Great Britain

I have visited Britain twice, once in 1982 and then again in 1993. During my first trip, I spent about two weeks in Wales, and on the later trip I spent about a month traveling through England, Scotland, Wales, and also Ireland. In this narrative, I will mainly focus on the second trip, because in the course of it I revisited the part of Wales where I had traveled before. In addition, I remember more details from the second trip, as the first one occurred when I was but 15 years old.

For this trip to Britain, I traveled with a close friend, Tom Elliott. We decided to travel in March, hoping for fewer tourists and good rates in the youth hostels. As luck would have it, we also enjoyed remarkably good weather, and we were only seriously rained on once, in Ireland. We set out with the idea that an adventure, especially a long trip to a foreign land, should begin on foot, so we sallied forth from my apartment in Virginia intending to walk to the metro. We would then take the train to the airport and then fly to Britain. It was a good plan, and one that did in fact work out. There was only one snag: I left my traveler's checks on the dresser in my bedroom and therefore had to run madly back to my apartment (about a mile and a half extra distance). Luckily, I always insist on having far more time than I could ever possibly need. Otherwise, we might have missed our plane.

Landing in Gatwick Airport about 10 hours later, we at once hopped on a train for Salisbury. Here we first realized just how efficient the British railway system is. Every train runs on time or nearly so, and if a train is so much as one minute late, the railway authorities broadcast a public apology! (If Amtrak is within a half-hour of their scheduled time, they consider it good work, the wretches.) Anyway, one can go just about anywhere in Britain using the trains, the buses, and his legs. A few hours by train and we arrived in Salisbury, by now exhausted and hungry. However, we didn't want to waste a day, so we arranged for lodging and then set out for Stonehenge. When we arrived at the monument, it was cold, windy, cloudy, and a bit rainy -- the perfect atmosphere for viewing the ancient stones. For me, my first sight of Stonehenge represented in some ways the culmination of years of planning. Throughout high school, I had studied Celtic history and archaeology far more diligently than my assigned schoolwork, and of course I wanted to visit Stonehenge more than any other place I had read about. Even so, I was stunned at the profound sensation I felt when I saw the monument for the first time. I felt as if I were gazing down the well of time and that I might somehow slip though a time-warp and be among the ancient people who lived in Britain so many centuries before. (I know, sounds like I have been watching too much Star Trek, but I must say at this point that I am not a "trekkie" and never have been. Apologies to the fans of the show out there, Ann in particular, but I think it is the most wretched, absurd TV series that I have ever seen, and that is saying a lot, given how bad American television is.) Anyway, absolutely nothing unusual happened, and after freezing in the cold wind for quite a while, Tom and I returned to Salisbury. There we found a chip shop and had the world's best fish and chips. Believe me, nothing goes down better when you haven't eaten in hours and you've been out in the cold for an extended period. After our meal, we went to the cathedral, which unfortunately was covered in scaffolding, and then we visited the first of many British pubs that we would investigate over the course of the trip before retiring for the night.

The next day, we set out by bus from Salisbury to Swindon. The weather was fine, and the sun shone warmly over the Wiltshire countryside. Swindon proved to be a working-class town, quite unlike the tourist-oriented Salisbury. We arrived in the late morning and began arranging for lodging and further transport. We stayed in a small bed and breakfast run by an elderly lady who had not been outside of her own neighborhood since 1950, near as I could figure. "Do all Americans wear hats like those?" was her first question to us. (Tom and I were both wearing hats, but not the ubiquitous baseball caps that one normally sees in the U.S. When I travel, I wear a felt or leather hat with a wide brim -- actually, the clearest description I could give would be to call it an "Indiana Jones hat." Such headgear is quite useful, really, as it keeps off both sun and rain, and if I get the occasional "where's the bull whip?" sort of comment, it's small price to pay for the usefulness of the hat. Tom was also wearing a hat, a jaunty sort of "Moose River" affair with the brim turned up in the back.) Well, to get back to the story, we squared our gear away, while being instructed not to come in too late that evening and not to be late for breakfast the next day. After getting settled in, we caught a bus to Ashbury and from there walked to Uffington, stopping at Weyland's Smithy on the way.

Uffington is a very small village, but it is the site of two very interesting archaeological treasures. The first is Uffington Castle, which is actually a Celtic hill-fort that was built in the Iron Age, around 400-200 B.C. (I am afraid that despite the years of study, I am beginning to forget when things were built.) The fort is, of course, atop a high hill. It is about 100 yards in diameter, perhaps more, and consists of two concentric earthen walls with a moat between them. Near the "castle" is the White Horse of Uffington. In ancient times, the Celtic people of Britain took advantage of the white, chalky soils in the area and, cutting away the turf, created an enormous image of a horse on the hillside. The horse is very stylized, but it is clearly a horse nonetheless. I believe it was created in honor of the Celtic goddess Epona, probably also in the 400-200 B.C. period. Getting out to Uffington is a three-mile slog from Ashbury -- the road is not bad but one does have to go through some mud. By the time we had visited the castle and horse and returned to Ashbury, we were ready for a pint. Unfortunately, the pub was not open, so we took the bus back to Swindon to get dinner and find a pub there. We ended up in the Royal Oak, which was pleasant enough. We had been warned that it was "a rough place," but it turned out to be nothing of the kind, at least by American standards. Before we reached to Royal Oak, however, we did have one other rather bizarre experience. We had entered a restaurant to get a quick cola and change a traveler's check. As we were doing so, a guy came in, girlfriend in tow, and proceeded to chew out one of the waiters, who apparently had said something to the girlfriend. I never did find out what had happened, and really we were not very interested. We left the restaurant and began walking across a nearby square. Suddenly, Tom seized my arm and yanked me to one side. At that moment a blurred shape zoomed by -- the waiter, as it turned out -- hotly pursued by the fellow who had accosted him in the restaurant, and who was carrying a shillelagh (something I had not noticed before). The two rounded a corner, and we never saw them again, so I cannot tell you how it turned out.

The next morning, the owner of the B&B did provide a terrific breakfast, and we enjoyed every mouthful, despite unnecessary warnings not to let any of the food go to waste. From Swindon, we took the railways to Birmingham, where I planned to visit an old friend from my earlier trip to Britain. On the train, I sat next to a friendly Englishman who spent the better part of the trip waxing enthusiastic about the joys of living in Florida. Between the sunny weather and the submarine sandwiches, I think he was ready to spend the rest of his life there. Birmingham reminded me a bit of Baltimore, Maryland, but on the whole I have little to say about it. As I said, I was there to see a friend, and that was great, but that's about it.

From Birmingham, we again traveled by train, this time to Edinburgh, Scotland. I must say that Edinburgh is everything anyone could wish for in a city, or so it seemed to me. In some ways, the city resembles Paris, in that it boasts a plethora of monuments and places of historical interest, as well as fabulous architecture. The main difference between the two cities, as I saw it, was that Paris has more sites spread over a large area, whereas Edinburgh has fewer sites all together in the center of town. The town center consists of three hills, one of which is a rock outcrop called "Arthur's Seat." I presume that is a reference to the one and only (or once and future) King Arthur -- I guess he got around. The two other hills I call "castle hill" (because that is where Edinburgh Castle is located) and "monument hill" (because it is topped with numerous monuments, including an unfinished replica of the Parthenon). From Edinburgh Castle, the Royal Mile (Cannongate Street, for the most part) stretches down to the Palace of the Holy Rood, which is a marvelous site, though one that I only saw the outside of, as Tom and I were pinching pennies on this trip and generally only went inside a place if there was not charge to do so.

Other attractions in Edinburgh include the Sir Walter Scott memorial, which is an intricate spire that rises in the center of town and provides excellent, if alarming, views of the buildings and streets below. The monument hill is the location of a cemetary with an Abraham Lincoln memorial in addition to the unfinished Parthenon, and Arthur's Seat offers a nice day hike and an interesting ruin. (Here let me insert a brief self-congratulatory anecdote: when Tom and I first saw monument hill, we noticed the strangely Grecian structure there. Tom asked me what I thought it was, and I said "it seems they planned to build the Parthenon but ran out of money halfway through." Later, while standing near the very structure, we asked a local what the story was. The reply: "They were building the Parthenon but ran out of money.") At any rate, Edinburgh seemed a neat town, and we enjoyed its architechture and historical grandeur, as well as its quirks. On Cannongate Street is a tarot shop, which we found interesting despite our limited interest in fortune-telling, and the unaffiliated youth hostel is a real center of local (and not-so-local) youth culture. I am not really able to describe it -- suffice to say it felt like being on the cover of a recent U2 album. However, the oddest experience I had in Edinburgh was an encounter with a Budweiser-drinking Scotsman in one of the city's pubs. He chatted with me in a distracted way for the better part of two hours, all the while looking off in the other direction and sipping his Bud. Truth to be told, I could barely understand him, in part due to his accent and in part due to his habit of looking away while speaking. He went on at great length about the virtues of "the King of Beers," ignoring my protests that Bud isn't even good beer by American standards, and then suddenly he started drinking tequila. This was a truly surreal scene, but I just enjoyed it for what it was worth and sipped my pint of (Scottish) bitter.

After a couple of days in Edinburgh, we jumped on a train intending to go to the Isle of Skye. (Here let me recommend the BritRail Pass, or alternatively the Brit-Ireland Pass, as a great way to get around. I bought 10 days of unlimited rail travel and two ferry rides across the Irish Sea for about $400. I think the same amount of travel bought one ticket at a time would have cost three times that much.) At the train station, Tom and I learned that we could go from Edinburgh to Inverness in about three hours, arriving at noon. To our dismay, we also learned that the train crossing the highlands to Kyle of Lochalsh would leave Inverness at 12:10. Thinking in Amtrak terms, we were certain that would prove an impossible connection, but as it turned out, it was anything but. Accepting the word of a Scotrail employee in Edinburgh, we attempted to make the 10-minute connection, and as it happened, we pulled in to Inverness at 12 noon on the dot. The other train was on the next track -- a four-second walk from our train -- and we boarded at 12:01. We actually had to wait nine minutes before it pulled out! Astonishing, but just one more example of how well British trains run.

Both legs of the rail trip to Skye were spectacular. The Scottish highlands are cold, desolate, and in March are still subject to snow at the higher elevations. The two trains carried us through spectacular scenery, but the Inverness-Kyle of Lochalsh line was the real prize of the trip. (In fact, I had long wanted to take that very train ride, as it was featured on a PBS series called "Great Railway Journeys of the World." I think Michael Palin hosted that particular installment.) Anyway, the ride to the Kyle is a long, slow roll across the heart of the highlands, and the open train windows allow the passengers to breath the strangely heady mixture of pure highland air and diesel fumes. Miles of uninhabited lands pass outside the carriage windows, and a passenger will see far more sheep than people on this trip. Gradually, the lochs and mountains of the center of Scotland are replaced by sea-lochs (fjord-like inlets) and lower hills. The line ends at the Kyle, where the ferry provides an enjoyable crossing to Kyleakin, on the Isle of Skye itself. (I hear that there is now a bridge, but when I was there in 1994, there was just the ferry. In a way, I think it is sad that the traditional ferry has been replaced.)

The Isle of Skye is beautiful, if desolate. Most of the Isle is like an extension of the highlands, with the center of the island dominated by the Cullins of Skye. Treeless, these hills stand like great heaps of lumpy oatmeal, and my understanding is they are great for hiking. Unfortunately, I cannot confirm this personally. One of the big disadvantages of being way out in the Inner Hebrides is that Britain's ultra-efficient public transportation system suddenly falls apart and becomes leisurely (and expensive). The short version is that there was no way for us to get out to the Cullins and then make it back in time to get to Wales (our next stop) on schedule. This was a disappointment, but we made up for it as best we could.

We did not make up for it on day one on Skye, however. That day, we decided to take a hike that we will forever remember as the "bog slog." What looked like an innocent hillside led to a moor worthy of the "Hound of the Baskervilles," and Tom and I ended up struggling for every step, as our boots became weighted down with mud. We did see some interesting fungi and lichen, but on the whole, it was not the most enjoyable walk we had ever taken. Well into the hike -- too far to turn back -- and close to exhausted, we realized that we were not too far from a road. However, there was no way to approach the road without trespassing on someone's land, as houses surrounded the street. We pondered the situation and decided that in a country with strict gun-control, it was a good bet we would not be shot if we crossed someone's yard. That proved to be the case, and we reached the road with just a small outcry from one of the local dogs. Only after we were walking on the road itself did we hear an enraged cry of "And stay out!" from some indignant, and vociferous, local. I never found out precisely why he was so upset -- we never actually saw him -- and nothing came of the incident. We spend the night in a youth hostel in Kyleakin, enjoying a soccer game with the locals in the town's pub. We also made the crossing back to Kyle of Lochalsh to visit the pub there. The soccer game, by the way, was the Glasgow Rangers against the team from Marseille, and believe me, Tom and I made a point to pull hard for the Rangers. The crowd in that pub was extremely fiesty, and their disdain for the French team was almost beyond comprehension. It seemed that every close-up shot of one of the French players incited a cry of "look at that faggot!" (Actually, they probably used a different epithet, but I cannot remember precisely what it was, and it is not all that important, anyway. The bottom line is that Skyelanders pull for the Rangers and would not be very comfortable in the Bay Area.) Really, I think that the crowd at a New York Mets vs. Philadelphia Phillies game would be more peaceful (having in-laws from Pennsylvania, I have in fact had some direct experience in this).

The next day, a short bus ride took us to Armadale, a small town on Skye's southeast coast. This part of the island, from which one can look across the Sound of Sleat at the mainland beyond, is less desolate than the areas further north. There are thick, dark woods down by the shoreline, and though the moors on the higher ground are exposed and windswept, Armadale itself seems relatively sheltered. Having arrived in the town and stowed our gear in the local youth hostel, Tom and I set out on another hike. We planned to take the road toward Tarskavaig (on the far side of the peninsula on which Armadale is located) to take in the view from its highest point. This proved to be a six-mile round trip, but it was worth every step. The first part of the hike took us along the coast, and we enjoyed the view of the sound and the Scottish mainland. Then, still near the coast, we stepped into the forest and explored a bit, stopping to eat breakfast (a loaf of bread and some cheese, cut with a Swiss Army knife) in a small clearing. After eating, we returned to the road, following it up the hill toward the center of the peninsula. At one point, we passed a small cottage, and we could just hear the sound of someone playing a set of bagpipes. I am not certain whether the piper was some distance off or in the cottage, as we never saw him. Finally, after three miles of walking, we reached the high point of the road, where we set out across the moors for a nearby rise. Getting there proved to be a bit of a slog, but at last we reached it and were rewarded with a view of a lake, the other side of the peninsula, the sea beyond, and the lower half of the Cullins of Skye in the far distance (the tops were socked in with clouds). We spent some time enjoying the view and then returned to the road, briefly toying with the idea of continuing to Tarskavaig a few miles further on. In the end, however, we turned back for Armadale, reaching it in a state of considerable hunger. Happily, there is a nice tea-house by the shore, and we were soon well-fed.

Unfortunately, I soon discovered that I had lost my wallet, including my credit cards, my traveler's checks, and about $60 in cash. The seams had given out on the cargo pockets of the trousers I was wearing, and somewhere in the six miles of walking Tom and I had done that day, the wallet had dropped out. My heart sank as I imagined spending the rest of the afternoon retracing my steps, hoping my wallet had not fallen out in the moor, where I would never find it. In the end, I decided to just let it go. I could call my wife back in the states and have her cancel the credit cards, and of course traveler's checks are easily replaced. The only permanent loss would be the cash, but I could get by without it. We returned to the youth hostel so that I could start dialing.

At the hostel, to my astonishment, I was recognized by the staffer on duty, who had my wallet. It seems a young Swedish woman had come across the wallet by the road near the hostel, so I suspect it had fallen out of my pocket at the beginning of the walk. I went to thank her and had to endure a brief lecture on being careful with my valuables, but I reckoned it a small price to pay for the safe return of my wallet. Let's hear it for Sweden!

Subsequent to the recovery of my wallet, Tom and I found a small but elegant restaurant in the town and enjoyed an excellent meal. The next day, we caught the ferry to Mallaig and then boarded a train for Glasgow. The line from Mallaig to Glasgow passes through some of Scotland's most beautiful scenery, but unfortunately, it is a fast train and thus is closed off from the outside world. In that regard, it provides a somewhat more sterile experience than does the Kyle of Lochalsh train that one takes from Inverness. Still, it was a wonderful ride, and though the weather was rather damp and misty, we saw lovely lochs, forests (or tree farms), and the highlands. The Loch Lomand and Fort William areas were the most scenic, and I can report that the lower half of Ben Nevis is huge (the top was socked in when I passed). It may not been Himalayan in scale, but up close, it's a big'un!

Here I must apologize in advance to Glaswegians. I spent very little time in Glasgow, and I am quite certain that my impression of it was formed in haste and is incomplete. That said, I found Glasgow to be a dump. A more dismal city I can scarcely imagine (Elizabeth, New Jersey excepted, of course), and I was happy to leave it. My one interesting (albeit slightly unpleasant) experience there was a meal that consisted of an American-style pancake (such as one would see at IHOP) adorned with mushrooms and gravy. Yuck. Well, at least the waitress was nice.

After a night in Glasgow, Tom and I decided to set a British Rail endurance record of some sort and therefore hopped on yet another train, this one bound for Wales. Eleven hours later and we found ourselves in Haverford West, where a friend of mine had agreed to meet us. All went according to plan, and that evening saw us in Dinas Cross, which is not far from Newport (also known as Trefdraeth), a small Welsh village on the Dyfed coast that I had visited some 11 years earlier.

There is much to see in the southwest region of Wales, and quite a bit of it is clustered around Newport. In addition to the marvelous cromlech at Pentre Ifan (pictured at the top of this page), there is also a Medieval high cross at the church in Nevern, which is also the site of a spooky old graveyard shaded by ancient yew trees. One of the yews bleeds red sap from a wound in its side and is thus known as the Bleeding Yew of Nevern. Not far from Newport and Nevern is St. Davids, where the famous Saint David's Cathedral is located. (More to come...)

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