Trip to England (with a detour to the Carleton College graduation in Northfield, MN)

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Cristi and Daveri took Idell and me to the Oakland Airport about 8:30 AM. We were early as always.

We flew to Hubert Humphrey Airport in Minneapolis/St. Paul, then took a rental car 40 miles south to

Northfield. After checking into the City College Motel (a modest establishment run by a nice Hispanic

family with mostly Hispanic clientèle) we called Bruce, and he came in his car with Charlotte and

Sydney to take us all out to an Indian dinner. Sydney has a dorm room (almost all Carleton students

stay in a dorm) and Bruce and Charlotte were camping in their trailer about 35 miles away.

Friday, June 10

Bruce and Charlotte were supposed to collect Idell and me around 9:00, but what with one thing and

another they didn't get there until 11:00. Idell and I made a short visit to town for coffee and groceries,

then waited for Bruce and Charlotte. They took us on a short walk around campus:

Sydney and four friends had organized a lunch for their families at a golf club next to campus.

Here are all the Weydemeyer's and spouses. On the left is Dewey, and his wife Shelley is between Idell

and Charlotte. Idell and I had a good conversation with Shelley and Dewey. Dewey is a retired

geologist, while Shelley is a professor of education who works now to develop teacher-run charter

schools.

After lunch we wandered around campus and the student union, ate more food at a 4:00 reception, then

returned to our motel for the car and a return trip to campus for a 6:00 party at one of the few off-

campus student houses (about two blocks off-campus). This was a swim/diving team party. Sydney was

on the diving team.

Saturday, June 11

Graduation is a big deal at Carleton. Students traditionally (there are many traditions at Carleton) count

down the last 99 days, and there is a week of events capped off by a two-hour outdoor ceremony. The

faculty entered in order of decreasing seniority, with the oldest carrying the mace, followed by about

450 students. The President pretended to be surprised to find a small bust of Schiller on his podium;

apparently this bust is a campus talisman that appears unexpectedly. Two elected students spoke. One

did a very competent job—her speech sounded just like the President's, with the same vocabulary and

rhythms. The other, a tall, handsome poet, gave a genuinely interesting speech about the multiple

dimensions of time—not just duration but thickness and depth. Then two honorary degrees were

awarded to old Carleton grads, one the dean of Chicago theatre critics and the other a long-time popular

Classics and Music professor who went on to become President for one year before serving as

President of another college. Finally the graduates—all 450, each individually recognized. Afterwards

we had a picnic lunch with Bruce and Charlotte (Shelley and Dewey had already left) while Sydney

stopping by two or three times briefly before running off to see another friend for the last time.

I was interested in what the students were going to do after graduation. I didn't meet one student who

was going to graduate or professional school, although there must be some. I was told that about half

had found potentially long-term jobs, like Sydney's Indian roommate, an economics major, who will

start with Deloitte and Touche in St. Paul and a geology major who has an appointment at the Menlo

Park office of USGS. Others have short-term internships or volunteer positions. Sydney will start with

year-long Americorp-supported position working on urban agriculture in Chicago.

After lunch Idell and I drove back to the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport and flew to Chicago. There was a

little adventure finding the shuttle to our Chicago hotel, but after an hour we found it.

Sunday/Monday, June 12-13

We did a laundry at the hotel this morning, then returned to O'Hare. Idell went into Chicago to see the

Field Museum, while I stayed with the luggage and worked on various reading and writing projects.

We left Chicago at 6:45PM and, thanks to the miracle of jet travel and time zones, arrived about seven

hours later in Dublin at 7:30 AM. with very little sleep on the airplane. We spent four hours in the

Dublin airport, where we couldn't buy food because we didn't have Euros. Idell got as far as the cash

register with a banana before we realized that dollars weren't welcome, but the person behind her took

pity and paid for her banana. From Dublin we took a short flight to Edinburgh, then a bus from the

airport to the train station and a train to Newcastle. There we walked four blocks to our hotel, a newly

remodeled, modern-looking place.

We found Guinness and dinner at an Irish pub opposite the train station, then collapsed in our room.

Tuesday, June 14

Today is Hadrian's Wall. We took a train to Hexham, where we had lunch in a traditional teahouse

(which served Idell gluten-free bread). Idell is gluten-intolerant, and it is a constant battle for her to

find gluten-free alternatives in restaurants or even explain what she needs. It's amazing how many

waiters in America don't know the ingredients in the dishes they serve or even what what flour is. In

England we often found ourselves dealing not with a waiter but with the proprietor who was better

informed about the food being served. It many cases they had prepared it themselves. Awareness of

gluten-intolerance is widespread in England, at last among food-service workers, and usually those

serving us were able to help Idell find gluten-free alternatives. However, see Weymouth below for a

counter-example.

Here's a picture of the entrance to the teahouse.

After lunch we took a bus to Hadrian's wall. These buses run every hour, and if you get off to visit a

site you can get on the next one to continue your trip. We had all our luggage with us, but each of the

sites we visited allowed us to leave our bags in a safe place. We were able to see what we wanted to

see.

First we stopped for an hour at Housetead's Roman Fort, a fairly large but mostly unexcavated site at

the top of a hill in the middle of an active sheep ranch.

I was surprised that visitors were allowed to walk all over it and even climb on the ruins. Maybe they

have been reconstructed.

After a short ride on a following bus, we arrived at Roman Vindolanda, a much more extensive and

better explored site. Many writing tablets were found there illustrating much about daily life of the

Roman legions and their families. All the signs are bilingual—English and Latin. We had an hour to

tour the site and visit an interesting, small museum dedicated to its excavation.

The people in the picture are volunteers who come for a week or a month to work on excavating the

site. So many people want to work that the site has a lottery for positions.

We rode a bus from Vindolanda to Carlisle, then took a train to Kendal in the Lakes District (Cumbria),

where we had booked a room in a bed-and-breakfast for three nights. It seemed a long walk from the

train station to the B&B, but it was only about 10 minutes. We've done it twice a day since.

Wednesday, June 15

After a gargantuan “English” breakfast (sausage, potatoes, Canadian bacon, eggs, toast, broiled

tomatoes, juice and coffee) we caught a bus for Ambleside, where we bought a map and walked up

Loughrigg Fell. Total distance about 4.5 miles and less than 1000 feet elevation, but it took us three

hours. The first part of the walk is a steep driveway serving several homes in the hills, and the

remainder is on wet, grassy slopes with many marshy spots. The top of the fell was exposed enough to

have very strong winds, as you can see from Idell's hair and my firm grip on the stone monument.

The trail down is different from the trail up and skips the top half of the paved driveway. Here's Idell

where the trail down rejoins the trail up and a picture of Ambleside nestled in the hills.

After recovering from a wrong turn on the way back to Ambleside, we found the bus stop and

continued to Grasmere where Wordsworth lived. Unfortunately Wordsworth lived more than a mile

from the bus stop, so we settled for waving at his house as the bus passed by. We had a late lunch at a

little place run by British woman who had retired from working in America for Merrill Lynch and Bank

of America. Her husband ran the counter while she seemed to stay mostly in the kitchen cooking.

After lunch we took the bus all the way back to Kendal and walked to our B&B. We continued past the

house and walked a long block past a school with a huge playing field to a supermarket. Shopping

carts cost ₤1 to rent, but baskets were free. We bought fruits and vegetables for snacks.

Thursday, June 17

Another big breakfast, and off to the train to go to Windermere. After we walked a block the skies

opened and the rain poured down. We go soaked and missed our turn to the train station. The rain

stopped after 15 minutes, and we found the station by asking passers-by where it was. We arrived in

time for our train.

From Windermere we took a five-minute bus ride to Bowness, where we caught a ferry to Ambleside

and a launch to Wray's Castle (a 19th

century folly built by a wealthy surgeon). The ferry, the launch

and the folly are pictured below.

Windermere Lake is about 20 miles long north to south but only 2-3 miles wide east to west (and over

200' deep in places). Bowness is about the middle of the east shore, and Ambleside is at the north end.

We walked south along the west shore for four miles from Wray's Castle to a point just opposite

Bowness, where a launch took us back to Bowness and the bus to Windermere. We spent a few minutes

shopping at a modern kitchen supply store next to the Windermere train station, then had a proper pub

lunch--baked potato stuffed with tuna and corn for Idell, Yorkshire pudding and a pint for me.

From Windermere we took the train back to Kendal, then walked into town to hit the ATM (our

residence wanted cash payment) and a bookstore so Idell could resupply. Then back to the residence for

some serious internet time. The previous day or two we had made reservations in Hull (two nights) and

Southampton (three nights), but we still had nothing for the two nights in between Hull and

Southampton or the four nights in London at the end. As I write we're still not sure about the two

nights in between, but for the last four nights we found a small place on the outskirts of London close

to a tube station for less than the ₤200-₤300 / night most of the central London hotels seem to charge.

Friday, June 17

We got up early to finish packing, ate a quick but still large breakfast, then got a lift from the landlord

to the train station. The landlady gave Idell what remained of a gluten-free loaf of bread she had bought

for her and even toasted it for her. We caught a 9:00 train which, with two changes, would take us to

Hull. On the third stage we sat across a table from a lady returning home to Hull. She gave us some

good information about the area, especially the nature preserves on the coast.

After checking in to our hotel, the Hotel Ibis of the Accor chain, we stopped by the tourist office in the

town center and then went to the aquarium. This is a very modern and impressive display called The

Deep built around a 10m deep tank. Lot of scientifically well-written displays for adults and play areas

for children. To get there and back, we walked over a pedestrian bridge that swings horizontally out of

the way of water traffic.

Little water traffic would pass under the bridge when the picture was taken, since the tide is out and the

bottom exposed. The entrance to the city marina was also impassable at low tide. Apparently no effort

is made to have waterways available full-time. Mariners have to watch the tides to plan their trips in

and out of the marina.

Not many pictures today as the weather was drippy.

We had dinner at a pub on the way back to the hotel, then bought snacks at the Mark & Spencer

grocery.

Saturday, June 18

We took the train to Bridlington 30 minutes north of Hull. Bridlington is a seaside resort community

with lots of lodgings, a commercial fishing harbor and an amusement park on the beach.

There was a low tide the morning we were there, and boats including a big yacht are allowed to rest on

the sandy bottom.

We ate breakfast at a small place on the waterfront, then walked about and visited the tiny Maritime

Museum which was stuffed with interesting stuff—information about WWI German submarine attacks

just off the coast, famous storms and shipwrecks, and a forty-foot sailing “coble” maintained by the

staff of the museum. We were waiting for the chance to go out on a large tour boat to see the nearby

bird colonies.

Bridlington is the gateway to Flamborough Head, a peninsula edged by high chalk cliffs pointing

towards the North Sea. One of the largest seabird colonies in England nests in these cliffs. At midday

we took a three-hour boat tour of the cliffs on the Yorkshire Belle, during which we saw puffins (the

most popular resident) and perhaps a dozen other varieties of seabird. The captain kept up a running

commentary, but between his accent and the poor quality of the speaker system I couldn't understand

much of what he was saying. The crew were also knowledgeable, and they pointed out interesting birds

and answered questions.

On returning from the boat trip we dashed to make the train back to Hull, where we found a bad, cheap

dinner at a pizza counter owned by an Iraqi Kurd (as Idell found out by striking up a conversation as

she always does with strangers when she travels). He had been in England for ten years, and he was

very pessimistic about the future of Iraq. But then he was pessimistic about the future of Hull.

Sunday, June 19

The Accor hotels and new and clean and cheap and not very accommodating. Reminds me of the

airlines we used. Idell asked for another pillow and a wash cloth. Wash cloths are not provided—every

guest gets one towel per day. As for a pillow, there just aren't any. Did we expect them to take one from

another guest's room? I had the breakfast buffet. The clerk was kind enough to charge me ₤5 even

though the listed price was ₤7.50, but the orange juice cooler was empty and the eggs and bacon had

been out long enough to cool below serving temperature. At least the coffee machine worked, and I

could get two cups.

Nevertheless we solved the problem of no lodgings for two nights between Hull and Southampton by

staying two extra days in Hull. The town isn’t much, but there is lots to see in the surrounding

countryside.

We took the train to York. Train stations in northern England are monuments to British ironworker.

Here are pictures of their work in Carlisle and York.

In York we visited an excellent historical/archeological museum. Good stuff on fossils and the five

great extinctions, but without any local focus. The historical part emphasized the Roman occupation

and the Catholic period perhaps 1000-1500. Around 1500 Henry VIII abolished the monasteries and

convents, which were allowed to fall into ruin. The museum is built over the site of a monastery.

Outside you can see what remains of the walls of the monastery chapel.

Next we walked around the York Minster, a huge Gothic church that looks like it should be a cathedral,

but there is no bishop there.

Then we started to walk on the medieval wall that almost surrounds the inner city. It has been mostly

reconstructed.

We walked on on part of the wall, then got off to go into the middle of town where we visited a multi-

media private museum devoted to the Viking occupation of York and the surrounding area. We even

rode what appeared to be roller-coaster cars very slowly through a Viking village. We passed mock-ups

of homes and workshops, and very realistic mannequins talked to us. The last exhibit was the skeleton

of a 16-year-old boy who had suffered a number of horrible wounds before dying in battle.

I was interested to learn that King Harold II fought the Vikings twice in 1066, losing the first battle but

winning the second just three weeks before fighting and Battle of Hastings and losing to the Normans.

We took an early dinner at an Indian restaurant, where Idell discovered that our waiter had come from

Pakistan two years before and was completing an MA in International Business. The restaurant was

large and very nice and the food was a lot better than the pub and pizza-stand food we had the previous

two nights. We've taken to eating a large meal in the late afternoon when possible, since small English

cities (at least as represented by Newcastle and Kendal and Hull) offer little in way of evening dining.

After eating too much Indian food we staggered to the next section of the city wall and walked around

to the train station to return to Hull. On returning to the hotel we put a quid in the Internet computer in

the lobby and got to see cute videos of our granddaughter Daveri taking her first solid food.

Monday, June 20

We wanted to walk on the moors of Yorkshire, but the trip to Helmsey was three hours each way. We

settled for another coastal visit, this time to Filey, an old resort town on the coast between Bridlington

and Scarborough. We took a 9:30 train from Hull to Filey, then walked almost four miles on a loop trail

that leaves town north along the beach, passes an old church, and follows the cliffs until a branch heads

back into Filey.

We had lunch at a small tea shoppe in town, shopped at a supermarket for snacks for our train trip

planned for the next day, and then returned by train by Hull.

Once back in Hull we decided laundry couldn't wait any longer. We were told that there was a

laundromat down a certain street, so we started walking with a wheeled pack full of dirty laundry. Half-

an-hour later we found by talking to bystanders that we were in sight of the laundromat. We finally

found it in a little Polish neighborhood. Fortunately we had been collecting coins for two days, since

English laundromats don't have change machines. Even more fortunately, we found a bus back to the

center of town within a block of our hotel.

That evening I watched a couple of first-round Wimbleton matches on the TV. The great British hope

Andy Murray embarrassed himself by losing the first set to an unknown Spaniard before recovering for

an easy win.

Tuesday, June 21

Up early for a 7:00 train from Hull to Doncaster, where we sat on the platform for 50 minutes and ate

breakfast out of our packs before boarding the train for Southampton. British trains are clean and

roomy and fast. We paid dearly for our 15-day passes (almost $400 each), but we are getting our

money's worth. We take a train somewhere almost every day.

We arrived in Southampton about 1:00, checked into the Southampton Etap Hotel (selected and

reserved from the internet), and immediately went back to the train for a trip to Portsmouth. The hotel

was close to the train station but otherwise was a mistake. Even compared to the Ibis we just left in

Hull, the room is smaller and less well equipped and more expensive, and there is an Ibis hotel right

next door. Oh well. The point of booking a cheap hotel in Southampton was to have easy access to

Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, Weymouth and the Devonshire coast, and Salisbury and Stonehenge.

From our hotel we can get to the railroad station in five minutes, so it serves its main purpose.

Portsmouth has a major British naval museum highlighted by Admiral Nelson's ship Victory. I love the

tea room at the stern.

There is also a 400 foot warship, one of the last sailing warships built (with a steel hull), and

(unpictured) the Mary Rose, a seventeenth century warship that was sunk recovered and rebuilt.

After walking around the naval yard, we looked for supper. We've found that it's easy to get a breakfast

or lunch in England, but many restaurants close about 4:00. After 6:00 the choice seems to be pubs or

pizza. However we found a very small restaurant, just a husband/wife operation selling newspapers and

sweets and cooking light meals. Idell had a “jacket potato”--a baked potato filled with some extra

stuffing, and I had an omelet. Then we went back to the train and rode to Southampton.

Wednesday, June 22

We returned to Portsmouth, had breakfast at the same place we had taken supper. At breakfast we

talked with a railroad engineer who had just brought a train to Portsmouth and who thought the best

place for breakfast was the one we had chosen. He had some good hints for visiting the Isle of Wight.

We then took the ferry to Ryde on the Isle of Wight. The Isle is pretty big, rising perhaps 780' above the

sea and measuring about 13 miles across. We found a bus to the capital Newport, where we walked

through a light rain to a boating museum devoted to small boats. They had rebuilt '50's Chris Craft in

beautiful condition, a collection of very early Seagull outboards, a lifeboat designed to be parachuted to

downed flyers, the first boat to be rowed across the Atlantic, and a whole mess of wooden sailing

dingies.

Many of the dinghies (and the parachuting rescue boat) were designed by Uffa Fox, who lived nearby. I

asked about the West Wight Potter, and an old man who worked on the boats told me that the British

models were currently being manufactured in China and “they don't go to windward well, do they?” I

guess Stanley Smith (the designer of the Potter) lacked both the versatility and the social skills of Uffa

Fox, whose work dominates the museum.

We walked back to Newport, where we caught a bus that went across the center of the Isle to Ventnor,

where there was a botanic garden with cafe. We had a late lunch at the cafe, then walked around the

garden. I don't think Idell was too impressed. Afterwards we completed our circular bus trip by going

back to Ryde along the east coast of the Isle. A quick ferry ride to Portsmouth and back to our

temporary home in Southampton. There were very few restaurants near our hotel, but there was a

branch of the American chain TGIFriday, where we had dinner amidst at least three renditions of

“Happy Birthday”. The restaurant is very popular for local parties.

Thursday, June 23

Today we went to see the Devonshire coast, where some of the first significant fossil finds were made.

We started early on a longish train ride to Weymouth, then after a mile walk from the railway station to

the tourist office, we had breakfast at a little place facing the beach.

After breakfast we took a bus for 90 minutes to Lyme Regis. This is the center of fossil country. There

is a little museum in a narrow three-story house absolutely packed with memorabilia related to fossil

hunting and local history. Sometimes the people of Lyme Regis were on the right side (Cromwell) and

sometimes not (Monmouth). There are displays devoted to various authors who spent time or located

stories here, like Jane Austin, and a whole room for John Fowles, who lives nearby and who was

curator of the museum for ten years.

The person most responsible for the best early fossil discoveries around Lyme Regis was Mary Anning,

a poor, semi-literate woman with a great talent for finding and understanding fossils. She made her

living in the early 19th

century selling fossils to museums and universities.

Lyme Regis is on the coast, and the fossils are found in cliffs that come down to the sea. In some places

there is sandy beach between the cliffs and the ocean, so this is a popular beach resort. People rent

small storehouses along the walkway, and I saw one boat owner painting the bottom of his double-

keeled sailboat. The double keel is to keep the boat upright when the tide goes out.

We walked along the beach to the area where there were cliffs, and in the rocks that had fallen from the

cliffs we found our own fossil:

The fossil is about 6” across. It may not be the full skeleton of an icthysauras, but we found it

ourselves.

We walked back to town. While waiting for the bus to Weymouth, Idell bought some hand-made

Sicilian pottery to take home for a souvenir. We got to Weymouth just in time to buy a snack at a fish-

and-chips house for the train to Southampton and to have a contretemps with the short-order cook. Or

rather the order-taker. I ordered fish-and-chips, and Idell tried to order a hamburger-without-bun. No

chance. The person taking the order couldn't deal with the concept of a bunless hamberger, let alone

communicate it to the cook. So Idell peeled the bun off her hamburger and had to hope not too much

stuck. This food, while bad, kept us out of Friday's when we returned to Southampton.

Friday, June 24

Today is the day for spiritual experiences. We took a quick train ride to Salisbury, where we found a

bus to Devizes that met another bus to Avebury. This is a small village at an ancient crossroads where

there is a stone circle about 1000' in diameter. Many of the stones are missing, but there are enough left

that the pattern is clear. The stones surround the village, and sheep share the fields with tourists

walking the perimeter. This arrangement is older and more primitive than Stonehenge. The rocks are

not shaped at all (although they must have been dragged a long distance before being set in place) and

there are no lintels or rocks placed one atop others. The entire arrangement is surrounded by a deep

ditch.

After a picnic lunch in Avebury we retraced our bus route to Salisbury, from where we took a tour to

Stonehenge. I think this site looks better in artful photographs than real life. It isn't very large, and it is

difficult to tell from the remains what it looked like originally.

Stonehenge itself is dwarfed by the crowds of people who come to visit. There is a paved path around

the stones that comes within 20 yards on one side but is mostly further away. No one is allowed closer.

Compare to Avebury or Hadrian's wall, where tourists and sheep are allowed to get as close as they

want and even climb on the stones. Or just quietly contemplate them. Contemplation is not possible at

Stonehenge.

After about 40 minutes we returned to Salisbury, where rain threatened. We walked to the Salisbury

Cathedral, thinking we would spend only a few minutes inside. We emerged over an hour later, having

immersed ourselves in history through reading memorials for the hundreds of people buried inside. At

one point I found myself standing on a large stone in the floor memorializing Edward Heath, a recent

prime minister of England. I felt like I was standing on a fresh grave.

We dined in a Japanese restaurant that didn't identify itself as such. Strange. It presented itself as an

establishment that was modern and different, but the menu was mostly derived from traditional

Japanese dishes. They must be doing something right. The place was crowded with lively young people

drinking plenty of beer and trying to use chopsticks. When Idell asked about gluten-free food, the

waitress brought out a binder listing all the ingredients in all the dishes on the menu. Idell had lots of

choices.

We caught our train back to Southampton for our last night there.

Saturday, June 25

The last part of our trip will be spent in London. We had booked a room for four nights at the Mary

Rose Inn in St. Mary Cray, a suburb of London.

Getting there from Southampton entailed three train changes, and by this time we had collected enough

luggage to look like refugees: one big rolling duffel, one smaller rolling pack, a day pack, a nylon

shoulder bag, two waist packs and a couple of plastic bags holding food and bubble-wrapped Sicilian

pottery. We actually made a pretty quick trip from Southampton through London to St. Mary Cray. We

walked fifteen minutes from the St. Mary Cray train station to the Inn and dropped our luggage in a

closet, since no room was ready so early. Then we headed back to the train station to return to London.

No time to waste.

We got off at Victoria Station with the intention of going to the Victoria and Albert Museum. We had

developed the habit of going to a tourist information bureau whenever we got off the train in a new

town. There we could get maps and information about the local points of interest. That didn't work in

London, where there are no tourist information bureaus. We were on our own. We chose a souvenir

shop from the dozens in and around Victoria Station and purchased a city map. A study of the map led

us back through Victoria Station into the subway, where we rode two stops to the Victoria and Albert

Museum.

In London, when you take the subway somewhere, you really take it within half-a-mile of your desired

destination. It seems to me that stops were further apart than those on the Paris Metro, and the distances

walked underground were even longer. To get to the Victoria and Albert after leaving the train at the

nearest stop, we walked underground for 10-15 minutes before emerging into the daylight.

The museum itself is unusual in not emphasizing a few masterworks. For example the Raphael room

does not have oil paintings by Raphael; instead there are six (I think) large “cartoons” painted with

various media like goache as models for weavers to make tapestries. Yet they illustrate the vigorous and

muscular renaissance style of Raphael's workshop as much as any oil pointing.

As we saw in Paris, many museum visitors took photographs of the objects they viewed. Unlike Paris

the restriction against flash photography was not enforced, and I would occasionally get blasted by

someone's camera. Many of the rooms were dark to preserve the art works, and since I didn't want to

use flash I couldn't take many pictures. I did want to remember one Indian object that I thought was

particularly beautiful.

Another example of works that were fascinating but not original masterpieces was the casting room. In

the nineteenth century methods were developed for making very accurate plaster casts of elaborately

carved stone objects like columns and alters. The museum has a large room full of these castings, all

painted to look like the originals. For example here is an elaborate alter and a tenth century English

church carving that I think looks remarkably modern. It is said that the original is badly weathered, so

the craftsman who made the cast improved it somewhat.

We ate a meal in the museum cafe, then took subway and train back to St. Mary Cray. The Mary Rose

Inn is supposed to be very old. The ceiling in the lobby is timbered and only about 7’ high. I think the

current management are fairly recent immigrants from southeast Asia. They've attached an Indian

restaurant with a Tibetan name (The Yak and Yeti) to the Inn.

The location of the Mary Rose Inn is a mixed blessing. It is in a small village with convenience stores,

a laundromat right across the street and a large shopping center with a Marks & Spencer grocery just a

block away. It is also bounded on one side by a creek, and across the creek is a very busy thoroughfare

with loud traffic day and night. To get to our room we walk behind the inn, enter a ground floor hall

and climb a flight of stairs to a door leading to a balcony, and re-enter the second floor from the

balcony to climb another flight of stairs to our room. In our wing there are two rooms and one bath on

each floor. We are on the top floor. Our room has windows on two sides. Since we have arrived in time

for a rare London heat wave, this is a blessing..

Here’s the Inn from the front and the back.

The arches are the elevated railroad track that brought us to St. Mary Cray.

On our return we recovered our luggage from the closet. I took the laundry to the laundromat across the

street while Idell moved us into our room. For once I didn't need exact change, since the laundromat

was staffed by an old woman who rolled her own cigarettes, provided change and told me about the

history of St. Mary Cray. It used to be an independent farming and industrial center before London

grew to absorb it.

Internet access has become a key component of travel. We needed daily access to check weather, make

reservations and hear the latest news on Daveri. In England the new hotels charge for a signal, but our

bed-and-breakfast in Kendal and the Mary Rose Inn allowed free use of their wi-fi. Unfortunately the

wireless router at the Mary Rose Inn only works in the bar. Our room is too far away. I told Idell they

charge for the Internet but give patrons free beer. It all comes out the same.

Sunday, June 26

The largest repository of fruit varieties in England is a small farm called Brogdale outside of

Faversham in Kent. There were special tours on this day, so Idell and I took the train to Faversham and

a taxi to Brogdale. Alan, one of the volunteers, gave us a private, two-hour tour of the orchards, where

there are over a thousand varieties of different kinds of fruit and berries: apples, pears, plums, cherries,

apricots, gooseberries, currents and so forth.

We ate a lot of small fruit—currents, gooseberries and cherries.

We walked back to the Faversham train station (about 30 minutes) and went directly to London, where

we completed a plant day by visiting the Chelsea Physic Garden, a 300-year-old garden of medicinal

plants on the Thames near the Albert Bridge. Now it is kept mostly as a public garden, but for its first

200 years it was part of an apothecary school.

Monday, June 27

This morning we took the train to Cambridge, about two hours from our hotel on a route through

London (two train stations and one subway link—London has at least eight train stations, each one

serving a different sector of the country centered at London). Our trip was a rehearsal for the trip to the

airport two days hence.

I wanted to see the colleges at Cambridge, but for the most part they were closed so we just saw the

fronts. Here are Kings College and Trinity:

Trinity is guarded by a little man above the gate:

We wandered around the town a bit, ate lunch and visited the Cambridge U. Press bookstore. Idell

bought a book on the anthropology of childhood and I bought one of a new series of Martin Gardner's

collected works. Then we headed for what was advertised as the “Science Museum”, which turned out

to be a terrific collection of scientific and teaching tools from the past three hundred years housed in

the second and third floors of the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science (which used to

be the Chemistry laboratories).

The museum emphasizes optical and calculating tools. There are myriad microscopes and telescopes,

sets of Napier's bones and a few of the original hand-held calculators. What isn't on display is carefully

laid out in drawers that visitors are encouraged to open. There is also a collection of surgical

instruments (scary!) and large drawings for the teaching of botany and anatomy in the days before

Powerpoint. There is even a “Victorian Room” containing the sort of scientific curiosities that might be

displayed in a Victorian household like this table covered with shells.

This collection is in few guidebooks or maps, and it is really a hidden treasure.

Today turned out to be the hottest day for a long time in England, with temperatures soaring into the

90's. The weather for most of our trip has been overcast and cool with occasional drizzle, although only

once did we get caught in a rainstorm. Today's heat crashed the transport system. Many trains out of

London failed because the electric wires stretched and sagged or the rails warped. It's the big news item

of the day. Our scheduled train out of St. Pancras was canceled, and we had to take the subway to

Victoria for a different train. All the trains were very crowded with irate passengers trying to figure out

alternative routes home. When we finally arrived at St. Mary Cray, we stopped at the local Marks &

Spencer to buy sandwiches and cool salads for dinner.

Tuesday, June 28

Our last full day in England. The big question is whether we have enough energy left to get through it.

The heat wave has turned into thundershowers. We started out at the Thames near Cleopatra's needle,

where we saw a huge ferris wheel and a new pedestrian bridge using the now-popular single tower

suspension system (like the much smaller pedestrian bridge at a park in Redding and the new

construction on the Bay Bridge).

We walked to Trafalgar Square, where we saw the column dedicated to Admiral Nelson. We had seen

his ship in Portsmouth. There were several school groups, all outfitted in matching safety vests. The

safety vests would be a good way to keep track of wandering children if only one school used them, but

with so many groups similarly outfitted I don't see how the teachers keep track of their charges.

The British are still (sometimes) proud of their colonial past as shown by the following two plaques,

one from Cleopatra's Needle and one from a statue in Trafalgar Square.

After walking through Trafalgar Square we entered the National Gallery, which was crowded with lots

of tourists and a few well-behaved school groups. We watched a group of twenty primary-age children

sit quietly through an art lecture. We limited our focus to the medieval paintings, the Dutch masters and

the Impressionists. Unlike the Victoria and Albert and the British Museum, which we visited later, the

National Gallery does not permit photography of the art works. The most popular section was the

Impressionists, with Van Goth's sunflowers attracting the biggest crowd.

We got lunch in the National Gallery, then left for a subway ride to see Handel's house which is now a

museum. The subway exit was blocked by crowds of people, and we soon saw the reason. Torrential

rain was pouring down. No one wanted to leave the protection of the subway. After about fifteen

minutes the rain slowed and we were able to walk to Handel's house. It's not very imposing on the

outside, and we decided that the charge for seeing a couple of rooms filled with 18th

century furniture

was a bit steep when the British Museum was waiting for us. So back to the subway and on to yet

another part of the city.

The National Gallery is one of the world's great art museums, and the British Museum is one of the

great archeology/anthropology collections. We got lost for an hour in the Enlightenment Room, a

collection of books and objects collected in England during the 18th

and early 19th

centuries. Captain

Cook's memoir's are there, along with a huge fossil head discovered by Mary Anning and pots and

baskets and spear points and statues from around the world as well as reproductions of classical

sculpture and a copy (“please touch”) of the Rosetta Stone. The display gave a sense of how educated

Englishmen and women were expanding their horizons from the more European and Christian

perspectives of previous centuries.

We took a quick look at Eastern European dress from 100 years ago, including this Bulgarian wedding

dress

spent some time in Old Testament Palestine, visited Egyptian tombs and then took the elevator to

mesoamerica. The collection of ancient Mexican and Central American artifacts is remarkable. We had

never seen a Mexican goddess or a rattlesnake so beautifully polished.

At our last stop—complementing our visits to Avebury and Stonehenge—we learned about bronze-age

and iron-age Europeans up to the Roman invasions. According to the clothing shown in the displays

these people were not only skilled metal workers but understood weaving as well. However there was

no mention of a written language.

This evening the trains all ran on time—they have difficulties in the snow and heat, but rain is all too

familiar—and we returned to St. Mary Cray. We had dinner in an Afro-Portuguese-themed chain

restaurant called Namba located in the shopping center behind our hotel. There are a lot of restaurant

chains in England competing with the pubs and the tea shoppes. Some like Macdonalds are very cheap,

and some like Namba moderately priced. The manager of this one came to talk to us when he realized

we were Americans. He is a Portuguese-speaking Brazilian, and the Namba chain was started by

Portuguese from South Africa. A couple of franchises have opened in the US.

Wednesday, June 29

Every trip ends the same. We had our last breakfast at the Mary Rose Inn and dragged our luggage to

the train station. Our luggage consists of one backpack, two wheeled packs and one cardboard box with

(if I do say so myself) a cleverly tied string handle cushioned by a heavy sock. At St. Pancras in

London we switched to the Underground for an hour's ride to the airport. The three jars of preserves

purchased at Farmingham for Clark caused a bit of a delay at security (“I don't have any liquids.”

“Oops, I guess I do.”). A very understanding security agent allowed me to keep them, maybe because I

was a model of cooperation and contrition compared to the young women ahead of me who was

unapologetically trying to sneak extra cosmetics past the security agents.

The flight home was 11 hours, but only 3 hours were lost to clock time. This is the second international

flight we've taking in two years. We were adequately fed and watered on both, but very crowded. After

landing at SFO and going through customs, we took BART to the East Bay, where Cristi met us. When

we got to bed we had been up about 23 hours.