| HOLYHEAD, WALES
June 25-28, Monday through Thursday
Our last few days here on Holy Island in Wales have passed quickly, as days do when you're having fun. Though there have been lowering skies and sprinkles in the mornings, there is sun in the afternoons and a brief tease of warmth before the skies again go gray again for evening.
Russell, our host, is up before everyone in the morning to set out breakfast. He always opens the back door to cool the kitchen and take off the odors while he fries up bacon sandwiches for us. When I come down from our upstairs bedroom into the kitchen, I push the door nearly shut. Breezes from the Irish Sea blow through the room and right through me.
In a bit, when the air gets smoky with frying bacon, Russell opens the door again. Sometimes he yanks the door back and forth to push out the smoke. I appreciate his not wanting the whole house to smell like bacon, but I also want to eat without shivering. When Russell's wife, Eileen, comes down, she takes over my job of pushing the door closed. The door swings back and forth with nary a complaint.
It has continued to be unseasonably chilly, which is plain cold to these Florida types. The natives walk around in light jackets when the sun is out; I wear long sleeves and a pile vest under my pile jacket. But when evening sets in and the skies go gray, even they put on warmer clothes. As in Durham, there were plenty of folks out and about in winter coats no matter what time of day, so we don't feel overdressed. On this Welsh island, the real culprit is the chill winds from the sea. They blow without pause, bending the trees and whistling around the corners of the house.
I walked along Plas Road out into the country last evening, my favorite island walk. Drystone fences overgrown with vines, wildflowers, and prickly gorse mark off the road and outline pastures dotted with sheep. Every now and again twisted, dwarfed. flag trees, bent and shaped by the winds, struggle up through the fencerows. And over it all, gray as the skies, is Holyhead Mountain. The rounded stony mount, not so high itself, but on a high part of the island, can be seen for miles across the sea.
After Eileen's brother Norman arrived we made a jolly party of five, instead of four. He has tinned mackerel or sardines on his toast in the mornings instead of a bacon sandwich.
Tuesday we toured a maritime museum and a WWII air raid shelter with daughter Michelle and two grandchildren. Bob got to crank the hand-wound air raid siren in the shelter, to his great delight. Eileen, Bob, Norman, and I (Michelle and the tots had lunch at home) had a bit of a rowdy lunch at a glass-fronted shop with a view of the water. We got a lot of laughter, as I remember, discussing turnips, Swedes, rutabaga, and cruise ships. After lunch Michelle and the children rejoined us on rocky-sandy Treaddur Beach. We whiled away the afternoon there; had an ice cream cone, sat in the sun, chatted, and watched the grandchildren at play.
Evenings are passed with TV, reading, conversation, and cups of tea. In fact, the teakettle hardly cools in the Hughes house. Someone, if not everyone, always has a cup of tea at hand. It warms not only the body, but the spirit as well.
Tomorrow, June 28, we leave Wales by train for Manchester, England.
BACK TO ENGLAND
June 29, Friday
After a quick lunch of beans and toast yesterday, Russell brought us to the train station for the three-hour trip to Manchester, England. The skies were gray and the winds whistled down the train platform. We took shelter in an old building on the platform until the train arrived.
We froze, I mean Froze, for the first two-plus hours of the trip. A cold breeze blew from vents somewhere on us the whole ride. We asked the conductor to turn it off. He said he couldn't because the day's climate is set before the car leaves the station in the morning. I held my backpack in my lap for a windbreak, and tucked my hands behind it against my tummy.
The car was warmer in the middle seats, where we started out the trip there in our reserved seats. As we waited for the train to leave, the engineer passed through the car. We were the only ones in the car then, since Holyhead was the end of the line. The train waits there a half-hour brushing up and changing staff before making the return run to Manchester.
The engineer paused to chat with us, and suggested we sit where we could see our luggage, which was piled at the car entrance. He said that with so few people to see anything, it would be easy for someone to walk through the car, simply pick up a suitcase and get off the train with it at one of the many local stops. Not only folks who might be on the train, but there are also loiterers at the platforms who look for opportunities like that.
Well, you can believe that sent us scurrying to the end of the car, and into frozen hell. But our suitcases were safe. Anyone that touched them would have to deal with a couple of gray panthers.
We changed trains again at Manchester Picadilly Station, and got a nice warm twenty-minute ride to Manchester Airport. Greg Banks, the owner with his wife Linda of Moss Deepings, our Manchester digs when we're in town, had just pulled up as we came out of the airport train station. It was pouring rain, big pelting drops that soak you in no time. In another twenty minutes we were safely inside the B&B for the night where it was warm and dry. Let the winds blow and the rains pour.
Supper last night was powdered tomato soup in hot water, quite good, actually. Crackers and cheese, an apple, and a shared flapjack rounded out the meal, which we ate on a low end table in the B&B room.
I am sitting now before the big rounded glass bay window in our room. It rains intermittently. The heat is off and it's chilly near the glass, but that's where the end table and chairs are. Bob is making us a cup of tea.
We got up at 5:30 a.m. The plan was to have breakfast at 6:15, then leave at 6:45 for the airport to meet daughter Lisa, husband Gordy and grandson Josh when they arrived from the U.S. at 7:40.
I woke up and staggered out of the room to go down the hall to the toilet and was met by Greg coming up the stairs. The flight had been delayed, and would be two hours late. No need to go to the airport until nine. We could go back to bed.
We were wide awake by then, right? So we did our morning routine, got the suitcases ready to grab and run, and went downstairs to breakfast. By the time we finished breakfast at 7:30, Linda brought us the news that the flight's ETA was 11:30!
So we wait and listen to the rain hitting the windows. I've got my cup of tea sitting on my mouse pad to keep it warmer longer and I'm mousing around it. Time is 9:30 a.m. Unless you want to read my harangue on Internet Cafés, and I'm sure you don't, I have nothing more to tell right now.
Until next I write, Hwyl from England.
MANCHESTER TO WARWICK
June 29 and 30, Friday and Saturday
The long-awaited plane from Newark did finally land at Manchester airport at 11:15 on Friday, June 29. While we waited for Lisa, Gordy, and Josh to deplane and get through customs, we had ample time to people-watch the milling crowds from the world over, many of whom were obviously Eastern.
One man caught my eye momentarily, an Eastern in a white skull cap, long white coat, and loose white pants. There were other younger, similarly dressed men in the area near him, and a number of other people. Nothing unusual, my eye moved on. Then activity in that direction caught my eye again. Another man, a younger one again, walked up to the older one, draped a necklace of some sort over his shoulders, and kissed him. A few minutes passed, then a lady with her head covered, not her face, just her head, walked up to the older man and draped what looked like a sparkling lei over him and hugged him. Soon a constant stream of people, men and women alike, broke from the crowd, followed the same ritual, and melted back into the multitude. When the burden of the necklaces got to the elder's ears, a fellow took them off and stood by with them as still more folk greeted the patriarch. I watched idly.
Then Lisa, Gordy, and nine-year-old Josh appeared at the Arrivals gate. It was 12:30 p.m. They were really, finally, here! Everyone hugged, kissed, and talked at once.
We had already piled a trolley high with our luggage, which we leaned on as we waited. Bob trotted around the Arrivals Hall until he found another one all alone and unguarded, and Gordy, Lisa, and Josh piled their luggage onto it. We were prepared for Life in an Airport Terminal.
The first order of the day was food. Like a caravan, we pushed our way past and around people with names scribbled on papers held against their chests or held above their heads, families of Orthodox Jews in black hats and scarves, Eastern women swathed in black, men in huge turbans, punks with green hair and eyelid studs, and the milling throng still piling leis on the smiling patriarch. We got to the lift and took it to the Departures floor. After we got out of the lift on the second floor, we again pushed through mobs, this time waiting to check in, waiting to go through security, milling around looking for toilets, food, or each other.
Finally we arrived at the restaurant. Nine-year-old Joshua and I guarded the luggage and held down a table whilst the rest went through the lines. Lisa and Gordy had heard so much about full English breakfasts they had to try one. They dived into sausage, fried eggs, chips, beans, and toast, and declared that the early press releases were right on.
From there it was another foray into the milling millions. We said “excuse me” so many times to so many people-many of whom didn't understand us anyway-as we cut through endless lines, that it would have been easier to just paste it on our foreheads. We rode miles of moving walkways in a glass tube from the air terminals to the coach station, still with our trolleys full of luggage. At the station, we moved into coach Stand 3, and set up housekeeping for an hour or so until the coach was due to arrive.
Later in our waiting hour Bob was wandering around the station looking at people and reading bus schedules, and he made a discovery. We were in the wrong coach stand - waiting for a bus that would never come!! It was the work of minutes to drag the luggage down to Stand 1, and resettle ourselves.
When we climbed aboard the coach for service 320 for Birmingham and points beyond, my worst fears were realized. The coach was almost full, and we'd have to fight for seats. People who get on the coach earlier plop into the window seats and dump their daypack and packages on the seat next to them, claiming both seats for themselves. They will grudgingly move their goods or themselves to another seat, if requested nicely. Joshua needed to be seated with a family member, so there was some jockeying around while other passengers pushed down the narrow aisle and around us searching for and grabbing seats.
It was an old coach, with narrow aisles and no leg room at the seats. I sat with my filled and bulging daypack on my lap next to a young woman with her lap full also. My laptop was wrapped in my down vest in that daypack, and it just wedged between me and the seatback ahead. For the two hours from Manchester Airport to Birmingham Digbeth Coach Station I didn't move anything below my neck.
Birmingham station is a huge barn with rows of buses pulling into stands, loading, and leaving. The queues for coaches are set up Disney manner. There is a little maze of pylons and tape at each stand, and where individual queues started was a mystery to us. We could see bus 325, but we didn't know which queue to get in. I asked a fellow, and he pointed us aright. We got in the queue, we showed our tickets and the driver binned our luggage. It was a newer coach. The seats were roomy and comfortable; there was plenty of leg room.
It was a fifty-minute run from Birmingham to Warwick (Warrick), just enough time on the road for our supper. We hauled out the sandwiches and vinegar and salt-flavored Pringles that we had bought at the airport, and dined on our laps. Bob and I split a tuna salad and cucumber sandwich. It tasted like manna from heaven. We were that hungry.
Service 325 dumped us at a streetside bus stop on Puckerings Lane in Warwick at 7:55 p.m. A ten-minute walk under gray skies took us to the 300-year-old The King's Head Pub Inn.
I pushed open the heavy wooden door to the bar lounge and asked for the Inn. A fellow at the bar motioned me in. We all trailed in, dragging luggage, and filled the small pub. A young man came out from behind the bar to show us to our rooms. Narrow twisting old wooden stairs led to a bright green-carpeted landing on the second floor. Lisa, Gordy, and Josh's room was off the landing. Bob and I had another flight of stairs, not twisting ones, thank goodness, to our room.
We opened the door, shoved and dragged in our luggage, and looked around. A teddy bear, resplendent in a hand-made sweater and arms open wide, greeted us from the pillow of each twin bed. There was a fluffy warm duvet on each bed and plenty of instant hot water in the bathroom. We were home-again.
Once we were settled in, we stopped down by the green landing and picked up the rest of the family to go back down to the bar lounge for a drink. We were hungry; but it was after 8 p.m., so no more meals were being served at the bar. Too bad. Oh, well. We each ordered a pint (Coke for Josh, of course) and some crisps (potato chips). Then decided we were really hungry. Not to worry. Bob went back upstairs, rummaged in our always-handy food pack, and reappeared with crackers and a slab of cheese. Dinner was served.
The only people in the room were two men and woman sitting at a table across from the bar, the fellow at the bar who had motioned me in, and us. It was an old room. Rude black beams held up the low ceiling, and castironArt Nouveau lamps tucked into nooks washed the room in golden light. Behind the cushioned bench where we sat rain pelted against the leaded glass windows of a small bay projecting over the sidewalk. The only thing that could have made it more traditional English was if Charles Dickens had walked in the door.
The next morning we all had a “Full English Breakfast” in the same room. Instead of beer glasses, the bar was set with bowls of various cold cereals and a bowl of fruit. Some time during breakfast, Gordy discovered that their camera had gone missing.
Time came for us to walk back to Puckerings Lane to meet another bus from Birmingham bringing daughter Amy and husband Craig, and the camera still hid itself. So Bob and I put up our umbrellas and made the foray to Puckerings Lane. The bus was fifteen minutes late, which upped my stress level by fifteen levels. We had tracked the flight and already knew the plane had landed over an hour late. They could have missed the bus.
They didn't. Craig was first off the bus, followed by Amy. The family was collected! When we got them back to the pub, the missing camera had also been collected.
It rained all day. Warwick had a festival going, which got mostly rained out. It was market day, and the square was filled with tents bravely defying the weather. By late morning only a few tents remained. But they were the good ones, the produce and bakery tents. Bob bought olives and cheese. Lisa and I got a huge loaf of crusty bread. We shopped a couple of the stores around the square.
Lunch was a pub meal back at The King's Head. After lunch the whole clan grocery shopped at Sainsbury's Super Market next to the pub. Then we lined up with our stacks of luggage and piles of orange plastic grocery bags in front of King's Head, in the rain, and waited for the two taxis to take us to our country cottages at Whitley Elms Farm.
The taxi drivers took us out of Warwick on wide roadways, then turned down a one-track country road named Case Lane. Finally they backed into a narrow curved drive and disgorged us onto a small gravel lot at the end. Whitley Elms is a monumental brick and half-timber farmhouse a few hundred years old. The owners, the Bevins, had converted a long barn to a series of four motel-like cottages named after Shakespeare characters. Amy, Craig, Bob, and I moved into Portia. Lisa, Gordy, and Josh had Octavia next door. Heavy vines laden with white blossoms hung over the dark brown plank doors; red and pink roses crept up the cottage walls, Sheep grazed in the hedge-rowed pasture surrounding the cottages.
We dragged the orange bags and our luggage into the cottages, shut the doors against the rain, and gazed through the large back windows at sheep who were practically in the room. 'Twas a truly English country cottage, and all ours for a week.
WARWICK CASTLE
July 1, Sunday
Before I begin on the day's outing, which I am actually writing from memory on July 19, I must introduce you to Arthur and Jennie Guest.
Arthur Guest runs a one-man taxi service in Warwick area with his silver station wagon. He has no web page; there is nothing on his car to identify it as a taxi, and he doesn't sit in taxi stands waiting for fares. If you want to use Arthur's services, you must call his home. On busy days, when there are many calls, his wife, Jennie, drives a smaller red sedan on taxi runs. I learned about Arthur's Taxis from Clive Bevins, the owner of Whitley Elm Cottages, by email before we came over here. It was a golden tip.
Arthur and Jennie are salt-of-the-earth country folk. You are not just a fare; you are instantly their friend-almost a member of the family. They would pick up a fare at 4:30 a.m. at Heathrow airport, a two-hour drive, and still greet us at 7:00 a.m. with big smiles. We looked forward every morning to Arthur's silver car backing in around the driveway's high curved stone wall, followed by the back end of Jennie's red car. We knew that for twenty minutes we would be entertained with area facts and follies and a patter of family jokes the Arthur and Jennie told on each other.
Mick Jagger wrote a song to these people and The Rolling Stones recorded it in 1968:
Let's drink to the hard working people
Let's think of the lowly of birth
Spare a thought for the rag taggy people
Let's drink to the salt of the earth
Let's drink to the hard working people
Let's drink to the salt of the earth
Let's drink to the two thousand million
Let's think of the humble of birth
Lets raise our drink
To the salt of the earth
Lets raise our drink
To the salt of the earth.......
Arthur always wears a black suit, white shirt, and a tie slightly askew when he leaps out of the taxi to open the door for the four of us who will ride with him. Jennie climbs out of the red car in, usually, a skirt with a wavering hem, sandals, a wine-colored pile jacket, and a floppy-brim waterproof hat to open the doors for her three guests. Arthur and Jennie don't just drive into the gravel patch and honk. They personally welcome us into their vehicles, always with a smile.
On the morning of July first, Sunday, Arthur and Jennie took us all into Warwick. They took a roundabout way into town to show us some of the local attractions, then deposited the seven of us at an entrance to Warwick Castle on the River Avon. Warwick Castle is a huge, majestic castle straight out of Camelot. It is truly a medieval castle. The first major fortification of the site was built in 914, part of which still remains. This wall almost certainly replaced an older wood fortress. Most of the castle as it is today was built in the eleventh century after the Norman Conquest, and is of Norman design.
Warwick Castle is an important historic site that earns its own way these days with exhibits, programs, and demonstrations. The first event, to our left after we passed under the stone-framed portcullis gate, were narrow steps going down into darkness under a castle wall to the ancient dungeons. They were as cold and grim as you can imagine, with in situ exhibits of rusted body cages, instruments of torture, and a peek into the Oubliette where prisoners were thrown down a shaft and forgotten.
The next offering, in a gate tower, was “Dream of Battle.” This was a video/slide show with flashing lights, live action blended with computer imagery, surround sound, and a black-hooded figure intoning “Doom” or something like that all the way through. It was intended to terrify, and did a good job on Josh. He never opened his eyes through the whole event, which was definitely not for children. They do need to tell the public that.
We walked out into wet. It had been raining, and was just stopped. Nice timing. We had that kind of luck all day. When we were in an exhibit, it showered. When we were out-of-doors, it was not only was not raining, but was often sunny. We had lunch in The Undercroft medieval-themed cafeteria-style restaurant. When we went in, there were lots of long tables vacant for our party of seven. By the time we were finished eating, people were fighting for seats. We figured it must have started raining again.
We stuck our heads out. Yep. It was raining. Our next exhibit choice, then, was The Making of a King, because it was connected to the restaurant by an interior hall. We saw Tussaud's life-like wax figures demonstrating life in a medieval castle, including a horse that rolled its eyes, swished its tail, and smelled of manure. Josh loved it. Another display featured wax figures depicting a typical turn-of-the-century gala at the castle. We toured historically reproduced rooms and posed in front of suits of armor. Lisa tried on a helmet. Didn't do much for her.
Grandpa and Josh sat on a bench in the sun while the rest of us took the “Tower Walk” of the fortified walls and four high corner towers of the fort. There were 586 steps to climb in this walk, and I don't know how many to come down. Tight spiral stone stairs, designed to be defended by one man, wound up and down inside walls and towers. As we came off a sunlit wall or a tower parapet, we could not even see in the unlighted stairwells. You clutched the stone walls and reached tentatively with your foot in pitch blackness. After exploring with your toe until you found the wider end of the small triangular step below, you lowered yourself gingerly and did it all over again. It was exciting and we whooped and laughed in the blackness.
Along the way, a couple of old tower chambers left just as they had been for hundreds of years beckoned the curious. To get into them we had to jump gaps and, once inside, step over piles of fallen ceiling plaster and hunks of wood. Ancient rudely carved wood framed small stone fireplaces; windows were just slits in the stone. They were wonderful.
After that adventure, we went out through a back gate onto a grassy slope beside the river to watch a demonstration of the trebuchet. We had seen on television some time ago a program about building an actual size working replica of the medieval weapon. It had to be this one at Warwick. Neat!
The trebuchet is almost sixty feet high and weighs twenty-two tons. Spectators were kept across the river from the weapon for obvious reasons. The sun shone. Some folks spread their raincoats on the wet ground and sat down. Most, like us, elected to stand.
It takes eight men a half hour to set and load the machine. During this time a narrator kept up a constant stream of chatter both informative and humorous. At the same time he kept vigil at the end of a wooden bridge over the river and chased off people who couldn't read “Keep off the Bridge during Demonstrations.” The demonstration didn't try to be totally authentic and bring boulders up to the sling by horse cart. A green and yellow backhoe did the job. Sort of, hm-m-m, took away from the illusion, but provided great amusement.
A swan from the river wandered up the grassy slope where we awaited the big event. He must have been a people-loving swan. He didn't hiss or bother anyone, just walked around and posed for photos.
Finally the trebuchet was loaded with a boulder. Everyone held their breath. The trigger snapped. The weight fell, the sling flung and that boulder nearly hit a satellite. The power and distance was absolutely stunning. No wonder it was the prime siege weapon for over 200 years.
Lisa wanted to go back through the Making of a King exhibit. We had the bad luck to see it the first time with busloads of tourists and teenagers who pushed their way through and blocked views. Now it was later in the day and they were all elsewhere. There were few people in the exhibit this time, and we lingered over the meticulous and authentic-looking dioramas for quite a while.
Too soon it was coming up 6:00 p.m. and time to find the castle exit where we were to meet Arthur and Jennie. The exit wasn't a problem. Where to go afterwards was, at least for me. I remembered Jennie saying that we needed to be at a street side on the other side of a car park. After we got through the gate I told Bob I'd go on ahead and find the car park and bench so everyone didn't have to traipse along and hunt for it. He said “all right,” but didn't really understand what I said.
So I walked, jogged, and walked down a long sloped road past a bus park, then a car park, a huge one. When I finally reached the end of the car park, the castle grounds road went on. There was no town road nor a bench. I asked a woman standing nearby about it, and she pointed to her husband walking away down the park road. She shrugged her shoulders. “He thinks the way out is that way,” she said. No help, that.
I power-walked and jogged back up the hill to give the news to the others. When I got back to them, they demanded to know where I had been. Turns out Arthur had been more specific in his directions than Jennie. All we had to do after going through the first gate was turn right, go out another wooden gate, and voilà! The town road and park benches.
Oh, well, sometimes you win…
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