London Fog

Both Shari and I are running low on toothpaste. We each started with a fresh 1.7 ounce tube and we know how to squeeze it out. Time to go home.

London is the opposite of Tucson in many ways — the most obvious being weather, sheer size, congestion, public transportation, a river that flows year-round, and art and buildings dating back centuries. This world city is a great place to complete our one-month blitz of Britain. (Maybe "blitz" isn't the best choice of words.)

The curiously named British Museum.

London. The capital of a former empire where the sun never set. (The joke goes, because God didn't trust them in the dark.) Today you can hear almost any language spoken on the streets and Tube trains. Not just tourists, either. Our hotel is almost entirely staffed by Latvians. There was an African wedding reception in its pub dining room last night. We are located in a Polish neighborhood.  (There's a Polish-Chinese restaurant across the street.) Our server at breakfast is a Gujerati from Kenya.

The British Museum reflects that erstwhile empire. Bits and pieces collected, some say stolen, from all over the world. The Parthenon marbles are the most controversial. Having visited Athens, the Parthenon, and the Acropolis Museum, it is sad to see the marbles out of context. Mind you, the display in London is spacious, but juxtaposed with spectacular relics from Assyria, Egypt, Rome, Africa, China, India, Anatolia, Levant, Japan, the European Continent, it's a bit too much. It's not really a "British" museum.

By comparison, the Tate Britain gallery does focus on British art. There is more than enough to overwhelm. Beautiful, marvellous paintings they are. No wonder Shari wanted to see the Tate again. Ninteen years after her previous visit, there was no disappointment. It was tough to keep from taking photos even though the Tate website has accurate images readily downloadable.

Walking the Thames riverside was a little disappointing. The weather didn't help, but that's the climate here in autumn. Drab industrial piers along the river didn't help, but it is a working river. Homeless sleeping on benches and in camps under bridges didn't help, but London is a big city. Crowds of tourists didn't help, but London deservedly is a prime tourist destination. Odd, even bizarre shaped skyscapers and a ferris wheel dotting the skyline didn't help my appreciation, but that's only my lack of good taste.

What was a little frustrating was the number of buildings shrouded in scaffolding. They included MI5 and almost all of Westminister. Only the clock of poor Big Ben was visible peeking above the scaffolding.

So much for my goal of panoramic shots of The Thames and London. I did get some shots of police protection at No. 10 Downing St., but I wish I had the video camera on record to capture one tourist's reaction to being told there was a crowd there because it was No. 10 Downing. "What's that?" was the reaction.

"That's where the Prime Minister lives," was the explanation.

Stonehenge, Avebury, and St. James

To Yogi Berra is attributed the quote, "Nobody goes there any more. It's too crowded." Actually, it's an old line, but Berra was fond of it.

Our telephoto view of Stonehenge.

If you advance book for Stonehenge (and its website insists it is necessary), the fee to walk around (but not in) Stonehenge is £19. If you take a chance and just show up, it's €21.10. Parking is £5, refundable on the way out if you bought a ticket.

So some fifty dollars for the two of us buys an experience of one of the world's most famous historic sites, a Neolithic stone circle we believe to have been sacred. The modern experience? Park, pay, pay, shuttle bus ride, walk around the outside the circle with a crowd (a bit like the Kaaba). You can get no closer than about 100 feet, and mostly the permitted approach is about 400 feet distant.

Neolithic circles at Avebury.

I understand the need to control hordes of tourists, and I understand the need for the English Heritage Trust to collect money to pay for the cost of preserving not only Stonehenge, but some 400 other buildings, monuments, and sites.

I also understand tourist burn-out. Some tourist sites in Britain are popular and very crowded. Fine. But add one too many expensive entrance fees, one too many pay-and-display parking fees, and tourist burn-out. It hit us at Stonehenge.

It's late September. No one bothered to collect money at the humongous parking lot which was mostly empty when we arrived at opening time, but half-full when we left a couple of hours later. We discovered it was possible to walk the one and a half mile shuttle bus road to the site for free. That's what we did, and the heavens approved our decision. The rain and clouds cleared, resuming only as we drove away. We had a delightful walk through the open countryside.

English Heritage Trust has done a thorough job of keeping freebie lookers at a distance. Fences and two lime green vested young men at the gate kept folks without tickets away. It takes a telephoto lens to see the parade of people walking around a respectful distance from the stone circle.

Upon our return to the large visitor center, we wandered around the recreated examples of Neolithic huts. Inside one hut, three volunteers chatted and showed off recreated Neolithic pottery, thatch, flint tools, and horns. They demonstrated how they ground corn. They were retired men who just did it for the fun. One candidly admitted they would never work there as employees. Apparently, it either wasn't fun or employees weren't well treated. We said we were off to Avebury next. He smiled and approved.

It rained on the 23 mile drive to Avesbury, then cleared up just as we pulled into its English Heritage Trust parking lot. Pay and display. £7. The English woman ahead of us complained. She said she would not tell her husband or he would insist on immediately leaving.

St. James church, Avebury.

Everything else about Avesbury is on the plus side. A World Heritage site that you can touch and feel. Scattered visitors. No entrance fee. Nice cafeteria. (Great sausage rolls and soup of the day.) Freedom to roam around the paddocks littered with sheep doo-doo.

And the village itself, built into one side of the giant Neolithic circle, is also precious. Some thatched roof houses. And St. James church.

It seems that almost every village has an old church. Some, like Avebury, have portions that date back to Norman times. A few, like Avebury, have Saxon portions. It's an amazing experience to wander inside such a church.

Consider this detail from a website:  "Avebury manage[d] to keep its rood screen after Elizabeth I ordered all such screens to be destroyed in 1561[.] Apparently the parishioners disassembled the screen and carefully hid the timbers behind a false wall of lath and plaster against the east wall of the nave. [T]he screen timbers remained hidden until they were found by accident in 1810."

The Avebury rood screen. (from web)

As we left Avesbury, it began raining again. The gods had shined upon us at Stonehenge and at Avesbury.

Juliots Well and St. Julitta

The church dedicated to St. Julitta, Lanteglos-by-Camelford.
Currently under reconstruction, so this is a photo
from its website. The oldest parts date to Norman times.

Our base for three nights in Cornwall is one of the Juliots Well Cottages outside of Camelford by the River Camel. There is no evidence that there were any camels here, so the name is actually an English corruption of the Cornish name.

The other example is Port Isaac, the picturesque Cornish fishing village used as the location for the TV show, Doc Martin, which has nothing to do with any Isaac. Port Isaak is a corruption of Cornish "Porthsek," which means Corn Port.

Wikipedia is an easy source of information. Juliot is not a misspelling of the woman's name Julia, but a corruption of Julitta. St. Julitta (not the martyr) was an early Celtic saint who settled in nearby Tintagel Castle by the end of the 5th Century. A church in Camelford is dedicated to her, as was the Norman chapel at Tintagel Castle.

So, perhaps not surprisingly, there is history where we are staying at Juliots Well Cottages. And it's not just Arthurian. Camelford and seemingly every other place in southwest Britain claims some association with Arthurian legend. Shops abound selling crystals and Harry Potter stuff. This history of Julitta is of the earliest Christians in Britain.

Rivers, springs and wells have spiritual associations. So St. Julitta, who lived around these parts some seventeen hundred years ago, and a well named after the saint, has to be triple sacred.

So checking my trusty map of Juliots Well Park in the guest notebook, I hiked downhill across wet grass towards nearby Juliots Well.

You can't get there.

The descent to the river and the reputed well have been bulldozed and terraced. Tiny concrete pads have been poured. Plumbing and other utility conduits are sticking up, ready for even more manufactured homes. Some are marked with "sold" signs. There already are three existing streets lined with rows of manufactured homes planted and regularly spaced on small concrete pads.

The British tend to name their homes. So these manufactured homes have names like Westwood, Pinehurst, Forest Grove, Portland, Beechwood and even the whimsical Dunromin. In their bricked driveways, BMW's, Volvos and a Maseratti are parked.

What is marked as the "Dog Exercise Area" on my guest map is no more. It is an even larger construction site. A "Brand New Leisure Facility" is being built with indoor pool, sauna, lounge, cafe, fitness suite, etc.

All construction sites are fenced off.

Port Isaac (Porthsek), historic Cornish fishing village
and location for Doc Martin TV show shots.
Henry VIII had the breakwaters constructed.

I asked one couple how to get to Juliots Well. All they knew was that it was down the hill. They had no idea access was blocked. They had no idea of any St. Julitta. They were from London. They came often. (They probably owned one of the manufactured homes.) They liked the quiet in the countryside.

I stopped by the mobile office that manages and sells pads at the development. The young lady confirmed no access. It seems the contractor located a petrol tank there.

There may be access to Juliots Well some time in the future. I don't know. There is no mention on the construction site signs. Apparently, it was not sufficiently significant to preserve access during construction.

The cottages where we are staying were probably the first development. There is another duplex cottage next to us, then next to it an old stone building labeled "The Coach House Pub and Restaurant" and in smaller lettering, "17th Century Cornish Inn." It is closed.

I also asked the young lady at the office about plans for the inn. She didn't know, other than she thinks it's up for sale.

Times change but names remain. Cornwall understandably is a retreat and resort destination. Corn Port is no longer used to ship farm products or coal, wood or stone, as it has in the past. St. Julitta and the well associated with this 5th Century saint live on mostly in a parish church, a place name, and a vacation resort development.

That is what is intriguing to a history-buff and trivia-afficionado traveling around the Old World where so much written and physical history has been preserved. No matter where I look, there are endless layers of history.

Inclement Weather

If a forecast like this were to appear for the Sonoran Desert, it would portend floods of Biblical proportions. 90% and 100% chance of rain? All day? For days on end? At monsoon rates, that could be inches per hour.

But in the British Isles, it's only autumn. It's the drizzle and just plain overcast with occasional squalls and sunbreaks that keep everything green. It's the weather where hourly forecasts have little meaning.

View from King Arthur's Cafe.

Yesterday was forecasted to be a 90% rain all day. We got sunbreaks enough to enjoy a light lunch at King Arthur's Cafe, near King Arthur's Car Park and King Arthur's Arms Inn, all in the crowded village that lives off of the almost one-quarter of a million annual visitors to Tintagel Castle.

We got a window seat where we could enjoy Brits with their pet dogs, young families, tatooed and pierced Gothic folks, Arthurian enthusiasts, and German, French and US tourists.

Sunbreaks continued as we visited the English Heritage site, craggy Tintagel Castle ruins on the rugged north Cornwall coast.

Then as the rain set in, it was time to leave.

The ascent, footbridge visible in back.

Visitors to the site, and there were plenty on a rainy Sunday, wore an assortment of different dress. Some in shorts and T-shirts, others in hooded rain parkas.

As the squall set in, people continued filing down the steep path, then up to the footbridge leading to the shale-rocky promintory with its ruined medieval fortifications associated with Arthurian lore.

One woman climbing the narrow steep path that clung to the cliffside (only occasional guard rails) wore Wellington boots. Another flip-flops. Both were headed in, not out.

The footbridge (English Heritage website)

Anatomy of Travel: Planning, Endurance & Serendipity

Beryl Country House, Wells. Our room is the open
window on the top right, where I am writing.

We were having lunch in Stow-on-the-Wold. In a pub, of course. The Bell with its photos of Prince Charles and the queen mum pulling beers at that very same pub. A party of two couples took the table next to ours. We exchanged conversations of where we were from. Even English are tourists in the Cotswolds. The woman talking with us was from Lincoln. She ran a hotel there. She asked where Shari and I had been and we listed places, including York.

"Not Lincoln?" she asked. "Lincoln Cathedral is much larger and more wonderful than York. You should have seen Lincoln," she added with some competitive pride and just a hint of disdain.

Wells Cathedral

Lincoln I had heard of. But how can one see everything? We only have one month. One month! Most vacations are one week. Even if you are a starving student with a backpack bumming around for a summer, or comfortably retired and reasonably healthy making traveling your second career, or living and/or working locally and traveling around each weekend, you still can't see everything in a place like Britain — or Ireland or any other country in Europe, or in the world for that matter.

Yesterday afternoon after visiting Glastonbury and Wells, we were sitting in one of the Victorian appointed lounges of the Beryl Country House (1838, but mercifully renovated and upgraded since). A young couple comes in to serve themselves a drink from the honour bar. We exchanged conversations of where we were from. They were from London. When we described how we had been to Wales, the woman commented, "We've never been to Wales."

Glastonbury Abbey. Arthur's grave is a plaque in the middle of the lawn.

What you end up seeing is limited by what little you know about what to see, endurance, and serendipity.

We had planned to stay on Anglesey Island last night. That is northwest Wales. That is knowing a little of w hat you want to see. Then three days ago we realized that a five and a half hour drive from Anglesey to Cornwall made no sense. That's endurance or, more accurately, reality. Hence we decided to stay at the Beryl Country House. (Actually, we booked another place, then the next morning got an email that they really had no room and had booked us at the Beryl instead. That's serendipity,  but another story.)

We booked three nights in Carmarthen planning to use it as a base for Wales. Cardiff is a must see place in Wales, said Shari's distant Welsh cousin. That's planning. It was one too many cities, churches, castles, narrow streets, and pay-and-display parking lots. That's endurance, or the lack of it. We simply drove past and headed to Somerset in England. That, as it turned out, was serendipity.

Our plan was to see Glastonbury, its Celtic Tor hill, and its ruined abbey, the mythical site of all things King Arthur, and the darling of the New Age set — of which we are sympathetic. The abbey was among the first in Britain and, before Henry VIII pilfered it, was Britain's wealthiest.

Inside Wells Cathedral.

What happened was we drove through Wells first to get our room at the Beryl. We noticed an impressive Gothic church towering over the small town. We marveled at the Beryl House, squashed our feelings of not being worthy, then headed for the first place we could get some lunch. A pub, of course. Our car being parked, we walked the two blocks to that gothic church and realized it and Wells itself were stunning treasures.

But our plan was Glastonbury. We decided to drive the eight miles, see the sights, and maybe have a closer look at Wells afterwards if we had the time and energy.

To be honest, Glastonbury didn't impress us that much. What's left of Glastonbury Abbey is nothing compared to what we had seen and experienced at Tintern Abbey in Wales near the English border. King Arthur's tomb isn't really a sight, just a plaque and a concept. We skipped the Neolithic and now neo-pagan Chalice Well. We drove past the Tor twice looking for its play-and-display parking lot, but noticed the stream of tourists climbing up the trail to get to the top of the rather steep and tall hill.

Back to Wells.

Inside Wells Cathedral.

Again to be honest, I had no idea there was a place in England named Wells. The Wells with which I am familiar with is on the Great Basin Highway where it intersects I-80 in northern Nevada. Shari and I often fueled our cars in Wells during our three-day, 24-hour driving time, 1600 mile migrations between Seattle and Tucson. It's impossible to imagine anything more radically different than Wells in Nevada and Wells in Somerset.

Probably because it was not connected to any abbey, the Wells Cathedral, dedicated to St. Andrew the Apostle, survived Henry VIII's destructive Dissolution of the Monasteries relatively intact. It still has statues in niches on the outside walls. Inside, it is a marvel of light and simple, open shapes.

Our delight with Wells was enhanced by the wedding that had to conclude before we were allowed inside. Imagine cathedral bells ringing as the wedding party emerges from the main entrance, sunshine on them, the cathedral front, and the large expanse of green lawn dotted with picknicking couples, children, and visitors. Imagine medieval bishop's quarters, schools, row houses, and narrow shopping streets and squares crowded with Saturday market stalls.

Rhys ap Thomas, the Tudors, and Connections

Pembroke Castle where Henry Tudor was born.

Whoever ill-affected to the state, shall dare to land in those parts of Wales where I have any employment under your majesty, must resolve with himself to make his entrance and irruption over my belly.

In a nutshell, Rhys ap Thomas promised Richard III that if anyone landed in Wales to attack him, it would have to be over his body. The Wars of the Roses (1455-1487) were still going on. The Welsh nobleman Rhys had confirmed his support for King Richard and, in exchange, he was rewarded with money and the job of defending SW Wales.

Henry Tudor was Richard's rival and enemy. He had fled to France, secured help from the French king, and returned as an invader with a small force of French and Scottish soldiers. They landed in Southwest Wales at Mill Bay, Pembrokeshire.

Mullock Bridge in the countryside of
southwest Wales near Pembroke and the bay where
Henry Tudor's invasion force landed from France.

It was Rhys' job to attack the invaders, but he changed sides and joined Henry instead.

Promises were rather serious matters back in those days, as was the fear of eternal damnation for breaking them. As one story goes, a clever priest offered a solution which Rhys adopted. He stood or sat under a bridge near Mill Bay, Mullock Bridge, as Henry Tudor (likely, his advance guard) rode over the bridge. His promise was fullfilled to the letter, if not the principle.

Rhys, then others, joined Henry and defeated Richard's army at the Battle of Bosworth Field (1485). Richard was killed - the last English monarch to die in battle. Some thirty years of dynastic warfare were decisively ended. Henry become Henry VII, the first Tudor king and the father of the better known Henry VIII and the grandfather of Elizabeth I.

The tomb of Siir Rhys ap Thomas in St. Peter's Church,
Carmanthen. Henry VII knighted and
rewarded Rhys with Carew Castle, and Rhys is
a bit of a hero in these parts.

Had Rhys not switched sides, Shakespeare would not have written Richard the Third, glorifying the Tudors for the sake of Elizabeth I and demeaning Richard. "A horse. A horse! My kingdom for a horse!" The English Reformation may never have happened, and a Catholic regime may have surpressed the remarkable creativity that we know today as the Elizabethan period.

Here's the interesting rub. Rhys is credited, according to the eyewitness who wrote a poem about the feat, of being the man who killed Richard III on the battlefield of Bosworth.

The name Rhys and its variants Rees, Reese, Ris, Rice, and Reece are common enough in Wales that there is no assurance Rhys ap ("son of") Thomas is Shari's blood ancestor. Shari's mother's maiden name is Rees and her ancestors came from Felindre in Wales, north of Carmarthen. But certainly, there is no harm in pondering and basking in the possibility.

Tintern Abbey

William Wordsworth wrote a poem entitled Tintern Abbey.

Actually, its full title is "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798." And it actually is about the River Wye and never mentions the Abbey.

The valley and the little stream that runs by Tintern are not only lush, intimate and beautiful, but on a sunny day like yesterday, the area is peaceful and filled with the sounds of doves and finches.

But in my opinion, Wordsworth missed the real gem, the spectacular ruins of the Abbey.

Maybe there were too many ruins in Britain for any one ruin to attract the inspiration of the poet. Maybe the River Wye was more special to Wordsworth than a ruin. But then, especially in the late 18th Century, before the days of motorways, automobile dins, and chattering tourists, there would have been plenty of idyllic nature scenes to inspire poets great and mediocre.

We were lucky to get there early on a sunny day. We had the place to ourselves for the first half an hour, and only a handful of visitors had arrived by the time we left. But the two parking lots were ominously large.

Tintern Abbey is no ordinary ruin. It is one of the most spectacular sights I have ever seen. It's not even a sight as much as an experience.

The soaring open stone shapes are amazing, all framed with the lush green of the lawn that serves as its floor, and the green of the trees, paddocks and bushes of the small valley that is the setting for this jewel.

It is more a fantastic sculpture than a ruin.

The destruction of royal greed and survival is imprinted upon seemingly every church and castle in Britain. Tintern was a thriving Cistercian abbey in the early Middle Ages. But even before Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and pocketed their wealth (even the Abbey's lead roof was stripped and sold off) the population decline of the Black Plague and the damage from Welsh revolts against the English rulers took their toll.

The odd thing for me is my suspicion that ruin has improved the Abbey. Its exposed bones in their simplicity, shapes and grandeur strike me as an amazingly powerful blend of art, spirituality, and nature — and not a little sense of timeless haunting.

History Becomes Alive

Reading history interests me, but actually being and seeing gives a much greater depth of color and experience.

Some times it is little things that bring history to life, like the small museum in Cirencester, the Corinium Museum. Cirencester in the beautiful Cotswolds was Corinium in the Roman days — over three centuries of Roman days. It was a provincial capital. The well laid out museum features Roman artifacts and large floor mosaics unearthed locally, as well as Saxon and medieval finds and remains. But what most intrigued me under the subject of "History Becomes Alive" was a museum wall with information about the English Civil War (1642-1651).

Off and on several times, I have read about the cavaliers versus the roundheads; the Royalists versus the Parlimentarians. Cromwell and an austere form of religion win and become dictators. The display on the wall in Corinium Museum shows how the people suffered from both sides. Leave aside the direct horrors of warfare and sieges. Think about damage to farms and property, theft to feed the armies, and forced billeting of soldiers. One young man kept a diary in which he recorded the hardships. It was quoted and printed on that wall.

That Civil War also left its mark on Dunnottar Castle. It was blockaded and besieged by Cromwell for months in his effort to take the Scottish crown jewels (the Honors) and destroy them.

Malmesbury Abbey,. What the Tudors left standing
still serves as a magnifiscent church

Then there is Henry VIII, his need for money, heirs and gratification, and Elizabeth I, and her need to surpress Catholic opposition. In the process, monasteries and abbeys were confiscated, sold off, and torn down, and churches stripped and defaced. The obvious scars today are all the many exterior wall naves on the many remaining cathedrals and churches in England. The statues are missing. Plaques on some historic houses describe how some of their stones were pilfered from the demolished monasteries.

We visited Culloden battlefield (1745). Today it is an open, grassy field with three red flags marking the English army positions and three blue flags marking where the Scottish Jacobites stood. Some two thousand mostly Scottish clansmen died or were wounded in that final decisive defeat of Scottish independence. For what? A mixture of religion, clan loyalty, and the vein arrogance of the twenty-six year old young Stuart pretender, the Italian raised and French supported "Bonnie Prince" Charlie. He fled the battlefield when the going got tough, leaving the clansmen to their fates.

Historical anecdotes: The Queen Mum
pulls a beer at The Bell at Stowe pub,
Stowe-on-the-Wold, Cotswolds.

The battlefield has its ghosts, but visiting castles in Britain bring the brutality home. Every one has its prison. Even churches have histories of being used as prisons. Jacobite prisoners were crowded in the dungeon rooms of Carlisle Castle without food or water. The castle brochures point out the worn stone where prisoners licked water dripping into the dungeon.

On a less violent theme, the Corinium Museum in Cirencester has a wall devoted to the wool trade that made the Cotswolds wealthy in the Middle Ages — until the invention of the cotton gin radically changed the economics of clothing. Sheep in the Cotswolds produced the wool that was exported to Flanders and Northern Italy where it was woven into cloth. This wall featured one man born a commoner who became ridiculously wealthy as a wool merchant, bought himself a noble title, and lived to the ripe old age of a hundred and one. He died only because he fell off a horse.

I wish I had taken a photo of that wall. I cannot find any reference to that merchant on the internet. Yet such anecdotes preserved in local histories provide the details that bring history alive -- at least for me.

Post Script:  Searching the Corinium Museum website I found the merchant's portrait and name, then this basic information on a BBC website. (God bless the BBC.)

John Coxwell was a self made man who made his money from the wool trade in the Cotswolds and rose from the ranks of the lower middle classes to that of the gentry. In the 14th and 15th centuries the trade in Cotswold wool was on an international scale

John was in his early twenties when the Abbey at Cirencester was dissolved. Twenty years later, when Elizabeth I sold off the Abbey estates, he purchased a significant amount of land using the money he had made from trading wool. Eventually he owned over 40 properties in Cirencester. In 1563 he purchased part of the manor of Siddington, ten years later he bought the manor of Ablington

John was 101 when he died after falling off his horse at Lechlade!

The Boo Laundrette.

It's been a week, our laundry bag was getting heavy, and we do like to wear our favorite clothes. Monday became laundry day and our laundromat of choice was the Boo Laundrette in downtown Cirencester.

Of course, being an oversized village and medieval wool town, negotiating the warren of narrow streets in the old city was no small feat. But we had scoped out the parking lot, the route, and the location of the Boo well in advance. We even had set aside some one pound coins for the Brewery Car Park. We assumed the Laundrette would give change. It opened at eight.

We were there at eight. The door was locked and no one inside. We rang the bell. Nothing. We begin to get a little desperate. Then Shari noticed the only intelligible instruction in that laundromat, which was to press the button and open the door simultaneously. It worked.

Inside was nice and clean and lonely. But no change machine. There were no instructions posted on the wall as to how much it cost for a load in the washers. We had about £2 in coins. We put a coin in and the washer's screen lit up and asked for another £6 some. We had no such amount in coins.

It was still early, but the butcher shop a block and a half away was opening. I asked the woman, "Could I trouble you for some change? Pound coins? My wife and I are trying to do laundry and the laundromat has no coin changer."

She smiled. "Say no more." and she gave me £5 in pound coins.

Elated with my success, and impressed with yet another example of British kindness, I returned to reassure Shari that all was well. We got the wash going.

While the wash was washing, we had time to decipher the dryer instructions. Here was the clue. A typed and overwritten piece of paper pinned above the dryers which read: "£2 = £1 coins only". The £1 had been handwritten on a tiny piece of paper and sticky-taped over something else.

After about five minutes of pondering alternative interpretations, we reckoned that neither our £2 coins nor our 50p coins would work. The sign meant £2 to get the machine to work and the machine took only £1 coins.

We needed to exchange our coins for £1 coins.

I hesitated to go back to the butcher again. So instead of going out, then left, I walked out, then right. The One Pound store was open. Kinda like our Dollar stores. The doors were open, lights were on, and two young school boys dressed in uniforms were cruising an aisle.

"Can I trouble you for some one pound coins?" I asked in the most calm and polite voice I could master. The lady smiled and asked me how many. I asked for ten £1 coins in exchange for my ten pounds worth of £2 and 50p coins. She pulled out a handful of £1 coins and counted them out.

I returned victorious to Shari who was anxiously waiting. The One Pound store. Of course.

While we are watching the clothes go round, a woman came in dressed as you would expect for an early, chilly, overcast morning that threatened rain. We exchanged polite and warm greetings, she deposited her load of wet clothes into a dryer, and left.

Now comes the good part. A few minutes later, another woman walked in. She was a rather striking woman. She wore a short red dress and high heels suitable for an evening cocktail party. She made no attempt at eye contact or any greeting, but walked right up to the dryer with her Ikea blue bag with wet clothes and shoved them in the dryer. I was sitting next to that machine and, being polite, stared at the ground, unavoidably looking at her naked legs and painted toenails in her high heeled sandals.

Like the first woman, she left. Obviously both women knew the system and how many minutes of dryer time £2 bought.

Now comes a better part. After a few minutes, the dryer used by the woman in the red dress made some god-awful bashing noise. I looked at the dryer and saw a woman's belt tumbling around and around. A belt buckle. Okay.

Now comes the best part. About another five minutes later, I saw some white, rectangular shape tumbling around and around in the dryer used by the woman in the red dress. I thought that was a little odd, but I am polite and did not stare at someone else's laundry in the dryer. But I couldn't help noticing that it was a piece of paper. Okay. She hadn't checked and emptied pockets.

Here's the punchline. As the minutes passed, more and more sheets of paper appeared through the glass door of the dryer used by the woman in the red dress. Soon there were twenty, thirty, and who knows how many more. Now I got curious, stared through the glass, and started reading the printed text on the pages. They were the pages of a book. I read page three hundred and something on one sheet. They were all neatly separated and so many of them were tumbling around and around that the clothes of the woman in the red dress were no longer visible.

Of course, I pulled out my video camera and took some shots of the pages going around and around in the dryer.

Our loads were done, folded, and stacked in our laundry bag so we left. But both Shari and I would have loved to have seen the expression on the face of that woman in the red dress when she came to retrieve her load and opened the dryer door.

British Roads

Dunnottar Castle, just south of Stonehaven

Accomodating automobiles, as we know them today, is a seriously centuries too late afterthought in Britain. These roads are well suited for ox carts and horse drawn carriages. Not so much for automobiles.

We are spoiled in Tucson.

Leave aside driving on the left side, the roundabouts, the hieroglyphic striping on the roads, the signage ("dual carriageway", "give way", and "crawler lane"). Those can be managed.

What is terrifying are the narrow roads and no shoulders.

We were following what we in the US would regard as a tiny RV. It was as wide as the country highway lane. The speed limits are 60 or 70 miles per hour. Imagine oncoming traffic, say, a truck ("lorry") or bus. It's hard not to wince as it passes a few inches away from your driver side rear vision mirror.

No shoulders. Only occasional turn-outs. The countryside is gorgeous, but there's no place to stop. And where there is a pull-out, eight or nine times out of ten, any view is hidden by foliage or a wall. You can't win.

Bicycling should be out of the question. Even footpaths are rare and, if they exist, they too are narrow. It's funny to see rural bus stops with no sidewalk for pedestrians to get to them.

Dundee

And that's just the country roads. Imagine double decker busses routinely driving their routes in medieval city streets. Imagine street parking that takes up the better part of the driving lane. Oncoming traffic has to take turns to pass each other. I'm often not sure if I am behind parked cars or standstill traffic.

Then there is parking, something we take for granted in Tucson. Here, every little village has a pay and display lot from which the council earns money. £1-2 pounds for an hour or two. Visiting a historical site? Royal Collection Trust? National Trust for Scotland? Pay and display.

All those country scenes in BBC shows where the car drives in a broad village space, simply pulls over and parks in front of its intended destination, not another car in sight? All staged.

Not my photo, but typical.

We chose places to stay knowing we would need parking for our rental car. So far the most awkward was the one-car wide alley in Stonehaven with a ninety degree left turn into a car-wide alley that leads to a three, maybe four car lot in back of the B&B. Scraped the left rear fender in my ten minute back and forth that should qualify me for docking a shuttle into the space station.

I should add that I love the roundabouts and, once you get familiar with the system, the highways and directions are well marked (street signs, much less so) - but only because we have GPS and Google maps.

Treasure those wide open country spaces for automobiles at home.

Post script. As I composed this post, Shari is watching some local TV - a program devoted to parking tickets, traffic congestion, and tight squeezes.

Edinburgh and Verdo

Royal Mile (part).

Cosmopolitan. That's one of the first words that come to mind. It's obvious from its restaurants, population, and visitors. Seattle is another word that comes to mind on account of the weather and the black mold-stained stone buildings. Europe is another because of its stone buildings, churches, castle, palace, narrow, old city streets that go back centuries, and a history and identity that goes beyond medieval. But mostly, it is proudly Scottish. Edinburgh.

The city isn't that big in terms of population or area, being hemmed in by some steep rocky outcrops. I suspect weeks and months of exploring would not begin to exhaust its sights or experiences. Still, walking the Royal Mile and visits to Holyrood Palace and Edinburgh Castle are pretty special experiences.

Edinburgh Castle (west side).

There is some personal history here. Alexander Christian Dingwall, Shari's fourth great grandfather, was the Scottish crown keeper in the 1830's. We saw the Scottish crown jewels and the Stone of Destiny (Stone of Scone). At one point, Dingwall lived in 2 Canning Street Lane, just down the hill on the west side of the castle. We walked down there.

Of course, in a foreign place, when you find your way somewhere, it becomes welcome familiarity the second time around. Breakfast twice at the Abbey because it was good and it's just a few blocks up. Twice, beers and snacks at the Royal Mile Tavern because, well, it's good and in the middle of the the Royal Mile.

And two dinners at Verdo because it's up the street, walking by it we smelled angelic wood fire grill smoke, and it serves the best Turkish food either Shari or I have ever eaten anywhere. Turns out the owner is a Kurd from Kahta in eastern Turkey where Shari's dad worked and we have visited. So if you like Turkish cooking, I can safely write the best is the Kurdish restaurant Verdo in Edinburgh.

Traveling Confusion II

The good news is that it worked out well and easily, but for an hour or two, I had my doubts.

There comes a time with each rental car when it's necessary to find the fuel tank cap (which side? how to open?) and figure out whether the gas station pumps are self-serve, prepay, or take credit cards. After a bit of motorway driving and route finding from York to Penrith, I couldn't even find the gas station in the freeway rest area without making a wrong turn. A U-turn around the restaurant and general rest area parking lot, silently muttering "left side, left side", and down the other side, and there's the BP sign.

I had to ask the woman at the gas station shop counter how to pay. Refreshingly simple. Pump, then come inside to pay.

I went back outside and, of the three available nozzles at the island where I stopped, I chose the green one. The other two were black and grey.

Now in the US, we have various grades of gasoline nozzles and the one green nozzle for diesel. I simply chose the green nozzle and started pumping. As the fuel poured in the tank, I saw the black and grey nozzles were labeled diesel and diesel something. I checked the label on the nozzle I was pumping. Unleaded.

I stopped pumping. Our rental is diesel. Not knowing anything specific about the risks, other than it's not really a good thing, I completed the top up with diesel.

Fortunately, we pulled into the gas station primarily for WC purposes. We had almost a half tank when we pulled in.

Fortunately, gas is lighter than diesel, so when I drove another hundred miles to get to our room in Roslin, we were still running on diesel. Dumb luck.

We settled in, had lunch, toured the chapel, returned to our room, and I remembered that it might be a good idea to search the internet and learn a little about mixing the fuels.

It's actually a very, very bad thing to do. And since I couldn't blame anyone but my own stupidity, our comprehensive insurance might not pay for, say, replacing the engine.

We searched the internet for nearby mechanics. It was Saturday night. Everything is closed until Monday morning. We thought we'd risk driving another ten miles Sunday morning to get to our pre-booked Edinburgh guest house and then hope for the best.

Shari to the rescue. Call the rental car number. Use the £10 burner phone we got in Windsor.

The other thing about pouring gasoline in a diesel car is that it's a pretty common occurence. Within 45 minutes, the AA Fuel Assist van showed up. Another 35 minutes, the very nice young Scottish man (he'd been to Las Vegas) had drained our full but contaminated tank and carburetor and put in £10 worth of diesel to get us to the next gas station.

Our comprehensive insurance pays for it.

Rosslyn Chapel, Roslin, Scotland

Rosslyn Chapel

The church is extravagantly decorated with carved stone outside and inside. The village of Roslin was created for the stone masons, carpenters and blacksmiths required to create the structure. Columns and lintels decorated with vines, green men (heads in greenery), allegories (seven sins, seven virtues), geometric designs, dragons (probably pagan Norse influence), and animals. The chapel is as much a pagan celebration of nature as it is a Christian dedication to St. Matthew.

The niches are empty. More evidence of the destructive purges wrought by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. It has had to be repaired and reconstructed to become the tourist mecca that it is today. Despite the entrances fees, docents, and strict prohibition of photography inside, it still hosts church services. Church of Scotland.

No wonder the chapel inspired Queen Victoria and 19th Century poets and authors. And, of course, the Templar connection in the Da Vinci Code novel made even more famous by the Tom Hanks movie. Which is utter fiction, as is the story invented about the Apprentice Column. But to see this chapel is to understand how it has inspired the imagination.

Rosslyn Chapel

Thanks to Shari who knew of the fame of the Roslin Chapel, we included a night in tiny Roslin in our itinerary. It's a Saturday and the folks here are adept at organizing events to attract people from nearby Edinburgh and all over. The village was crowded with familes, young kids with face decorations, and couples young and old. Some children's carnival was underway. The one restaurant already has brochures on every table advertising its 2019 Christmas season and exhorting early reservations. "Breakfast with Santa."

Decent sunshine and warm weather allowed the outside pub area to be filled with beer drinking, snacking, T-shirted and shorted folks. Not everyone wore summer clothes (certainly not us), but most. Locals, I suspect. Inside the pub, families with dogs were noisily talking over the speakers blaring some folk-sounding songs. Too noisy for us.

Odd thing. Bitters and ales in Windsor and York were served only a little below room temperature. I reckon that way, if you nurse a pint or more over an hour's worth of local gossip, it doesn't make much difference. Or maybe it's just the custom. Cross into Scotland and I find my first IPA. It's a very light IPA by US microbrew standards, but what is surprising is that it's served nicely chilled.

And I am pleased to report our room is spacious, nicely appointed, and comfortable. A corner room with views over the tiny park with its war memorial and the beer garden.

York

The gate by the York Minster.

York is an obvious tourist destination in England. I just had no inkling of why. It is simply stunningly amazing.

For one, it's a pretty small town; less than a quarter million. For another, much of the medieval city walls and each gate are still standing. Then there is its Minster, a gigantic gothic cathedral much too large to squeeze into a camera lens.

Inside the walls is a warren of old cobblestone streets devoted to pedestrian traffic and lined with restaurants, pubs, pastry & coffee shops, high end boutiques and department stores, businesses, hotels, tourist knick-knack stores, butchers, cheese mongers, ghost and Viking shows, municipal buildings, market squares, used book stalls, Hogwart shops and kids with magic wands, medieval churches, street musicians and theatres -- to name a few.

The narrow streets and alleys are crowded with tourists; most from Britain, some from the Continent, some from the USA, and plenty of east Asians. No shortage of locals, either. One parade of Malaysians, the women wearing headscarves, was lead by two middle aged women holding a selfie stick on which two (not one) smart phones recorded the entire group strolling about. (I hesitate to think how seasick I would get having to watch the playback.)

York, the wall walk.

We spent a couple of hours inside the old walled city yesterday and return there today. This morning, as I am framing video shots at the gate we walk through, the one closest to the Minster, Shari finds stairs leading up the wall. We discover the walk on top of the walls. Gorgeous views over private gardens, through huge trees, and peering over roofs, the towers of the massive Minster.

We wander inside one elegant department store. There's a fashion show under way upstairs in between racks of merchandise. Tall, long-legged models in high heels and disarming smiles are doing their runway thing as the commentator with a microphone explains the various features of the clothes they are wearing. A woman asks us whether we would like a glass of prosecco. We notice the folks sitting in folding chairs on either side of the makeshift runway are holding champagne glasses. We politely declined. We had just come from a delightful bakery where we drank cappuccinos.

York Minster

In one open area a street musician is singing show tunes accompanied by his karaoke boom box. The man is professional grade. I video record a song. Videographers are always desperate for a soundtrack. The pleasant sounds of people chatting in the streets should also serve nicely.

Before we enjoy our bowls of coconut lentil soup at the Cafe Concerto by the Minster, I spring for the £10.50 fee (seniors over sixty) to wander inside the cathedral. It is incredibly imposing on the outside, even with its myriads of exterior niches missing their statues. The stonework carving is intricate. The interior spces are equally huge and detailed. Incredibly high vaults and stained glass windows make the visitor look up in awe.

Traveling is work, but a day spent in York makes it all worthwhile.

Traveling Confusion

Arriving and driving at a foreign place can be confusing. Then there is Heathrow which is in a mega-confusion category of its own..

I was hoping to drive the few miles to Datchet on a back road from the Heathrow rental car madness. On the dashboard screen, the rental folks progammed in some route on an M-XX. "Oh it's easy. I went to school there. It's a short, easy way on the motorway," assured our friendly young Sikh Europcar desk clerk.

I took a wrong turn just trying to get out of the parking lot, then ended up on the wrong side of the road after my U-turn. Stressed? You betcha.

Our Kia for the month behind our York pub inn,
the Old Grey Mare.

A couple more wrong turns, a couple more disastrous U-turns, a missed roundabout direction and a missed motorway exit trying to interpret the dashboard voice, and we find our hotel after driving by it twice. It took me about five minutes and three tries to squeeze the car into the teeny, tiny marked parking space in back.

But here's the confusion. I had assumed the Brits had converted to metric. Our first morning, we tackled the one and a half mile drive to Windsor.  I am mindful of speed limits and I notice the big numbers on the speedometer are mph and the teeny ones that I can't read without reading glasses are km. For about a day, I was thinking I need to complain to Europcar. How can they rent a Kia with right hand drive and mph on the speedometer?! I was getting indignant.

Full day two was the four-hour motorway drive to York. Brits have speed cameras on their freeways and tickets by mail. I got to make sure whether to use the tiny marks on the speedometer (i'm wondering, looking in the rear vision mirror, "Why are there so many cars tailgating me?") or the big ones. Then I just try to keep up with traffic. After about a half an hour on the motorway, I notice mileage signs list place name, a distance number, and an "m". Not a " km" anywhere.

Then there are electrical devices. Like the electric kettle in our Datchet room. Doesn't work. Fumble with it. Play with its switch. Nothing. Each wall plug in Britain has its own switch. We play with them. Nothing. We are about to complain to the front desk when it occurs to us to follow the cord from the kettle. It's not plugged in.

Our shower this morning in York depended upon an instant water heater mounted in the shower cubicle. Heck. We'd seen them in Thailand. We know how they work. We play with different combinations of the two dials and one switch. Nothing. Not even water, much less hot water. Shari is about to put on some clothes and ask for help from the folks downstairs.

There's this pull chain outside the shower stall. We assumed it was an emergency cord for when you fall down and break a hip. We had seen them before in nice hotels. Of course, our assumption was completely unwarranted. This was no nice hotel, no one frail could possibly climb the two narrow, steep staircases to get to our room, and it is impossible for anyone to fall down in that tiny shower cubicle about the size of a coffin.

I look at the small plastic box from which the pull cord dangles. In rough, faded, permanent ink lettering, someone had printed, "SHOWER".

A good pull, a click, and fumbling with the switch and two dials produce wonderful hot water.

Datchet

Datchet from our hotel room.
The tower of St. Mary the Virgin is visible
behind the Royal Stag.

Datchet is a village on the Thames a mile and a half from Windsor. Stuff around the Thames is old. The river is life, a barrier, and a highway.

Datchet has its roots in Celtic times, if not earlier. It used to have a ferry to take kings and travelers on the road from London (north side) to Windsor Castle (south side). If they weren't taking a boat or the train.

Queen Victoria protecting Windsor Castle
from tourist busses.

Datchet is the location of the hotel we booked online for our first two nights in Britain so we could visit Windsor. It's the Manor Hotel. The desk clerk told us it is three hundred years old. Maybe people were smaller back then because our corner room was small. Like the vaudeville joke, the room was so small even the rats were hunchbacked.

It rained last night. Shari woke me up when she gasped, then cursed. Drops on her face. We had left the windows open. But the drops came from the ceiling onto the bedstand next to her and splashed on her face.

The night clerk feined surprise and explained that they had had no rain for a while. That did not explain the mold on the ceiling, or the pretty stainless steel jug standing on the floor in a doorway where we went for breakfast. That is in the middle of the hotel building. The roof is two levels up. The jug was catching about half of the drips from the ceiling.

Three hundred years old, you say? i believe it.

We got a new room this morning. Much bigger. This hotel advertises its facilities for weddings. I think we got the wedding room. It's not really a suite, but it's almost three times bigger than our first room. Which says much more about the first room than the second.

We still have our view of the little village center with its church steeple peering out above a giant tree by its entrance. The church is surrounded on all three sides by weathered gravestones. No landscaping. Just graves that, far as I can tell, go back to the early 1800's.

After our visit to Windsor Castle, I had to visit that church. It is named St. Mary the Virgin. It is a charming place, not just because of its age and Gothic style, but its human scale (compared to Windsor Castle), and the obvious fact that it is very much a working church. Folding chairs set up for meetings and prayer groups. Collection plate still had coins in it, out in the open. Bulletin boards, children's drawings. A box with donated reading glasses. Beautiful stained glass windows from the early 1800's. And a plaque with names and dates of its early rectors and vicars. Earliest date? 1239.

If a graveyard surrounds three sides, what is on the fourth? The Royal Stag. look it up on the web. The pub dates back to the 15th Century when it was an ale house. We headed there for dinner. I had its signature dish: beef and ale pie on mashed potatoes. Great. The carrot coriander soup was excellent, as were Shari's ribs.

And the pub itself? Imagine a community living room.