A Great Visit to Great Britain

 

When we walked out the front door of our hotel in London at night at the start of our trip to the United Kingdom, this is what greeted us: The Tower Bridge, in full lighted glory.

Yes, this was going to be a fun 19 days and 17 nights (we lost a night flying over). 

My guess is that England is high on the list for possible destinations by Americans for a trans-Atlantic vacation. We've been hearing about the British since before 1776, and we settled (most of) our differences, won wars together, seen their attractions, took in their culture, and watched their Royal family with curiosity. Most importantly, we speak the same language ... sort of. There are times when you might need an English-English dictionary, but not many. ("Way out" on signs in British buildings rather than "Exit?" What a waste of letters.)

I pay closer attention on such trips when I take notes for use in these essays. It's fun to find additional information about the sights I've seen, and that's represented in other portions on other portions of this blog. It's also fun to comment on what else is part of a trip - interactions with fellow tourists and the natives, funny experiences and sights along the way, and so forth. That's what this is. A few friends have graciously said they use this website to travel vicariously, or have used it in planning their own trips. High praise indeed in both cases.

So hop on the bus (there was a lot of that), and go for a ride in Great Britain.  

Our route

The origin of this trip is simple to describe. In 2015, we had started and ended a cruise of Northern Europe in the London area, and had the chance to spend about three hours in the city while waiting for the plane to take us home in the afternoon. That was good enough for us to say we had seen Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey from the outside through the windows of a bus, but we had only gotten out to eat lunch at Covent Garden. There was obviously more to see. Therefore, we signed up for the pre-trip extension to spend extra nights in London. That way, we could get a better look around at one of the world's great cities while later seeing the rest of the region as well. 

This itinerary worked quite well. The English countryside is quite pretty, as we saw a lot of it. About the only change in the schedule worth investigating came when we were driving to York and a road sign indicated we were close to Liverpool. Considering the bus had a large majority of senior citizens on board, I would bet that most of them wouldn't mind posing for a photo on The Beatles' famous Penny Lane - and maybe seeing a barber who shows photographs of every head he's had the pleasure to know. But ... you can't do everything. When we did get off the bus to see another city or town, the surroundings were almost always interesting. 

I don't know the statistics, but I would guess than a vast majority of these group tours feature an older crowd. We've been taking such trips for several years, but I'd still be near the end of the line if everyone lined up in chronological order. The demographics skew old. It's relatively easy travel, considering most of the arrangements are done by others. There probably were more women by percentage in this group than on other trips. In other words, there wasn't a great deal of conversation about the NFL Draft along the way.

Some of the stereotypes about senior travelers are true. Information about details is repeated quite often, and it takes some time for everyone to get off the bus. Speaking of that method of transportation, there are always a few seniors who are, um, "territorial" about their seats. Many of us had a good laugh behind the backs of the couple who tried to put their name tags on a row near the front in an attempt to "reserve" it.   

More seriously, there are warnings in the guidebooks about doing a good-sized amount of walking at times, some of it difficult. For those who haven't seen their shoes while standing up in a while - and traveling Americans are famous for that - a trip like this can be a taxing experience. The program directors try to make allowances on the fly for those who have trouble keeping up with the group, but it's a difficult balancing act. For those considering this type of group journey, be sure to pack extra patience with your toiletries.  

On the other hand, everyone arrived in good humor - which is more important in the long run of a trip that threw almost 40 strangers together for two weeks. People lent a hand to those in need, which was just about everyone at different times and in different ways. Friendships may have been formed that will last for years to come.  

"This is London" 

 

Students of broadcasting history can almost hear those words read aloud by Edward R. Murrow, a CBS Radio reporter. Murrow was based in London when World War II was underway while the United States was watching from a distance. His reports around 1940 on how Great Britain was responding to the German air blitz have become legendary.  

 

No doubt that's about the time that many in the United States first heard the chimes of Big Ben, the clock that stands tall over the Parliament Building and the Thames riverfront. The intersection of the street that offers this view was jammed with tourists eager to get this particular shot ... to the point where it was tough to cross the street. 

 

Our tour guides made a couple of interesting points about London. The first is that 100 miles seems like a long way to the English, while 100 years seems like a long time to Americans. There's a lot of truth to that. It's tough to go anywhere in London without tripping over some sort of history. After all, we're only a few decades away from the 1,000th anniversary of the Royal Dynasty. 

 

The other point concerns the city's layout. We were reminded that while the French like to restore things, the English prefer to simply rebuild things. Maybe that's because London has had so many fires over the years, including one that wiped out almost everything in 1666. Don't worry about how it looks; just get it fixed. It looks like there are some very odd plots of land in London in terms of dimensions, That's part of the charm of the place. 

* Driving must be a permanent nightmare in this city, with its major traffic issues and narrow streets. The equivalent of Interstate highways don't go through London, stopping well short of the city. No room. Most people, regardless of economic situation, wisely stick to the subway - known as the London Underground.

 

The Tube won't win any beauty contests, but it will get you where you want to go. It's been doing so since 1863. And if you take that route, be sure to notice the space between the train and the station platform. "Mind the Gap" comes over the P.A. system before every stop. No wonder you can buy a shirt that says "Mind the Gap" on it. 

 

* Come to think of it, walking isn't much better than driving. The sidewalks are often uneven. Within our first couple of days, we saw a couple of pedestrians take a spill and suffer injuries that required some medical attention. You've been warned: Visitors should watch their step.

 

* I can't say I saw any injured runners during my time in London, but I did see a great many runners at all times of the day or night. Maybe some were warming up for the London Marathon, which was scheduled to be held a week after Easter. A little detective work came up with the fact that the Marathon ends on a beautiful tree-lined street only a few dozen yards from Buckingham Palace. It looks like a thrilling place to finish.

 

I was inspired enough by the Marathon's upcoming staging that I looked at event merchandise as a souvenir possibility. I discovered that the prices of British marathon items are as high as their American counterparts. In other words, very, very high. No sale. 

* We discovered the hard way that it's good to check the calendar before scheduling a vacation. We happened to arrive in London at the start of Easter week, when the schools were closed. That meant there were tons of families and school groups touring the city, making it feel like summer. 

 

Certain attractions featured long, long lines; you needed to go to the London Eye either very early or very late to get a ride. We didn't make it. When closing time came to the British Museum, so many people left at once that it felt like a football game had just ended. My photo of the 5 o'clock mob shows a little of it.  

 

* If you can't find a waste container on the city streets of London, there's an interesting reason for it. It seems that trash barrels were frequently used by terrorist bombers during the 1970s and 1980s, as no one was too anxious to search them. The City of London removed them from the streets, and try to pick up the garbage in other ways. The areas that we visited looked pretty clean.

 

* During our visit, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled that terms "woman" and "sex" under the Equality Act of 2010 should refer strictly to the biological sex assigned at birth. It causes a bit of a commotion around the United Kingdom, as you might expect. 

 

A couple of days later, we happened to be coming out of Westminster Abbey when a full-fledged march by a few thousand protesters (at least) came streaming by. It took some fancy stepping just to get to the other side of the street. It brought back some memories. We once popped up in the middle of a demonstration in Lyon, France, after getting off a train. We also couldn't get near some attractions in Paris when we picked the wrong day (more demonstrations) to visit. 

 

Just lucky, I guess.  

 

* You've gotta be careful when shopping here. If you see a hamburger going for 16 "units" on the menu, you think that's a reasonable price compared to American costs. Then you realize it's in pounds, and the number jumps by 33 percent. So that hamburger costs the equivalent of $21. A proficiency in mental math is a must on these trips. The cost of living naturally is higher in London than in the rest of the country.

 

Honoring the greats

You may not know that Westminster Abbey isn't just a church, although it certainly serves that function brilliantly, as they say over there. There are few bigger honors for the English than to be saluted there. The list of people who are saluted there, including all sorts of royal figures of course, but "ordinary" citizens can pop up there too. Everyone from Charles Darwin to Stephen Hawking pop up in one form or another, and "The Poet's Corner" is filled with tributes to names that have provided course material for English Literature classes on both sides of the Atlantic.

I chose this one to represent the group here. Sir Isaac Newton had an amazing life, as his work touched on all sorts of areas. Newton made huge contributions to physics, science and astronomy. If you want to pick someone who contributed the most to the Scientific Revolution, he's a good starting point. School kids are still learning about Newton's Three Laws of Motion, and adults are still quoting them. I have written that sports teams that go on long losing streaks are proving Newton's first law that objects in motion tend to stay in motion until a force acts on it. 

The rest of the island 

 

 

This might be my favorite photo out of the almost 800 pictures I took during the trip. Welcome to the part of England that doesn't receive too much publicity. 

It's hard to drive too far into the countryside before running into sheep. After leaving London, we probably saw more sheep than people during the course of the trip. There are all sorts of fields where the cute critters spend relaxing days chewing on grass. It's a good life, albeit one that might end abruptly in the form of a long, one-way trip. Mostly the animals are relatively alone in those fields, although you may catch a few families sticking together. They may be the ones that are used for breeding. As for the rest, well, let's say it will be hard to look at a lamb chop in the same way ever again. 

The animals are particularly visible in the Lake District. That's the part of England in the very north and west of the country. There are mountains there, and they are tall enough to affect the weather. It rains a lot, and the water fills up some depressions, and eventually you get a bunch of lakes. Happily, it didn't rain at all during our two days there - part of what was described as the sunniest April in the country's recorded history.

* With all of that space devoted to sheep, it's easy to ask what's missing here. The answer that was suggested caused some head-slapping in the "oh, right" sense.

 

There weren't many golf courses in sight in rural England as well as in Wales and Scotland. This seemed odd, considering the Scots invented the game. And really, blow up the photo shown here by clicking on it and take a look. 

 

This seems like a good place for a challenging par-4 hole. (Free relief for balls hit near a sheep.) Guess you'll have to go elsewhere for a chance to play golf. 

 

* Wales is a particularly interesting area of this part of the world. I was told beforehand not to say in public there that Wales isn't a separate country from England, Scotland and Northern Ireland; it's a way to be instantly hated by the local population. 

 

As David Lloyd George - Britain's only prime minister who used Welsh as his first language - might remind us, they have their own language there. It's a source of pride for the natives. The catch is that it's not something you're going to learn in a couple of hours. Languages like English, French, and Spanish have some common roots so there are enough similarities to guess at possible meanings. This does not apply to Welsh. I'm told each word has letters and combinations of letters that are pronounced only one way, so it's just a matter of reading the word as it should sound. In that sense, it has something in common with Finnish, which is rather ugly-looking for the non-speakers of that particularly language. 

 

Wales does have an evening newscast in Welsh, and a newspaper with some pages in Welsh. However, English seems to be a strong second language for most of the people who bump into tourists, and - as the photo shows - ice cream seems to translate quite easily. 

* We heard a story about a farmer who lived around the Scotland/England border when a new big highway was planned. The problem was that the road was scheduled to go directly through his property. He refused to sell, despite all of his neighbors taking the money for their land. Eventually, the government gave up and built the road around the farm ... placing tunnels so that animals and people could bypass the highway and reach other parts of the property and the surrounding area. It was quite an odd sight as we drove by. 

* Many dozens of years ago, a pub was located exactly on the border - one side in Edinburgh, one side in the neighboring town. The catch was that the two municipalities had different regulations. So at 9:30 p.m. each night, half of the bar had to close - forcing the clientele to pick up their glasses and move to the other side of the building to continue their, um, business.    

 

Stories and other observations 

 

* If you go to Bath, or a number of other English cities, you'll probably see a bar named J.D. Wetherspoon. The backstory to this is a good one. In 1979, student Tim Martin was told by a teacher that he'd never amount to anything. When Martin opened his first restaurant, and he decided to send a message to his former teacher by naming the pub after him. The J.D. refers not to Wetherspoon, but rather to J.D. "Boss" Hogg from the TV show "The Dukes of Hazzard." Now there's a chain of them around the country. For all the teachers out there, I wouldn't advice using this approach as a motivating tool, although it worked in this case.

 

* Speaking of Bath, when we woke up after our first night at a hotel there, word quickly spread that our facility had hosted a Very Important Person that night: The British Prime Minister. Kier Starmer. Can't say I ever noticed any sort of sign that Mr. Starmer was in the building. The management must be very efficient.

 

* The Holiday Week flaw in our scheduling also popped up a bit later in our trip when we stopped in Oxford. I had hopes of seeing the field where Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile in 1954, which is sacred ground in the running community. I would argue that it ranks as the greatest moment in track and field history - although Bob Beamon's long jump in 1968 is in the argument too.

 

Alas, most cab drivers in Oxford took Easter off, and I didn't have time to walk the mile from the college and back. (Sir Roger could have run it in his prime, but not me.) Such side-trips usually are tough to complete on a guided tour, as everything has to work out. It's good to have low expectations in such situations. 

Bannister became a doctor and lived a most admirable life. He once said that his greatest accomplishment was his research into the responses of the nervous system. Still, those three minutes, 59 and four-tenths seconds are permanently placed in the record book. 

 

*  I often had company on my trip throughout Great Britain: The Times of London. I hate to say something nice about owner Rupert Murdoch, but The Times is a wonderful newspaper in many ways. The center-right editorial stance rarely gets in the way, if that matters to you. It's a throwback to the old days, when newspapers were thick and full of news. There were stories on every possible angle, and it even had TV and radio listings! (OK, the baseball box scores were nowhere to be found, but you can't have everything.) I was ready to subscribe by journey's end. 

For those who might be hoping the Times might be a start of a trend, I never saw anyone else in our group even reading a newspaper.  

* Here's a burning issue that's probably too hot for the Times. Where should a visiting pedestrian walk in England - on the left side or the right side when it comes to sidewalks, stairs, etc.? I was curious after seeing all of the cars on the left side of the road. I'm still not too sure of the answer, but it looked like it was the right side in tourist areas and the left side in other places. Still, I'm not quite ready to publish my findings.

 

* This might be the most dog-friendly place in the world. They were allowed almost anywhere, including art stores (as in paintings) and restaurants (water bowls were available on request). Some restaurants even had special food for our four-legged friends. Dog walkers were spotted all over the region. 

 

* Nights often meant preparing for the upcoming day's tour, which meant background noise was needed on the television in hotel rooms. It was easy to miss the American cable companies after two weeks of it. There were no all-news or all-sports channels on the set. The World Snooker Championships did get a ton of coverage during our visit, but it's tough to watch a game when you don't know the rules. 

 

That left the old stand-by - game shows. There were new ones and repeats on display during the late afternoons and evenings. British adaptations of programs such as "Jeopardy" and "The Chase" were familiar, even if the questions were not. There were definitely too many questions about British royalty for my tastes.  

 

* Many of the thrift stories spotted in cities around the country are owned by non-profit organizations, such as, say, the Heart Association. Maybe that could catch on here. 

On the personal side

 

Another Westminster tribute belongs to Geoffrey Chaucer, who lived in the 1300s in London. He was the first writer to be saluted in Westminster Abbey's "Poet's Corner," where he is buried. Chaucer is considered the father of English literature, and wrote "The Canterbury Tales." 

Here's the connection: I've done some research on my family tree, and found work from someone else that indicated that I am a direct descendant of Mr. Chaucer. Call this visit something of a family reunion then, although I do admit the possibility of a mistake in the research popping up. 

 

* Speaking of the family tree, I also made a connection about the people who supposedly are my 13th great-grandparents, Marmaduke and Thomasine Thwenge. You don't see those names too often. They had a daughter, Jane, which is also my sister's name in a small coincidence. Marmaduke died in York in 1567. That means he certainly walked on the streets of the city and probably visited the York Minster - the magnificent cathedral that was finished in the 1400s. To think I was literally following in the footsteps of my 13th great-grandfather is relatively cool as these things go. 

 

* I discovered that the "dd" letter combination comes out in Welsh as something of a "th." This would make my name "Buth." I sincerely hope this does not catch on. 

 

* Speaking of names, there was a Bud in the group on the bus to go with Budd. It wasn't his real name. His wife often yelled out "Bud!" in an attempt to get his attention, leaving us a bit confused for a moment. We never did talk during our trip, as we were in different orbits. You'd be surprised how often that happens, as group members find like-minded company and hang out with them for the rest of the journey.

 

* The surprise of the trip for me came when our program director announced on the bus that we'd be taking a surprise side trip to Lockerbie, Scotland. We walked to see the memorial to the 259 passengers and crew members who died in a plane explosion over Lockerbie that was created by terrorists' suitcase bomb in 1988. The catch for me is that Lockerbie is a famous word for anyone who went to Syracuse University. 

There were 35 SU students on Pan Am Flight 103, as they were returning home after the semester abroad program. Most of the students on campus then knew someone on that plane, and the alumni all knew someone who had done a half-year abroad. In other words, just about everyone connected with Syracuse University had something close to a nervous breakdown that day.

 

I sent a photo of the area to friends with Syracuse connections. They all said what a sad day it was in 1988. However, they quickly added that it was nice to see that the memorial was well-maintained. The good people of Lockerbie obviously still remembered that day when debris that included bodies fell from the sky. As if they could forget it.  

A Scottish farewell

 

Our program director Will had all sorts of surprises for us during the two weeks he guided us. Sometimes it was in the form of sweets, sometimes it was in the form of stops during bus trips. He saved a good one for last. 

 

When we were getting ready for the farewell dinner, he gave a cue ... and a fully dressed Scottish bagpiper went to work. He wailed on the instrument as he escorted us into the dining area. Our bagpiper later told about his experiences on the bagpipe, including playing for President Reagan as part of the welcoming party. 

 

When we were walking into the banquet room, I asked a staff member if this sort of performance happened a lot at the hotel. "Oh yes, happens all the time," she said, and smiled.

 

Thanks for coming along on our trip.