Logistical June

June was crazy. It began with several enormous and daunting piles of marking and ended with a string of complicated travelling plans that didn't really ease up once the month had ended. We were blessed with the chance to see a some good friends and beloved family members, and I was able to visit several new places, both domestic and international, but by the end of the month I. and I were more or less madly throwing items into suitcases and wishing we could have about five days just to sleep.

We spent a good deal of late June on trains (pictured below) or in train stations (also pictured below), mostly because I can be an overly paranoid traveller. This particular train station is in Helensburgh, Scotland, where we travelled for a friend's wedding. Our Scottish excursion on this trip also saw us spending an hour in Lancaster and a night in Glasgow, where we were able to see one of my former housemates and her family over a luxurious but too-brief breakfast.

Here we are in our wedding garb:

The wedding was brief but lovely, and the reception was small and filled with laughter. We sat at one of two tables with children, so I've withheld any photographs of our tablemates, but it was a very pretty table, and the fine people at Rosslea Hall also gave the children small entertainment packets that contained crayons, colouring pages, and some of the hardest word games ever invented (the six adults at our table, working together, were unable to solve the crossword puzzle).

We dashed from the reception to the train station, and after catching our Helensburgh train, we went back to Glasgow and caught an overnight bus to London, where we met up with I.'s brother J. As an aside, I don't recommend the overnight bus for anyone who is not a very sound sleeper and a very cold sleeper. It was perhaps the second-hottest sleep of my life.

We took J. to some of our favourite London destinations, including the British Library (not pictured, because I'm sure anyone who reads this blog faithfully is sick of photos of the great BL by now), the British Museum, and the South Bank of the Thames, which we walked along for a while. J. was particularly interested in the South Bank book stall, which has been a staple of our London trips for about as long as I can remember.

We eventually stopped for coffee in the cafe at the Tate Modern, partly because it was raining and mostly because I really love the view from the cafe (not pictured). While we were upstairs, some ambitious people tried to make bubbles on the riverbank, and a few of these survived briefly, although the small children in attendance seemed to think that bubbles only existed to be popped.

We also had live musical entertainment (though I confess I was so distracted by the pretty bubbles that I couldn't tell you whether these guys were any good at all) and a beautiful view of St. Paul's.

London was a bit of a whirlwind, but a fun one, and after a nice dinner and breakfast with J. and a morning spent navigating various busses around Regent's Park, I. and I headed back to Sheffield to pack, clean, and visit our church again. My packing was rather immediate, as I spent only the Sunday and Monday at home, and was off to destinations unknown on the Tuesday.

Locally, I spent most of Tuesday transcribing records in beautiful Chatsworth House in Darbyshire. It is still the home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, and is located in the heart of the Peak District, hence the beautiful hills that suround it.

I took a photograph of the house itself, but it was snapped from a moving bus and really doesn't do the building any justice. The house itself contains a stunning library and some glorious old rooms, and the gardens are beautiful as well; I spent most of my time in the archives, which were fabulous.

From Chatsworth, I met up with my beloved husband in nearby Chesterfield (of the twisted spire) for a pub dinner, then hopped on a train to London for the next leg of my adventure (which merits its own blog post).