I suppose I could go back to any trip we have ever taken and recall mistakes we made whether it was an inferior place we stayed, driving across a prairie state with no gas station in sight and the needle moving ever closer to empty or having me try to look at a map to get us to downtown Boston. Along with the mistakes have been the successes like getting off the interstate in Miles City, Montana and asking where the locals eat. We were told it was the 600 Club downtown. The meals for four of us were less than $20 and were delicious. Our successes outweigh our mistakes but our trip to England contained a bit of both.
Our first mistake was at the rental car desk at Heathrow. Hack’s ears were completely plugged up from the flight and I was left to do the talking. Hack had always done the car renting on all our trips. He had already requested a Passat and the guy behind the desk had our internet information. He told me he didn’t know why their ad said they had Passats because they very seldom had them. Later in the conversation he said he had one, but he personally did not like them and wouldn’t we like a Mercedes? I asked him how much more that was than a Passat and he never gave me an answer. He came up with a deal on a Mercedes and I did a quick calculation from pounds to dollars. I then asked him again how much more this was then a Passat. Long story short….we drove the Mercedes on the trip and when we returned the car, knew we had paid twice what we usually do. We are in a dispute with the rental car company, but I’m sure in the end they will simply say, let the buyer beware.
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| Our expensive Mercedes mistake. |
Another mistake is one that I hope does not become a common occurrence on every trip I take from now on. I left a bag with all my shoes except the ones on my feet at the first place we stayed, The Yew Tree Inn. I wouldn’t have thought this was starting to become a pattern except I had left a coat in the closet of a hotel room in Door County, Wisconsin on a spring trip. But except for the expense, this turned into a success in getting them back. I am eternally grateful to a young man named Felix in a coffee shop in the Cotswolds who let me use his phone to call The Yew Tree Inn and have the shoes shipped to our hotel in the Lake District.
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| A cute coffee shop in Stow-on-the-Wold in the Cotswolds. |
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A German young man by the name of Felix who let me use
his phone to call the YewTree Inn so I could get
my shoes returned. My hero. |
Ah…..the Lake District, another mistake. I thought I had booked a beautiful hotel on Lake Windermere in Ambleside. When we got there after a long drive from Stratford-upon-Avon we were told I had actually booked a hotel two villages over. How could there be two Waterhead hotels? I had looked at the one in Ambleside on the internet and wanted to think a bit at the high price. When I decided to book it, despite the price, I got the other Waterhead hotel which was in Coniston, an eight mile drive down a tight curvy road where stone walls were one foot away from my window. When we first approached the hotel I thought it looked spooky. It was an old stone hotel a short walk from a smaller lake than Windermere and a short walk into the village.
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| The Waterhead Hotel in Coniston, England. |
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| A short pathway from the hotel to the lake called Coniston Water. |
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A steam powered boat on the lake.
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| The beautiful serene view out our window at the Waterhead. |
This mistake however turned into a positive when I saw our room. It was large and bright and the bathroom was large. white and sparkly. The view from our window was of an expansive green lawn beside the hotel, a pasture full of sheep and the lake in the background. Coniston is a small village off the beaten track and even though we had to take the curvy road to get back to things we wanted to see, it seemed easier in the morning when we weren’t tired. The hotel had a restaurant where we ate the first night and the following two nights we ate at a pub in the village.
When we wanted to go to Beatrix Potter’s house it was only four miles from Coniston and after visiting her house we took a ferry across Lake Windermere to get back to the other side. The Waterhead hotel that we stayed in was less expensive than the one in Ambleside and we had great conversations with the English travelers who were staying there as well.
Before we got to the Lake District we stayed one night in Shakepeare’s birthplace of Stratford-upon- Avon. Hack booked the hotel in this town and I would have said it was a mistake if it had not been for one thing, the dessert at dinner. The room itself was not a room for old people. The hotel was hundreds of years old, we were up three flights of stairs and there was a slight step up into the bedroom part of it and there was a small hallway to the bathroom. However there was a huge bathtub which I took advantage of. I stubbed my toe several times walking from the bathroom to the bedroom.
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| Sitting outside Shakespeare's birth place at Stratford-upon-Avon. |
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| A bedroom in Shakespeare's house. |
Back to the dessert. One plus with the room was that breakfast and dinner were included with the price of the room. I ordered something called Eaton Mess for dessert and it was heaven. It was fruit, mostly strawberries, mixed with whipped cream and pieces of meringue. I can’t really describe how delicious it was. It made the whole stay in this ancient hotel worth it.
Upon leaving the Lake District and heading toward Scotland we saw a view of a large green valley we thought was picture worthy. There were few places to pull off the road so we turned up a slight hill into what was the driveway of a nearby house. So many of the events that make our trips successes met us in this driveway. An elderly man came over and started talking to us. We apologized for being in his driveway, but I know he was glad we were as he was able to tell us a little history of the region. He told us there was a railroad viaduct in the panorama we were looking at, but it could be seen better when the sun wasn’t out. He told us that during WWII the viaduct has been filled with explosives in case it needed to be blown up. The railroad had stopped running in this area, but a grant from the government was going to get it going again. He told us his son lived in New Zealand and his daughter in New Castle. We thanked him profusely for talking to us and letting us park in his driveway. I was remiss in not taking his picture and getting his name. I was hoping that we had brightened his day as he had ours.
Further up the road one of those unexpected experiences that so often accompany our traveling happened. We saw the words Cheese Festival and I felt the excitement of what I knew would follow. The building we were about to enter was built under a huge hill with rocks all around the outside. Before entering the building we looked at a pen of miniature sheep that their owner had brought for people to see. I was absolutely smitten by these wee small animals. Even Hack said we should get some for our “farm.” I talked to the girl whose farm they were from and she said as far as she knew these little sheep could only be found in the UK. Her family owned the largest amount of them.
Inside there was cheese to be sampled and bought, wine to be tasted and
European bread made by a Polish baker to be savored. I was in my glory. We ended up buying some English cheddar that was smooth as butter and some rye bread from the Polish man. We sampled some wine and I bought some cheese scones from a woman who said their baking business was very close by.
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| Adorable miniature sheep that I wanted to bring home. |
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| Huge chunks of cheese for sale. |
Listening to people tell their stories is one of the pleasures of traveling. Hack met a very elderly woman on the streets of Thirsk who said she knew Alf White (a.k.a. James Herriort) and had several delightful stories to tell about him. Meanwhile I was in a bookstore talking to a woman by the name of Valerie who said her family had made six trips to the states and loved traveling in our country.
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Hack talking to a gentleman on the streets of Thirsk,
the town where James Herriot had his vet practice. |
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| An absolutely delightful bookstore in Thirsk. |
There is never enough time to see all the things a country has to offer. We pick and choose and do the best we can to get an overall experience. We passed by Oxford because the traffic was horrible and went on the Cotswolds, a delightful area of England where there are still thatched roofed cottages. Was it a mistake to pass up Oxford? Probably in some sense, but the Cotswolds were so picturesque..
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| So many of the houses in the Cotswolds have thatched roofs. This was in the town of Chipping Campden. |
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Flowers against a stone wall. There are stone walls everywhere and they add to the
beauty of England and Scotland. |
The mistakes and successes add up to what traveling is all about. There is an enrichment of our minds and souls and a knowledge that people live both alike and differently from Americans. We always hope to leave a good impression of who we are and where we come from as we gather so many good impressions of those people whose countries we visit. We never think there is something we can not do as we needed a sense of fearlessness to travel UK roads.
We are thinking it would be nice to see the Lake District in the spring when we were told the blue bonnets bloom in the woods and the daffodils cover a field William Wordsworth planted in memory of his daughter. We would like to see the Yorkshire Dales in the sunshine and spend more time exploring James Herriot’s part of the world. We probably will not go back, but we seem to live by the traveling philosophy of never say never.
