Prologue: England 2018 (Part I)
I'm going to England again and it's happening super soon! Here's the story...
The past year or so I've been pretty into ancestry research. For my birthday last year, Philip got me AncestryDNA, which is where you send your spit in, they analyze it based on other spit samples they've already received, and then they tell you where your spit is from and whose spit is similar to yours. (As an aside, my cousin recently did AncestryDNA and the results came back that she's my first cousin, so I guess it's pretty legit.) In case you didn't see my post about it a while ago, this is my results page from after I completed AncestryDNA.
(Colors in the Ethnicity Estimate correlate with the map.)
Forty percent of my ancestors prior to migration to America came from England. I feel like that's a lot! It helps me feel like my connection to England is in my blood. With Ireland/Scotland/Wales in the mix, 52% of me is from those islands across the pond.
My ancestry research is actually research that a lot of other people have done through the years that was provided to me by my cousin Barb. The majority of those who have done this research are names I don't recognize--distant cousins--and I am grateful to them for doing so much legwork. The family tree I have created for myself includes 276 people and, in some lines, goes all the way back to my 12 times great grandparents. It was one ginormous tree. While digging through the pages of family research (probably 50 pages that took many hours to comb through), I kept track of all the English towns my ancestors were born, died, married, and buried. Then I made a map with pins in all of those places. See below!
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| The whole of England with pins on my ancestral towns |
It makes me so happy to see this map. My love of organization really delights in knowing that this is perhaps the most complete picture I'll have of where my roots lie in the country I love so much.
In February of this year, while in the thick of going through the documents I had and creating my family tree, I had this undeniable urge to go back. I really felt like I needed to go this year. There are few things more exciting to me than traveling and this gave me a reason to go to my most loved place--to explore a piece of where I am from more closely.
I started to notice geographical clusters in the larger map. See that patch of pins at the very top of the map? The idea burrowed in my head that I had to visit that area.
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| A close-up of northeast England |
My initial goal was to visit all of these places, however brief the stop may be. While it may seem like a lot of traveling, the distance between these towns and cities is not far. However, getting to these places is not as easy. I toyed with the idea of having a home-base city (Durham) and renting a car. I even put together a pretty thorough route to do such a thing, with travel times between towns and everything. While do-able and definitely adventurous, I think it would be more stressful to try to negotiate driving in a foreign country on the wrong side of the road and wrong side of the car than it would be enjoyable. I've decided to cut back on where I will visit and use public transport, which does make me slightly sad, but I'll still see and experience a lot!
Here is my full itinerary for the trip:
- Sun, Aug 26 / Mon, Aug 27 - Fly to London; bus from London to Cambridge
- Tues, Aug 28 - Cambridge
- Wed, Aug 29 - Cambridge
- Thurs, Aug 30 - Train from Cambridge to Durham (stop to explore Peterborough)
- Fri, Aug 31 - Bus to explore Lanchester; rest of the day in Durham
- Sat, Sept 1 - Train to Bishop Auckland; back late to Durham
- Sun, Sept 2 - Bike to Shincliffe; majority of day to explore Durham
- Mon, Sept 3 - Bus to Crook; rest of the day in Durham
- Tues, Sept 4 - Train to Seaham; back late to Durham
- Wed, Sept 5 - Train from Durham to Newcastle
- Thurs, Sept 6 - Newcastle
- Fri, Sept 7 - Explore more of Newcastle early; train from Newcastle to London
- Sat, Sept 8 - London
- Sun, Sept 9 - London
- Mon, Sept 10 - Fly to Chicago
Many more details to come about my family connections to these places!