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.