LONDON LETTERS: mumford&sons. huddersfield.

the day has arrived. today i will see marcus mumford & sons in the flesh. hear their voices. feel the thumping of the bass, the strum of the banjo. today is the day my ridiculous birthday present happens.

and today i can't sleep past 4:30am.

it's cold. i keep checking my phone watching the minutes crawl by. the sun's already out... is it really only 4:30? i think maybe my phone didn't adjust to the time change... where's my watch? 4:30... is it really that light out? pull back the curtains... yes, the sun is up at 4:30 in the morning. and it's cold. freezing. our window is covered in a layer of dewy moisture because our heater doesn't work. i need to sleep a little longer...

5:30 still need to sleep longer...
... zzzzz
6:00 seriously, it's only been a 1/2 hr. dear stefani, sleep looooonger.
... zzzzzz
6:45 check facebook, instagram, read a little bit of pride and prejudice on my iphone...
... zzzz
7:20 what time does the breakfast buffet open?? what time does it close? i don't want slim pickings... maybe we should go at the beginning. how can casey still be sleeping? itʻs full-on daylight out there... this is crazy. in 12 hrs. i'll be watching Mumford & Sons live in england. i'm crazy. this is crazy. i need more sleep.
... z
7:30 i'm taking a shower. and then i'm waking up casey. maybe i'll lay out our outfits first. and do my hair and make-up and all that.

8:00 i'm waking up casey.

we just had our first english breakfast... eggs, beans, bacon (but not like american bacon), sausage (but not like american sausage), and there was the continental all-you-can eat bar where we grabbed a couple croissants and fruit&yogurt bowls, maybe some frosted flakes too. oh and complimentary hot cocoa... mmmmm. tummies full, it's time to find markers and posterboard to make "the sign". 

"the sign" has been part of the plan all along. i mean, how i am going to get on stage with Mumford & Sons if they don't know i exist? and how can i let them know i exist when they're on stage and i'm down with the huge sea of audience peoples? and what would get their attention?

a poster.

a poster exhibiting the fact that we have flown, literally, to the other side of the world to see them perform live in their home country. HI2UK12, that was my catchphrase/hashtag for the trip... Hawaii to United Kingdom in 2012 - HI2UK12. big deal, right? like seriously, big deal. so hereʻs the plan... find a spot near the front, close to the stage. hoist the sign at the perfect time when Marcus will see it, read it, and say something like, "oh really, you flew all the way from Hawaii to hear us?! that's brilliant! come on up here!" (make sure you read that in a british accent...) then we'll chit-chat on stage, he'll ask what i do back in hawaii, "oh i teach piano."

"oh so you're a musician? you ever play any of our songs?"

"yah! i did 'the cave' at the spring recital last year, and i've done 'awake my soul'. y'all are amazing!!"

"well, how about we do one together, whadya say?"

and that's how it's all gonna pan out. so i need to find a store that sells markers and posterboard so i can make a sign. the sign. and would you believe that Staples is in the UK?! (no wonder Dunder Mifflin never stood a chance... michael scott? the office? anyone... bueller... ) we made the sign right there at checkout... took up an entire register area to do it. 

next stop: Huddersfield. Greenhead Park.

drive. park. pay for parking. find bathroom. find venue. arrival time: 2ish. Mumford & Sons goes on just before 9. in the interim: stroll around Huddersfield.

eat fish and chips.

man these are good fish and chips. and i had a coke too. but coke is coke no matter where you are... do you see these fish and chips?? amazing... greasy. and amazing. i don't know how they got a chunk of fish that big!

oh look, a cute little random man smiling at me from his front step. *click click

and back to the festival...

buy tshirts. check.

look at the booths... they all sell different brews of beer. no hot cocoa. check.

find a good spot. check.

hmmm... the stage is well guarded. there's no way to access it from the audience area. like, there's the audience, then a fence, then security guards, then the stage. all stairs and stage access are backstage. my plan can't work... they can't call me up on stage. it's literally impossible. and i never came up with a plan B.

plan B: have casey hold our spot and i'll go be all chatty with the security guard that's at the backstage access area. tell her our story... get in. 

i approach the security guard... female. in her 40s. looks nice.

smile. smile big. 

i tell our story... flew allthewayfromhawaii because we adore Mumford & Sons, young parents first time away from kids, fellow musicians, we love England, Yorkshire sure is beautiful... 

"no, love. but good on you for trying!" (everybody calls everybody 'love', it's great.)

then Ben walks by.

Ben, the pianist/keyboardist for Mumford & Sons.

walks right by me. like less than 2 ft. from me.

and i walk back to Casey, tell him the bad news, but that i saw Ben. i point to Ben. "see, he's right over there?"

"well, why don't we go say hi to him?" says Casey.

duh. of course.

so we did.

me: "we flew all the way from Hawaii to see you guys!"

ben: "why?!"

me: "because you're amazing! inspiring! some of the best music i've ever heard!"

ben: "wow, well are you enjoying the festival?"

me and case: words of affirmation.

we said something else... i'm not sure what it was. it was surreal. then we walked away, and someone attacked him for a picture, and i realized we didn't get a picture. so we did.

my one regret: i should've said, "can we come backstage and meet everybody?"

i'm sure he would have said yes. oh well... HI2UK13! jk jk

after several hours in some drizzly rain, which was awesome by the way, the time came. and this guy came to the stage to announce the band...

and then it began...

(FYI: no that is NOT me you hear singing/screaming at the beginning and such...)

and here are a couple more for those who love Mumford & Sons' music as much as i do...

Thistles and Weeds

Awake My Soul

and a few pics of the concert...

in one word: epic.

LONDON LETTERS: skipton castle

first off, it's worth noting that i had severely underestimated the whole driving thing. i figured, "yah yah, other side of the road, no big deal." and then our car was a stick shift, and i thought, "well that's a little tricky... shifting with the left hand, but still, we can handle." and by "we" of course i meant Casey, because there was no way i was gonna drive on day one. and then it was rainy, and foggy, and the roads weren't exactly wide enough for two cars, and then.... the round-a-bouts. they have their own set of rules, those round-a-bouts.

that roundabout right there... the one above... that's a pretty straight forward roundabout. it's the ones where the Garmin is saying, "Enter Roundabout and take 5th exit" that were freaking us out a little. okay okay, on day one, all of the roundabouts freaked us out. so like i was saying in the last post, once we got out of Manchester, we headed to Skipton.

literally, dozen upon dozens of little roundabouts in there. 

pardon my incessant laughing... it was intense.

a little over an hour-and-a-half later we arrived...

(des or mais is medieval french, meaning "henceforth")

there is a large section of the castle that is not open to visitors... because someone lives there. isn't that amazing! they live in a castle... a castle! this whole section pictured below... private residence.

all over the castle were these crosses (see below-right...) they were for the archers defending the castle during times of war or attack. those slits are only about 2 inches wide. youʻd think they would be completely protected behind that tiny cross, but we learned that longbows were incredibly accurate in the right hands, and attackers standing over 80 ft. below had over a 30% accuracy rate, so 1 in 3 arrows would make it through. 

            

the castle was built in the 1090 and has received very little renovation since the 1600s... it was originally made of wood, and after faring poorly through its first attack, it was fortified in stone. the original drawbridge and moat and dungeon and kitchen... everything... were very well preserved (the original stone version, that is). this hook here was part of the drawbridge/castle gate unit. i loved the way it had worn into the stone wall over the centuries.

now letʻs take a gander inside...

pictured below is the "oven" and bathroom. yes, i'm standing in the oven. back then, kitchen duty was a mans job, several men actually. there were two of these huge fire places in the kitchen, as well as several smaller loaf cooking ovens. apparently the men who worked close to the fires, like the carvers, usually worked half-naked due to the heat. (the middle pic is looking up the oven shaft.)

the pic on the right is the toilet. its a concrete platform with a bum-sized hole that opens up several stories over a stream. in theory, you did your business and it fell right on down to the stream. (you can kinda sorta see the stream below, through the trees.)

this is the banquet hall... so imagine a couple of super long tables and dozens and dozens of people. this picture doesnʻt really do it justice but this room was enormous! there is a human sized fireplace along the left wall, and there were a couple of cannons in the rooms too. just for decoration iʻm pretty sure... unless they used them for some epic food fights.

these are the north-facing windows of the drawing room. it was the "ladies room" where the women and children would retire after dinner to do needlework and stuff... i donʻt really know what they did. if it were me, i would have made a pot of hot cocoa and watched Pride and Prejudice.

this is a view from one of the watchtower windows, overlooking the castle entrance as well as the town of Skipton.

and next... the dungeon.

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what i thought was most interesting about the dungeon was its absolute seclusion. no windows. no nearby chambers or anything... it was by nothing. and completely shut-off. i wondered how people lived for very long in those conditions, and wondered what type of people had been incarcerated there, and for what crimes. there were etchings on the dungeon walls, a coat of arms/shield, some shapes... in a nutshell, it was dark and it smelled funny. so we went outside...

the courtyard: in the middle of the castle there is a courtyard, surrounded by the domestic buildings of the castle. 

these rain gutters were part of the 1650s renovation, which was under the direction of Lady Anne Clifford... they are made of lead, as was the winery equipment and water storage containers. the castle had only one well or spring within its perimeter, which was piped in, but if they were under siege and the pipeline was cut off, the gutters were used as part of a rain-water catchment system that funneled the water into a cistern under the conduit court.

and hereʻs the court...

 this ewe tree was planted by Lady Anne in 1659 to celebrate the completion of the restoration work.

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this coat of arms is located above one of the many doors accessible via the courtyard... itʻs actually the arms of Margaret Bromflete, who was the mother of Henry Clifford, he being Anne Cliffordʻs grandfather. got that??

the archway pictured bottom right (above) is the entrance to the courtyard if you are coming by way of Lady Annaʻs main entrance to the castle.

the chapel.

built in the 12th century, last record of use 1637 for a baptism, and then fell into derepair during the civil war... became a barn for the animals. it was carefully cleaned and uncovered in the late 1950s and renovation work is slowly underway...

the view from the castle looking over Skipton...

and that concludes our castle tour...

just outside of Skipton Castle is the Holy Trinity Church of Skipton

with a kind old gardener who chatted to us for nearly a 1/2 hr. while our teeth chattered in the cold.

what i loved most about Skipton Castle was its history. i loved being around something so old, that had been a part of so many peoples lives... it had such an amazing feeling, to walk the stairs and imagine the centuries of footfalls that had worn away the stone. and the fact that itʻs still being used, being lived in, is so remarkable! history... so much history.

with the drive time, we spent our entire friday with skipton, and saturday was the concert... Mumford and Sons here we come!!

LONDON LETTERS: prep and leave

camping. we had already planned on camping from fri - wed. and the kids were super stoked about it, so i wasn't gonna bail on the idea. that just meant a little less prep time. we went to the passport office on friday and handed in our paperwork, spent the weekend camping, then hit up the memorial day sales for some cold-weather clothes. (NOTE: hawaii does not sell jackets. probably never, but definitely not in June. also, no long-sleeved white shirts. seems simple, right? yah, not so much. i ended up going to sports authority and just buying some under armor shirts...) we decided to pack-up camp monday night, so i had 36ish hours to unpack camping gear/clothes/food, do laundry, clean the house, pack kids suitcases and grown-ups suitcases... oh yah, and pick up our passports.

wednesday night. our plane didn't leave until 10:30. we dropped of the kiddos at 6:30, threw our bags in the car, and headed out. (i'm really proud of the fact that we packed super light... i might mention it a few times. we packed super light.) our route took us to LAX then Washington/Dulles, then Manchester, England. FLIGHT 1: 5ish hours. FLIGHT 2: 5ish hours. FLIGHT 3: 7ish hours. Total fly time from point A to point B: 17 hrs. ish. Total travel time from point A to point B: 24 hrs. ish... oh, and we almost missed our flight to Manchester... no joke. we were chilling in Washington/Dulles... i had already begun my hot cocoa addiction, which lasted for the duration of the trip. i was rubbing essential oils on my feet because i was determined to A) defy all past experience and not get sick with all the flying (ps. jackie k. if you read this, i want you to know we were constantly putting neosporin in our noses. totally works!)  B) chill-out my asthma before arriving in a new climate/environment, etc. we were sitting 20 feet from our gate... and we thought it was weird that there was a flight to Paris leaving 30 minutes before our flight to Manchester, U.K. was supposed to leave. We kept saying how that was some magic to get one plane taxied out and another in, unloaded, cleaned, loaded and on its way in only 30 minutes. It got closer and closer to leave time and the flight to Paris was obviously running late.... we were uber confused. NOTE: ALWAYS CHECK THE SCREENS!! I mean, everyone knows this. We know this. But for same brainless reason we were just going by our tickets... As I'm sure you've figured out, our gate had been changed. To be more correct, our terminal had been changed. IT WAS INTENSE!! We grabbed our small carry-ons (we packed super light... so cool) and booked it! When we arrived at the correct gate it was on last boarding call! We walked in, buckled up, and left. Like I said, intense!

We arrived in Manchester, England, Friday morning at 9:30, picked up our rental car, and started driving. On the left side of the road. Through the most insane driving situations ever... let's all say "rounadbout" together... And an hour or so later we were in Skipton, home of Skipton Castle.