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My Southern England trip continues as I edge closer to my time ending in Salisbury. As I write this post, it’s a washout as the Brits like to say. In other words, it’s raining heavily. Therefore, yesterday was my big excursion; I visited Lacock and Bath in one day … and without a car.  Here’s how it went:

I took the train from Salisbury station to Trowbridge.  I have to admit I much prefer the buses because they’re much cheaper and you get to see much more sitting atop the double decker.  The train costs 10 pounds for only a 30 minute or less trip.  The day before I took a bus ride for 30 minutes for 3 pounds, 80 pence. It’s a huge difference to a budget traveler.

I got off at Trowbridge, a bit lost, but a nice Brit walked me to the town center and showed me to the right bus.  Trowbridge is the county seat and a busy, little town, and I was glad I was able to see it.  I hopped aboard the 234 (or you can take the X34) toward Chippenham.  I made sure it stopped at Lacock, even though it clearly said it on the sign.  The bus cost 4 pounds, 15 pence.

The ride was charming on my absolute favorite, the double decker bus.  We went through villages and farmland and even got to see a version of a British trailer park.

Then we arrived at Lacock after a 30 minute or so ride. Lacock is the National Trust village where scenes from world-famous BBC films such as the original Pride & Prejudice (the Colin Firth version) and Cranford were shot.  Scenes from two Harry Potter films were shot here as well.

Lacock is a step back in time.  It looks like an 18th to 19th century, English village. The English tudors, flower boxes, lush green landscapes help the tourist step back in time.  It was easy to see how Lacock was a film set.  Simply throw down some dirt for the roads and place actors in old-fashioned clothes and you’re ready to shoot.

I walked around Lacock, winding through the cobblestone streets, peering up at the perfect English cottages, adoring a kitten in a window (see photo) and even stopping off at the bakery to smell some goodies. I stopped outside The Abbey and took some photos through the fence and thought of Jane Austen. This was a perfect setting for her novel.

After sitting on a bench and eating in Lacock, I walked down the road towards Chippenham and caught the X34 (you can also take the 234) to Chippenham.  Only a 10 minute ride and 2 pounds, 40 pence, I got off at the Chippenham bus station. Alas, there was a bus waiting to go to Bath.  I hopped aboard for 4 pounds, 45 pence.

It took over an hour to get to Bath.  The bus was not double decker, and the ride was uneventful until we approached just outside of Bath …

Please continue reading about my travels in Bath on the Editorial Director’s Forum.

And don’t forget to read about my non-touristy, Stonehenge visit.

- Jennifer, Editorial Network Diector

I’ve officially started my Literary Traveler England trip.  It began last night in Salisbury, England and will end with a once-in-a-lifetime cruise on the world-famous Queen Mary 2!  So please stay tuned all this week and next week for my blog posts.

This morning, I woke up at the Cathedral View Bed & Breakfast in Salisbury. It’s a lovely, charming place with a literal view of the Salisbury Cathedral from my window. The innkeepers, Wenda & Steve, cooked an incredible spread of eggs, bacon, toast and fresh, homemade jam.  Breakfast was fun this morning because I had the pleasure of dining with two intellectual and well-traveled couples from Canada and England.

After breakfast, off to Stonehenge I went.  But I refused to take the incredibly expensive tourist bus there. Instead, I took a bus from the Salisbury bus station for 3 pounds, 80 pence one-way to the stop after the Amesbury station (less than 30 min). My intentions were good, as I was to walk down country paths to Stonehenge, but the stubborn bus driver dropped me off at the wrong stop and insisted this was the best way to walk to Stonehenge.

Alas, I turned the corner and ended up walking along the A-303 highway. It was not only dangerous, but not very enjoyable either.  Just as I was about to give up, there it was … Stonehenge.  I climbed the hill, paid my fee of 6 pounds, 90 pence and walked through the tunnel to that magnificent pile of rocks.  Up close, it’s powerful, even if the rocks are roped off.  You can only encircle them now–unlike the old days where you could climb atop them.  Older Brits will tell you stories of how they played on them as children.

Back on my way from Stonehenge, I finally was able to walk through my beloved country paths, which were marked clearly with gates from the National Trust. I weaved through cute sheep and not-so-cute, sheep doo-doo.  Then I took my own detour, cutting through the lovely town of Amesbury.

Even though the highway experience wasn’t great and I walked miles and miles today, I was glad I stayed away from the tourist buses.  No one was on the country paths except for me.  I saw Stonehenge from afar, surrounded by silence and countryside.

All in all, it was quite a day.  Please continue to read on tomorrow as I visit Lacock, the National Trust village where Pride & Prejudice was filmed, and Bath.

- Jennifer, Network Editorial Director

When I read Katy’s post about LT’s Dark New England theme, I thought of centuries-old stories set in a wilderness that no longer exists, Hawthorne’s characters tempted by the devil in the woods.

Then, last weekend, on the drive to his late godfather’s place in Maine, my boyfriend me told a story that hit a little closer to home.  His mother had recently stumbled across an old family Bible in the attic.  Inscribed in it was the name of a distant great aunt who was accused of committing withcraft in Marlborough, Massachusetts in the early 1700s.

More interesting, though, was a letter folded in the Bible, recounting the experience of another Marlborough aunt.  She started in an idyllic domestic setting, singing in the kitchen as a pie baked in the oven and her sister’s children made God’s Eyes on the floor.

Then the tomahawks came out, the arrows flew through the air, and, in a few minutes time, everyone but the singing aunt was slain where they stood.  Enraptured by the beauty of her song, the invading tribe decided to take her as a captive instead.  They brought her back to Marlborough four years later.

I haven’t heard many more details — I do know that she married her fiance when she came back to town — but until I get them, I like to hope that the letter is a concise, Quaker variation on Mary Rowlandson’s The Soverignty and Goodness of God, with sheet music of the melodies she dreamt up on the frontier.

I scoured the internet, just in case, but I couldn’t find any such music, or even an operatic captivity narrative.  (His mother’s a writer and his grandmother was an opera singer; I thought they might appreciate the connection.)  No such luck, but I did find a blogger/musician who wrote a song inspired by Rowlandson’s experiences.  Listen at your own risk.

Ever since the era of the Romantics, the western world has been rather obsessed with nature and its violence.  Adventurers and writers alike – though, as we well know, these are often one in the same – chase the feeling of awe, the moment of being engulfed by a landscape that is at once both dangerous and beautiful.  They call this feeling of vastness, this curious mixture of threat and promise that comes from something far greater than one’s self, the sublime.

While history does not count Jules Verne among the Romantics, like Mary Shelley and the rest, Verne was interested in the phenomenal greatness of the natural world.  In Journey to the Center of the Earth, a work originally written in French and later translated into English, Verne describes a voyage of the imagination.  Propelled by his own belief as to what lies under the earth’s crust, Verne takes his characters – and his readers – down into the depths of our universe.  What they find there is nothing less than sublime.

However, this week we are more interested in where their journey began than where it ended.  Professor von Hardwigg and his companions take the quickest route into the underground – through the Snæfellsjökull volcano in western Iceland.  Just as von Hardwigg is bowled over by the beauty and majesty of the peak, writer Jacquelin Cangro is also awed by the snow-covered volcano, and though she never reaches the peak – or the center of the earth – Cangro is rewarded for her efforts with a glimpse into Verne’s inspiration.

Join us this week at Snæfellsjökull with our newest feature article, Journeying to the Wilderness of Iceland with Jules Verne.  With a little help from the imagination, you can hike with Cangro up the side of a volcano – and with a little more effort, you can dive with Verne straight into the depths of the earth.  Just don’t get lost.

In the rich literary tradition of America, tales of the supernatural have always occupied a special place. Stories of the fantastic and the unreal have not only entered our imaginations, tainting the way we think about the very ground below us, but also the cannon of great literature. From Washington Irving to Edgar Allan Poe, we have always celebrated the authors that have the power to make our skin crawl and our nights restless.

This fall, Literary Traveler will feature a new theme for our feature articles: Dark New England. As the days lengthen, and All Hallows Eve approaches, we will be publishing several articles that center around some of America’s best horror writers, including Stephen King and Edgar Allan Poe. We will also highlight one of our favorite underrated writers: Shirley Jackson, author of The Lottery fame.

Join us as we journey to Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts in search of what makes New England so uniquely suited to images of ghosts and specters, stories of hauntings and awakenings.

There are many places in the world that stand testimony to the suffering of previous generations.  From the gates of Auschwitz to the  Vietnam memorial, we remember those who we have lost through the objects that remain.  These things serve to remind us of the harsh reality of human suffering — and the courage that impels us all toward survival, throughout it all.

The island of Spinalonga is one such place.  Though not quite so famous as the aforementioned examples, Spinalonga, located off the coast of Crete, is seeped in history.  The very soil, and the ruins that still stand upon it, tell the story of the lives of all its exiled inhabitants, sent to live on Spinalonga for the crime of contracting leprosy.

In our newest feature article, write Inka Piegsa-Quischotte visits the tiny island that once housed a colony of lepers.  She walks through the remains, imagining what life must have been like for the sick sent to live out their days far from society.  Using Victoria Hislop’s novel The Island as her literary guide, Piegsa-Quischotte explores what is left of the town on Spinalonga, which she renames the “island of defiance” for the many acts of courage it has seen.

Join us as we travel to Greece with Piegsa-Quischotte and Hislop in our piece The Defiant Spirit of Spinalonga, an Island of Exiles.  Take a moment to imagine what the world must have looked like through the eyes of the ill, what trials they must have faced, what bravery they must have shown.  Leave behind the comfort of your living room for a moment and immerse yourself in the ruins of Spinalonga — an island forgotten by many, but remembered in writing.

Like my fellow Literary Traveler blogger Ashley, I’ve been on a rather tight budget this summer.  This does not jive well with my near-constant need to get out of the city, to always be going, going, gone.  Fortunately, I’ve found a way around my limitations: camping.

I’m no stranger to roughing it–I did once complete several weeks of Outward Bound–but I hadn’t done a lot of camping in the past couple of years, so my recent trip to Maine was something of a shock.  Camping was dirtier, messier, scarier, and harder than I remembered.  But also so much more fun.

And Maine is the perfect place to get away from it all.  From the mountains in the West to the island-riddled coast in the East, the entire state is filled with incredible views, pristine lakes, remote villages, and all the rural charm you could ever want.  We stayed at the Augusta West Kampground on Annabessacook Lake, an oddly-shaped body of water, delightfully rich in water lilies, located somewhere in the middle of Maine.  Our first afternoon was spent on the water, canoeing from island to minuscule island, poking through the debris left behind by former visitors.  I felt like an anthropologist, uncovering the remains of a forgotten culture–though in truth I discovered nothing more exciting than charred fire pits and empty beer cans.

On the second day–and our final day of the weekend getaway–we drove out to New Hampshire and climbed Mount Pine.  The White Mountain National Forest is an amazing place for both experts and amateur hikers.  Though I probably fall into the later category, I felt an absurd sense of pride as we reached the summit, just moments before the fog rolled in.  I watched as the thick, sullen clouds descended over the peaks, shrouding them–and us–from view.

Fortunately for me, my camping days are not over yet.  This week, I’m dragging my boyfriend out to Western Massachusetts, where my younger sister goes to school.  I’m looking forward to several days of hiking, hot dogs, beer, bonfires, and maybe some early-fall swimming.  Stay tuned for details.

I touched down in Guatemala yesterday afternoon.  Originally, I planned to go directly to Quetzaltenango, where a former high school classmate is launching his non-profit, weGuatemala.  But, anticipating the long weekend and my yen for ruined churches, I decided to spend the day in the deliberately old-school city of Antigua, and maybe try to see Lake Atitlan (a la Aldous Huxley’s Beyond the Mexique Bay) on the way.  Good plan, it turns out.

Heavy rains on Thursday and Friday created mudslides on the routes to the west of Guatemala City, and a chicken bus (colorful second-class transportation) went under.  Last I read, there were 37 confirmed deaths, and 23 missing persons.  President Alvaro Colom declared it a national emergency, and la ruta Interamericana has been closed.

If I’d taken my malaria meds, I’d be booking it for Tikal right now — ruins on a large scale, and far to the east.  As is, I’m grateful to be here, and I’ve developed an interest in traveling first-class.  Because–I can’t help but think this, erroneous as it is–throwing money at it might make the landscape less chaotic.

And, given recent events, I’m a little perplexed by my interest in the ruins of natural disasters.  I think every social science nerd geeks out over Pompeii, and I love me some scraps of ancient civilizations, but isn’t there something inhumane about my giddiness over churches ruined by volcanoes?  If the mud out here acts as a preservative (this isn’t an entirely crazy idea — I’m looking at you, mummifying air of Guanajuato), will a future student of the humanities go out of her way to study the chicken bus?

Probably not, since it’s a pretty small-scale disaster.  And while I am not alone in my fetishization of “ruined” civilizations (I’m looking at you, Romantics), I am uncomfortable with contemporary disaster tourism, even as I participate in it.  When Ground Zero was a stop on my marching band’s tour of New York, I cringed,  but I got off the bus.  When I went to New Orleans to knock down houses the spring after Katrina hit, I unabashedly took pictures of the broken dam, and admitted that I had gone down mainly out of curiosity.

The latter was shameless because I was doing what I could to help, even if I just came to gawk.  Maybe that’s the difference.