The final week

This is my final blogging week, unfortunately. Just as I was getting into the swing of it.

Great photo of the aqueduct in Segovia, Silvia. I must go there for myself and have a look. It's really amazing what the Romans achieved. I've seen quite a lot of Roman remains especially in the south of France, including the famous Pont du Gard aqueduct, which is 275 metres long, with three 'storeys', and crosses 49 metres above the river Gard. But the Romans were everywhere, it seems. I've mentioned previously the Roman presence at York. I once worked on an archaeological dig at a Roman fort near Leeds, and up in the hills to the west of Leeds there's a Roman road, running dead straight, with massive flat rocks laid down to provide a secure surface for wheels to cross the boggy terrain.

You write so well, Silvia, that there isn't really a great deal to be improved.

You can use 'get to' meaning 'get the chance to' - e.g.:

I never get to hear any good music.

In your sentence, I think you probably mean:

I had been there before, but the city always manages to enrapture me with its atmosphere.

The word 'necessary' has an ungradable meaning, so it isn't usual to say 'extremely necessary'. Instead, you could say:

What's extremely important is .....

Your use of 'scour' isn't quite right. You scour a place in search of something - e.g.:

We scoured the whole city looking for Roman remains.
I scoured all my dictionaries but I couldn't find the word anywhere.

In what you wrote, there's no suggestion of looking for something in particular, so you could say:

to explore the whole city on foot
to walk around the whole city
to roam around the whole city

When 'alike' is used as an adjective or adverb to say that people or things are similar, it isn't followed by a noun or pronoun:

All capital cities are alike in some ways.
Do you and your sister look alike?

So in your sentence, you should say:

The city looks quite like any other European capital.
(or: The city looks quite similar to any other European capital.)

'You don't have to' means 'it isn't necessary', so you should say:

You mustn't miss the old part of the town. (In other words, don't miss it!)

A few other points:

Here come two funny pictures.
the stroke of midnight
you'll have to pay for the cake
on the other hand (not 'side')

Here are the solutions to the vocabulary questions from last time:

1 whole, unbroken, well-preserved: intact
2 shades of black and white, without other colours: monochrome
3 to examine carefully: scrutinise
4 not too expensive: modestly-priced
5 a not-very-attractive smell: odour
6 a trip to a place of interest: excursion
7 drinking (an informal word): boozing
8 spending more than necessary (an adjective): extravagant
9 miscellaneous human-made objects (e.g. found by archaeologists): artefacts
10 to fall down (e.g. a building): collapse

And finally, today, a couple more photos.

Here's another image of the Yorkshire Dales:



This is a tiny, remote village called Keld. Keld is an old Scandinavian name meaning 'spring' or 'source' of water, and it dates back to the days of Scandinavian settlement in the early Middle Ages. You can see how the houses huddle together in the shelter of the valley. They're built of the local limestone and almost seem to be part of the natural landscape.

And in contrast, here's a view of Scarborough (another Scandinavian name), one of the major towns on the Yorkshire coast (a town, definitely not a city!)



The massive headland juts out into the North Sea and separates North Bay from South Bay. The Romans had a signal station there, but what you can see now are the remains of a mediaeval castle. Scarborough is a working port - you can see the harbour with its lighthouse on the right - and a popular holiday resort, once extremely elegant but now rather down-at-heel. Like resorts in Britain generally, it lost out when more and more people started to spend holidays abroad - in Spain, for example! It's full of closed-down hotels and guest houses, and nowadays relies more on day trippers, although there are still some holidaymakers willing to risk the unpredictable weather and stay for a week or so. For us, it's another of our favourite days out when we're in Leeds.

Jonathan

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