More of Exter

Friday was our last day in the West.

We went and saw Exter Cathedral. The organ in this cathedral is probably the most amazing one I have seen. It stands by itself with all this open space around it. Underneath the organ are a series of paintings. The paintings were very unique you usually don’t see this type of thing in a church. They also had a clock in the church, again unique. The clock was based on the concept that the earth was the center of the universe. So the sun and the moon rotate around the earth in the middle. It was really neat. The church was originally started by the Normans so the side towers are in the Romanesque architecture and the main part of the church in the Gothic style. In the vaulting of the ceiling different scenes are depicted the one which fascinated me was murder of Thomas Beckett. They also had a cairn of hope. You pick up a rock. Contemplate a weight and think of someone carrying a heavy burden and ask that our Savior carry that weight. You then place the rock on the cairn.

We were off to Lyme next. Lyme is the setting for part of the book Persuasion. I timed it really well. I had just finished reading the part….well if you haven’t read Persuasion I don’t want to ruin it for you. Lyme was really relaxing. We took our time and strolled through the town. We stopped in a fossil shop. I got this really cool ring there. There were tons of antique shops in the area. I found a 2nd edition of the 2nd Winnie the Pooh books. It was super fun to buy fish and chips and get as close as you can to eating them in newspaper right on the ocean. Prof. Benfell and his family ate with us on the beach. He told us this story that his professor told him when he first went on a study abroad program. It made us all want to go do a ton of things and convinced me to buy my Winnie the Pooh book. We then strolled a long the rocky beach and the cobb where we pretended to jump off. Oh Deidre there was a pink house there with turquoise doors I took a picture of it but you can’t really tell that the house was pink.

We had a really long bus ride after this. We were all very tired and it was weird how coming back to the center already felt like coming home. We were all really excited. That night we found out that there was a Jane Austen Festival in Bath. We tried to get train tickets to go but they were too much money. We were really sad about that.