Our second day in London began after we were assembled into our touring groups led by Exeter’s student ambassadors. We then walked to the center of Covent Garden to meet up with our tour guide. Our group was lucky to have Jan, an energetic and sarcastic Englishwoman who directed us through crowds with a blue and gold Buckingham Palace umbrella. Jan has been in the tour guide business for over 30 years, and her experience was evidenced by the wonderful history and facts she provided us about London’s highlights. For instance, Covent Garden used to be called Convent Garden when nuns occupied the area, but was later changed once they moved to other locations.

We hit all the highlights on our two hour tour including the River Thames with its donated obelisk statue, the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, the horseguards at the back of the palace, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey. Jan also pointed out 10 Downing Street, where the Prime Minister’s official residence is located, the government building which was used as the Ministry of Magic in Harry Potter, and numerous war memorials scattered throughout the city. Jan also pointed out the homes of Prince Charles and Camilla and another palace used as a residence for royals next door.

Jan finished our tour by leaving us to explore Trafalgar Square for the afternoon. I joined a group of about seven students and together we walked to Picadilly Circus down Regent Street (AKA- the street with lots of expensive shops I cannot afford to walk into). After a quick lunch, we wandered through the Soho area before splitting off in two groups. Our group rode the Tube back to Kensington Palace in time to actually tour the inside of the home and the surrounding gardens. The areas of Kensington open to the public provide an intimate history of the childhood of Queen Victoria and her devotion to her husband Prince Albert. Their relationship is a beautiful love story from start to finish, and Queen Victoria never truly stopped mourning the death of her beloved Albert. Other wings of the Palace provide an in-depth history of royal fashions from Princess Margaret to Princess Diana as well as walk-throughs of the queen and king’s chambers.

Later that evening, we traveled across the Thames to the Globe Theater to see Macbeth performed on stage. I was initially excited to see the play anyway, but all my expectations were completely surpassed! The performance was both amazingly powerful and mesmerizing and truly brings the play to life. The humorous ad libs added in by the actors provided a special treat you can only get when you see something performed live. An extra bonus was the realization that Banquo was performed by the same actor who plays Pippin in Lord of the Rings! Seeing a Shakespeare play performed in the venue it was originally envisioned in was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience which has made me appreciate his works even more.

On Saturday morning, we began our journey to London by train with Lucy from the International Office and two student ambassadors, Sandra and Daniella. After a two hour train ride from Exeter St. David’s station to London, we disembarked to a surprisingly chilly afternoon. The immediate contrast between London and Exeter was startling, both because of the temperature change and the sheer amount of people rushing about. We soon acclimated to both, though, after a ride on “The Tube,” or the London Underground took us within two blocks of our hotel. (The London Underground also just happens to be celebrating its 150th anniversary this year!). After checking into our rooms, we were given the afternoon to explore until our fellow international school students arrived for dinner that evening.

To make the most of our few free hours, we took the Tube to South Kensington and explored the amazingly huge Museum of Natural History which featured dinosaur displays, precious gems, a giant sequoia, and stunning architecture. Did I mention almost all British museums are free? Amazing! After leaving the museum, we found one of the iconic red telephone booths and had to take the quintessential London tourist photo before continuing on to Hyde Park. Hyde Park contains the famous Kensington Palace, the childhood home of many British monarchs including Queen Victoria, as well as beautiful gardens dedicated to Princess Diana and a stunning memorial for Prince Albert. (The newly arrived Prince George spent his first night home from the hospital at Kensington as well.)  An antique British car show was also taking place in the park that day, and seeing all those classics lined up was an extra treat before rushing back to the Tube to make it in time for dinner.

Upon arriving back, we were introduced to some of the 150+ students we would be joining as a part of the International Summer School at Exeter. An astounding 27 countries and over 60 different schools were represented in our groups. We enjoyed a wonderful catered dinner at the Strand Palace hotel, the only venue close by which could fit everyone. After dinner, Lyndon took us on a tour of the surrounding area of Covent Garden. The highlight of the night was seeing the London Eye lit up over the River Thames before going back to the hotel to get some sleep before a busy city tour the next day.

Last Friday, the Fulbright four (myself, Catelyn, Veronica, and Cayla) began our day with a lecture from Professor Clive Sabel. Clive had already given us a personal tour of the Southwest of England, and at the end of our first week in England, was going to tell us about his research current project URGENCHE. URGENCHE, as I would describe it, is a comprehensive ethnography of metropolitan areas. It is currently operating in locations throughout Europe and China. We focused on the studies taking place in Switzerland and China which are examining the intended and unintended consequences of eco-friendly initiatives (or the lack thereof) on both the environment and its inhabitants. When examining the statistics from different areas, like eco-conscience Switzerland and not-so-eco-conscience China, it is startling to see the impact human infrastructure has on the natural environment and the complications involved in changing the status quo. Some seemingly benign interventions, like increasing mean time spent outdoors, can have unforeseen impacts, such as increased exposure to airborne pollutants. These compounding variables make it easy to see why environmental policy is never clear-cut. Clive’s research aims to create methodologies for urban impact assessment and increase the knowledge-base in these areas as well as expanding GIS usage for such studies. More information can be found on their website: http://www.urgenche.eu/

After our teaching came to a close, we decided to use our afternoon to enjoy more of what Exeter has to offer. We escaped the heat by taking a tour of the ancient Roman passageways that run beneath the city’s center. These passages were a plumbing marvel in their time and helped provide fresh, running water to city residents (mainly the Cathedral and the wealthy of course). They are the only medieval passageways of their kind open for tourism in England. Many of the others were filled in as keeping them requires maintenance to prevent cave-ins (extremely important for the Exeter tunnels since they run right under main street!).  Most of the tunnels are walkable, although taller people may find themselves ducking often, but towards the end of the tunnels is the “Crawley Space”–an area made as narrow as possible and extremely fun to navigate through. After the tunnels, we continued to spend time around campus and in the town, visiting the Firehouse Pub, the Arabic and Islamic Studies Building, and St. Martin’s and St. David’s churches. I still have difficulty wrapping my head around the fact that some of these churches were built in the 1066′s!!

Yesterday we traveled a mere thirty minutes outside of Exeter’s city center to the sustainable community of Embercombe. Thirty minutes, though, might as well be three hundred miles because upon arriving in Embercombe, you feel as if you’ve entered a sort of Utopian Eden. Mac, the visionary and director of the “sustainable living experiment,”  has created a sprawling fifty acres of woodlands, woodshops, food gardens, horse stables, chicken pens, yurt villages, and gathering places in an effort to re-connect people to the earth. For years, Mac worked in the corporate world as a leadership consultant for large companies. After helping a pair of disillusioned corporate successes, they wrote him a check to realize a vision he had described as “a garden which grows people.” It was then that Embercombe was born. The large property was purchased and transformed from empty fields with a lake and an airplane hanger and airstrip to the community present today.

Embercombe’s current focus is on providing educational and inspirational retreats for any one from school-aged children  to corporate teams. They hope to encourage a focus on sustainability in daily lives as well as business practices. The Embercombe community is made up of volunteers who stay for months at a time to apprentices who stay for at least a year to Mac, his wife and a few other couples who have lived their nearly since its founding in the 1990s. Everything at Embercombe is homemade, homegrown and organic. Animals are treated with respect, and if meat is eaten at all, it is done so with much ceremony. Two Dartmoor ponies reside at Embercombe and have been encouraged to contribute through a training method which focuses on an animal’s trust and willingness to complete a task. Residents all share responsibilities from cooking to building to gardening. In addition, Embercombe is expanding. Their building worksite will create more gathering space for visiting groups, dining areas, and kitchens for cooking and concocting soaps and remedies from the medicine garden. The buildings are being built with reused materials from demolitions and with ancient techniques like lime plastering (a mixture of horse hair and lime for the interior walls) and cobb walling (a mixture of local clay, hay, sand and water which forms a strong, efficient exterior wall). Composting toilets and reed bed filtration systems are also present on site which allow the lake to stay pure enough for swimming any day.

The workers of the construction site are also unique. Most are ex-convicts who have been giving a second chance at Embercombe to learn new skills, earn a living, and break life-long hurtful habits. There are success stories from this program from junior offenders to men who have served fifteen years or more.

After touring the entire area and talking about its mission, we partook in a beautiful garden dinner with freshly caught mackerel, tortilla (Spanish omelette), olives, antipasto salad, homemade bread, Embercombe cider, garlic aioli, and fried zucchini (courgette in the UK). Eating at a ten foot wooden table in the middle of a beautiful garden was magical enough, but to be surrounded by such a diverse and passionate group of people with children playing in the background was perfectly idyllic.

That night, we retired to our beautiful yurt accommodations which have convinced me of the functionality of the ancient dwellings. The experience of using the compost toilet was certainly interesting, and I must say I am not the best at it, but put forth a valiant effort (I don’t quite have a grasp on the separate chambers and how to move the “toilet” from one to the other).

I now have a full understanding of the beauty of living off of and being connected to the land. Our lectures this morning on leadership and sustainability within social contexts took on greater meaning because of my Embercombe experience. If only everyone could visit such a place, I think views on “going green” would change greatly as people realized the importance of what could be lost.

Ending the day with a walk through historic Exeter sites, including St. David’s church completed an interesting and filling past two days.

Over the past two days, I and my Fulbright companions, Veronica and Katelyn, have been on a whirlwind tour of the Southwest of England. Our knowledgeable tour guide was Professor Sabel, who will be teaching on my Physical Activity Pathway and is currently a professor in Health Geography at Exeter. Professor Sabel began by taking us to the national park area of Dartmoor. Unlike America, national parks in Britain can actually have people living on them, as long as no additional adverse alterations are made to the protected areas of the landscape. Thankfully for Dartmoor, beautiful areas of woodland, rivers and moors have been set aside for recreational enjoyment and appreciation. We had the opportunity to hike through a small portion of these areas and even swim in the river. The Brits call this “wild swimming,” although from my personal perspective, “freezing cold swimming” is a more precise name. Although EXTREMELY cold, the water was absolutely beautiful and clear with brilliant blue dragonflies and birds darting about among some very characteristically English flora like fox gloves, ferns and ivy.

The River in Dartmoor

Fox Glove Flowers in Dartmoor

On our way to the Truro-Cornwall campus of Exeter (called Tremough Campus), we stopped at a lookout point to capture photos of some of the famous Dartmoor ponies. Roaming cows and sheep were also nearby and the adults barely acknowledged our presence, while the younger colts seemed quite curious and posed for our cameras.

Dartmoor Ponies

Young Dartmoor Colts

Once in Truro-Cornwall, we had the privilege of visiting the European Centre for Environment and Human Health and met with Director Dr. Lora Fleming and some of her researchers. The ECEHH is examining unique influences on human health from the perspective of the natural and constructed environments as well as the implications of different types of pollution and current medical and societal practices which impact the environment. In addition to this useful research, the ECEHH also designs innovative ways to communicate their findings to the public and constructs relationships with local businesses for community involvement and job promotion.

After a wonderful (and extremely filling!) dinner of Nepalese-Indian food, we retired to our gorgeous accommodations at the Exeter Tremough Campus. No buildings there are even over 5 years old, and their smart and functional construction makes you wonder how they ever get students to leave!

The following day, we were given a boat tour of the Falmouth Bay test site by the Falmouth Harbour Commission. This test site is home to one wave energy generation which has been producing power since 2011. Scientists are constantly monitoring the generator, which for now just produces energy and releases it into the air, to test for efficiency, durability and feasibility of this type of renewable energy. It is the hope that eventually, these types of generators will be installed at the Wave Hub, a specialized wave energy site which can connect the generators to the English power grid. With two more companies interested in testing their machines at the Falmouth site, hopefully we will have a viable new option for generating power in the future!

Wave Generator at the Falmouth Bay Test Site

The Harbour at Falmouth

Leaving Falmouth, we traveled northward and enjoyed the more rocky coast and beaches. We ate along the waterside and one of the more popular beaches of Southern England at the Bowgie Inn (which in Cornish means, Cow Shed Inn). The blue water and white sand beaches rivaled some of the best tropical destinations! Alongside the beaches rose stunning gray, almost slate looking, cliffs and hillsides covered in bright yellow flowers. We walked up and down a hill to reach the more secluded Polly Joke beach which experiences extreme tide changes leaving hundreds of feet of sand open for visitors. Shallow streams of saltwater crisscross the beach which is flanked by staggering cliffs. We explored the caves and tidal pools finding small shrimp, jellyfish, and thousands of mussels. Looking out towards the sea, it was strange to think I was seeing the Atlantic from the other side. After saying a quick “hello” to faraway Florida, it was time to head back to Exeter’s main campus.

The Cliffs at Polly Joke Beach