Sunday film travels through seas of Europe

DOWNEY - The Downey Theatre will represent the seventh film of its 2008-09 Armchair Adventure Travelogue Series, "Etched in Stone: Scotland to Provence," filmed and narrated by Monty Brown, this Sunday at 2:30 p.m.From (Irish) sea to shining (Mediterranean) sea, the film is a historic spiritual journey from Solway Firth on the Irish Sea in Scotland, to the North Sea cost of England, south through the Midlands, the West Country, and across the English Channel to France. Finally, from Normandy and Brittany in the north, through the redolent French countryside to romantic Provence on the Mediterranean Sea. Everywhere, stories and legends of the glorious past are written in stone: churches, castles, monuments, monoliths and remnants. Part 1: Scotland and Northumberland: Whithorn - the White House - where the Scottish St. Ninian arrived from Rome with a mission to spread the Gospel. Christianity arrived in Scotland and England, and spread outward and downward from these remote northern climes. Evocative red stone ruins of Sweetheart Abbey, surely the inspiration for Valentine's Day. Massive Bamburgh Castle, the Farne Islands of the North Sea, and the Victorian heroine, Grace Darling. Part 2: Yorkshire and The Heartland: Tickhill, a typical English village, with its medieval church, castle duck pond and buttercross. John Wesley's roots; Ivanhoe's Conisborough Castle and nearby Roche Abbey; St. Ives and Huntingdon and the story of Liver Cromwell, the Puritan leader. Peaceful byways rarely seen by tourists. Part 3: The West Country: Glastonbury Abbey, sacred site in a spiritual land. Abbotsbury: medieval monks and thousands of nesting swans. Carn Enuy Ancient Village. Stonehenge; new etched glass windows at war-damaged Moreton Church; Salisbury Cathedral, tallest spire in Europe; Dorset buttons; Cleeve Abbey and the seaside holiday town of Minehead. Part 4: Northern France: Norman and Breton country churches and Benedictine Le Beq Hellouin monastery; Orbec and Debussy; Mont St. Michel and Le Dol de Bretagne; American tombs at Port de Plaisance; plinths and obelisks; the Cathedral of St. Tugdual at Treguier, and Cathedral at Coutances. Part 5: Provence: Charleval and La Roque d'Antheron, Provencal villages; Lamanoun caves and cliffs; pilgrimage at Lambesc; cathedral and town of Aix-en-Provence. Le petit train in Marseilles: the Major Cathedra; mountain village of Gordes and the stone shepherds' huts (Bories); castles, monsters and Tatarin's House in Tarascon on the River Rhone. Notre Dame de Beauregard: church built on a rock. St. Maries de la Mer, where Mary Magdalen arrived, as do we, on the shores of the Mediterranean. Producer Born in Doncaster, England, in 1940, Monty Brown was raised and educated in British Columbia, Canada. He studied theater at the University of B.C. and, after touring with a repertory company in Canada for a year, he returned to England to study acting at the Stratford East Theater School. In London during the 1960's, he worked first as an actor, then as a production assistant at BBC television for five years. In 1972, he moved to New York to take up a career in song-writing and musical performance. He and his wife, Marsha, who was born and raised in upstate New York, have written many songs together, including two - "Would You Fly?" and "Cajun Christmas" - which were used in the movie, "Steel Magnolias." The Browns spent more than a year working for the Lousiana Folklife Center at Northwestern State University in Louisiana, where they produced the music and handled the publicity for the 1989 Folk Festival. "Etched in Stone: Scotland to Provence" is the seventh Armchair Adventure of a 10-film series. The series features full-color, feature-length travelogues with live, in-person narration by the travel adventure producer. All films are on Sundays at 2:30 p.m. at the Downey Theatre. Tickets for individual films may be purchased on the day of performance only, beginning at 1:30 p.m. at the theater box office. Adult tickets are $7 and senior/student tickets are $6 (cash or check only). ********** Published: February 13, 2009 - Volume 7 - Issue 43