As a writer, piles of scribbled notes, papers, file folders, and edited manuscripts seem to pile up on my desk. During my last effort to figure this out, I stumbled upon a photograph of a group of forty strangers, yours standing in the center of the last row, with a thatched-roof house as a backdrop. I look at him now, remembering the group with bittersweet nostalgia. They were all strangers to me, but after eleven days on a bus in England, I remember them fondly.
When I told my father that I wanted to visit England, he said in his heavy Yorkshire accent, “What the hell do you want to go there for?” Not Mr. Happy at best, he had a low opinion of his old country. What I wanted to say in response was, “I would like to know if your psychological problems are social in nature or based on individual idiosyncrasies,” but I held my tongue. I was determined to visit the land of my ancestors one day.
I listed the many reasons for visiting England. The main reason was that, in addition to being English by blood, if not citizenship, the country is a great cultural influence of the modern era. The birthplace of many luminaries from Shakespeare to Churchill, the country has generated an endless list of notable historical names in all fields of activity. The fact that he was not one of them was no reason to be bitter at all.
Like hugging an octopus, you have to choose how to approach England. You can buy any number of rail passes for reasonable rates that allow you to hop on and off at any time that is convenient for you. There are plenty of options, from London walking tours to guided bike tours, to renting scooters and staying in guesthouses. The problem is figuring out which one suits you best. In the end, I opted for a guided bus tour of England, leaving out Wales and Scotland, which I’m sure are great, but they would have extended the tour by another ten days.
A friend who did the coach tour recommended it to me. The reasons became obvious after a while. The English drive on the other side of the road and after a lifetime of making easy right turns here, they suddenly become extremely dangerous there. You will appreciate the driving skills of the coachman once you have seen how narrow some of the roads are. To make things easier, the travel itinerary is planned for you. On the first day you will see Windsor Castle, Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral, stay at the hotel in Plymouth, leave in the morning to continue the tour of Devon and Cornwall etc.
Please note that the tours in the catalogs change frequently, if not every year. The tour he had decided to do a year earlier was no longer on offer. I settled for an eleven-day tour of England. The bus would leave London and go in a clockwise circle around the country stopping in quaint towns and cities along the way. The pace was listed as a ‘busy’ itinerary, a code to say it wasn’t exactly slow. Sometimes when we stopped we just had time to buy coffee and use the bathroom and then go back to the bus. A slower pace means you’ll be able to spend more time at each stop, but it also means fitting in fewer places in the same time frame. So if you stop at Bletchley Park on a ‘busy’ tour, you better be able to understand the twenty second subtraction cipher or you will be back on the bus without all the dope in the German Enigma machine. That’s what designing your own tour is all about; you can stay as long as you want if something interests you.
Think of the coach tour as Introduction to England 101. They give you an overview and you decide what you would like best for your next visit. Another good thing about England is that they speak a form of English there. Well, outside of London they do. Within London, it would be difficult to find English other than the Queen. In fact, all over England except for the guys dressed up as medieval falconers and their tour guide, you might have a hard time finding genuine English. Those wonderful PBS shows like Downton Abby, Upstairs Downstairs and the like are a sham and reflect a nostalgic and non-existent vision of England, England as it used to be. That, in a way, is what the coach tour presents.
You see, England exported to her lower ranks, people like the Schofields, and without having abandoned the class system yet, she needed to import a new batch of servants and coal miners from the colonies. That’s where all foreigners fit in. All the waiters, hotel concierges, room cleaners you meet will be from abroad, few of whom have a decent command of the language. The first clue should have been the customs agent who was African and spoke with a strong French accent and asked me “How are you a hare? Who are you visiting?” Damn terrorists, I thought, the plane has been diverted to the Middle East while I was sleeping! A Russian took me to my hotel and answered all my questions with unintelligible grunts. The Egyptian concierge had it reserved for us settlers, the Polish room cleaner didn’t understand that he wanted her out of the room, and the Serbian head waiter pointed to the buffet and made strong hand signals: “Eat!” he said, “Zix o’clock – eat!” Ah, merry old England!
All hotels have buffet-style breakfasts. I’ve heard it said that if you want to eat well in England, eat breakfast three times a day. The English slaughter their food with a hammer and then boil it for a day to remove any remaining flavor. When traveling the world, note that there are no English restaurants, only many Scottish (MacDonald’s). Eat the buffet, it is the best on offer and is included in the price.
The tour was very reasonable at $ 2,200 Canadian and placed us in moderately good hotels. Note that a four-star rated English hotel is probably a three-star hotel in the US or Canada. After my bus tour, I stayed for two days on a dive that was below a motel, but rated three stars. Our prisons have better accommodations. That room with a single bed with paint peeling off the ceiling and mysterious red stains dripping down the walls costs $ 250 a night. I’m sure there were better options, but it was conveniently located for my planned excursions to Oxford and the Imperial War Museum in the other direction the next day.
The visit was great after leaving London. We stopped at Salisbury Cathedral and saw a copy of the Magna Carter. Our group’s lawyer said it was worth the trip. Attorneys must be Toastmasters by nature; every time he spoke to me, I felt like he was speaking before a sleeping jury, and his slow, loud pronouncements were heard three counties away. We took a boat tour of Plymouth Harbor and saw the steps where the first New World settlers would have set out on the Mayflower.
We visit some picturesque villages on the Cornish coast, notably Tintagel, home to King Arthur’s court, and Clovelly, a curious little cliffside fishing village where donkeys still carry provisions up the steep cobbled paths. The retired South Carolina judge scratched his pants knees when he fell. We visited Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace, Bath, an ancient Roman town, and Chester, a picturesque Elizabethan town of narrow streets lined with Tudor houses, where our talented guide helped us understand the history of street baths, I almost made a contribution due to the length of your discussion. At the old Stratford hotel, the directions to my room were “Up two stairs, turn left, go down one flight, watch your head, then right, then go up one flight of stairs.” By then, you will have developed a Bill Bryson English accent. “Cheers” or “Very good then,” you reply.
We then headed to Liverpool, a surprise because it was not the city that I thought it would be. I lived there when I was a baby and heard many stories about their horrible living conditions. It was also the second most important port of its time. Beatles fans will be able to see the Cavern Club, Penny Lane and relevant houses. This touched a young woman from Texas whose mother had bought her the trip for her nineteenth birthday. He knew more than the tour guide about the Fab Four. Liverpool, now fairly modern, is also home to the headquarters of the White Star Line of Titanic fame. I bought a coffee from a Liverpuddlian but his English was worse than the Russians in Devon, so I stopped trying to order milk and sugar and took what was delivered. Note that the average prices for coffee are two pounds, around C $ 3.75. Think of it as a visit to another planet and you’ll be fine, don’t try to make sense of it all. “Carne an shooha ova da, mayeet. Ta”. He says that, then you give him money. Smile everywhere. Until you drink your coffee.
From there we went to the Lake District and took a boat trip on the ten mile long Lake Windermere, the largest lake in England. Home to many haunting English authors and poets, it made me laugh because we have thousands of lakes, all larger. Yet we were beaten up by haunting poets.
Next, we will head to York, a gem of a city. We had dinner in a private mansion where a wealthy couple graciously served us in our forties. It was on this evening that two Singaporean women asked, “How long do you have to stay married to a Canadian before you can get half the property?” One year, was the answer, to which they both smiled widely.
The last stop on our tour was Cambridge and King’s College. I found a store that sold outdated military surplus, including Grenadier Guard robes and bearskins. Street vendors sold boats down the River Cam, the famous flat-bottomed boats where a pole is used to propel the boat. Oh yeah, and lots of girls on bikes in flimsy dresses! Sorry I can’t stay for a Ph.D. or two.
I am a huge fan of Inspector Lewis and added a trip to Oxford after the bus tour concluded. I wanted to see the little college town where three people are murdered every week, many of them, appropriately, academics. I also wanted to be able to tell people “I went to Oxford” and delight in their reactions when they drew the wrong conclusions. I sat on a bench by the Thames chatting with an older couple who knew Collin Dexter, the creator of the original Inspector Morse.
On my last day in England I visited the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth, an easy tube ride to the south side of the Thames. World War II has been a lasting interest for me since I was fifteen. The museum turned out to be smaller and more crowded than I had imagined. One day is enough to cover the exhibits, but I suspect he could have spent his entire life in the library upstairs.
He had an uncle who died in that war as a pilot and he wanted to know if he was one of ‘the few’ that Churchill referred to in his famous speech. The librarian said the military archives were now in Kew, but since my flight home was for the next morning, it would have to be another trip.
If you are looking for a safe and enjoyable trip, I highly recommend England by bus. If you’re an Anglophile, well, what are you waiting for? And no, not everyone in England is as miserable as dear Mr. Happy.
