ghost story for the kiddies:
Thanks to all who have written in asking questions about our UK trip. sorry we don't have time to answer all of them with the detail they deserve, so we've decided to post the occasional anecdote or photo on our blog. (looking at photots may require you, the reader to venture out into our official blog). There is a pretty wild and apparntly true ghost story associated with the house, Burton Agnes, where we stayed in february. It tickled us while we were there because everyone was so commonplace about it. ("here is where we do laundry, here is the red drawing room, there is the ghost's bedroom...")

(quick aside) if you ever get the chance to visit east yorkshire - and it's pretty out of the way - it is completely worth it. Go to the Burton Agnes House/gardens, and undoubtably go to either Scarborough, or Whitby, or both. The drive alone is pretty fantastic. With great zeal we reccomend eating fish and chips at Mother Hubbard's in Scarborough if you get the chance. They are the official reataurant of roman candle in yorkshire (a very coveted title). Everyone that writes a travel book reccomends the Magpie Cafe in Whitby (which we tried, twice, and it is great) but the stone truth is Mother Hubbards is where it's at.

back to the ghost story as it was told to us: in 1620, one of the three daughters of the gentleman who built the house Burton Agnes (in 1598) was mugged/attacked/robbed while riding her horse in the countryside near the house (in the above, photo the one on the far right - and the only one wearing black). she was brought back to the home in terrible shape and died a few days later. This daughter had always been in love with the house as a child and a teenager (maybe in a nutty way?), saying she thought the house was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen, and how she never wanted to leave the house, etc. You get the idea. After she was mugged, and laying on what would be her deathbed, going in and out of consciousness and/or sanity, she pleaded with her sisters to take her skull, when she died and put it in the walls of the house. yikes. The sisters agreed to this, to soothe their ailing sister, but when she died, they buried her in the churchyard, with her head attached to her body. Apparently she haunted the house in a loud and nasty way, until the sisters consulted the vicar (taking David Brent's perpetual advice), dug up her body, removed her head and put it into a wall within the house. The haunting stopped. a hundred or so years later, while the descendants' family were remodeling things, someody discovered an old skull planted in the walls. Very sensibly, they chucked it in the trash. The haunting apparently cranked back up until the skull was found and put back. This happened again about a hundred years later, during another remodel only this time they (very sensibly) buried the skull in the garden. This was also a mistake. After this third haunting, they permanently put the lady's skull into a wall in the house. Things since then have been generally at peace in the house according to the owners, except for the dogs occasionally refuse to go into the what was the ghost's bedroom. Which, having been in the room, is a pretty weird, cold place. We were told it continully smells like lilac, even though there is no lilac in the room or near it. I'm not sure what lilac has to do with ghosts, but there you have it.