Day 11 - Capernwray (continued)

May 12, 2008

Well, I believe we are now at the half-way point in our trip. Neither of us can believe all that we have already done and that we have that much time left before we come home; means there are lots more adventures in store for us!

I left off around 5:00pm last night when the computer lab closed. Jeremiah had put our stuff in our room and we were just settling in to our new location. At 5:45pm we went to the dining hall for tea. We weren't sure exactly what to do since the dining hall was not here when Jeremiah was here last.

Luckily, a nice lady told us to just take a seat at a table and the food would be on it. We sat down with a group of students. The girl I sat next to was from Germany and very nice. There was a man sitting next to her and he was also German (we found out later that he was the lecturer for this week). Dinner was pizza and salad and, according to Jeremiah, much better than it had been when he was here. We talked around the table and it was very nice.

Dessert was a sweet cake with an apricot on it. I noticed on the table there was this jar of Cadbury Chocolate Spread, which I had never heard of before (I came to find out that it is more popularly known as Nuchela - not sure on the spelling - and I'm pretty sure this is what Monica told me I had to try). The German girl, Judith, told me that it is very common to eat it on toast and she has it every morning for breakfast - it amazes me that she could be as thin as she is when she eats that daily! The lecturer said his kids grew up on the stuff and that it was actually good for you - not sure exactly how that works out, but that's a good enough excuse for me to try some!

After everyone else had left, I opened the jar and smelled it. It smelt just like Chocolate frosting you would put on a birthday cake. I spread a little on my dessert cake and it was wonderful. I grabbed another cake just so I could eat more! At this time, Mark Thomas (the son of the Major who had bought Capernwray Hall and who was now running the place) came and sat with us as the lady from the beginning who told us what to do had informed him that an alumnist was here.

He was very nice and knew of the Cornthwaites very well even though he didn't know Jeremiah's name. We chatted with him for a while.

After tea, Jeremiah took me around for a bit and showed me where his old rooms were. We sat in one of the old dining rooms which had been converted to a Quiet Room. As I sat in there, I could imagine that the room had once probably been a sitting room for after dinner time back in the 1800s. It made me want to put on a Regency dress and grab some cards for a good gae of Whist. I would love to live in a house like this with all the fancy rooms, decorated like the 19th century.

Then we found the telephone and called Debbie. She was very excited to hear from us and from Capernwray of all places - she was also in the middle of writing an email to us so that was really neat. We only had a few minutes on the phone before the evening lecture started. So we got off just before 7pm and headed to the Conference room.

We found chairs and later discovered that they have assigned seating so they can tell who is there and who isn't. (We took some other people's seats but it ended up turning out okay.) Well, it was an interesting lecture but honestly, I didn't hear much of it as the tone of the lecturer's voice put me right to sleep! I felt really bad and tried hard to keep my eyes open, but there was nothing I could do; I forgot what it was like to be back in a classroom atmosphere. Jermeiah did better and listened, although, he admitted as well that it was hard to follow the speaker. After about an hour, there was a break so we got up and left. Jeremiah said that he remembered this guy from when he was a student here.

We then took a walk down the path through the fields and enjoyed the evening together. He took me to a little pond where he remembers swinging on a rope over the pond back in 1992 when his parents had first brought him here. It brought back lots of good memories. We walked in the fields where all the sheep were and tried to get close to both the sheep and the cows but they were too afraid. We even saw some pheasants and Canadian ducks over a hill but they ended up flying off when they felt threatened. There was one crazy sheep that had a weird, deep voice and kind skidded all about over the road and over the hills. He didn't seem to belong to any mother so we thought maybe he was the "black" sheep of the group. He almost seemed like he had rabies with the way he was acting; but he never got close enough for us to find out.

On our way back, there were some little sheep that were pretty close to the fence so Jeremiah squatted down to see if they would come up to him so he could touch them. I did the same and they did! We were able to touch them a bit and I felt their soft wool. It was very cool.

We then headed back to the Hall and checked out the new gym and swimming pool. We debated going in but as it was getting close to 9:30pm, we thought we had better call it a night and catch up on some much needed sleep. We got ready for bed and listened to an audiobook for a little bit and then fell asleep. It had been a very good day.