söndag 25 mars 2012

Vikings here and there

(Henrik Nielsen)

It is time to say goodbye to the hostel in Haworth. 




In the afternoon we will say hello to the hostel at Mankinholes. Mankinholes is an early medieval village settlement lying uphills between Todmorden and Hebden Bridge - the two towns where the student are going to be in work experience.
The name means ”Mancans hollow” - Mancan is an Irish name, indicating Irish viking settlers. Mankinholes is a few old houses on a rather tough hillside. 
On top of the hill is a peace monument called Stoodley Pike.




Before we headed towards another much bigger viking settlement, we decided to take a short roundtrip in Hebden Bridge on this sunday morning to see the outside of the work experience places. On the way to Advanced Technology Center where Bit and Marcus are going to work, we came by some riverboats and a lock at the Roachdale Canal





Roachdale Canal is dug out by hand and was a very important piece of infrastructure from the Industrial Revolution. We got to talk to Bryan who is living on his canal boat and in it has all kinds of modern facilities from a warm shower to sattelite TV. He had lived in Copenhagen for some years. It is nice to meet strangers and then realize fhow much you have in common. He has a very clever and cute dog.









From Hebden Bridge we drove straight to York. Only Bit and I was awake on the drive there in the Renault. We could hardly hear the diesel enginge for all the snoring.










In York the only thing we had to do together was to visit Jorvik Viking Museum.
After that the students were let loose for three hours to shop and see the sights. I myself entered Starbucks, drank half a gallon of black coffe while I was using the open Wifi for updating this travel blog.



It was as hot as on a summerday. We are very lucky with the weather.



Everyone showed up in time at 4 AM. Into the cars again and back to Haworth to pick up our luggage. On the way we wanted to buy groceries for the meal at Mankinholes. No more buffets like in Haworth, Mankinholes is a sef catering facility. Trouble was that it was sunday and that it was hard to find an open supermarket.
In Todmorden we finally found an open supermarket and we sent in the cooking group to buy proviant for dinner and breakfast next morning. Do I need to say that it was a chaotic and rather badly planned mission. After a lot of complaining and rather opportunistic actions we ended the campaign succesfully.




The food group made a lovely dinner with pasta and bacon and Elin served very good icecream. After dinner the woman in charge of the place told us not to mix boys and girls in tghe same rooms... so we didn't. All names and room numbers had to be written down and left in the letterbox outside for the firemen in case of an emergency situaton.





Outside in the garden I sat and got all philosophical as the neighbours´ cat wanted to cuddle. I was wondering since the overall goal for the education in school is democracy, wether democracy is a right or an obligation. Is it wise to take democracy for granted? Before I drove my thoughts to a conclusion it was getting dark and a bit chilly. I decided to go to bed.

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