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.