| LEAVING HOME June 3, 2007 Sunday Now here's some excitement. I'm writing you from Orlando International Airport, Gate 85. Our flight is scheduled for 6:15. We got here at 2:15, and were glad we did. I had checked in online last night, so we could cut that line and go directly to the bag drop. There was already a short line at the bag drop where they weighed your baggage and issued boarding passes. Security also was already busy, but not mobbed. I can imagine what it is down there now. Here in Never-Never land beyond Security there are a number of restaurants and snack shops. All we have with us is some half-smashed sugar-free cookies that were left on the counter this morning, so we threw them in Bob's carry-on. I strolled down the concourse to a "Natural Foods" shop and bought a half-pound of "sesame mix" for snacks on the plane. When I got back I opened the bag to show Bob the miniscule amount for which I had paid (gasp) $4.25. His hand was in the bag immediately. From there to the mouth like a flash, before I could snap the bag closed. I asked him how it was. "Stale." "It smelled like it," I replied, and tossed stuff into my carryon. We may get hungry enough.... Backing up a piece, we were up at 6 a.m. this morning. By 10:30 a.m. the laundry was pretty well caught up, the house was moderately clean; we only had our showers and some last minute details to do. I took out my sewing bag and thought that, after my shower, I'd have time to work on a purse I was making. I'm not quite sure what happened after that, but when brother-in-law John showed up at noon, I was still unplugging computers and Bob was folding towels. The plan was that I would carry the L.L.Bean bookpack-style backpack with the laptop computer crammed into it in its new case as my carryon. When the bag was sans computer, it went into the biggest pocket of the backpack enough that it wouldn't fall out. When I tried to do it with computer inside at a quarter to leave-time, it took two of us to cram it, um, well, maybe halfway in the pocket. The zipper was strained, and I didn't dare put it on my shoulder for fear of losing the computer. I trotted out to the car with the pack clutched to the front of me, both arms wrapped around it. We left the house in a flurry of dust and crammed our luggage in the car. On the way to the airport Bob kept thinking of things he hadn't got done, and was asking John to stop at our house on the way to his house and do them. I don't know if John will get home in time for supper or not. There's a Friendly's restaurant on Rt. 27 just about 15 miles south of home. We left home, drove for less than half an hour, and stopped for lunch. I had decided that I would have to use the computer bag by itself as my carryon, and put the backpack in my big suitcase. On the way to Friendly's, I raked pencils, CDs and DVDs, and my quart bag of 3 oz. liquids out of the pack and put them into the computer case. At the restaurant, I ordered an Oriental Chicken, borrowed John's car keys, and headed out to finish up the change. My big suitcase was wedged under the spare tire. It took some serious yanking and swearing to get it propped up on the edge of the trunk so I could open it and unzip the expander. I was about to stuff the backpack in the suitcase when I thought I'd better take a last check of the pack before relegating it to the hold. Good thing. A couple of important folders were still in the pack. I took them out, laid them on top of the other suitcases, and concentrated on shoving the backpack into the suitcase. I also pulled several DVDs and CDs out of the backpack and laid them on the other cases. An errant wind came by, seized the two folders, and tossed them into the air. It snowed sheet of white paper all over the parking lot. I left the trunk open and chased the folders and papers swirling off towards Publix Market across the lot. I identified my E-ticket dancing toward the boulevard. It was always a step ahead of me. I finally jumped on it. After I gathered all the papers I could find, I ran back to the car to find that, when I had lunged for the papers, the CDs had been knocked to here and gone. There were CDs in the trunk, CDs on the ground, CDs....well, God knows where. I picked up the CDs I could find, threw them in the back seat of the car with the papers I had caught, and slammed the door. Now, the suitcase, fattened up with the backpack, would not fit under the spare tire. Keep in mind that this suitcase weighs 50 or 60 pounds - maybe 80. I pushed it in; I yanked it out. I got two year's wear on a brand new suitcase in ten minutes. Finally I shoved Bob's carry-on under the spare tire, balanced my big case on top of it, and slammed down the trunk lid. I though I'd better take a walk-about to see if there were any more wandering papers. Sure enough, there was one near the rubbish bin behind the restaurant-the phone numbers of my computer gurus in case the laptop gets sick. I dragged into Friendly's. My Oriental chicken salad awaited, a mountain of cold crispy lettuce crowned with spicy chicken bits and Chinese noodles. I needed that. Did I mention it was 90 degrees in that parking lot and I was wearing slacks and wool sox? Cold lettuce. Wonderful. We were four hours before our scheduled flight time of 6:15 p.m. when John dumped us on the Departures platform. When we trundled up to get weighed in, there was a Virgin Atlantic gal directing people to various lines. I asked her if the computer briefcase counted as my carry-on, or if I could carry on my school pack in addition. She said since computer MUST be taken on board, that I could also carry another piece of luggage. I flopped Big Betsy on the floor then and there, ripped the zipper open, and hauled out my school pack. I grabbed out of the suitcase everything I could that I had stuffed in there in Friendly's parking lot, jammed it again into the backpack, threw the pack on my back, zipped up Betsy and took my place in line behind Bob, who was pretending not to know me. We got weighed, consigned our two suitcases to the mercy of Virgin Atlantic and trotted off to gate 85. There were only two other groups at the gate when we got there. A couple of young mothers with absolutely ratty snotty noisy kids, and two young East Indian women wrapped in saris from the top of the head to their Nike tennis shoes. A fellow was with them, 50ish, sort of a chaperone. He had that Eastern carven-god good looks topped with gray sprinkles at the temples. Um. But he was a big dude, not to be messed with. I went to the bathroom, took a walk, and there were still two hours until boarding call. I cased the place. There was a big post ten rows away with four electrical outlets on it. Time to write Postcards from the Road. I gathered up the laptop, selected and seat near the post, pushed in the plug-and nothing happened. There was a fellow seated with his back to me that was plugged in. He must have had juice, or else why would he stay? We were the only people in twenty seats in any direction. I tried to plug in the outlet right underneath his cord. I couldn't get into it. Two, three, five tries, what is this? I knelt on the chair, leaned over the back and got a closer look. The three slots in the outlet were for some Eastern plug. They went every which way. I slid back down in my seat and resigned myself to running down my battery. And this is where I began, writing to you in Orlando International Airport, and running down my battery. ENGLAND TO SCOTLAND June 4, 2007 Monday I just finished the first of three paperbacks I brought along. It is an old Rex Stout murder mystery, Death of a Dude. Not his best, surely, but still interesting enough to keep you reading to find the murderer. I like words; I collect words. Stout's detective persona is fat Nero Wolfe, who uses words you've never heard. He is the brilliant logistician with a purposeful vocabulary and incisive observations. I collected this quote out of Death of a Dude. "Man's brain, enlarged fortuitously, invented words in an ambitious effort to learn how to think, only to have them usurped by his emotions. But he keeps trying." So much for today's cultural hour. Back to the Postcards. We took a Red Eye flight direct from Orlando to Manchester, England. Eight hours of trying to sleep-I can't-interspersed with eating and reading. We landed in Manchester at 7:10 a.m. GMT and frogged around in the airport for a while getting information and finding places we needed to get to. This was not easy, you know. The airport was jammed with people with luggage, crabby people with luggage. The pick-up point for our ride was a mile from where we landed, and the public phone was in a place we didn't want to go to at all. When we got it together, a phone call to Moss Deeping brought Greg in his silver Citroën chariot to gather us up and dump us in the foyer of his B&B. We bumped our luggage upstairs to our room, shook out our clothes, brushed our teeth, and sallied forth to take on the village of Bramhall for the day. We did have one material objective -make that two. One was to get something to eat. Our last meal was a muffin and tea at 6 a.m. Two was to buy a prepaid cell phone. That was my perception. Bob wanted to get the phone business done first. Whatever. Nikki and Pauline, English friends, had scoped out the phone market for us, and wrote that we could get a phone for £20 in Woolworth's, the least expensive phone going. They were right. We picked out a £20 phone at Woolworth's and took it to the register. The girl at the register tried to activate it, several times. She made some phone calls. A young man with a shoulder twitch came over, fiddled with it, and left. She made some more phone calls. Finally she decided that the card was defective. We picked out another phone. It worked from the get-go. On to lunch. It was a lovely day in Bramhall-town. We sat outside a little tea shop under a green awning. I dined on homemade vegetable soup with crusty bread and drank tea. Bob had a ham and cheese pannini. We were entertained by the old ladies trundling shopping baskets, young mothers pushing babies in pushcarts, and people with their arms full of packages who needed to cross the street at a pedestrian walkway in front of our en plein-air table. The game was to push the white button on the pole, then get into a crouch position. When the red light started beeping, everyone had ten seconds to get across. Even unencumbered people sprinted. We cheered on the old ladies. We could identify with them. Bob ate half of his pannini and took the other half with him wrapped in foil. Then we set out to stay awake for the next nine hours. We had got up at 6:00 a.m. Sunday morning EDT, and flew out at 6:00 p.m. (rounded off). We arrived in Manchester 2:00 a.m. EDT, or 7:00 a.m. GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). We needed to stay awake until at least 9:00 p.m. GMT to avoid jet lag and get our bodies to think they were English. We walked up and down the streets of town. We walked in and out of stores and shops. There was an attractive square of shops with benches in front of the shops and picnic tables with awnings in the center. Bob gave up on the walking and collapsed on a bench where he got out the new cell phone and played with it to get it set up. I kept walking. Time crawled by. Bob was absorbed in the phone. I kept walking. Finally it got to be 5:00 p.m. We returned to Moss Deeping. All bed and breakfasts in Britain provide an electric tea kettle, tea bags, cups, and teaspoons. Bob dumped powdered tomato soup into the tea mugs, added hot water and voila! Supper. I had brought BacOs from home to sprinkle on top. There were various bread slices and rolls left from prior meals to have with the soup, and those cookies we had brought from home for dessert. By the time we ate that, showered, and organized our clothes for the next day, it was 9:00 p.m. Hooray! Bedtime. Good Night! 5:30 a.m. was going to come 'way too soon! June 5, Tuesday At 7:00 a.m. Greg dumped us off back at the airport to catch the National Express coach for Glasgow, Scotland, on the first leg of the journey to the seaside town of Oban. We headed in to the airport bus station, one of the things we scoped out yesterday, knowing that we would need to get to it fast today. We found Bay 5 and sat around a bit staring at the other travelers who were staring at us. When the electronic door opened, we raced for the good seats. We dumped our luggage beside the bus. Before the driver had tossed it into a bin, we were on the bus. Bob had our green fanny-pack “food bag” strapped around his waist, I lugged the computer, and we each had a day-pack of essentials like umbrellas and books hanging off our backs. We've done this before. We moved through those aisles and up the winding stairs like thoroughbreds out of the gate. For only the second time in our bus-riding career, we were fast enough to get the front seats on the upper deck of the bus. These seats would be ours for the whole first six hours of the trip. It was wrap-around scenery from above the world-for six hours! I have to pause to explain about the “food fanny pack.” It is a big fanny pack left over from our skiing days. It's gone to Britain every time we go. Inside are a salt and pepper, plastic tableware, a small jar of mustard, and, this time, the BacOs. When we are faced with a long bus or train trip, we shop and fill the pack with sandwiches, fruit, gorp, and cheese, whatever appeals. Sometimes the bus/train stops so you can buy a meal, but sometimes not. Everyone carries lunch and snacks. Rattling papers and crunching noises are the background music of life on a long-distance trip. The route ran through the mountainous in beautiful “Lake Country,” and into the Scottish Highlands of deep firths and wild cliffs. The scenery was spectacular. There was a shelf in front of us for our snacks and water bottles, and the bathroom was right at the bottom of the stairs. All was right with the world. The bus swerved into a motorway service area with a restaurant. Everyone sat up and stopped eating. The driver announced that there would be twenty minutes to get some food, that hot food was not allowed on the bus but hot drinks with caps were, and if you weren't aboard in twenty minutes, he had no obligation to wait for you. Yep. Bob and I walked around to stretch our legs, then climbed back aboard and hauled the food pack down from the overhead rack. We dined on Bob's leftover pannini, stale gorp, and the last crumbs of those cookies from the kitchen counter. We arrived in Glasgow's Buchanan bus station at 2:00 p.m. We left Glasgow's Buchanan bus station at 2:45 p.m. on a Scottish City Link bus for the last two hours of the trip to Oban. We whirled around mountain curves and dived down mountainsides on roads so narrow that there were warnings posted: “Be aware that cars might be in the middle of the road.” Also express coaches. We had to make a change of busses at a point called, interestingly, Tyndrum Public Toilets. The change was to be made in two minutes, according to the trip schedule I had printed off the internet web page. The bus braked to the side of the road at Tyndrum Public Toilets, a couple of buildings on a flat spot next to the road. We were ten minutes behind schedule. Another bus was waiting, motor running. We ran off the first bus, grabbed our luggage as the driver threw it on the ground from the hold, ran over to the second bus with suitcases bouncing behind us. The second driver grabbed the luggage; I didn't even see what happened to it. We leaped up the bus steps and fell into two seats. By the time we had our seat belts fastened, we were roaring off into the mountains. Bob thinks the change did get done in two minutes. I would have bet a minute and a half. The second driver was on something-like Speed or Ecstasy. We sat in front seats and I could see the speedometer. The numbers at the end of the arrow didn't match the numbers painted in white paint on the road. The driver was irritable and twitchy. He yanked the wheel back and forth around the road curves and argued with someone at the other end of his Bluetooth phone. At one point he let go of the wheel to unwrap a stick of gum. I was real nervous. Bob just sat there gripping his seat belt. The bus wheeled into Oban and stopped. Literally stopped. The bus stand was full of other coaches, so Twitchy just stopped in the street. We tumbled out of the bus, grabbed our luggage, dragged it across the street to a taxi stand and hossed it into the trunk of the first taxi in line. We jumped in and within ten minutes were up the hill from the docks and at Thornloe Guest House. We greeted the hostess, Valerie, and dragged—with Valerie's help — those suitcases one more time, up the stairs and into our room, and dropped them. We were stunned. Double eight-foot windows opened up one wall of the room to a view that slid over slate roofs down the hill and took in the sea and rows of floating, mountainous islands. That, alone, was worth the trip. |
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TOUR GUIDE
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| Page 1
Leaving Home |
Page 2
Scotland |
| Page 3
Isle of Mull, Scotland Durham, England |
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Durham, England Holy Island, Wales |
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Holy Island, Wales Manchester, England Warwick, England |
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Warwick, England Stratford-upon-Avon, England |
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Blenheim Palace, England |
Page 8
Bury St. Edmunds, England London, England |
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Newquay, England |
Page 10
Newquay, England |
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Newquay, England |
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Newquay, England |
| Page 13
Newlyn, England |
Page 14
Penzance, England |
| Page 15
Bath, England |
Page 16
Bath, England |
| Page 17
Bath, England |
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Bath, England Canterbury, England |
| Page 19
Canterbury, England |
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Tostock, England Sites in Norfolk, England |
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Along the North Sea Bury St. Edmunds |
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France |
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France |
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Back to England Cambridge, England |
| Page 25
Tostock, England Bury St. Edmunds |
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London, England Goodbye to Great Britain |
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