The English Countryside Continues to Amaze

Greetings from the town of Portland, in England's Dorset County, our third stop along the English Channel. If you haven't heard of Portland, which is really just a small island connected to the mainland by a spit of land, then you may have heard of the next town over -- Weymouth, a very colorful seaside resort. Our guide this morning told us that, now that London has secured the 2012 Olympics, this area (specifically Portland Harbor, I think) will be the site of the sailing events.

We drove through Weymouth on our way to Corfe Castle, one of many castles we've seen on this trip. At pretty much every port-of-call, you can be sure to have a castle and/or a set of gardens among your excursion choices. Corfe Castle turns out to be a set of ruins, but in many ways is much more interesting and picturesque than an intact or restored castle would be -- you can wander around the grounds, see the various turrets and other castle parts, use your imagination about what went on here, and take in the terrific views of the village of Corfe and the surrounding countryside. We even happened to have a steam train pass by below us while we were up on the castle grounds.

Corfe Castle was built in the time of William the Conqueror, almost 1,000 years ago. I forget which king lived there, but he once took a batch of French soldiers and stuck them in the dungeon and left them there until they literally starved to death. This also was the castle where some boy-king named Edward was murdered by his wicked stepmother so that his even younger brother could become king. I forget the name of the little brother, but they called him [Whatever His Name Was] The Unready.

The castle was heavily damaged in the Civil War of the 1600s.

This particular castle was built to guard the only gap in the local hills (the Purbeck Hills). A lot of the other castles around here were built to guard the seaports -- King Henry VIII had those built in the 1500s, out of fear of attacks from the French. (Paranoia about the French seems to be a big theme over the years.) If I heard the onboard lecturer correctly, not a one of the castles was actually ever needed -- the attacks never materialized.

Everyone has been marveling about the beautiful countryside we've been seeing from the bus -- as interesting as the actual destinations. This is Thomas Hardy country, we're told, and many of his novels were set here. In fact, an entire excursion today was devoted to visiting some of they key sites in his novels. The countryside is dotted with stone cottages, many of them with thatched roofs.

I mentioned that Weymouth is a very pretty seaside resort. It has a lot of colorful Georgian-style houses, a really colorful clock tower erected in 1887 to commemorate the 50th Jubilee of Queen Victoria, and a colorful statue of King George III. They love George III here -- apparently he visited often. There also is a statue in town of Queen Victoria, and as we passed it, we laughed out loud at the scowl on her face. Whoever sculpted that statue captured her infamous ill humor perfectly.

Other passengers this morning went to a Tank Museum nearby, and others to a swannery (a place where hundreds of swans and their offspring congregate). And quite a few went to Stonehenge, surely the most famous attraction around here. I got a report from one of the other Penn State passengers that both Sting and Madonna own estates here in Dorset County, not far from Stonehenge. Sting paid about £2 million for his -- that's about $4 million in U.S. dollars -- and spent another £1 million installing a recording studio. Just a little trivia for you.

Latest song to be stuck in my brain: "I'm Henry the 8th, I am" by Herman's Hermits.