Part II of our Travels to Sheffield

Part II of our Travels to Sheffield: Please start by reading the posts below this!

Having not slept well, Ashley and I awake at 8:00 AM GMT (3:00 AM at home) and drag ourselves down to the basement of the B&B for a lovely full English breakfast in a small kitchen with the owners and the other guests. It’s only a two hour train ride to Sheffield from St. Pancras station in London and we’d like to be in Sheffield by 4 or 5. So, we find the wireless password from the front desk, send quick emails to our parents, and head over to St. Pancras (the international train station that connects to France through the Chunnel) to buy tickets for a train to Sheffield. Also while in the station, we are drawn to a bookstore and spend far too much time in there. Without buying anything more than batteries, too! With trains heading out every hour, and our tickets good for the day, we exile our luggage to the hallway again and check out of the B&B. Taking our (now substantially lighter) packs with us but thankfully leaving the cursed red bag, we decide to wonder down the street

And what happens to be right next to St. Pancras?!? That’s right: THE BRITISH LIBRARY! Ashley and I, being the nerds we are, have found our morning’s entertainment. Wandering in, we note all the interesting exhibitions (though most have just ended, as September is apparently international exhibit change-over month). However, the Sir John Ritblat Gallery is permanent, and houses some of the Library’s most brilliant treasures. For instance, neither of us thought we’d be seeing Magna Carta that morning! Or tons of other great objects, such as the Gutenberg Bible, the Lindisfarne Gospels, Lewis Carrol’s original Alice in Wonderland manuscript, original handwritten lyrics for The Beatle’s “Yesterday” and “Help!” and (something I more enjoyed), some great early star charts. In addition, the Library had wonderful interactives that allowed you to turn digital pages of book as well as have access to a host of other cool features all throughout the exhibit.

Leaving the Library after a too-brief stay, we find a pub called O’Neil’s and stop in for cider and Guinness Red (interesting) and some hummus before we head for our train to Sheffield that leaves at 1:55 PM. Once again it’s with the entire luggage (and the red bag), down to the busy roads, through St. Pancras, up a lift with a crazy old British lady mumbling something (we think positive) about Obama, and then over to our train. And also once again, it’s through the turnstiles with all of our heavy bags and hurrying down the platform and trying to toss all of our bags into a car before it leaves. Once we’re moving, I don’t last long before I pass out and sleep through most of the open countryside before we make a few stops, mostly at Derby and Chesterfield before pulling into Sheffield at about 4:00ish.

Here we call our new house’s landline and get our roommate Killian, an Irishman also starting a Master’s program in the Department of Archaeology. He plans to meet us outside of the station in a few minutes, and so we make for the lift to get out. But alas! The lift is broken! Of course! What then takes places is something akin to a sad punishment that one might see in a circle of Dante’s Inferno, as we attempt to time our access up stairs with two large 50 lbs. suitcases apiece, the Red Devil suitcase, and heavy backpacks against a strong counter stream of busy Brits attempting to move down the stairs to catch their trains. 10 minutes and many disapproving faces later, we’re up and realize that we have a staircase waiting for us to descend now. However, this time the lift works! Fortune smiles on us once again! Now it’s time to wait in the biting wind for our roommate to arrive.

Once Killian shows, we start our ascent up a steep hill through the Museum Sheffield, the Winter Gardens, the City Centre, and Fargate to get to the bus stop that will escort us to our door. Many of the first words muttered in Sheffield were very sharp and insulting things aimed at the red carry-on from Hell. Apparently, my hostile vibes directed towards the red bag were heard as it tried to commit luggage-suicide after coming unsnapped from my larger bag at the top of an escalator, tumbling all the way down. Luckily, the escalator was empty and the bag landed so that we just had to wait for it to eventually work its way up to us. However, the bus was nice and Ashley, Killian, and I talked Irish and American archaeology as we headed through campus and the city, and up the hill to Crookes – our neighborhood. Incidentally, after four days walking observation, we’re convinced that Crookes is situated at the highest point to the west of Sheffield, as it’s literally all downhill from here. As physics are pesky and the reverse tends to be true, we’re rethinking our plans about getting bicycles.

Here are some photos of the journey. Pictures of the house to follow. Also, we’ll have these pictures and more with captions on Facebook as well. That’s all for now – we’ll update everyone on our first few days here soon!