I had only one hour in Sheffield before Transpennine train took me back to Manchester. Fortunately, many major point of interests are scattered around north-northwest Sheffield train station, most things can be reached on foot.

Once an important steel city during Industrial revolution, Sheffield is now one of the UK’s biggest cities, a major industrial and cosmopolitan city. Those in process safety occupation know Sheffield for its well-known University of Sheffield’s MSc in Process Safety and Loss Prevention.

Some of the point of interests visited were: Town Hall, City Hall, Peace Garden, Winter Garden, Millenium Galleries, and Sheffield Hallam University.

Edensor (pronounced: “Ensor”) is a village, a small village in Derbyshire, England. If not because of Andrea Hirata‘s novel bearing the same name, it will almost certainly be unheard in Indonesians ears. Edensor is not a tourist puller, the nearby Chatsworth House is.

In his novel, Andrea, with his strong fluidic narrative, and vivid details of his story, tells a tale about his struggling time in the Universite de Paris of Sorbonne, and his summer traveling across Europe and Africa partly to find his childhood ‘girlfriend’. It was she who gave him a book inwhich naturalist description of a village captivating him. That village is Edensor.

Story has it that originally the village, much of it belongs to the Dukes of Devonshire, was close to the River Derwent immediately below Chatsworth, but the Dukes had it moved out of sight over a hill, apart from one cottage whose tenant didn’t want to move, which still stands in Chatsworth Park.

When I’ve got a chance to visit Manchester last June, I didn’t miss it without visiting Edensor.Will it be as breathtaking as its novel?

The village is easily accessible from Manchester by taking 48-min to 1hr 18min train ride to Sheffield (price varies) and continuing with a 50-min bus ride (5.50 GBP return trip) from Sheffield Interchange (Bus Number 214/215 Sheffield – Matlock).

….I am stunned. Overwhelmed with dejavu from seeing this charming village. I feel like I am already  familiar with rooster-carved village gate, with stone benches, with arrays of daffodil and astuaria flowers. I am as though passing through a time tunnel and thrown away to imaginary land that has been long settled inside my heart.

I  asked the driver to stop and bursted out of the bus. Thousands of memory fragments on this beautiful place for tens of years suddenly synthesized before my eyes, so lovely.

To a passerby woman I asked,”Madam, can you please tell me the name of this place?”

She looked at me calmly then answered.

“Sure lof, it’s Edensor….”

(free translation from Edensor, Andrea Hirata, 2008)