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.