THEY SAY: After 5,400 kms or 3,400 miles, and after nearly 5 weeks of touring England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, we have come full circle. We returned to London on Wednesday and flew home on Thursday. It is hard to believe that this magnificent, but tiring, trip is over, and it will take a while for life to return to normal. It has been a once in a life-time opportunity to experience the “real England”. By that phrase people usually mean seeing the rural – and green – England, rather than confining ourselves to the large, urban cities with their Karl Marxy smoke-stack reputation.
For both of us, having experienced Britain in very different personal lives in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, travelling or studying, we can unreservedly say that England has changed, and undoubtedly for the better. Today the so-called mod-cons, wine and coffee bars, restaurants, culture and so forth are marvellous and meet the highest international standards, which was not necessarily our earlier experience.
Hopefully, there will always be a Britain. There is much to admire about this country, including its value system and its fundamental sense of fairness, propriety, and decency. Less admirable however, has been its historical elitism and social stratification, chauvinism and colonial policies (domestic and international). But then what would the world do without a good pint, whisky, or football (soccer) match, or literate newspapers?
In our last day we lazily travelled through the English countryside (with Richard appreciating the Gainsboroughesque fields and counting cows instead of sugar plums, and Eleanor drooling over the masses of wildflowers and the gardens overflowing with roses and making plans to visit the garden centres as soon as we’re unpacked). We all began to wind down from our adventures as we headed eastward towards one of the most hyped archaeological sites in Britain: Stonehenge. Stonehenge is that odd mixture of fact and fiction. Evidently it was first constructed about 5,000 years ago and has gone through a number of basic structural changes and refinements. Part of the mystique is that no one really knows what it was used for: religious purposes by the Druids, human sacrifices, celestial navigation, an agricultural calendar, or as some ancient type of status symbol?
The vertical stones themselves seem much smaller than portrayed in the conventional TV documentary, which was quite surprising to us. The site itself is literally in the middle of nowhere, or more accurately in the middle of a vast field on the Salisbury Plain, which makes them appear even smaller and diminishes their alleged mythical and mystical character. The average stone in reality is about 15 – 20 feet tall and weighs 5 – 20 tons! Richard maintains that the similarity between Stonehenge and the megaliths in Brittany (France), those we saw in the Orkney Islands, and others that exist throughout England and Scotland, suggests that they all served a common purpose, whatever that was, and should therefore be studied together.
Determining what our favourite region or cities might be has generated a lot of discussion between us. For Richard, the Orkney Islands (northern Scotland), the Lake District in central England, and Wales were the most memorable and scenic areas, while his favourite cities are London, Dublin and Bristol. It was no historical accident that Fredrick Engels, Marx’s co-author, used Glasgow (and Manchester) as his stereotypical English city for his indictment of nineteenth century British capitalism.
Richard, as might be expected, was captivated by the universities he saw, especially Oxford , the city of Spires, immortalized in CP Snow’s novel, The Masters. St. Andrews and Edinburgh universities, alas, stand in dramatic aesthetic and architectural opposition. At St. Andrews every effort has been made to maintain the integrity of the campus by maintaining the same coloured sandstone and general design of the new buildings thus integrating the campus, while Edinburgh, the renowned 18th and 19th century university of learning which set the standard for philosophy, economics and medicine, is a horrific stylistic mess with differently designed modern office-like buildings covered with posters and graffiti - a blight on the old charming campus.
Eleanor, on the other hand, enjoyed London and Edinburgh, but still feels that except for a few spectacular historic sights like Edinburgh Castle and the Tower of London, if you’ve seen one city, you’ve seen ‘em all. For her, the highlights of the trip were the picturesque villages and the rural areas, particularly the mountains and the seacoast. She agrees that the most beautiful places were Wales and the Orkneys, and with a little encouragement, would happily pack up and move to escape the Canadian winters forever. If we ever decided to move to Britain, Wales would be her first choice because it’s further south and therefore milder, with more winter daylight. Since we don’t speak Gaelic, there could be a slight communication problem in parts of Wales, but why let the reality of their version of bilingualism interfere with a good dream?
Before we sign off we are, again, compelled to heartily and genuinely thank our tour guide, Dylan J, and our bus driver, Neville P, of Insight Travel for their professionalism, decency, good humour, and vast store of knowledge. They made this trip a real pleasure in so many ways. Even if we had been brave enough to rent a small car for a month and risk driving on the wrong side of the road, we would never have had the courage to negotiate some of the narrow mountain roads that Neville managed in a gigantic coach, we’d never have learned so much about the history and the people, and we’d never have found a guidebook that would lead us off the beaten track to many of the interesting places that Dylan introduced us to. Thank you, guys.
For ourselves we have learned a lot from our Australian friends: a chook is a chicken Who'da knew??); 10 C is their idea of cold, but they easily tolerate 40+ C summers that would frazzle us; kangaroos and koalas are commonplace, but squirrels are exotic creatures that deserve photo ops; nobody in Australia drinks Foster’s beer-they just export it; their off-beat sense of humour is much like ours, and although we share the same British history and traditions, in many ways they are more British than we are. Since it takes about 26 hours with stopovers for them to get to London, many people we travelled with have plans to visit other parts of Europe for a few weeks before they head home.
For us, 5 weeks away from home is definitely enough. As much as we enjoyed our trip, we’ve learned that in the future, a two week bus tour is pretty much our physical limit before terminal fanny fatigue sets in and the novelty of living out of a suitcase wears a little thin. There is much to be said for sleeping in one’s own bed and not having to wake up to an alarm clock at dawn every morning…at least until the next attack of wanderlust strikes.
As you read this we have already returned to Ottawa to pick up the strands of our lives, so this is obviously our last blog concerning our British trip, but we will add photos as promised, so check back in a week or two and nag us if we put it off too long. We hope you've enjoyed our account of our adventure. Any feedback is appreciated.
After our regular winter escape to a warmer Caribbean climate (probably Cuba), hopefully with our respective children and grandchildren this year, we will resume our globe-trotting -- and start a new blog -- probably from a beach on the Algarve in Portugal, where we’ll be studying the different types of vino verde. Alternatively, we may do a river cruise down the Danube and visit various European venues to enjoy their pastry and chocolate shops and the occasional art gallery or Mozart concert. We’ll unpack and tackle the dirty laundry and the garden before we start arguing about which one comes first.
Until then, Happy trails ….
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