This blog is the diary of the two-week trip to England and Scotland (plus 20 minutes in Wales) taken by Sue Anne, Bruce, Aimée, and Steve in October 2008. We spent the first week traveling around southern Scotland and northern England, and then we set ourselves up for the second week in a 400 year old cottage in Ledbury in the west of England and took day trips from there. It was Aimée and Steve’s first time in the UK, so they ducked out for a couple of days to go see London, while Sue Anne and Bruce stayed back in the West Country where we had lived for three years back in the early 1980s.
We wrote this a day at a time, typically in the evening after a day’s adventure (though we didn’t get around to documenting the last few days till after we had returned home). We often didn’t have good access to the Internet or found ourselves otherwise occupied, so we were pretty much limited to posting just text on our blog. But now that we’ve returned home we’ve had the time to include lots of pictures, explanatory links, and a series of pen and ink sketches and water colors that Sue Anne created along the way.
The daily blog was a great way of letting the folks back home know where we were and what we were doing, and it captured our impressions as they existed at the moment. But since the format of blogs tends to be oriented toward current information, it’s now a bit awkward to follow our trip in the normal chronological order. So here are a couple of ways you can navigate the trip in the order in which we took it:
Click here to go back to February, when we first started to plan the trip.
or if you want to get right into it:
Click here to go straight to October 4th when we got on the plane.
At the bottom of each page thereafter, you’ll see links for Newer Post and Older Post. Keep clicking Newer Post and you’ll work your way day by day through the whole trip and a loooong post-trip summary of our impressions, and finally you’ll end up back here. Or you could do it backwards by just continuing down from where you are now.
The Links section off to the right will take you to a map of our entire itinerary and a few other sites that might be of interest.
You can click any of our pictures to see a full-sized version in a new window. If some of the pictures in the blog look dark, it’s because of the way they were compressed to fit. The detail will show through if you look at them full-sized. The pictures with the controls at the bottom are videos. Click the Triangle icon to play them. They probably require a recent version of Flash to work correctly. And make sure your speakers are turned on.
We hope you enjoyed traveling with us. We’re not sure where or when the next trip will be, but you can be sure that we’ll be blogging it. Stay tuned!
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Impressions
This is the third time we’ve blogged from a foreign trip: 2006 in China, 2007 in Italy, and now in the UK. Fourth if you count the diary of our 2000 trip to Germany back before the word ‘blog’ was invented, but that was all published after the fact rather than day by day. All these trips were in October, a great month for travel!
It was fun recording our immediate experiences and impressions every day, and we still look back at these and relive those adventures as we experienced them. But we found when we came home after each trip that there were things we had taken from the experience that weren’t tied to the specific chronology of events but developed over time, from reflection, or from further research. So we found ourselves creating a summary of our impressions after each of those trips. The Germany one was pretty short, the China one went on forever since it was all so new and exotic, and the Italy one was in between. Here are the major impressions we took from this trip. This one got to be pretty long, because we saw so many things from so many perspectives.
This was Aimée and Steve’s first time in the UK, so they were taking it all in and comparing against mental images, travel books, TV programs and movies, and other sources of expectation. There was new stuff for Sue Anne and Bruce to learn and see as well, but with our history of having lived for three years in Cheltenham 25 years ago, and traveling around the country a few times since, our impressions were strongly aimed at understanding what had changed and what was still as we remembered. You can see that slant in a lot of our writing.
So here, in no particular order, are some of the impressions we all brought back with us. And some of the lessons that we learned. And a few hints that you might not find in the travel guides.
Friendliness
Wow! Not a surprise, but it was wonderful to have all our memories and expectations so well reinforced. We described a lot of these occasions earlier in the blog, and there are so many others: the people at the harvest service and luncheon in Ledbury, the woman who ran out to our car in Northleach to tell us that we had left our postcards behind in the shop, all the hotel and B&B operators, various people in pubs, shops, museums, and tourist offices, the weaver at the Paisley Museum, the printer and the gift shop keeper at Beckford Silk and the proprietor who offered us a tour at a time when they weren’t offering tours, so many people who wanted to talk about the one or two pieces of America that they were familiar with, and of course our wonderful friends of many years whom we were so happy to be reunited with and introduce to Aimée and Steve.
Hotels and B&Bs
We mentioned this earlier in the blog, but it’s worth repeating. B&Bs and the smaller hotels often tend to be sideline activities, run by people who have other things going on in their lives. They might not even live on the premises or staff them full time. So they like to have a rough idea of when you expect to arrive, and they’re especially appreciative if you can give them a heads up if you’re going to be delayed. Arrive after hours and it’s likely that you’ll find a note saying that you can pick up the key at the pub across the street. Many are locked at night, so be sure you’ve got the door key when venturing out for dinner or an evening stroll. Be aware that hauling your own luggage up many flights of circular stairs can be part of the picture.
Many places will volunteer to provide the newspaper of your choice for you at breakfast, but don’t expect it to be free. Similarly, don’t pick up a paper that happens to be sitting at the reception desk on your way in to breakfast without inquiring, as it might have been reserved by somebody else. It’s not USA Today!
Guide Books
We were all helped by the suggestions provided by Rick Steves, both in his books and in his TV series. He had lots of good insights into places to go and into trip planning in general. Though he didn’t have anything to say about Ledbury! It was our own undiscovered gem.
Back in one of our early blog posts, we mentioned UNESCO World Heritage as a great source of information for travel planning. You can be sure that any place listed there is great!
Driving
We signed up both Sue Anne and Bruce as authorized drivers of our rental car, but Bruce ended up doing all of it. It wasn’t that expensive to add a driver, and it was good insurance. Aimée and Steve, on their first trip to the ‘drive on the left’ part of the world, were happy to be observers and map readers. It’s hard to believe given the relatively small size of the place, but we managed to travel over 1500 miles in the course of our two weeks.
We were very happy with the Vauxhall Zafira minivan that we had been upgraded to. We did manage to squeeze all our luggage into the rear cargo area and under the sliding cover there, though it became ever more a challenge as the trip progressed and suitcases expanded, whether from purchases or from increasingly inefficient packing. The seating area was quite roomy for all.
As mentioned earlier in the blog, the width and position of the A-pillar (the framework at the edge of the ‘windscreen’) was quite distressing, as it was perfectly positioned to interfere with the view of oncoming vehicles at the thousands of roundabouts we encountered during the course of our trip. They do love their roundabouts! And the windshield wipers and directionals (‘indicators’) seemed to have a mind of their own, under the control of a computer which thought itself smarter than the driver.
With his experience of three years’ residence and numerous business trips, Bruce re-adapted quickly to British driving. Sit on the right, drive on the left, shift with the left hand, do the correct things at the roundabouts, come out of U-turns on the proper side of the street—all these skills came back quickly, though the last one was always the scariest and still is. (A friend of ours once drove into a head-on when coming out of a U-turn on the wrong side, shortly after returning to the US from England. Fortunately all survived unscathed.)
Even more important, as we had learned in the past, the instinctive actions all worked out well—things like which direction you have to pay the most attention to when making certain kinds of moves. Those are the ones that can get you, because they’re the ones you often perform without consciously thinking about. We know! The one accident we had during the time we lived in Cheltenham was the result of doing something American—making a right turn without giving proper attention to oncoming traffic. Ironically, we found on this trip that the location of that accident had been turned into a mini-roundabout, which would have given us the right of way had it been like that 25 years ago.
Sue Anne and Bruce followed our long-established protocol that the driver would ask and the associate driver would respond (or interject) in a fashion that NO! (or a similarly emphatic negative response) would mean “Don’t do something,” and a positive response would mean that it was something safe to do. For example, "Is anybody coming the other way?" would not be an acceptable form of question. The term ‘Big Truck!’ was also an acceptable negative interjection back at the time when we were driving our left-hand drive American car and needed to pass (‘overtake’) on a narrow road, where you almost had to commit yourself before the left-seated driver could get a good enough view of the oncoming traffic. Another part of the protocol: the word ‘right’ is never used to mean ‘correct.’ It always means the opposite of ‘left.’
GPS was invaluable in getting us into and out of cities, and it was generally pretty useful in longer range navigation, though maps, signs, and map readers could have handled that just as well. Road signs were generally quite clear and complete. GPS did present us with that peculiar two mile routing down the narrow farm track in Scotland, but we trusted it and indeed it did take us to our destination, after we managed to pass the big tractor coming in the other direction. Call it an adventure!
There was one time when Bruce reacted too quickly to a misunderstood voice command. We were all appreciative of the correcting maneuver made by the big lumber truck that was behind us at the time. Very appreciative. And there’s always that danger of not working hard enough to remember a route that you navigate with GPS, and then finding yourself clueless on a subsequent trip down the same road without it. It’s kind of like not knowing somebody’s phone number because all you can remember is where they are on speed dial. The moral of all of this is that there’s no substitute for understanding the big picture.
Speed limits on the motorways and A-route divided highways (‘dual carriageways’) were up around 70 or 80 MPH. (Yes, speed limits are still in MPH and distances in miles, though it’s illegal to sell in ounces, pounds, or gallons. And you buy 2x4s by the meter. Pints of ale are still very much OK, however!) Most everybody stayed pretty close to the speed limits, one way or another, and GPS gave out an annoying sound whenever it found us going too fast.
There were signs everywhere warning of speed cameras, but we were never sure how many of them were actually lurking out there. The only apparent ones were in the construction zones on the motorways, where they enforced a 40 MPH average speed. Picture going in, picture going out, computer analyzes your license plate, rate = distance over time! There were no surprises in the final reconciliation of our rental car bill, so we apparently never got our picture taken while in a compromising position.
Another thing we had learned from before is the necessity of consciously snapping back into our normal driving pattern after leaving the UK. This lesson occurred on the first morning of a trip to France from the UK, over 25 years ago. Why was that crazy French guy driving toward us on the wrong side of the road? Oops! Well, Bruce did OK in that department when we got home this time, except for an occasional left handed grope for the gearshift. Nothing too dangerous about that.
Toilet Paper
Yes, this is worth writing about! It was once an important part of every American tourist’s European experience. It was the currency of conversation among first time travelers and a frequent souvenir to bring home and show around. There used to be two varieties: shiny waxed paper, and gray with the texture of coarse sandpaper. During Bruce’s liaison assignment at a British government organization in the early 80s, the official toilet paper there was of the waxed variety, each sheet inscribed in blue ink with the legend ‘H. M. Government Property’ or words to that effect. He managed to sneak into the Director’s private loo along with a few other naughty people when at work one weekend, and we found that even that was equipped with the waxed stuff.
We Americans there all had our own private rolls of the soft variety that we procured at the nearby US Air Force base, which we carried with us on our trips down the hallway. Some of our British colleagues and friends, having no real appreciation of cost differences between the two countries, were amused by their belief that soft toilet paper was the only reason we shopped at the base.
Toilet paper experiences are all in the past! Soft paper is everywhere! There’s none of the nasty stuff any more. Some of the dispensers were a challenge, but it was worth the effort. Hot air hand dryers were most everywhere as well, and usually pretty powerful. Not the wimpy ones we remembered from the past.
Finance
Forget about travelers checks, money changing, and all that nostalgic stuff. ATMs and credit cards are everywhere. There are only a few minor cautions to be aware of:
Twenty-five years ago, sidewalks in England were simply filthy, especially in proximity to fish and chip shops (‘chippies’) or in dog walking territory. There’s been a revolution since then. Enough said.
Opening Hours
Opening hours for stores, restaurants, and especially pubs used to be very tightly controlled, by law, custom, or both. Among the most valuable information passed around among newly arrived members of our American community in Cheltenham, still living in hotels while awaiting the arrival of their household goods, was the discovery of restaurants that were open on Sunday. Indian and Chinese tended to be prevalent on this list.
Especially irksome was the inability to drop in at a favorite pub late on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon after a pleasant trip out in the countryside. That’s all changed now. ‘Licensing hours’ for pubs were progressively liberalized and ultimately abolished by 2005. It did take the publicans a while to decide how they were going to react to this newfound freedom, but by now things seem to have stabilized. Free enterprise!
We were surprised to find the grocery stores in Ledbury open as late as they were. It was convenient indeed—that’s how we got the strawberries for our celebration meal—but it did take a bit away from the evening charm of the place.
Britishisms
“Two countries divided by a common language,” wrote George Bernard Shaw! We tried to illustrate these differences throughout the blog as we came across them. There were none so striking that they interfered with communication, as has occasionally happened throughout history; it was just interesting to take them in and appreciate them as a part of the environment.
We talk that way among ourselves from time to time, just because it’s fun. Our favorite, an expression of thanks regularly used by a shopkeeper in Cheltenham, is “Thank you, thank you, thank you very much indeed, ta!” And it didn’t take a very large purchase at all to elicit this response from him. (‘Ta’ is said to be an abbreviation for ‘Thanks awfully (much).’ It’s more prevalent in certain strata of the class structure than in others. Makes it all the more fun to say. And it’s quick and easy. Ta!)
Politeness in general is a well known Britishism. A number of stores there have recently stopped accepting checks (‘cheques’), and it generally took them many words on an entire sheet of paper to announce this policy, acknowledge the consequent inconvenience, express their full regret for this action and their gratitude for your continued business (‘custom’), and explain all the reasons why they had to do it. Back in the US we’d accomplish this all in just two words, “No Checks!”
We wouldn’t call it impoliteness, but the British are very frank in their use of a number of terms that might be considered offensive in the US. ‘Spastic’ is one that quickly comes to mind, though its use is now on the downturn. ‘OAPs’ (Old Aged Pensioners, i.e. anybody of our age or greater) feature frequently in the news stories. We did often qualify for ‘concession’ prices (and never got carded), the best of which was Aimée and Steve’s 50% discount at a London theater on the best show in town. And we chuckled when we often came across this rather frank sign, which is also now the object of controversy (‘con traw’ ver see’).
Brits also have their own pronunciation for French words or even those that just sound French. Perhaps there’s a bit of spite going on here. For example, ‘chalet’ = ‘shally,’ ‘ballet’ sometimes = ‘bally,’ ‘brochures’ = ‘broshers,’ and the Belgian town Ypres of WW I fame is typically pronounced ‘Wipers!’
We very much enjoyed the book Brit-Think, Ameri-Think: A Transatlantic Survival Guide by Jane Walmsley. The author is an American married to a Brit, who has lived there for quite a while and come to see and appreciate many of the differences and the similarities. It’s a good mix of humor and sociology that can be appreciated and enjoyed on many levels, by the seasoned traveler or the aspiring one. Yes, it got a few low reviews at amazon.com (outdated, xenophobic, racist, brash defamatory lies!), but lots more reviewers thought highly of it and it averaged four out of five stars. We bought the first edition, and we’d surely give it five stars! It was reissued in a revised edition in 2003. You can get it used at Amazon for as little as $1.75 plus S&H.
Tea, Cress, and Pudding
About cress.... delicious sprouts of mustard cress were strewn about the food and plates in a lavish and joyful fashion when we lived in the UK in the 1980s. Now there is nary a sight of it. I guess it was just a fad. But it was so wonderful. I have sprouted it myself at home, and it is fun and worth the few days’ wait.
Tea...this was such a short but confusing word to me when we moved to England. Are we talking dried leaves to put into a pot? Or evening meal for the family? Or something else? I used to hear our neighbors calling their children in for ‘tea,’ meaning that their supper was ready. I learned that occasionally the word supper is used, but mainly in the north. Well, I was born in northern New England, so maybe it makes sense somehow. We never did get used to hearing people speak of ‘eating their tea.’
Then there is the term ‘nursery tea’ which means stodgy sugary foods given to pre-schoolers. Such as jam sandwiches, crisps, and squash (orange kool-ade). Note that the word ‘jam’ in Britain includes what we would call either jam or jelly. ‘Jelly’ in Britain is Jello! We still remember the lightbulb moment when we discussed this with an English friend. Her eyes lit up and she said, “Ah, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! Now I understand.” To them it would be peanut butter and jam sandwiches, and the alternative—with Jello—was simply unimaginable.
Moving up the ladder of tea-ness is a nice cuppa. This is most likely grabbed in a cafe or teashop while out shopping. It is not expensive and there’s lots of cookie-like sweet treats to go with it. Bar cookies are called slices. If someone invites you over for a proper chat, odds are you will get a nice cuppa and a bickie (biscuit or cookie). Or possibly some very bad instant coffee. A cream tea is just a nice cuppa with a scone, jam, and some very thick clotted cream, maybe from Devon if you are close enough.
Now we get on to afternoon tea. This is usually served in hotels and costs a bunch of money. Pots of fancy tea, savory sandwiches including some kind of fish and meat, and several small cakes. I don’t much care for afternoon tea, because of the cost, and I dislike all that much sugar at one time. Now for the controversy. I was told that the way that Americans call afternoon tea ‘high tea’ is incorrect, the term meaning just family evening meal. Afternoon tea...fancy, high tea.....beans on toast. Americans refuse to believe this. But, I believe the term ‘high tea’ can be found on some signs in the UK. It is still unclear to me if this term is used authentically in the UK, or they are just luring in American tourists. But where did the term ‘high tea’ come from? I believe that if you were well off, this afternoon thing was just to tide you over until 8 PM when you could dine big time. If you were poor, ‘high tea’ or tea was all you got before you fell into bed.
Another befuddling term: pudding. It usually means simply dessert. It doesn’t appear to ever mean stuff like chocolate pudding. There is blanc mange (pronounced ‘bluh monge’), a French phrase for what North Americans would call pudding. You can buy it in a can, with the label Mont Blanc. Delicious. They do tend to use a bit of French in terms associated with food. It’s ‘serviette,’ never ‘napkin.’
Back to ‘pudding’. In Britain, three things are important: crunchiness, gooeyness, and booziness. The best and most popular puddings combine all three, such as trifle. ‘Trifle’ is such a glorious example of British understatement. It is large, showy, upon a pedestaled bowl, with about ten ingredients. I once remarked that, had Americans (known for hyperbole) invented it, a trifle would be called a humongous. The sherry is the booze. The almonds on the top are the crunch. And most importantly, the sherry soaked cake, the custard, the jam, the cream and the jello supply the FIVE kinds of gooeyness.
I had a very good boozy berries in Ledbury, and that was the exact name on the menu. And all those Pavlova type things that combine the crunch of meringue, usually store bought, with more whipped cream, and fruit. It all looks wonderful on a plate, and makes a huge mess as soon as you try to break into the meringue. It is not a combination I would have thought of. Speaking of cream, usually cream is not whipped, but poured from a pitcher unto a dessert that is already rich and creamy. Summer pudding is just gooey, no crunches, but very good. Runny custard (pouring) is added on top of basically every pudding for extra gooeyness. It is warm, and usually comes from an instant mix called Bird’s. A set custard, as is more common in North America, is a flan.
Black pudding is a sausage made from blood. You either find that intriguing or gross.
Yorkshire pudding
This is neither pudding nor dessert! This is why travel is so much fun, once you get used to being confused. Yorkshire pudding is traditionally an egg mixture which is cooked in the fat drippings of roast beef. If done well, it resembles a pop over, done poorly it looks and tastes like very greasy scrambled eggs. It is an old housewife’s trick to dampen down the guests’ appetites just before serving the meat course. I noticed on this visit to the UK that a new sort of Yorkshire pudding seems to have been invented....something from the freezer case that looks and tastes like puff pastry. It was less greasy. So on the whole, I’d say it is an improvement at the carvery line.
One other item on the buffet line at the carvery which I thought horrid was this: rock hard, grease-brown balls about an inch in diameter. For all the world, they looked like ammunition for some ancient firearm.
Upon inquiry, it was revealed to me by the carver that they were sage stuffing! They were over cooked, dry, tasteless, and so far removed from stuffing as to be silly. I myself now cook stuffing in a separate pan from the meat, so technically speaking it should not be called stuffing. Maybe it is time to call it dressing, as some do. But, it tastes of onion, sage, poultry seasoning, and bread and has a proper gooey-crunchy ratio. Oh well.
And while on the subject, carveries were much more prevalent at the pubs than they used to be. At some places it’s ‘all you can eat,’ but at others it’s only one time through. Pubs are definitely upscaling themselves.
Mince Pies
The above talk of ratios reminded me how much I like British mince (meat) pies. Originally, mince meat pies were a mixture of meat and spices. Now they are usually just the spice mixture with some cooked fruit like chopped apple and raisins. The filling is quite sweet and cloying. In the US, too much filling and not enough pastry crust to balance out the tastes. The pies I have had in England are small, about 2 to 3 inches in diameter. Better ratio. Delicious.
BUT, ‘mince’ in Britain usually means ground meat. Such as you would find in a meat spaghetti sauce. (Sometimes accompanied by peas—in the sauce!) Still confused? I tried.
Green Grocers
These are corner shops that just sell vegetables. Are there any left? I didn’t see any. I remember the lines (‘queues’) at Vick’s in Cheltenham. Down the block. And huge bags of Brussels sprouts (simply ‘sprouts’ in British), golf ball or greater sized, hanging out along the brick facade.
Post Offices
These are also declining in number, so I’m told. Consolidation and modernization. We had one in our neighborhood which was in the back third of a candy store, or in British parlance, a sweet shop. They also sold cards and small toys. People would line up along the barrels of sweets to get to the Post office staff behind the wire grills. And not just for stamps, or to mail a package. Folks were there to receive in hand their government payment for various things I didn’t understand. One was for assistance with underage children. The street windows of the sweet shop were taped all up with notices and help wanted signs. This is where we found the man who came to pull weeds in our garden during the intervals when it wasn’t raining.
Our neighborhood is now missing its green grocer and its post office. Wow. The pharmacy is still there, where we bought a lot of cough drops, fluoride tablets for the kids’ teeth, and wart removal supplies for first daughter’s foot. The chippie (fish and chip shop) was still there, as well as the local (pub). On the whole, it looked prosperous and welcoming.
Marks and Spencers
This is a well known chain found in every sizable town in Britain. In the 1980s, the clothes were durable, well made, good price, and drab. And British-made. Greys, browns, and lots of pleated skirts and sensible shoes. Many sizes actually, but few patterns. And a fair selection of old lady rain hats. And plenty of grey clothing for school uniforms—no private schools included, as each of those had a custom pattern but the state schools (‘public’ in US terminology) were all rather generic.
But the food selection was fantastic in the sense of fresh ingredients, quality ingredients, and pristinely washed and chopped vegetables. Their food always looked like paintings of food to me. It was the total opposite of shopping at the food stall markets, both indoors and out. In the latter, you could get the full range of quality, including plenty of rotting apples. Cleverly rotting from the inside out, so you couldn’t detect it until you got home.
We had read that during the 1990s and 2000s the fortune of Marks and Spencers was falling, and the brand was searching to redefine itself. On the first day on our trip this year, 2008, we took our traveling companions into a Marks and Spencers in Halifax. (Really, our first shopping of the day was in a 99 p shop. Like a Dollar Store. We wanted to give them the whole British shopping experience.) Well, were we surprised. The clothes were stylish. Not one pleated skirt. A huge selection, and that was even before we got to the knickers department. Yikes, good bye granny pants! The food hall was just as I remembered it, maybe even larger.
Shelves and shelves held out a huge selection of Christmas cakes. We don’t have this tradition. And to see them in the shops in October! Of course the explanation is that they are filled with alcohol, like rum or brandy, which improves the flavor with aging. Another ‘pudding’ that satisfyingly mixes crunch (the rock hard icing), booze, and gooeyness.
Sandwiches
The land that invented sandwiches. I could live, happily, off of sandwiches in Britain. Before I salivate over varieties, let me say that partially I love them because they are so readily available. A list of just some of the places where I have bought and eaten fabulous sandwiches: Prêt À Manger, Boots the Chemists (pharmacy!), grocery stores, department stores, bakeries, and motorway newspaper/snack shops. You can’t go wrong.
Types of sandwiches I love: prawn salad, egg salad, smoked trout, cheese and pickle (chutney), savoury cheese. The last was bought at a bakery in York, and was shredded cheese mixed with mayo and a sort of Russian dressing. So, the fillings are good and the breads are first rate too, with plenty of whole grain with chewy bits like oats and wheat berries. I bought the last prawn sandwich from an open fridge at a motorway rest stop. (My brother-in-law said “are you crazy?”) It was delicious and I couldn’t have made a better one. One more observation: wrap sandwiches have arrived! We got some great ones in St. Andrews.
Bakeries
Bakeries are great in Britain. They too can produce baffling moments. Most of the confusion comes from the large number of names for the loaves which look pretty much the same to me. I thought it was tricky in France (bagette, bâtard, and ficelle...that’s about all I learned from a year living in France); you’d think it would be easier in an English speaking country. I still can’t tell a bloomer from a farmer’s arse. So I just point at the one I want. And don’t wait until the end of the day; they plan to run out, and it’s your responsibility to apologize if you come in late and ask for something they can’t deliver. After all, you’ve embarrassed them. But this means that their products are fresh and not filled with preservatives. And when they say CREAM they mean just that, not CREME. Just avoid lardy cakes. That is, hard to believe, sweet pastry with some sort of meat fat drippings poured all over it. I bought one by mistake, and thought there had been some sort of terrible kitchen accident, involving missed footing and grease flying through the air and landing on the product.
Snack Food
Yummy, yummy, yummy!
Ribena blackcurrent juice. Maltesers malted milk balls. Smarties, like M&Ms. And especially Jaffa Cakes, a layer of orange jam on a cookie, covered with chocolate!
A happy accumulation of our favorite British snacks
Salads
Excuse me if I generalize but, when I lived in the UK, in the 80s, ‘salad’ meant a lonely lettuce leaf, sitting forlornly next to a precooked piece of meat. Picture it: a lovely pub, with a family space where we could be with our children, ordering chicken salad. Cold wrinkled drumstick arrives, snubbing one solitary green leaf. Same with ham salad. But now, we seem to have an international definition of salad....fresh vegetables and greens mixed with a suitable dressing, artfully arranged. Yea! By the way, what ever happen to Ploughmans? (Cheese, bread, and chutney plate.)
Presentation
We were so pleased see greater attention to presentation of food in the pubs. There’s been a definite upscaling all around—quality, creativity, presentation. It’s great!
Cell phones
We had mixed experiences with our cell phones. Aimée and Steve’s phone from Telestial had worked fine for them on their trip to Germany and Austria last year. They did have to have a friendly chat with customer service before this trip to add funds and keep their existing funds intact, but that appeared to have worked out OK. They got satisfactory calls from back home when we were within range of appropriate local carriers, but their phone refused to call out for the first week of our trip. It took another long chat with customer service from a street corner phone booth (‘phone box’) in Ledbury to finally get things sorted out completely. Proof of success occurred when Aimée and Steve talked to each other, one on the cell phone and the other on the pay phone, both squeezed cozily into the same phone box.
Sue Anne and Bruce’s phone, an unlocked GSM ‘world phone’ (actually two of them), had no problem detecting the local networks but wouldn’t register with any of them. After we got home we determined that our SIM card had apparently gotten swapped with another one when the phone was in for maintenance. A quick test with a new card from Mobal seems to show that things are working OK now, but we won’t know for sure till the next trip.
We’d probably also invest in a card from Virgin Mobile or another British carrier on a subsequent visit to the UK (available ahead of time on eBay so you can tell your friends what your number will be), as their pricing structure is much better oriented toward reasonable rates within the country and overseas.
That’s a nice thing about GSM phones—you can change their personality with a different SIM card, as long as they’re not locked to a specific carrier. Just be sure that your phone covers the European bands (actually the bands everywhere but in North America). The phone could be described as ‘World Phone,’ ‘tri-band,’ or ‘quad-band,’ or it could be one that only works overseas such as the one offered by Telestial. If your US cell phone is of the GSM variety (T-Mobile or AT&T), and meets one of the three descriptions above it should work in Europe, but be prepared for hefty roaming charges. If it’s unlocked then you could get much cheaper service by using a local SIM card in it.
Internet
Internet was available at most of the hotels and B&Bs where we stayed during our first week, but we didn’t encounter too many Internet cafés or shops in the various towns and cities. Our 400 year old cottage in Ledbury wasn’t on-line, and there were very few wireless signals floating around the area, mostly all encrypted or very weak. There was one shop in Ledbury and the ’net was also available at the library, both during their rather limited operating hours which didn’t mesh too well with ours. So somehow our schedule on this trip just didn’t allow as much opportunity to select and upload pictures as we had been able to do on previous trips.
We’re sorry if we disappointed our faithful readers with this lack of real time visual reporting of our activities, and we hope we’ve made up for it with the pictures, videos, and drawings that we’ve been able to put in there now and the various interpretive links that we’ve added in to the original text.
We did take advantage of a good Internet connection in Edinburgh for a video chat with Karin (and Edgar the dog) using the free service ooVoo. It worked great!
Fiftieth Anniversaries
Our two weeks in the UK coincided with a number of interesting 50th anniversary observances that were noted in the British press: Paddington Bear, Blue Peter, and the first scheduled transatlantic passenger jet flight.
Everybody knows Paddington. Aimée and Steve’s train trip to London took them to Paddington Station, which was right in the center of the celebration of the lovable little guy.
Blue Peter is an absolutely wonderful children’s show on BBC TV. Our kids both enjoyed watching it. It’s a whole mix of interesting and educational things. No two programs are the same. They are constantly conducting mail-in competitions on one subject or another, the winners of which receive a coveted plastic button (‘badge’ in British). We really mean coveted. People keep these with their treasures forever. Karin won one when she was seven! And the Queen has a gold one.
The British deHavilland Comet operated by BOAC, the predecessor to the overseas part of British Airways, was the first jet to fly passengers across the Atlantic in scheduled service. It beat by three weeks the Boeing 707 operated by arch-rival Pan American. Airline travel has changed so much since then!
That’s all for now, but we may be back!
It was fun recording our immediate experiences and impressions every day, and we still look back at these and relive those adventures as we experienced them. But we found when we came home after each trip that there were things we had taken from the experience that weren’t tied to the specific chronology of events but developed over time, from reflection, or from further research. So we found ourselves creating a summary of our impressions after each of those trips. The Germany one was pretty short, the China one went on forever since it was all so new and exotic, and the Italy one was in between. Here are the major impressions we took from this trip. This one got to be pretty long, because we saw so many things from so many perspectives.
This was Aimée and Steve’s first time in the UK, so they were taking it all in and comparing against mental images, travel books, TV programs and movies, and other sources of expectation. There was new stuff for Sue Anne and Bruce to learn and see as well, but with our history of having lived for three years in Cheltenham 25 years ago, and traveling around the country a few times since, our impressions were strongly aimed at understanding what had changed and what was still as we remembered. You can see that slant in a lot of our writing.
So here, in no particular order, are some of the impressions we all brought back with us. And some of the lessons that we learned. And a few hints that you might not find in the travel guides.
Impressions
Sue Anne captured many impressions of our trip in a series of pen and ink sketches and watercolors that we’ve included throughout the blog. The entire set of them is also available in an album on the Web.Artwork
Friendliness
Wow! Not a surprise, but it was wonderful to have all our memories and expectations so well reinforced. We described a lot of these occasions earlier in the blog, and there are so many others: the people at the harvest service and luncheon in Ledbury, the woman who ran out to our car in Northleach to tell us that we had left our postcards behind in the shop, all the hotel and B&B operators, various people in pubs, shops, museums, and tourist offices, the weaver at the Paisley Museum, the printer and the gift shop keeper at Beckford Silk and the proprietor who offered us a tour at a time when they weren’t offering tours, so many people who wanted to talk about the one or two pieces of America that they were familiar with, and of course our wonderful friends of many years whom we were so happy to be reunited with and introduce to Aimée and Steve.
Hotels and B&Bs
We mentioned this earlier in the blog, but it’s worth repeating. B&Bs and the smaller hotels often tend to be sideline activities, run by people who have other things going on in their lives. They might not even live on the premises or staff them full time. So they like to have a rough idea of when you expect to arrive, and they’re especially appreciative if you can give them a heads up if you’re going to be delayed. Arrive after hours and it’s likely that you’ll find a note saying that you can pick up the key at the pub across the street. Many are locked at night, so be sure you’ve got the door key when venturing out for dinner or an evening stroll. Be aware that hauling your own luggage up many flights of circular stairs can be part of the picture.
Many places will volunteer to provide the newspaper of your choice for you at breakfast, but don’t expect it to be free. Similarly, don’t pick up a paper that happens to be sitting at the reception desk on your way in to breakfast without inquiring, as it might have been reserved by somebody else. It’s not USA Today!
Guide Books
We were all helped by the suggestions provided by Rick Steves, both in his books and in his TV series. He had lots of good insights into places to go and into trip planning in general. Though he didn’t have anything to say about Ledbury! It was our own undiscovered gem.
Back in one of our early blog posts, we mentioned UNESCO World Heritage as a great source of information for travel planning. You can be sure that any place listed there is great!
Driving
We signed up both Sue Anne and Bruce as authorized drivers of our rental car, but Bruce ended up doing all of it. It wasn’t that expensive to add a driver, and it was good insurance. Aimée and Steve, on their first trip to the ‘drive on the left’ part of the world, were happy to be observers and map readers. It’s hard to believe given the relatively small size of the place, but we managed to travel over 1500 miles in the course of our two weeks.
We were very happy with the Vauxhall Zafira minivan that we had been upgraded to. We did manage to squeeze all our luggage into the rear cargo area and under the sliding cover there, though it became ever more a challenge as the trip progressed and suitcases expanded, whether from purchases or from increasingly inefficient packing. The seating area was quite roomy for all.
As mentioned earlier in the blog, the width and position of the A-pillar (the framework at the edge of the ‘windscreen’) was quite distressing, as it was perfectly positioned to interfere with the view of oncoming vehicles at the thousands of roundabouts we encountered during the course of our trip. They do love their roundabouts! And the windshield wipers and directionals (‘indicators’) seemed to have a mind of their own, under the control of a computer which thought itself smarter than the driver.
With his experience of three years’ residence and numerous business trips, Bruce re-adapted quickly to British driving. Sit on the right, drive on the left, shift with the left hand, do the correct things at the roundabouts, come out of U-turns on the proper side of the street—all these skills came back quickly, though the last one was always the scariest and still is. (A friend of ours once drove into a head-on when coming out of a U-turn on the wrong side, shortly after returning to the US from England. Fortunately all survived unscathed.)
Even more important, as we had learned in the past, the instinctive actions all worked out well—things like which direction you have to pay the most attention to when making certain kinds of moves. Those are the ones that can get you, because they’re the ones you often perform without consciously thinking about. We know! The one accident we had during the time we lived in Cheltenham was the result of doing something American—making a right turn without giving proper attention to oncoming traffic. Ironically, we found on this trip that the location of that accident had been turned into a mini-roundabout, which would have given us the right of way had it been like that 25 years ago.
Sue Anne and Bruce followed our long-established protocol that the driver would ask and the associate driver would respond (or interject) in a fashion that NO! (or a similarly emphatic negative response) would mean “Don’t do something,” and a positive response would mean that it was something safe to do. For example, "Is anybody coming the other way?" would not be an acceptable form of question. The term ‘Big Truck!’ was also an acceptable negative interjection back at the time when we were driving our left-hand drive American car and needed to pass (‘overtake’) on a narrow road, where you almost had to commit yourself before the left-seated driver could get a good enough view of the oncoming traffic. Another part of the protocol: the word ‘right’ is never used to mean ‘correct.’ It always means the opposite of ‘left.’
GPS was invaluable in getting us into and out of cities, and it was generally pretty useful in longer range navigation, though maps, signs, and map readers could have handled that just as well. Road signs were generally quite clear and complete. GPS did present us with that peculiar two mile routing down the narrow farm track in Scotland, but we trusted it and indeed it did take us to our destination, after we managed to pass the big tractor coming in the other direction. Call it an adventure!
There was one time when Bruce reacted too quickly to a misunderstood voice command. We were all appreciative of the correcting maneuver made by the big lumber truck that was behind us at the time. Very appreciative. And there’s always that danger of not working hard enough to remember a route that you navigate with GPS, and then finding yourself clueless on a subsequent trip down the same road without it. It’s kind of like not knowing somebody’s phone number because all you can remember is where they are on speed dial. The moral of all of this is that there’s no substitute for understanding the big picture.
Speed limits on the motorways and A-route divided highways (‘dual carriageways’) were up around 70 or 80 MPH. (Yes, speed limits are still in MPH and distances in miles, though it’s illegal to sell in ounces, pounds, or gallons. And you buy 2x4s by the meter. Pints of ale are still very much OK, however!) Most everybody stayed pretty close to the speed limits, one way or another, and GPS gave out an annoying sound whenever it found us going too fast.
There were signs everywhere warning of speed cameras, but we were never sure how many of them were actually lurking out there. The only apparent ones were in the construction zones on the motorways, where they enforced a 40 MPH average speed. Picture going in, picture going out, computer analyzes your license plate, rate = distance over time! There were no surprises in the final reconciliation of our rental car bill, so we apparently never got our picture taken while in a compromising position.
Another thing we had learned from before is the necessity of consciously snapping back into our normal driving pattern after leaving the UK. This lesson occurred on the first morning of a trip to France from the UK, over 25 years ago. Why was that crazy French guy driving toward us on the wrong side of the road? Oops! Well, Bruce did OK in that department when we got home this time, except for an occasional left handed grope for the gearshift. Nothing too dangerous about that.
Toilet Paper
Yes, this is worth writing about! It was once an important part of every American tourist’s European experience. It was the currency of conversation among first time travelers and a frequent souvenir to bring home and show around. There used to be two varieties: shiny waxed paper, and gray with the texture of coarse sandpaper. During Bruce’s liaison assignment at a British government organization in the early 80s, the official toilet paper there was of the waxed variety, each sheet inscribed in blue ink with the legend ‘H. M. Government Property’ or words to that effect. He managed to sneak into the Director’s private loo along with a few other naughty people when at work one weekend, and we found that even that was equipped with the waxed stuff.
We Americans there all had our own private rolls of the soft variety that we procured at the nearby US Air Force base, which we carried with us on our trips down the hallway. Some of our British colleagues and friends, having no real appreciation of cost differences between the two countries, were amused by their belief that soft toilet paper was the only reason we shopped at the base.
Toilet paper experiences are all in the past! Soft paper is everywhere! There’s none of the nasty stuff any more. Some of the dispensers were a challenge, but it was worth the effort. Hot air hand dryers were most everywhere as well, and usually pretty powerful. Not the wimpy ones we remembered from the past.
Finance
Forget about travelers checks, money changing, and all that nostalgic stuff. ATMs and credit cards are everywhere. There are only a few minor cautions to be aware of:
- Notify banks and credit card companies that you’ll be out of the country. The people who recently set the round-the-world helicopter record forgot to do this and found that they suddenly had a hard time buying gas.
- If possible, carry more than one of the same type of card. This precaution saved us on last year’s trip to Italy, when one of our banks suddenly decided (and only once) not to accept our ATM card, but another bank where we had an account was quite happy to take its own card at the same ATM. It’s also wise to keep these cards in separate places in case of loss.
- British credit cards are now becoming ‘smart’ ones. They have memory inside and gold contacts that allow the memory to be read and written to. A very few places were equipped only with readers for this sort of card, though the vast majority still worked fine with normal magnetic stripes.
- Dispose of accumulated coins as quickly as possible. They’re heavy, they dig holes in pockets, and their value can mount up pretty quickly considering that the one and two pound currencies are now coin, not paper.
- Paper currency and some coins were replaced with a new series a few years ago. The old ones can be redeemed at banks but are not accepted in trade.
- Scotland issues its own paper currency. It’s legal in England, but sometimes it takes a bit of work to convince people to accept it, especially the farther south you go.
- Be prepared for sticker shock. Although the official exchange rate is currently about $1.50 per pound, the price of many common items in pounds is often close to or even more than the number you would see in dollars back home in the US. For example, we saw a 500 ml package of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream in Ledbury priced at £4.49, while a similar pint package at our local supermarket in the US would go for $3.49. Do the math and you’ll see that there’s a premium of about 80 per cent on the unit cost!
Twenty-five years ago, sidewalks in England were simply filthy, especially in proximity to fish and chip shops (‘chippies’) or in dog walking territory. There’s been a revolution since then. Enough said.
Opening Hours
Opening hours for stores, restaurants, and especially pubs used to be very tightly controlled, by law, custom, or both. Among the most valuable information passed around among newly arrived members of our American community in Cheltenham, still living in hotels while awaiting the arrival of their household goods, was the discovery of restaurants that were open on Sunday. Indian and Chinese tended to be prevalent on this list.
Especially irksome was the inability to drop in at a favorite pub late on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon after a pleasant trip out in the countryside. That’s all changed now. ‘Licensing hours’ for pubs were progressively liberalized and ultimately abolished by 2005. It did take the publicans a while to decide how they were going to react to this newfound freedom, but by now things seem to have stabilized. Free enterprise!
We were surprised to find the grocery stores in Ledbury open as late as they were. It was convenient indeed—that’s how we got the strawberries for our celebration meal—but it did take a bit away from the evening charm of the place.
Britishisms
“Two countries divided by a common language,” wrote George Bernard Shaw! We tried to illustrate these differences throughout the blog as we came across them. There were none so striking that they interfered with communication, as has occasionally happened throughout history; it was just interesting to take them in and appreciate them as a part of the environment.
We talk that way among ourselves from time to time, just because it’s fun. Our favorite, an expression of thanks regularly used by a shopkeeper in Cheltenham, is “Thank you, thank you, thank you very much indeed, ta!” And it didn’t take a very large purchase at all to elicit this response from him. (‘Ta’ is said to be an abbreviation for ‘Thanks awfully (much).’ It’s more prevalent in certain strata of the class structure than in others. Makes it all the more fun to say. And it’s quick and easy. Ta!)
Politeness in general is a well known Britishism. A number of stores there have recently stopped accepting checks (‘cheques’), and it generally took them many words on an entire sheet of paper to announce this policy, acknowledge the consequent inconvenience, express their full regret for this action and their gratitude for your continued business (‘custom’), and explain all the reasons why they had to do it. Back in the US we’d accomplish this all in just two words, “No Checks!”
We wouldn’t call it impoliteness, but the British are very frank in their use of a number of terms that might be considered offensive in the US. ‘Spastic’ is one that quickly comes to mind, though its use is now on the downturn. ‘OAPs’ (Old Aged Pensioners, i.e. anybody of our age or greater) feature frequently in the news stories. We did often qualify for ‘concession’ prices (and never got carded), the best of which was Aimée and Steve’s 50% discount at a London theater on the best show in town. And we chuckled when we often came across this rather frank sign, which is also now the object of controversy (‘con traw’ ver see’).
Brits also have their own pronunciation for French words or even those that just sound French. Perhaps there’s a bit of spite going on here. For example, ‘chalet’ = ‘shally,’ ‘ballet’ sometimes = ‘bally,’ ‘brochures’ = ‘broshers,’ and the Belgian town Ypres of WW I fame is typically pronounced ‘Wipers!’
We very much enjoyed the book Brit-Think, Ameri-Think: A Transatlantic Survival Guide by Jane Walmsley. The author is an American married to a Brit, who has lived there for quite a while and come to see and appreciate many of the differences and the similarities. It’s a good mix of humor and sociology that can be appreciated and enjoyed on many levels, by the seasoned traveler or the aspiring one. Yes, it got a few low reviews at amazon.com (outdated, xenophobic, racist, brash defamatory lies!), but lots more reviewers thought highly of it and it averaged four out of five stars. We bought the first edition, and we’d surely give it five stars! It was reissued in a revised edition in 2003. You can get it used at Amazon for as little as $1.75 plus S&H.
The food essay, largely by Sue Anne
Tea, Cress, and Pudding
About cress.... delicious sprouts of mustard cress were strewn about the food and plates in a lavish and joyful fashion when we lived in the UK in the 1980s. Now there is nary a sight of it. I guess it was just a fad. But it was so wonderful. I have sprouted it myself at home, and it is fun and worth the few days’ wait.
Tea...this was such a short but confusing word to me when we moved to England. Are we talking dried leaves to put into a pot? Or evening meal for the family? Or something else? I used to hear our neighbors calling their children in for ‘tea,’ meaning that their supper was ready. I learned that occasionally the word supper is used, but mainly in the north. Well, I was born in northern New England, so maybe it makes sense somehow. We never did get used to hearing people speak of ‘eating their tea.’
Then there is the term ‘nursery tea’ which means stodgy sugary foods given to pre-schoolers. Such as jam sandwiches, crisps, and squash (orange kool-ade). Note that the word ‘jam’ in Britain includes what we would call either jam or jelly. ‘Jelly’ in Britain is Jello! We still remember the lightbulb moment when we discussed this with an English friend. Her eyes lit up and she said, “Ah, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! Now I understand.” To them it would be peanut butter and jam sandwiches, and the alternative—with Jello—was simply unimaginable.
Moving up the ladder of tea-ness is a nice cuppa. This is most likely grabbed in a cafe or teashop while out shopping. It is not expensive and there’s lots of cookie-like sweet treats to go with it. Bar cookies are called slices. If someone invites you over for a proper chat, odds are you will get a nice cuppa and a bickie (biscuit or cookie). Or possibly some very bad instant coffee. A cream tea is just a nice cuppa with a scone, jam, and some very thick clotted cream, maybe from Devon if you are close enough.
Now we get on to afternoon tea. This is usually served in hotels and costs a bunch of money. Pots of fancy tea, savory sandwiches including some kind of fish and meat, and several small cakes. I don’t much care for afternoon tea, because of the cost, and I dislike all that much sugar at one time. Now for the controversy. I was told that the way that Americans call afternoon tea ‘high tea’ is incorrect, the term meaning just family evening meal. Afternoon tea...fancy, high tea.....beans on toast. Americans refuse to believe this. But, I believe the term ‘high tea’ can be found on some signs in the UK. It is still unclear to me if this term is used authentically in the UK, or they are just luring in American tourists. But where did the term ‘high tea’ come from? I believe that if you were well off, this afternoon thing was just to tide you over until 8 PM when you could dine big time. If you were poor, ‘high tea’ or tea was all you got before you fell into bed.
Are you ready for another one? How about ‘tea towels’? Something to dry your tea with? Nope! We would call them ‘dish towels.’ They are used as part of the process called ‘washing up,’ which we would simply call ‘doing the dishes.’ And what does one use to do the washing up? Why washing up liquid, of course! Tea towels are the universal souvenir from scenic locations throughout the country, and when they wear out that means it’s time to go back.
Another befuddling term: pudding. It usually means simply dessert. It doesn’t appear to ever mean stuff like chocolate pudding. There is blanc mange (pronounced ‘bluh monge’), a French phrase for what North Americans would call pudding. You can buy it in a can, with the label Mont Blanc. Delicious. They do tend to use a bit of French in terms associated with food. It’s ‘serviette,’ never ‘napkin.’
Back to ‘pudding’. In Britain, three things are important: crunchiness, gooeyness, and booziness. The best and most popular puddings combine all three, such as trifle. ‘Trifle’ is such a glorious example of British understatement. It is large, showy, upon a pedestaled bowl, with about ten ingredients. I once remarked that, had Americans (known for hyperbole) invented it, a trifle would be called a humongous. The sherry is the booze. The almonds on the top are the crunch. And most importantly, the sherry soaked cake, the custard, the jam, the cream and the jello supply the FIVE kinds of gooeyness.
I had a very good boozy berries in Ledbury, and that was the exact name on the menu. And all those Pavlova type things that combine the crunch of meringue, usually store bought, with more whipped cream, and fruit. It all looks wonderful on a plate, and makes a huge mess as soon as you try to break into the meringue. It is not a combination I would have thought of. Speaking of cream, usually cream is not whipped, but poured from a pitcher unto a dessert that is already rich and creamy. Summer pudding is just gooey, no crunches, but very good. Runny custard (pouring) is added on top of basically every pudding for extra gooeyness. It is warm, and usually comes from an instant mix called Bird’s. A set custard, as is more common in North America, is a flan.
Black pudding is a sausage made from blood. You either find that intriguing or gross.
Yorkshire pudding
This is neither pudding nor dessert! This is why travel is so much fun, once you get used to being confused. Yorkshire pudding is traditionally an egg mixture which is cooked in the fat drippings of roast beef. If done well, it resembles a pop over, done poorly it looks and tastes like very greasy scrambled eggs. It is an old housewife’s trick to dampen down the guests’ appetites just before serving the meat course. I noticed on this visit to the UK that a new sort of Yorkshire pudding seems to have been invented....something from the freezer case that looks and tastes like puff pastry. It was less greasy. So on the whole, I’d say it is an improvement at the carvery line.
One other item on the buffet line at the carvery which I thought horrid was this: rock hard, grease-brown balls about an inch in diameter. For all the world, they looked like ammunition for some ancient firearm.
Upon inquiry, it was revealed to me by the carver that they were sage stuffing! They were over cooked, dry, tasteless, and so far removed from stuffing as to be silly. I myself now cook stuffing in a separate pan from the meat, so technically speaking it should not be called stuffing. Maybe it is time to call it dressing, as some do. But, it tastes of onion, sage, poultry seasoning, and bread and has a proper gooey-crunchy ratio. Oh well.
And while on the subject, carveries were much more prevalent at the pubs than they used to be. At some places it’s ‘all you can eat,’ but at others it’s only one time through. Pubs are definitely upscaling themselves.
Mince Pies
The above talk of ratios reminded me how much I like British mince (meat) pies. Originally, mince meat pies were a mixture of meat and spices. Now they are usually just the spice mixture with some cooked fruit like chopped apple and raisins. The filling is quite sweet and cloying. In the US, too much filling and not enough pastry crust to balance out the tastes. The pies I have had in England are small, about 2 to 3 inches in diameter. Better ratio. Delicious.
BUT, ‘mince’ in Britain usually means ground meat. Such as you would find in a meat spaghetti sauce. (Sometimes accompanied by peas—in the sauce!) Still confused? I tried.
Green Grocers
These are corner shops that just sell vegetables. Are there any left? I didn’t see any. I remember the lines (‘queues’) at Vick’s in Cheltenham. Down the block. And huge bags of Brussels sprouts (simply ‘sprouts’ in British), golf ball or greater sized, hanging out along the brick facade.
Post Offices
These are also declining in number, so I’m told. Consolidation and modernization. We had one in our neighborhood which was in the back third of a candy store, or in British parlance, a sweet shop. They also sold cards and small toys. People would line up along the barrels of sweets to get to the Post office staff behind the wire grills. And not just for stamps, or to mail a package. Folks were there to receive in hand their government payment for various things I didn’t understand. One was for assistance with underage children. The street windows of the sweet shop were taped all up with notices and help wanted signs. This is where we found the man who came to pull weeds in our garden during the intervals when it wasn’t raining.
Our neighborhood is now missing its green grocer and its post office. Wow. The pharmacy is still there, where we bought a lot of cough drops, fluoride tablets for the kids’ teeth, and wart removal supplies for first daughter’s foot. The chippie (fish and chip shop) was still there, as well as the local (pub). On the whole, it looked prosperous and welcoming.
Marks and Spencers
This is a well known chain found in every sizable town in Britain. In the 1980s, the clothes were durable, well made, good price, and drab. And British-made. Greys, browns, and lots of pleated skirts and sensible shoes. Many sizes actually, but few patterns. And a fair selection of old lady rain hats. And plenty of grey clothing for school uniforms—no private schools included, as each of those had a custom pattern but the state schools (‘public’ in US terminology) were all rather generic.
But the food selection was fantastic in the sense of fresh ingredients, quality ingredients, and pristinely washed and chopped vegetables. Their food always looked like paintings of food to me. It was the total opposite of shopping at the food stall markets, both indoors and out. In the latter, you could get the full range of quality, including plenty of rotting apples. Cleverly rotting from the inside out, so you couldn’t detect it until you got home.
We had read that during the 1990s and 2000s the fortune of Marks and Spencers was falling, and the brand was searching to redefine itself. On the first day on our trip this year, 2008, we took our traveling companions into a Marks and Spencers in Halifax. (Really, our first shopping of the day was in a 99 p shop. Like a Dollar Store. We wanted to give them the whole British shopping experience.) Well, were we surprised. The clothes were stylish. Not one pleated skirt. A huge selection, and that was even before we got to the knickers department. Yikes, good bye granny pants! The food hall was just as I remembered it, maybe even larger.
Shelves and shelves held out a huge selection of Christmas cakes. We don’t have this tradition. And to see them in the shops in October! Of course the explanation is that they are filled with alcohol, like rum or brandy, which improves the flavor with aging. Another ‘pudding’ that satisfyingly mixes crunch (the rock hard icing), booze, and gooeyness.
Sandwiches
The land that invented sandwiches. I could live, happily, off of sandwiches in Britain. Before I salivate over varieties, let me say that partially I love them because they are so readily available. A list of just some of the places where I have bought and eaten fabulous sandwiches: Prêt À Manger, Boots the Chemists (pharmacy!), grocery stores, department stores, bakeries, and motorway newspaper/snack shops. You can’t go wrong.
Types of sandwiches I love: prawn salad, egg salad, smoked trout, cheese and pickle (chutney), savoury cheese. The last was bought at a bakery in York, and was shredded cheese mixed with mayo and a sort of Russian dressing. So, the fillings are good and the breads are first rate too, with plenty of whole grain with chewy bits like oats and wheat berries. I bought the last prawn sandwich from an open fridge at a motorway rest stop. (My brother-in-law said “are you crazy?”) It was delicious and I couldn’t have made a better one. One more observation: wrap sandwiches have arrived! We got some great ones in St. Andrews.
Bakeries
Bakeries are great in Britain. They too can produce baffling moments. Most of the confusion comes from the large number of names for the loaves which look pretty much the same to me. I thought it was tricky in France (bagette, bâtard, and ficelle...that’s about all I learned from a year living in France); you’d think it would be easier in an English speaking country. I still can’t tell a bloomer from a farmer’s arse. So I just point at the one I want. And don’t wait until the end of the day; they plan to run out, and it’s your responsibility to apologize if you come in late and ask for something they can’t deliver. After all, you’ve embarrassed them. But this means that their products are fresh and not filled with preservatives. And when they say CREAM they mean just that, not CREME. Just avoid lardy cakes. That is, hard to believe, sweet pastry with some sort of meat fat drippings poured all over it. I bought one by mistake, and thought there had been some sort of terrible kitchen accident, involving missed footing and grease flying through the air and landing on the product.
Snack Food
Yummy, yummy, yummy!
Ribena blackcurrent juice. Maltesers malted milk balls. Smarties, like M&Ms. And especially Jaffa Cakes, a layer of orange jam on a cookie, covered with chocolate!
A happy accumulation of our favorite British snacksExcuse me if I generalize but, when I lived in the UK, in the 80s, ‘salad’ meant a lonely lettuce leaf, sitting forlornly next to a precooked piece of meat. Picture it: a lovely pub, with a family space where we could be with our children, ordering chicken salad. Cold wrinkled drumstick arrives, snubbing one solitary green leaf. Same with ham salad. But now, we seem to have an international definition of salad....fresh vegetables and greens mixed with a suitable dressing, artfully arranged. Yea! By the way, what ever happen to Ploughmans? (Cheese, bread, and chutney plate.)
Presentation
We were so pleased see greater attention to presentation of food in the pubs. There’s been a definite upscaling all around—quality, creativity, presentation. It’s great!
The impressions continue
Cell phones
We had mixed experiences with our cell phones. Aimée and Steve’s phone from Telestial had worked fine for them on their trip to Germany and Austria last year. They did have to have a friendly chat with customer service before this trip to add funds and keep their existing funds intact, but that appeared to have worked out OK. They got satisfactory calls from back home when we were within range of appropriate local carriers, but their phone refused to call out for the first week of our trip. It took another long chat with customer service from a street corner phone booth (‘phone box’) in Ledbury to finally get things sorted out completely. Proof of success occurred when Aimée and Steve talked to each other, one on the cell phone and the other on the pay phone, both squeezed cozily into the same phone box.
Sue Anne and Bruce’s phone, an unlocked GSM ‘world phone’ (actually two of them), had no problem detecting the local networks but wouldn’t register with any of them. After we got home we determined that our SIM card had apparently gotten swapped with another one when the phone was in for maintenance. A quick test with a new card from Mobal seems to show that things are working OK now, but we won’t know for sure till the next trip.
We’d probably also invest in a card from Virgin Mobile or another British carrier on a subsequent visit to the UK (available ahead of time on eBay so you can tell your friends what your number will be), as their pricing structure is much better oriented toward reasonable rates within the country and overseas.
That’s a nice thing about GSM phones—you can change their personality with a different SIM card, as long as they’re not locked to a specific carrier. Just be sure that your phone covers the European bands (actually the bands everywhere but in North America). The phone could be described as ‘World Phone,’ ‘tri-band,’ or ‘quad-band,’ or it could be one that only works overseas such as the one offered by Telestial. If your US cell phone is of the GSM variety (T-Mobile or AT&T), and meets one of the three descriptions above it should work in Europe, but be prepared for hefty roaming charges. If it’s unlocked then you could get much cheaper service by using a local SIM card in it.
Internet
Internet was available at most of the hotels and B&Bs where we stayed during our first week, but we didn’t encounter too many Internet cafés or shops in the various towns and cities. Our 400 year old cottage in Ledbury wasn’t on-line, and there were very few wireless signals floating around the area, mostly all encrypted or very weak. There was one shop in Ledbury and the ’net was also available at the library, both during their rather limited operating hours which didn’t mesh too well with ours. So somehow our schedule on this trip just didn’t allow as much opportunity to select and upload pictures as we had been able to do on previous trips.
We’re sorry if we disappointed our faithful readers with this lack of real time visual reporting of our activities, and we hope we’ve made up for it with the pictures, videos, and drawings that we’ve been able to put in there now and the various interpretive links that we’ve added in to the original text.
We did take advantage of a good Internet connection in Edinburgh for a video chat with Karin (and Edgar the dog) using the free service ooVoo. It worked great!
Fiftieth Anniversaries
Our two weeks in the UK coincided with a number of interesting 50th anniversary observances that were noted in the British press: Paddington Bear, Blue Peter, and the first scheduled transatlantic passenger jet flight.
Everybody knows Paddington. Aimée and Steve’s train trip to London took them to Paddington Station, which was right in the center of the celebration of the lovable little guy.
Blue Peter is an absolutely wonderful children’s show on BBC TV. Our kids both enjoyed watching it. It’s a whole mix of interesting and educational things. No two programs are the same. They are constantly conducting mail-in competitions on one subject or another, the winners of which receive a coveted plastic button (‘badge’ in British). We really mean coveted. People keep these with their treasures forever. Karin won one when she was seven! And the Queen has a gold one.
The British deHavilland Comet operated by BOAC, the predecessor to the overseas part of British Airways, was the first jet to fly passengers across the Atlantic in scheduled service. It beat by three weeks the Boeing 707 operated by arch-rival Pan American. Airline travel has changed so much since then!
That’s all for now, but we may be back!
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