TRAVELING DESTINATIONS
We've always enjoyed traveling, one of our commitments to each other when we married. As a nurse, Janet would come home from the hospital and tell me about yet another patient would never see his/her retirement travels. It's surprising how many couples never travel to new destinations, here in this country or to areas out of the US. They say they're saving for retirement so they can travel when their working lifestyle is changed. For reasons unknown to them at the time, many never make their traveling plans together, very unfortunate.
With our timeshares, we've been to the Bahamas, Cancun, Acapulco, Sint Maartin and the famous Orient Beach, Magog/Montreal in February, and the western US where we spent some time at the Grand Canyon in February. In October of 1999, a business spiff resulted in a pleasure vacation with an English company group tour to England. David was especially excited about this trip because his family ancestry originated in the West Yorkshire area of north central England. We visited Bath, with the Roman Baths, Stratford on Avon, and the Royal Shakespeare Theater where we were fortunate to see the play Othello. On to Windsor and the changing of the guard at Windsor Castle. There were many side trips in between such as the Cotswolds for shopping, a day in London, where we enjoyed a double decker bus ride tour, Tower of London and the royal jewels, Piccadilly and Trafalgar Squares. After one week with the tour group, we struck out on our own with a rental car (right side operated!!) and headed north towards West Yorkshire and the Pennine area. Lodging for two nights was at the Hinchliffe Arms Hotel in Craig Vale. The hotel is situated in a vale, along the picturesque Elphin Brook. It only had three rooms but the food and drink and the friendliness of the owners was outstanding. We spent two days poking around small towns named Sowerby, Sowerby Bridge, Hebden Bridge, Calderdale, and a larger town named Halifax. Our roving culminated with the time we spent in Heptonstall.
The commonly accepted meaning of the name Heptonstall is from the Old English 'Hep' - Wild Rose, and 'Tunstall' - a farmstead where cattle were pastured: so - 'Rose Farm'. Hebden was originally spelt Hepden, thus 'Hep-dene' - 'Rose valley'. Where all the roses went remains a mystery! Heptonstall is not mentioned in the Doomsday Book, around 1086, a surprising omission, as a hamlet certainly existed here at that time. At the time of the Norman Conquest, the area was part of the Manor of Wakefield and as such belonged to the King. The area, by necessity, developed a dual economy based on hand-loom weaving and agriculture. The Heptonstall area thrived, the population rose to around 4,000, today it is around 2,000. The village of Heptonstall is an extraordinarily well preserved Pennine hilltop settlement.
Ancestry records state that in 1593 George Fairebancke of Heptonstall, and Mary Farrer of Errington, were to be married at Heptonstall. A son from that marriage, Jonathan, born about 1595, eventually brought his wife, Grace Lee and four sons and two daughters to Boston in 1633. While we didn't meet any kin while there in the Heptonstall area, they were listed in the phone books and on one billboard we saw while driving, "Fairbank Textiles". While walking the village of Heptonstall, the excitement of the day mounted when we entered the walled remains of the St Thomas A Beckett Church which was built about 1260. The church was still in use up until 1854. A great storm in 1847 greatly damaged the West face of the tower, but repairs were done keeping the church in use until 1854, when its near neighbor, Church of St Thomas the Apostle, was constructed. The fact that there are two churches in one churchyard is an unusual feature. Only a handful of other church yards in Britain can claim a similar peculiarity, one being that of Westminster Abbey. The graveyard around the two churches is reputed to hold the remains of over 10,000 dead. David felt that he had indeed tread in his ancestral footprints, he was quite overwhelmed.
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Travel destinations will always be in our yearly planner, as long as the Good
Lord provides.....COMING SOON:
Pictures of our whirlwind European Tour where we spent twenty four days in
England, France, Holland, Belgium, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Germany,
and Italy, in 2002, and the three week + trip we took to the five major islands in Hawaii
in 2004. Here is the first edition of our whirlwind European Tour
... LondonEnglandTour ...
DoverToGermanyTour
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