayed in the Volcanoes Museum. The Mapuche (meaning "people of the land") are the largest ethnic group in Chile and constitute approximately 10% of the population (more than 1,000,000 people.)

The Volcanoes Museum is filled with exhibits of animals, minerals, fossils, history of the indigenous Mapuche people, a reproduction of a copper mine, and, rather oddly, a carved mammoth tusk from China.

Stone markers in the Mapuche style outside the Volcanoes Museum

After a lunch of empanadas, the classic Chilean meat filled pastries, that we had purchased from a stand in the local town of Neltume, we spent the afternoon relaxing in the hotel spa. We were still recovering from jet lag--the time difference in December between California and Chile is five hours. At dinner that evening in Puerto Fuy, just a few kilometers down the road, Art and I enjoyed our pisco sours, the classic drink of Chile. Back at our hotel that evening Art, Jennifer and Humberto attended a free workshop–learning how to make the perfect pisco sour, or the Huilo Huilo variation, which adds blueberries to the mix.

Pisco sour workshop.

Plans for our next day included horseback riding and a ride on the teleferico (funicular) up the mountain. Part 2 of our visit to Huilo Huilo will post next week.

For a map and directions for getting to Huilo Huilo click HERE.

Have Laptop, Will Travel: England's Lake District and More with Gretchen Woelfle (Guest Post)

Derwent Water, Lake District, England

My friend Gretchen Woelfle is spending three months in England this spring, beginning with a writer's workshop in the Lake District.  I think you will enjoy reading about her adventures!  Gretchen is a children’s book author whose newest books are Write On, Mercy! The Secret Life of Mercy Otis Warren and  All the World's a Stage, A Novel in Five Acts.  Find out more at www.gretchenwoelfle.com .
 
 One of the best things about being a writer is our portability, which can incite mobility. Long ago when I was an MFA student at Vermont College, I met a visual arts MFA student who complained about the mighty costs and problems of shipping artworks to the twice-annual residencies.  We writers only had to pack our floppy disks – and now our laptops.

Nonfiction writers aren’t quite as portable as our fiction-writing cousins.  Speaking for myself, my desk is littered with loose papers, file folders bulging with notes and photocopies, books piled high on said papers and stuffed into overflowing bookcases.

Sheep in the Lake District

But the lure of mobility forced me to rethink my portability in March 2012 when I flew off the England to attend the twentieth anniversary retreat of the Kindling Words writing workshop in the Lake District. Fourteen of us spent a week at a four-star hotel, eating four course meals each night, hiking along the lake, into the woods, and up the hills (but not enough, I fear, to work off those four-course meals.) 

Castlerigg stone circle, Lake District

Highlights:  Venturing forth to local literary haunts of Wordsworth and his reputable and disreputable Romantic cohorts. Circumnavigating a Neolithic stone circle. Me alone, finding a local pub to watch a Saturday football (soccer) match featuring my beloved team, Chelsea. Indulging in an Exotic Lime & Ginger Salt Glow at the hotel spa. (I can describe it, but it will be just as intriguing for you imagine the sensuous pleasure of it.) And, yes, attending workshops and writing. 

Seven writers, headlights shining, about to descend into the subconscious of their protagonists, or was it the Honister Slate Mine?

Though I wasn’t the only nonfiction writer there, many were tapping away on fantasy novels. As they retreated to their imaginary worlds by the fireside in the lounge, I time-traveled back to eighteenth century Revolutionary America, to meet my biography subjects.  As others were drawn by guided meditations into the subconscious minds of their protagonists, I tried to do the same, but was interrupted by an annoying inner voice whispering, “Document your sources.”

When the luxurious week was over, I took off for East Yorkshire to visit old friends, including a writer, who live by the sea.  One of the world’s biggest offshore wind farms will soon arise off the Yorkshire coast, but not soon enough to be pictured in my next book, The Wind at Work, a history of wind energy.  So here, instead, is a picture of the local beach with dog Libby chasing a seagull.

 One evening, Marvin Close, my writer friend, arranged an interview on the local radio station, BBC Humberside. The topic of the interview: how a children’s writer from southern California came to be an obsessed fan of English football in general and Chelsea Football Club in particular. I tried to mix it up with writerly talk, but not having many people to discuss football [soccer] with at home, I was happy to talk about the sturm und drang of the current Chelsea season.

View of Notting Hill Gate

Now I’m in London for three months, thanks to my latest travel adventure: home exchanging. Sitting in a top-floor flat in Notting Hill Gate with sun streaming in on all sides -- I brought it with me from LA! -- I’ve got several manuscripts in progress, a few file folders stuffed with research, just a couple of books I need to work with, and – since yesterday, a brand new card from the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Library system. (They’ve got all sorts of wonderful Dickens programs scheduled in this, his bicentennial year, and since he is my #1 favorite author, I’ll be there.) 

I’m still immersed in the American Revolution, which has a whole different significance from where I sit now. And I’ll be on the lookout for a new subject to research on the ground here. Something about English football perhaps?

More anon on the joys of a writer’s portability and mobility.

Derwent Water, Lake District