On the loose in London

 

Breakfast at the hotel was of average quality but exceptional convenience.  We took a preliminary shopping trip out to Queensway mostly looking for a mobile phone, but found we were too early for the shops.  Just as well we did the short walk, though, as it convinced Mom she was wearing the wrong shoes for a long walk.  We swung back through the hotel to grab stuff for the day and Mom changed shoes.

 

We walked across Hyde Park, mostly along the bank of the serpentine – a lake that winds across the park from north to south.  It was a lovely morning, just cool enough that walking around wasn’t sweaty work.  The park was fairly empty on a Tuesday morning, but there were a scattering of people, most of them exercising dogs off the lead.  Don’t know whether that was legal or not, but all the dogs seemed well behaved. 

 

The lake itself looks picturesque, but not like very clean water.  In fact, there are signs all along warning against swimming in it or letting dogs in.  Then we came upon a swimming club – the Lido.  Seemed like a mixed message. 

 

As we got close to the southern edge of the park, we heard drums and trumpets, and started walking towards them to find out what was up.  We came upon a fenced ring in which a bunch of young people dressed in battledress jackets (forest camo) and brown riding breeches and holding short lances straight up and down with the butt in the right stirrup (is this “couched?” I’m not sure.) were practicing fancy riding maneuvers.  They were being ordered around by a fellow wearing what I think were cavalry sergeants stripes.  The band were on horseback as well, including two men playing bugles and one fellow with kettle drums.  The riders were in two troops with different colored helmets and were working on all sorts of fancy maneuvers at many of which, judged by the amount and sarcasm of the shouting from the sergeant, they were not very good.  They bore it in good grace though and kept trying. 

 

Mom got some pictures.  I had ingeniously left the memory card for my camera back in the room in my computer, so was essentially out of film.  I will try to lift some pictures from Mom later to add to this entry.

 

We turned east around the foot of the Serpentine and walked along Rotten Row.  I don’t know why “Rotten”.  It’s a broad track a few dozen yards inside the boundary of the park with lanes running parallel for walkers, cyclists, and people on horses.  Close to the south east corner of the park, we walked over into a beautifully planted garden, mostly tulips with coordinated low flowering plants bedded around them.  Obviously a lot of work for the gardeners, but it was a lovely sight. 

 

We made our way through a big circle of war memorials over into the Green park – more tulips and so forth even more elaborately groomed.  That led us to the front of Buckingham Palace.  The building is a little drab, but of course huge and imposing.  The giant sculpture of Victoria in the circle out front makes up for any lack of décor on the palace front.  After some exciting traffic crossings, we were in St James Park – still more elaborate plantings and a beautiful little lake. 

 

Again we heard march music – this time with bag pipes.  We dashed over across Birdcage Walk just in time to see the tail end of a brief parade of guards.  You certainly get reminded, even without seeking out opportunities, that the power of the royal family is rooted in having a bunch of armed people ready to do whatever they say.  Still, I think the Queen picks up the tab for all the gardeners whose work we’d been enjoying, and Sara and I have enjoyed her hospitality in some parks she lets the public use in Sydney, so I’m still in favor of the royals.

 

Birdcage Walk becomes Great George street and leads you towards the Houses of Parliament.  They make our capital back in DC look a little dowdy, although the Parliament building in Budapest could give them a fair fight.  Walking in this area and crossing Westminster bridge was the only time of the day we were in a real crush of other people. 

 

Just called our flight for boarding.  More later.

Departure, Flight and First night. (Writing 27 Apr 04)

Departure, Flight and First night. (Writing 27 Apr 04)

 

I set myself a wake up for 3:30 am – 8:30 UK time - to help with the time change.  Mom was already up when I got downstairs.  I cooked us up some fried onions, kippers, and scrambled eggs to help convince us it was a reasonable time to be having breakfast.

 

Sara gave us a ride out to Dulles.  No traffic at 5:30 am.  I hope she didn’t have any trouble getting back into town after dropping us.  There were already an alarming number of people driving inbound.

 

There was only a short line at British Airways for check in.  This was the first time I tried the daylight flight to Europe.  It had benefits.  First, it wasn’t very popular, so we had plenty of room on the airplane.  We also got onto a fairly amenity laden plane.  Even in cattle class (World Traveler, as BA calls it) we had individual, tiny TVs on the seatbacks in front of us.  Mom and I both watched the movie Payback.  Ben Afleck plays a super gifted reverse engineer who has his memory medically erased after he finishes each job.  The story really zipped along but Ben never convinced me these things were actually happening to him. 

 

Much of the way it was very cloudy out, but it cleared out in patches just as we were flying over Ireland and we saw some bits of Wales.  As we descended to land at Heathrow, we finally got well below the cloud cover.  We flew over Windsor Castle at around 1,000 feet.  It looked exactly like a table top model of itself.

 

Immigration and customs went smoothly.  We met our driver who got us to the hotel.  After we checked in, we went back out for a little walk around Bayswater.  Had a pint at the Black Lion.  Took a more circuitous walk back to the hotel, just looking at buildings and in windows.  There’s one very striking building called Spire House quite nearby.  It’s a midsized, four storey apartment block that seems to have eaten the façade of an old church.  By the time we got back it was a little before 11 PM, and we were reasonably convinced the clocks were right.  I dragged myself through another chapter of Jane Eyre and fell off to sleep.

 

I’m ready to endorse the whole daylight flight.  I feel completely as though it is morning, in fact quite hungry for breakfast, and I didn’t have to sleep on a plane or drag myself through a zombie like day of enforced wakefulness.  I will continue to monitor.

 

Mom is just finishing up in the shower, so on to breakfast shortly.  The Ethernet jack in the room seems not to be working, so I’ll have to talk with somebody on staff to get this entry posted.  Clearly, if you’re reading this, I have.  (Actually, they never could get that to work.  I'm at a hotspot in London City airport uploading this.  Our flight to Manchester leaves in about 45 minutes.)

First Entry - Day before departure

Preparation, Planning and Toys

 

It’s hard to say when the idea for this trip really started.  It couldn’t have been before I was thirteen, because before then, I really hated hiking.  That summer, I was out in a national forest in Virginia with a bunch of other summer campers.  We got lost in a downpour.  Wound up making our way to a farm house where the owners kindly gave us a lift back to camp.  For whatever reason, rather than putting me off the outdoors, that experience planted a love of being out in the woods that has never left me. 

 

I do not, however, care much for camping, so most of the really impressive American wilderness is closed to me.  I first learned about the peculiarly English approach to hiking from reading a travelogue by James Herriot.  Apparently, when he was neither caring for animals in Yorkshire nor writing with unrestrained whimsy about caring for animals, he was often walking around the Yorkshire dales.  He made it sound delightful.  You can spend hours walking through a beautiful mix of natural and rural landscape, sometimes all alone, but then walk down into a village for lunch at a pub and then continue on.  This was an approach to the outdoors I could get really excited about.

 

In the summer of 1995, my girlfriend Sara (picture above) and I took a week long walking trip in Yorkshire, and found that it did indeed suit us well.  It probably helped that we managed to hit a 20 year record drought, and so didn’t have to deal with the rain, mud, and chill that ordinarily separate English walking from a stroll in a city park, but I became convinced I would enjoy it even in raingear.  I wanted a bigger dose, and that’s what I’m getting now.

 

 

 

I leave early Monday morning for seven full weeks in the UK.  My mother Phyllis (Picture above) is coming with me for the first week.  We plan to spend Tuesday knocking around London, then head up to Keswick in the Lake District for a week of walking and soaking up famous English poet ambience.  Mom recently retired from a career teaching English, so seeing the sights Wordsworth and the rest found so much to say about caught her imagination. 

 

We have few fixed plans, but my luggage will be creaking with maps and guides of suggested walks.  I tend on vacation to over prepare – I’ve read more than 2,000 pages of guidebooks and brit lit specifically related to this trip.  My great secret, though, is that after all the preparation; I refuse to indulge in checklist tourism.  All the reading lets me know what the options are, but while traveling, I make sure I only do the things that seem enjoyable at the time.  If somebody local says I just shouldn’t miss something that wasn’t in any of my guides, I’m open minded. 

 

Having said that, there are a few things I’m hoping we fit in.  In Keswick, we’ll be near a jumping off point to walk a few miles of Hadrian’s Wall – an imperial Roman fortification that runs the width of England.  I’m something of a classics fan, and the wall is supposed to run through beautiful country.  I had a great time one afternoon in Germany tracing a similar wall.  The UK just last year opened a trail that parallels the Wall.  I considered walking the whole thing, but apparently it’s become something of a victim of its own popularity, so a short stretch is probably a better plan.

 

There’s also a walk along the hills above Ullswater, reportedly one of the prettiest lakes in the Lake District.  My favorite thing about that one is that you can walk from one end of the lake to the other then take a steamboat back to where you’re parked.

 

On Tuesday May 4th, I will drop Mom off at Manchester airport for her flights home.  I get rid of my rent a car, and take a bus and train to a town called Edale.  That is the jumping off point for the Pennine Way, a long distance trail that goes about 260 miles to the Scottish border.  I’m not planning to walk the whole thing.  My plan is to go as far as Dufton in Cumbria.  That means about 180 miles of walking over 12 days. 

 

From Dufton, I need to find some way to get a car again – probably get a ride to Penrith then take a train to the airport at Birmingham.  I have myself booked in to a farm bed and breakfast in Wiltshire for most of a week.  That looks like a good base for some day-hiking in the Cotswolds and thereabouts.

 

Sara and I meet on May 23rd, probably in Stratford upon Avon.  We’re booked in to a B&B in Betws-y-Coed Wales for a week.  Again, this is beautiful walking country.  On the last of May, Sara has to get back to Heathrow for her trip home. 

 

My options are open for the rest of my stay.  I have a notion I may be sick of mountains after the Lake District, the Pennine Way, and Wales.  One thing I’m considering is walking the Thames Path from the source of the river near Gloucester back to London.  However, I do have a guide to and some maps of Dartmoor which appeals to me partly because of all the 19th century authors who described it as somewhere no one should ever want to go.  If anyone reading this has ideas of things I shouldn’t miss, feel free to use the comment feature to make suggestions.

 

Except for a tent and a lot of trail food, I’m basically equipped as though I were going into true wilderness.  My most extreme toy is a fancy GPS receiver that even includes an altimeter to record how high I climb and how fast.  I’ve figured out how to download its tracking of my walks so I can upload them as graphics to this journal. 

 

I also bought a compact digital camera and a photojournalist vest so the camera is convenient enough I remember to use it, so there should be plenty of pictures here.  Usually on vacation, if I have a camera, it’s in my backpack, and I only think to pull it out when I’m bored.  I wind up with vacation pictures of everything that was pretty but otherwise failed to interest me.  The vest is an attempt to overcome that.

 

I’ve got a pair of hikers that I’ve put about 10 miles on so far to break them in.  They’re very light and comfortable.  (Picture above.)  If I stay organized, I’ll shoot a new photo every few days to keep track of how they hold up. 

 

Time to go finish packing.