What Better Way to Celebrate Shrove Tuesday Than With a 500-year-old Traditional Pancake Race?

Today is known by many names; Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, what have you. At any rate, many people are eating pancakes today.

It was brought to our attention yesterday that in London, Shrove Tuesday is celebrated with pancake races throughout the morning. Legend has it that 500 years ago, a woman was making pancakes when she heard the bells for her church ringing. The woman rushed off to church, still carrying her frying pan and flipping the pancake the whole way so as not to burn it. This has led to the tradition of holding pancake races now on Shrove Tuesday. One town here in England has even had a friendly competition for over 50 years now with the town of Liberal, Kansas to see who has the fastest runner (without dropping a pancake).

The first race was during my one and only class this morning, but two races were being held at noon and 12:30, so Sasha, Annie and I planned on heading out to witness the excitement that a pancake was bound to bring.

But first! We popped in to the local STA Travel Office to inquire about trips to Scotland and Ireland. After nearly an hour there, we left with a complete weekend in Ireland planned, for the weekend right before St. Patrick's Day. We're flying to Dublin at 6:00 AM on Friday, taking a guided tour to various famous sights on Saturday, and flying out in the evening on Sunday. Saturday and Sunday we'll be sure to join in with the various St. Patty's Day weekend festivities.

Once we got this sorted out, we ventured out to the opposite end of London in search of the Truman Brewary, in order to witness the pancake races. We were already running late; it was 12:40 when we left, and the races began at 12:30.

Then we got lost.

We walked the wrong way, away from Brick Lane, where the brewery is located. We found ourselves in what is clearly a Muslim part of London. Many of the signs were in Arabic (completely useless to lost English-speaking foreigners), and we even found ourselves walking past the London Mosque.

So I pulled out my handy dandy iPhone and got us back on the right path. Now, you have to understand, we weren't just lost, but it's still ridiculously cold, and today, it has started raining. So we were lost, cold, and soaking wet.

Well, eventually we found our way to the Truman Brewery, and quite a to-do was going on. Food vendors were set up, an art gallery benefiting Haiti was going on, street musicians were playing folk music and - of course - pancakes were being sold. And by pancakes, I really mean crepes, as the English don't appear to differentiate between the two.

We hadn't eaten lunch yet, so we happily lined up for some yummy crepe/pancakes (I had a ham and cheese one) and then went in to the art exhibit to eat our lunch out of the rain. It didn't take us long to figure out that we had, unfortunately, missed the races. But! One team was still there, and still quite energetic. They were hopping and dancing around in the street with their frying pan (the rules state that you must supply your own frying pan; they will supply the pancakes). We didn't get to witness the race itself, but we did get to watch this team pose and create "action shots", and simply participate in a fun, local tradition.

Heading back to the tube, we got lost once again, this time wandering past a vintage clothing store which caught our fancy. By the time we eventually made our way back to the tube stop (once again aided by my bff the iPhone), we were utterly exhausted. We were ready to go home for the day. All in all, it was a successful, fun day exploring new parts of the city. And now we have an exciting new tradition (which we did not witness!) to bring home with us. I think Trinity could certainly benefit from pancake races in addition to the pancake supper every year.