Iotd – Journeys of Heart and Mind

Transparency

Some people are not at all transparent, with hidden motives, fears, doubts, and agendas. Treat such people with caution – what you think you see may not be what you actually get!

Ducks on clear water (Photo by Jess Grzeb*)

< Previous | Index | Next >

Image of the day – 196

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image whenever I can.

Ducks on clear water (Photo by Jess Grzeb*)

What does it mean to be transparent? In different ways, this word can used of material, of people, and of organisations. The photo is almost surreal, it looks as if the ducks are floating in mid-air above the water.

*Many thanks to Jess Grzeb for letting me use her remarkable photo.

Transparent material

The water in this photo (Lake Bled in Slovenia) is about as transparent as water in nature gets. Light is bent as it enters the water from the air, and again as it returns from water to air. Both water and air are transparent, of course, but they have different densities and the speed of light is a little slower through water than through air. The main effect of this bending is that the water looks a good deal shallower than it actually is. You can easily check this for yourself, fill a bucket with water and put a straight stick into it. The stick no longer looks straight.

Air is a gas, water is a liquid, glass is a solid, but all three can be either transparent or cloudy. Smoke turns transparent air cloudy, suspended mud will do the same for water, and glass can be manufactured to be cloudy as well. But of course, you can only see long distances through transparent materials. The universe itself is for the most part incredibly transparent. With telescopes we can see unimaginably far across the universe.

Transparent people

If a person is ‘transparent’ we do not mean, of course, that you can physically see through them. But metaphorically their nature and motives are clear for all to see. They tend to be open-minded, kind, thoughtful and make no attempt to hide their thoughts and opinions. If they think something they tend not to conceal it, and if you disagree it’s probably no big deal for them. They’re often live-and-let-live people.

Transparent people are useful in society. They say what they mean and they mean what they say. They’re reliable and you can trust them. I was once described by a colleague at work as a WYSIWYG person. It’s an old term from the early days of word processing; back in the 1970s computer screens were rather primitive and could only display text in one, very basic, typeface. On modern devices you can compose the text and images as they will appear in the printed document, that’s WYSIWYG and it makes life far, far simpler. Some people are not at all transparent, with hidden motives, fears, doubts, and agendas. Treat such people with caution – what you think you see may not be what you actually get!

Transparent organisations

So we come now to the third category of things that may or may not be transparent. Governments and companies are good examples of organisations that can vary greatly in their transparency. Few or even no governments or companies are fully transparent, both have aspects that require secrecy such as details of military capability or of new products in development. But not all governments are equally secretive, of course; and the same goes for companies.

Some examples will help here. Here’s a topical example: the Russian government is clearly much less transparent than the Ukrainian government. The presence of a dictatorial president in Vladimir Putin and the presence of a corrupt and wealthy oligarchy puts Russia amongst the most obscured of governments in the world. They are not alone in this, but they are one of the most extreme examples. Ukraine on the other hand has an open minded, democratically elected president in Volodymyr Zelenskyy. There is still some corruption in the Ukrainian system (but show me a government with no corruption at all).

The USA is an interesting case, the nation’s constitution is clear and requires openness and a transparent, law-abiding government. But the rules seem to be regularly flouted or ignored by President Trump who apparently has little interest in (or patience with) order, truth, legality or indeed transparency.

Perhaps among the most transparent governments are those like Switzerland, Canada and New Zealand – WYSIWYG nations.

When it comes to companies, we see the same thing; a wide range from open transparency on the one hand to deliberate obscurity on the other, particularly amongst high-tech businesses with commercial secrets to hide or those trying to make fast profits on illegal practices. Much lower transparency than Lake Bled here!

Governments and businesses alike range from law-abiding openness and clarity to some that are murky and perhaps even corrupt. There is a strong inverse relationship between transparency and corruption.

You might also like:

The changing USA

Trump, Vance and fruit

Understand and explain

The Governor gives way

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

Stars dancing in the sky

There is beauty in so many natural things – a waterfall, a flower opening from a bud, the swirling patterns in a shoal of fish or a murmuration of starlings at dusk.

Cirencester’s church tower

< Previous | Index | Next >

Image of the day – 195

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image whenever I can.

On a clear evening during late May or early June, take a look at the western sky after sunset and you’ll see two very bright stars quite close together. They’re not stars at all, in fact. They are the planets Venus and Jupiter. The brightest of the two is Venus, setting slightly earlier than Jupiter until the beginning of June. The photo was taken on 25th May while the two planets were still far apart in the sky. Venus is brighter, the same side of the sun as Earth is. It’s just to the left of Cirencester’s Church tower in the photo. Jupiter is a little fainter, up in the top-left corner. Jupiter is a larger planet than Venus (about ten times the diameter, but it’s also much further away; far, far beyond the sun from our point of view. If you’re struggling to find the planets click the thumbnail image to expand it and you’ll see them both quite easily.

Passing close

The two planets will pass very close indeed in the first week of June. As I mentioned above, it’s merely a line of sight closeness, there’s no chance of a collision. Astronomers call a coming-together in the sky a planetary conjunction. At one time people thought the star of Bethlehem might have been a close conjunction like this, but these events can be predicted accurately far into the future and we now know there are no events from 2000 years ago that would fit the idea.

Nonetheless it’s a beautiful thing to see and you don’t even need a telescope. It’s something you can watch evening by evening with the naked eye or a pair of binoculars (providing the weather cooperates). Serious warning, don’t look until the sun has set. You can damage your eyes by looking at the sun, and seeing it in binoculars is particularly dangerous. Hint: go on watching after the planets move further apart, you’ll get a continuing sense of how active our Solar System can be.

What makes something beautiful?

It’s hard to pin down, isn’t it? There is beauty in so many natural things – a waterfall, a flower opening from a bud, the swirling patterns in a shoal of fish or a murmuration of starlings at dusk. There is beauty in athletics, the perfect pole vault, a new world record, a plunging, almost splashless entry into the water from a high board after a long series of breathtaking manoeuvres on the way down. A special sunset or sunrise. A list of beautiful things could go on for ever!

There’s also beauty in human relationships, children playing together, smiling and laughing; the elderly chatting together about times past. There’s beauty in the flavours of food and drink as well, some combinations are just so special, cheese and fruit, even really simple things like a ripe apple and a chunk of mature Cheddar, or some Brie with ripe grapes and crispy crackers.

Beauty seems, at its heart, to depend on everything good and right. Kindness and gentleness are beautiful things, anger and violence are ugly.

What about me? How can I become more beautiful? Think about it from your own point of view if you are reading this; what can you do or say or think or display that will make other people catch their breath and think, ‘Ah, there’s something beautiful here, something commendable, something I can appreciate and value.

Living and behaving in beautiful ways costs nothing, and greatly benefits those around us. So what is not to like? If everyone on the planet was determined to live better and more kindly today than they did yesterday, what a wonderful world this would become!

You might also like:

Life together

The Lake District

Useful? Interesting?

Seemingly a leafy town

When I say ‘landscape’ I’m thinking here of the way the rising hills and the meandering river valley reveal a town snuggled into a cosy counterpane of woodland as in the photo.

Cirencester’s church tower

< Previous | Index | Next >

Image of the day – 194

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image whenever I can.

Seen at a distance from the east, Cirencester’s buildings are almost entirely hidden by trees. Only the tallest structures remain visible, mostly just the tower of the Parish Church. This telephoto shot shows it clearly; I’ve compensated for some summer haze by increasing the contrast a little.

Inside the town

It’s a very different matter when you’re in the town itself. Most of the larger buildings are in and around the Market Place. The church tower is at the western end of the Market Place and really all you can see are buildings. From the Abbey Grounds there are views over the rising land to the east across Tar Barrow Field towards the point where I took this photo (here’s the opposite view from near the tower towards the higher ground where I took today’s image). Northwards, the Cotswold Hills rise ever higher as you approach Gloucester and Cheltenham where the land falls suddenly and steeply about 300 m to the floor of the Severn Valley. In the West the hills increase towards Stroud and Tetbury as they also do to the south on the roads heading for Swindon and Marlborough.

Central Cirencester therefore lies in a hollow, part of the Churn Valley, and because the Churn meanders along its course there appear to be hills in every direction. Without the wandering of this valley, Cirencester would have hills mostly on the east and west. If it wasn’t for the church tower, Cirencester would be invisible from every direction, hidden by woodland and fields with scattered hedgerow trees, until you reach the built environment.

The old centre dates mostly to the 18th and 19th centuries with many wool merchant’s houses built of cut Cotswold stone blocks, often built in Georgian ashlar style and now converted to shops and offices. There are a few, scattered, timber-built properties remaining in some of the older streets in the town, almost entirely within 1½ km of the town centre. There are other wooden buildings now hidden, re-fronted in Georgian times with stone. Further out are Victorian and Edwardian streets, then houses from the 1920s and 30s, followed by post war housing estates from the 40s, 50s and right up to the present day. The town is still expanding.

Landscape affects the feel of a place

It’s important to notice this because the principle applies far more widely than you might, at first, think. When I say ‘landscape’ I’m thinking here of the way the rising hills and the meandering river valley reveal a town snuggled into a cosy counterpane of woodland as in the photo above. The entire feel of the town depends to a great extent on the underlying landscape features and the ten thousand years of water erosion since the end of the last ice-age. Had these events not taken place, Cirencester and its Roman predecessor, Corinium, would have been very different from the places they actually are and were.

Just consider how this applies to other aspects of life. Here’s a short list to consider. It really is a fundamental process.

Education – Shapes a person’s entire life.
Character – This affects how other people will understand you and treat you in life.
Genetics – Will affect everything from skin colour to health issues.
Wealth – Can open doors, create or close opportunities.
Faith – May provide strength to persevere, can bring peace and calm in difficulties.
Vision – Nobody can do what they cannot imagine!

Have a think about your own life. What things have been fundamental in shaping who you are and what you have achieved (or may achieve)? What has been really special so far in life? What is the ‘landscape’ underlying your life and how has it affected you and the way others perceive you?

You might also like:

Cirencester Hospital

A grand old house in Cirencester

Cirencester Abbey

Useful? Interesting?

The Bingham Library

The new library in Dyer Street had a meeting room with seating for 200 people, but it quickly became clear that a larger meeting place was needed. And this is one of the reasons that Bingham decided to fund the Bingham Hall.

The Bingham Library

< Previous | Index | Next >

Image of the day – 193

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every week or so.

Cirencester’s Bingham Library building is now the Town Council Offices and the Tourist Information Centre. When I was a pupil at Cirencester Grammar School in Victoria Road, this grand old building was still the town’s main library. I remember walking to it from the family home at 37 Victoria Road, often to return books and take out different ones on science fiction, astronomy, or whatever interested me at the time; sometimes to visit the reference library to read articles from Encyclopaedia Britannica and make notes for Geography essays on coffee, rice or tea production in exotic places.

Daniel George Bingham

The Bingham Hall in King Street as well as the Bingham Library in Dyer Street were built as town amenities and improvements by Daniel George Bingham. For more details of his life and career, click the blue plaque on the right.

Bingham worked in railway management, first at Cirencester, later at Paddington in London, and finally in Utrecht in the Netherlands where he became wealthy. He visited Cirencester briefly but quite regularly and spent part of his wealth providing the library in 1905 and the Hall in 1908. He and his wife Jane had friends and family in Utrecht so they were always keen to remain living there, though clearly Bingham retained a fondness for his town of birth – Cirencester.

From the beginning, the new library in Dyer Street had a meeting room with seating for 200 people, but it quickly became clear that a larger meeting place was needed. And this is one of the reasons that Bingham decided to fund the Bingham Hall to provide expanded facilities for meetings, dinners, theatre, music, and even a rifle range. I remember being in the Army Cadets in the sixth form at the Grammar School and taking part in target practice with .22 calibre rifles in the Bingham Hall rifle range. Morning assemblies were held in the main hall at the Bingham Hall, also school theatrical productions and musical performances.

What about us?

Few of us will ever have enough money to contribute something major like Bingham did. But most of us can afford to buy a little extra food and put it into the Food Bank receptacle as we leave the supermarket. Or we can join a local organisation helping others in some way, or keeping the local environment tidy. We all have the capability to improve our fellow citizens’ well-being in some way, it may cost no more than a little thought and a simple action.

So why not join in? Bingham did. We all can!

You might also like:

Cirencester Hospital

A grand old house in Cirencester

Cirencester Abbey

Guests and another move

Useful? Interesting?

A recommended site

Chris Dryden’s website

< Previous | Index | Next >

On the web – 1

Sometimes I read something so good that I want to share it with my readers. This happened recently with one of Christoper Dryden’s posts. When I asked if I might republish it here, he very generously agreed. But I’m having second thoughts. Not about sharing it, but about sharing it in full. I think it will be better to share enough that my readers will want to go and read the rest on CD’s blog.

The extract

Reading: Mark 5:21-43

Context: What social barriers does the bleeding woman overcome to reach Jesus, and why is this significant?

This scripture does not indicate the social barrier, but we can infer the following: she has a disease, which doesn’t make her socially acceptable for starters. The nature of the disease, apparently, would make her unclean, so she shouldn’t be seen in public. Touching the garment of Jesus would be considered scandalous and outrageous cos the belief was that those touched by the unclean would be unclean themselves. She’s a social outcast, and she should know her place and deal with the fact that she’s worse off for looking to get her problem sorted, only for it not to work out. She’s a woman, that also ain’t becoming of someone who wishes to approach this guy. Seen in that light, the amount she’s overcome to reach out speaks volumes about the level of faith she has that one touch could make all the difference. It explains Jesus’ own commentary on the situation, namely that her faith has made her whole. And as I reflect on that, there’s the nudge to consider what level of faith can be exercised to trust Jesus. And also, there’s a challenge of how we can demonstrate and declare, for the benefit of other social outcasts, that their issues can be solved by reaching out to touch Jesus, who is near them?

In first-century Jewish society, a woman approaching a rabbi — in public, uninvited, without the mediation of a husband or male relative — was itself an act that would raise eyebrows and clench jaws. Layer on top of that the twelve years of haemorrhaging, which under the Levitical code rendered her perpetually ritually unclean (Leviticus 15:25-27), and you start to appreciate what she was carrying before she ever took a single step toward Jesus. It wasn’t just a physical condition. It was a sentence. Twelve years of isolation. Twelve years of being untouchable. Twelve years of being told, in effect, that she didn’t qualify.

She had also spent everything she had on physicians who left her worse off, not better. So not only is she socially marginalised, she is financially spent and medically hopeless. She has nothing left to lose. And that, right there, might be the very thing that unlocks her faith. When you’ve exhausted every other option, the audacity to reach for Jesus becomes a lot less surprising.

Seen in that light, the amount she’s overcome to reach out speaks volumes about the faith she has that a single touch could make all the difference. It explains Jesus’ own commentary on the situation: her faith has made her whole. And as I reflect on that, there’s a nudge to consider what level of faith is required to trust Jesus. And also, there’s a challenge of how we can demonstrate and declare, for the benefit of other social outcasts, that their issues can be solved by reaching out to touch Jesus, who is near them?

Someone might feel like they don’t qualify. They feel like they’ve been told — by circumstance, by history, by the voice in their own head — that the door to Jesus isn’t for them. This woman’s story is a loud and clear rebuttal of that lie. She reached, He responded, and the power that went out of Him was not accidental. He knew. He always knows. And He is never contaminated by what comes to Him, broken and desperate. He is only ever transformative.

Content: How does Jesus treat both the synagogue leader and the unclean woman with equal dignity?

What a fascinating word – dignity. Let’s get ourselves a running definition or walking, if we prefer the strolling approach. Dignity is about worth, value and honour. To treat people with dignity is to confer on them a sense that they are of worth and value and should be duly honoured…

Reading more

My hope is that you’ll want to read the whole thing. Don’t miss the opportunity, you will not regret it! And if you like Dryden’s writing as much as I do, you’ll bookmark his site and keep coming back for more.

< Previous | Index | Next >

You might also like:

Another great post

Understand and explain

Life, death, resurrection

Useful? Interesting?

Life always wins out

All forms of life are precious and we depend on many of them to provide food, purify water, generate the oxygen we need to breathe, clean away life forms that have died, and much, much more.

Fallen tree, climbing ivy

< Previous | Index | Next >

Image of the day – 192

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

This old tree trunk, clearly felled by chainsaw, is being colonised by ivy. Once the tree stood tall and strong and it’s likely that ivy clung to its trunk and branches. Now the tree lies on the ground, entirely dead, but ivy still uses the trunk as a support to grow upwards to continue to reach the light.

No giving up

Life is not in the habit of giving up, generations come and go, no individual tree, person, or anything else lasts for ever, not even a species. But life itself adapts, changes, and takes advantage of what went before. There has been life on planet Earth for around four billion years, that’s only 500 million years after the planet itself was formed. And it’s developed enormously in variety and complexity since chemistry first gave rise to biology.

We’re still filling in the gaps in what we know, but our knowledge is expanding and the gaps are shrinking. What we do know is that living things are very good at taking advantage of circumstances. That’s what the ivy is doing on the dead tree trunk. The need for sunlight is critically important for plants as the energy from that light allows them to build sugars from water and carbon dioxide. A stock of sugars enables them to survive the nights where the sun is absent, and survive the long, dark, cold, winter months as well.

All forms of life are precious and we depend on many of them to provide food, purify water, generate the oxygen we need to breathe, clean away life forms that have died, and much, much more.

Animals of all kinds and sizes ultimately depend on the sugars made by plants. Many animals feed on plants, stealing their sugars in a variety of forms, some feed on other animals, stealing sugars in secondhand forms; some, like us humans, eat both plants and animals. But almost all life depends ultimately on sunlight for its supply of energy.

That same great source of light also informs us, lets us see. Without light, eyes would be of no value whatsoever. Without light we would all be profoundly blind.

Jesus said, ‘I am the light of the world’. What does he mean by that? Is he saying that he is a light without which we’d be profoundly blind?

I think that’s exactly what he’s saying. Light is essential for vision and vital energy. The sun enables physical vision and energy. Jesus provides another kind of vision and energy. Search it out! It’s not too hard to find.

You might also like:

Life, death, resurrection

Early steps towards life

Umbellifers

Useful? Interesting?

Cirencester at night

We are looking more or less along what was once a Roman street in old Corinium. Although it winds left and right here and there, nearly 2000 years ago it would have run almost entirely straight.

Jupiter and the church tower

< Previous | Index | Next >

Image of the day – 191

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

The town’s streetlights illuminate the lovely old architecture in Dollar Street, and Jupiter is bright enough to see high above the church tower’s flag pole. Click the thumbnail to enlarge it and you’ll also see a star a little further to the right, almost over the open window. This is Saiph, the bottom-left star of Orion. If you’re looking at the sky from the southern hemisphere Saiph will be Orion’s top-right star and Jupiter will be very low in the sky.

Looking south

We are looking more or less along what was once a Roman street in old Corinium. Although it winds left and right here and there, nearly 2000 years ago it would have run almost entirely straight, part of the Roman military road between Glevum (Gloucester) and Calleva (Silchester) through the local Iron Age kingdom of the Dobunni whose capital was about four miles to the north of Corinium in what is now the village of Bagendon. Behind you, in this view, the road continued north-west to Glevum where there was a military fortress. Some British tribes were allies of the Romans, including the local Dobunni. Some tribes opposed the Romans and their conquest of these islands. In the south-east direction the same Roman road (Ermin Way) passed through the town’s Forum, past the Basilica and made its way to Calleva to the south and east.

You might also like:

Mosaics underfoot

Image of the day – 64

Image of the day – 46

A view of ancient remains

Useful? Interesting?

A large bookshop

The basement, shown in the photo, is known as The Norrington Room and has five kilometres of bookshelves in it, containing 200 000 books.

The Norrington Room

< Previous | Index | Next >

Image of the day – 190

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

The photo shows the basement of Blackwell’s Bookshop in the centre of Oxford, the famous university town in the UK.

Blackwell’s Bookshop in Oxford is huge

You can get a good idea of size from the photo, there are four or five floors above the basement, large but not as open; the upper floors are smaller and have no long views like this one as the line of sight is broken up by countless units of shelving.

This was where the original Blackwell’s bookshop was, but it has grown larger and larger over the years. The basement, shown in the photo, is known as The Norrington Room and has five kilometres of bookshelves in it, containing 200 000 books. Blackwell’s in Oxford also hosts a Caffè Nero on the first floor. The map (opens in a new tab, click to resize and drag it) is centred on the bookshop in the very heart of Oxford.

Some history

The current bookshop in Broad Street opened in 1879, though it was much smaller in those days, at a mere 4 m square. The first bookshelf unit is still in use, at the top of the stairs to the first floor. The shop soon expanded, incorporating the cellar and the first floor as well as several adjacent shops. There was an earlier Blackwell’s bookshop, also in Oxford, that opened in 1846.

Blackwell’s had an online presence from 1995, selling books worldwide. It also opened retail outlets in many other cities and towns across the UK. As a company it remained independent until the business was bought in 2022 by Waterstones, another major British book retailer.

You might also like:

Castle Street

What does Jesus mean to me and how do I respond to him?

Useful? Interesting?

Arkell’s Brewery plaque

It’s likely the cracking will have been caused by differential thermal expansion and contraction with the iron changing its dimenions rather more than the ceramic glaze.

< Previous | Index | Next >

Image of the day – 189

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

This is one of the old brewery plaques, once numerous across Britain. This example is in Castle Street, outside The Brewers Arms, not far from the junction with Querns Lane and Lewis Lane.

Arkell’s Brewery

The brewery originated in 1843, the year on the plaque. It was founded in Swindon by John Arkell, remains family-owned and operates as one of the oldest remaining brewery companies in Britain.

The plaque is probably of cast iron with enamel decoration and apart from some cracks seems to be in almost perfect condition. It’s likely the cracking will have been caused by differential thermal expansion and contraction with the iron changing its dimenions rather more than the ceramic glaze. The plaque has seen more than 180 day/night cycles in its time!

The image is of Noah’s ark with a large capital letter ‘L’, so a play on Arkell (‘arkL’). There’s a long history of businesses advertising their presence with logos and other illustrations, it happens in all nations and cultures, sometimes the themes, names and images employed can become quite famous and long-lived. When I was a young child, Brasso (a British brass polish) was sold in steel containers with blue and white rays coming out in all directions. It’s still available today in cans with the same design. And it probably looked just the same in Victorian times as well! When I was young it was fitted with a low-profile, steel screw-cap, today it has a much larger, plastic cap. Otherwise, it looks identical to me.

You might also like:

The old Woolmarket

Castle Street

A grand old house in Cirencester

Useful? Interesting?

Come on in!

The simplest and cheapest way to travel would have been to walk, and people often did exactly that. For an example look no further than the old story of Dick Whittington.

< Previous | Index | Next >

Image of the day – 188

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

This photo was taken in Cirencester, peering in through an entrance to a courtyard beyond. If you are familiar with the town, I wonder if you know where this is? *The answer is at the bottom of the post.

There’s an invitation in this photo

That’s why I called it ‘Come right in!’ There seems to be an unspoken welcome here. What appeals to you most in this picture? Is it the warmth of the light? Or perhaps the sparkle of the decorative lights at the far end? Or the open doors beckoning you to enter? In days of yore, this double doorway might have allowed a horse to be brought inside for stabling, feeding, watering and grooming to recover for use the following day. The carriage would have remained on the street outside.

‘Days of yore’, this funny old expression is a poetical way of saying long ago. ‘yore’ is an Old English word closely related to the modern word ‘year’. So the sense is ‘in the days of years ago’. There’s a large garden at the back of the hotel, with a lawn scattered with tables and chairs, a lovely place to eat and drink with friends or family in the summer months. I imagine the horses sometimes being turned out to graze in a grassy field here, what a treat for them!

Shelter for travellers

Travelling on horseback or by horse and carriage was a slow affair, requiring regular stops for meals or to shelter for the night, and that’s why the old routes between towns in Britain are liberally scattered with pubs, inns and hostels. Practically every village of hamlet would have had one and towns would have had many more. They’re not hard to spot, although these days many have been converted to other uses.

It wouldn’t always have been necessary to pay for accommodation, friends or family along or near the route would have made travellers welcome and on dry, warm, summer nights it would have been possible to pull off the main roads and sleep outside or in the carriage. The simplest and cheapest way to travel would have been to walk, and people often did exactly that. For an example look no further than the old story of Dick Whittington. In Roman times there were parallel systems for official/military and public use. Every 30 to 50 km (a day’s journey) there were mansiones or official stops with good accomodation, fresh horses, dining areas, and perhaps even baths. And between these were mutationes, (literally ‘changes’) for a brief stop, a fresh horse, and perhaps some refreshments but without overnight facilities. Non-official, privately run facilities included cauponae and tabernae, some of these were a bit rough and disreputable, some were well appointed with courtyards, kitchens, and decorated dining rooms. Several modern English terms come from these words – mansion, mutation, and tavern are notable.

The Bible is usually regarded as a religious book, but it’s also a good historical source as well. Read the book of Acts, for example, to get a good idea of what travel by land and sea was like 2000 years ago. See for example Acts 28:11-16 where a place near Rome called ‘Three Taverns’ is mentioned (Tres Tabernae).

* It’s the Corinium Hotel in Gloucester Street, once the Corinium Court Hotel.

Useful? Interesting?

You might also like:

The old Woolmarket

Castle Street

A grand old house in Cirencester

Image of the day – 196

Transparent material

Transparent people

Transparent organisations

See also:

You might also like:

Useful? Interesting?

Image of the day – 195

Passing close

What makes something beautiful?

See also:

You might also like:

Useful? Interesting?

Image of the day – 194

Inside the town

Landscape affects the feel of a place

See also:

You might also like:

Useful? Interesting?

Image of the day – 193

Daniel George Bingham

What about us?

See also:

You might also like:

Useful? Interesting?

On the web – 1

The extract

Reading more

You might also like:

Useful? Interesting?

Image of the day – 192

No giving up

See also:

You might also like:

Useful? Interesting?

Image of the day – 191

Looking south

See also:

You might also like:

Useful? Interesting?

Image of the day – 190

Blackwell’s Bookshop in Oxford is huge

Some history

See also:

You might also like:

Useful? Interesting?

Image of the day – 189

Arkell’s Brewery

See also:

You might also like:

Useful? Interesting?

Image of the day – 188

There’s an invitation in this photo

Shelter for travellers

See also:

Useful? Interesting?

You might also like: