North West England

We rented a flat in Lytham St. Annes, really St. Annes by the Sea which is just south of Blackpool on the North West coast of England.  After taking a day to rest and do laundry we hit the road again.  Our first priority was to make arrangements to baptize Hannah.  We found our ward, transferred our records and baptized Hannah on June 23rd.  She was beyond excited and dragged her Dad to the font.  She asked her Grandpa Mitchell to speak about baptism, her brothers prayed and I spoke about the Holy Ghost.  She was worried about making the decision to be baptized in England because she knew that her friends and family would not be able to be there with her.  I was very touched by the members of the Blackpool ward who attended.  The Storr family came from Duffield, shared their talents and helped with the music.  The baptism had, for the first time been announced during Sacrament Meeting that morning.  We estimate around 30 members, so Hannah had lots of ward family and friends attend.  Blackpool was the first area that Chuck had served in as a missionary.  It was a special occasion to be blessed with the opportunity to baptize his daughter in the first area he served in as a missionary.  I was also very touched by the members willingness to accommodate us.  As I visited with one of the ward members who helped us organize I thanked him.  His response was, "in the end it's all the Lord's work."  I will miss the Blackpool Ward in the Preston England Stake.

 

While in St. Annes we did quite a bit of travelling.  We drove to Preston and Chorley to the Temple.  We performed endowments while the boys did baptism's.  There first baptism's were with a stake in Ireland and Scotland.  Some of the names they were baptized for was for a gentleman who had prepared 300,000 names for the temple.  He was in the temple that day and performed some of the confirmations.  As he performed each he would tell us about that particular family member.  He knew each of them as if he had known them personally.  Some of them lived hundreds of years before he did.  It was a great experience.

On our second visit to the Preston Temple we met the Derby Ward and the Storr family.  While the youth went into do baptism's we hopped on the coach with the Derby primary and went back into Preston and Avenham Park.  Avenham Park is where the first baptism's in England took place.  There is a bridge that crosses the River Ribble where two, soon to be members, raced across to be the first to be baptized.  So of course, the primary children got to have their own foot race and ran across the same bridge.  We stopped in front of the flat that Pres. Hinkley lived in as a missionary and walked through town center where the first missionaries stood to teach the gospel.  

We also drove to Chatburn and Downham where some of the first, in fact almost the entire villages were converted and baptized.  Downham has been kept and preserved like it was in the 1800's so all the power lines, etc. are buried.  

 

River Ribble

 My girls, Grandma Mitchell and Grandma Buchanan with their umbrellas at the Preston Temple

 

Our flat in St. Annes.  It's next to the beach and Ashton Garden. They have a really great playground so you can imagine where we spent a lot of our time.  The boys attend young men's and have 

learned to play cricket and rugby.  Hannah had been invited to young women's where she made jewelry.  And Abigail plays with  Bob, the cat that lives next door, looks for snails and digs the

 flower beds around the church for rollie pollies.

We have been to the remains of Roman Cities, the Royal Armory in Leeds, north to the Lakes District to see the house on the bridge in Ambleside, Lake Windemere where Beatrix Potter was originally from and was inspired to write Peter Rabbit, viking graves in Heysham.  As we travel we can see why Potter would have been inspired to write about Peter Rabbit, how Tolkien's Middle Earth came to be and there are areas where you are thinking you walked into Hogwarts and Diagon Alley.

    

Celebrating Landon's 13th Birthday with a chocolate Hedge Hog cake.  

We also celebrated Chuck's birthday and fathers day.

There are remnants of the Roman Empire all over England.  We drove through Hadrian's Wall without realizing it.  If you ask the British, they built it to keep the Scottish out.  If you ask the Scottish, they built it to keep the British out.  The reality is that is the northern border of the Roman Empire and pretty much sits on the Scottish, English border.

Pendel Hill sits on the edge of the Yorkshiredales.  The top left peak is where Heber C. Kimball and Parley P. Pratt stood to dedicate the land opening the UK to missionary work.

Built on a bridge in Ambleside to avoid paying outrageous taxes.  At one time there was a family of 6 living in it.  It's now owned by the National Trust and has been turned into a gift shop.  It seems that a lot of the places we have visited have had scaffolding around it.  I was hoping to take a picture without all of the construction.

Kids playing at Lake Windemere.

Scotland and England

I suppose you can safely say that we are not the best bloggers.  We stayed in Ireland a week then onto Scotland.  We stayed in a small village just east of Ayr (pronounced Air) called Coylton.  Part of what has been so great about this holiday is that we have had the opportunity to meet and make new friends as we have traveled.

We stayed in Scotland for a week.  We traveled north to Loch Lomond to find the Buchanan Castle.  This area of Scotland was once home of the Buchanan Clan and some of our ancestors.  It is located on the Buchanan Golf Course near Dryman in Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park.  One of the great things about the UK is that you don't have to pay entrance fees to their National Parks.  The castle, even in a ruined state was beautiful.  At some point in the castles history they were heavily taxed and so they removed the turrets and other parts of the roof to save money.  Once the turrets were removed the castle started to deteriorate.  There were several homes built around the castle and it sits quietly in a residential neighborhood on the golf course.  The crest still hangs on the front.

We spent a couple days in Edinburgh.  It's an amazing city and pictures don't do it justice.  You just have to come see it.  We took the train into to Waverly Station.  Thank heavens because originally we tried to drive to city centre.  I was still trying to learn the rules of the road and follow Chuck at the same time.  The lights go from red to yellow then green.  Green goes straight to red and yellow means get ready to go.  There are lights for each lane and instead of yield it's give way.  I was only yelled at twice in Scotland for my driving skills.

We spent time in the National Gallery and got to see our first Monet, Van Gogh and others.  Like most of the city centre's we have toured there are groups of musicians performing and in Edinburgh they had bagpipers on every corner.  We shopped, bought bagpipes and kilts and Scottish shortbread.  The architecture is incredible.  We loved visiting with the locals.  "Here is your wee receipt, sign on the wee line, follow the wee road."  We drove past the Wee Barber Shop and saw a picture of a mother and daughter pulling a plow in the early 1900's.  When we saw the picture of Mr. Veitch's father plowing we realized when he referred to mother and daughter he meant horses, not his mother and sister.

Part of the reason why we stayed in Coylton was because it was centered in Ayrshire where the Mitchell family came from.  We walked through Dalmellington's cemetery and visited with residents who directed us to an older cemetery in Dalmellington.  We found Mitchell's there, in St. Quivox (pronounced saint key-vix) and Beith (pronounced beeth).  All were areas where my side of the family were either born or died.  Even though we didn't find those we were specifically looking for it was a humbling experience to be there.  Dad said, "I wonder if William ever thought that his posterity would come back to Scotland to look for him?"  I am convinced they are there.  The older cemetery in Dalmellington had been vandalized and in the corner was a pile of broken headstones.  I didn't know if I would get in trouble by going through the pile and they were not small headstones.  I did find a history center in Kilmarnock that contains records of the area back into the early 1500's.  When we come back I will spend a few days their.  We also found names that could possibly be family on the Brandt side.  We just need to do our homework and come back.  The two oldest buildings in Dalmellington were the church and the pub pictured below.  Both were around when my grandparents lived there.

    

  

June 2, 2013

Note to self, at the gas station in Ireland, green means unleaded, black is diesel.  We were suppose to go to Northern Ireland today but plans changed. Good thing the gas station is only a block from the hotel. I did get a short nap in the parking lot of the gas station and the rest of the crew got to nap at the hotel.  Tow truck finally  made it and about 20 minutes later we had a new van only this one is gray.  I was reassured that this happens all the time and I did the best thing by calling the rental company before I drove it.  Glad we paid for the extra insurance.

We ended up at the    Ardgillan Castle just north of Dublin.  Kids loved this castle because it had huge lawns that they could run around on and roll down the hills. It was great for us to just sit and enjoy the views.  We then found a beach and picked up sea shells.  Kids were glad that we did not have to spend another day traveling in the van.

Ardgillan Castle 

Kids running around on the castle lawns.

Showing off some of the shells they found.

June 3

We caught the ferry from Dublin to Holyhead Wales.  The trip was about 2 hours long and was a new experience for all of us.  When we got to Holyhead we rented 2 cars because as we learned later you cannot rent 9 passenger vans in England unless you are affiliated with the government.  So Tauna gets to have the experience of driving on the left hand side. We then had a 5 hour drive to Coylton, Scotland.  We finally got there around 12:30 am and was glad to be out of the cars.  The last 50 miles was on a small Scottish road that had no part longer then a 100 yards that was straight and barley wide enough for 2 cars to pass by each other.

Waiting to board the ferry.

On board the ferry

June 4

Today we just stayed at the house we had rented and did some laundry.  We are still having a hard time adjusting to it being light so late and slept  in late.  Scotland smell s like a dairy farm, at least this part we are staying in.  We ventured over to the beach this evening and let the kids play for a while.  We found a castle perched on the side of some cliffs on the coast and took some pictures.  We found out that it was called Wallace tower and belonged to the William Wallace family.  We could not go inside and it was not very large.  Saw a fox and some pheasants while we were there.

Abbey in the back yard in Scotland

The Wallace Tower (Castle)

The house we stayed at in Scotland, the white one on the left.

May 28, 2013

Made it to Las Vegas and had about 4 hours to wait in the terminal for our plane.  Kids were able to watch the plane come in and the see what was happening to it as it was prepared for our flight.  Our kids were pretty impressed that we all had our own little screens that we could choose movies on.  The flight was good and no problems.

May 29, 2013

Landed at Heathrow and the fun began.  British airways had a wheelchair for Mike and gave him, Natalie and Grandma Buchanan a ride to the next terminal.  Tauna, I and the kids walked and took a shuttle.  Heathrow is a crazy airport, there are 5 terminals and no order to any of them.  3 of our group managed to sneak past airport security and were not allowed to get on the plane to Dublin.  So half went on to Dublin while the other half went back and caught the next flight.  We caught a double decker bus to the hotel. Finally got to the hotel around 9:30 that night and was ready for bed.  Sorry to admit it but we had McDonalds our first night in Ireland.  Mike will deny that if you ask him.

 May 30, 2013

We slept in and then decided to take a bus into Dublin City Centre.  We loved Dublin and spent most of our time in the National Museum.  We got to see the Bog people, St. Patrick's Shrine and other amazing artifacts....and of course the gift shop.  We had dinner in St Stephens Green, a park right in the middle of the city and had our first proper Fish and Chips. It does not get dark until 11:00 pm and light at 4:00 am so we are having a hard time adjusting to the fact that it really is late.  Picture to the right is outside the national museum.

  This picture is of Grafton Street downtown Dublin.

the one below is of the Liffey river.

The kids at St Stephens Green Feeding pigeons.  We loved Dublin.  It's an amazing city and the architecture is indescribable.  The Irish are very friendly and willing to help.  Several people asked us if we needed help and gave us directions.  The fellow that sat next to Dad on the bus gave him a personalized tour of the city as we traveled to the city centre.         

May 31, 2013

Rented a 9 passenger van today have to get used to driving on the left again.  Forgot that once you get on the roads the traffic goes quickly.

 Headed to Galloway, Ireland.  Of course we took a wrong road and ended up taking a "short cut".  It was fun to see the countryside of Ireland.  We never really made it into Galloway, but got to see a couple of sight's around the area.  Stopped at a small grave yard and cemetery a long the road.  The roads are a lot narrower then I remember. We have figured out we have to get out of bed and leave earlier if we want to get our sight seeing in.  The people in Ireland have been great.  Had to laugh because on the news this morning they were concerned because a study had been done and had shown that the Irish consume 700 times more alcohol then any other European country. It was a nice thought as we rented the big red van and learned to drive on the left side of the road and use round abouts.

A small valley north of Galloway

Kids outside the Dunguaire Castle on the west coast of Ireland

June 1, 2013

We drove south to Cork and Blarney.  First we stopped at the Rock of Dumanse and spent about an hour there.  This was interesting to see how the castles were put together to protect the main building.

All of us in the Castle Ruins

View from the castle to the west.

We toured the Blarney Castle and it's grounds.  Ireland is truly magical.  If a fairy flew from behind a tree or we walked through a forest of elves it would not surprise me.  We all climbed to the top of the Blarney Castle and kissed the Blarney Stone.  Legend says that if you kiss the stone you will be given the gift of eloquence.  You climb to the top of the castle and an Irishman sits next to you, explains how to lay on your back and you lean backwards over the edge of the castle and kiss the stone while the Irishman holds your waist.  

We toured the fern garden and the poison garden where we got to see marijuana, wolfsbane and mandrakes.      We now have lot's of landscaping ideas (ha ha, not with marijuana) but with ferns.  We just don't know how to keep it all from drying up in sunny southern utah.

Fern Garden

Blarney Castle