Up the Ben and Down the Boozer

Storm Over Teagardens

Living in western Massachusetts we are savvy on blizzards, nor-easters and summer thunder. This is the way it is and has always been.  We bundle up and deal. Yesterday changed all that as we received a line of  summer weather that resulted in three  tornado touch-downs better suited to the wide plains of nowhere and things blew apart.

Up here, just west of the mighty Connecticut River, we had hail and winds and thunder and lightening and suffered the great loss of trees. Losing trees is to me visceral as I think I may once have been one. Just south of here people lost homes, jobs and lives. The sky went green and the winds swirled and the horses in the barn tried their best to kick their way out past the deafening hail and wind and noise. Sirens roared and television news focused on loss and anguish and damage and terror.

I thought about Australia. When people talk about environmental challenges in Oz they tend to mention all the wildlife (scorpions, snakes, jellyfish and sharks) that can kill you but they don't usually mention storms unless they involve water or fire. The first day we were there we met a brown recluse spider
who took ownership of our Byron Bay veranda, dangling down every evening on its silvery, poisonous thread. We avoided running our small car over a huge snake sunning in the road by driving up the verge.

A week later we were acclimatized-- swimming behind shark fences, avoiding bluebottles, wearing sun hats with huge brims and slapping flat white  sun block over exposed skin. Arriving on yet another sunny day in Teagardens, a watery town north of Sydney,  we checked into the town's hotel/motel which offered backpacker rooms set around a tropical courtyard, each room demarcated by pairs of hiking boots placed in the sun to de-odorize. Wandering down to the Myall River to find dinner we settled 

on Mumm's and a table in the tent where we could see the water and enjoy the cool evening.  The restaurant was pleasantly full and we ordered fish, wine and greens.

The wind picked up when the wine arrived. By the time dinner came the wind had risen and we heard thunder from across the river. When we could see the lightening I was gauging the conductivity relevance of  metal table to metal chairs to metal tent poles. This lightening was not what we generally know (or knew until yesterday) in western Massachusetts. It appeared as a gilded  serrated column of spectacular orange and gold, often two or three or twelve driven deeply and directly from sky to water, sky to ground in a vertical and deadly ear-splitting  thrust. Tom happily tucked into his tilapia but I had just finished a book where the key character dumbly dies from being electrocuted by trying to fish a spoon out from under the fridge.  When the tent lights went out with the next fiery explosion there was a brief silence amongst the diners until one Ozzie voice called out to unseen waitstaff  in the darkness, "Oy mate, bring us another bottle of the shiraz?" and the sounds of pleasant conversation and clinked glass resumed, audible briefly between thunderclaps.

It took only one more huge and dramatic flash for me to grab Tom, leave our meal and rush to pay our check in the generator-fueled main restaurant. We foolishly ran handheld together down the center of the deserted street in an Armegeddon downpour chased by bolts of serious electricity.  By the time we reached the motel we were drenched and exhilarated in the way that happens only when you have dually toyed with death and reaped the highs of powerful negative ions. We dried as best we could with the motel's ancient towels and stayed awake until the wee hours watching night to day as each bolt lit our view of Oceana, listening to the world at its end.

The planet is at a strange place right now, weather-wise.  If the choices are between  American panic and Ozzie calm, I'd say open your cellar door to the neighbors, don't toy with disaster by video-iphoning that tornado and have another glass of the red.

 

 

In the Shadow of Castle Drogo: Sitting With Mabel

   Drewsteignton, Devon    July

Signing away your week's holiday on an unknown, unseen, not-sure village/cottage and in this case--pub, is both intriguing and unnerving. We knew we wanted to be in Dartmoor but we weren't sure where.   

Rule of  Thumb: when in doubt book through the National Trust Holiday Cottages. While not cheap (a caravan is cheap and while a week with the National Trust is increasingly Not Cheap they are dropping their rates--next year), reliability, location/location, ambiance, hot water and bath tub, fireplace/stove, and double bed with duvet. Some people (according to the guest book I always read in the first ten minutes of our tenancy while drinking my "welcome" cup of tea, eating my "welcome" biscuit and watching Tom bring our stuff in) get excited about the welcome tea tray, while others declare a life-long love with the cottage, the area, and the woman who prepared the tea tray. You can count on the Trust. 

  So here we were, week- long tenants of Trinity Cottage smack dab in the middle of the village square, thirty footsteps to the Drewe Arms pub and high above the glory of Dartmoor. We parked the car in the square right outside our cottage which was one of a long row of medieval cottages called Glebe on this side of the square. We unpacked suitcases from home filled with items necessary to a week away and some hot sauce,  items from the Sainsbury's back in Dartmouth: wine, beer, real butter, real bread, eggs, bacon, garlic cloves, yogurts, cheese, toilet paper, paper towels, cling wrap, some nice Spanish salami, five candles and Hello magazine, and went to the pub.

The thatched pub was originally the Druid Arms until 1915-ish when Julius Drewe (Home and Colonial Stores tycoon and creator of the peculiar Castle Drogo which stands crumbling high over the  nearby River Teign) paid the brewery to change its name to Drewe Arms to match his. Let us all be Drewe. Outdoor seating on tables tucked away from the wind in front and in the garden behind, the pub has recently been renovated but the original part has been left largely undisturbed. This means that you walk in a narrow aisle, order a drink at the  tiny bar drawn from carefully coddled shelf- casks in the original tap room and carry it either outside or into the snug unless you want the more upscale experience in one of the dining rooms.

Our first drink at the Drewe Arms was in the back garden under a summer sky, all by ourselves.  Trees in heavy green leaf, a nice breeze and a blue sky, we congratulated ourselves on a choice well made. Later, after a home-cooked dinner of real bread and real cheese  and Dartish chicken we went for a long walk where we got only modestly off-piste through some meadows, over stiles and past cows, circling back through the village churchyard which landed us right in front of the pub again. Leaving the evening's  gloaming for the cozily lit interior, we were warmly welcomed as neighbors for the week and forgiven for cooking our own meal rather than eating out.  The pub lends itself to a few people just standing in the hallway with drinks,  minding the doorway and chatting to the bar staff. Tom stayed to talk and I took my chardonnay into the snug. 

A British pub snug is just what it sounds like--a cozy place to sit with a drink. Think settle or stool, often an open fire and room for a few couples or a group of after-work celebrants. On this evening it was just me-- and Mabel. Taking in the satisfactory fire, the dart board and the small hatch into the bar, I turned my head  and met the  rather critical glance of a small round woman with arms made powerful from years of pulling pints.  Gazing towards the dartboard from her portrait gracing the far wall, she struck a familiar chord. It wasn't  just because she was portrayed sitting just where I was (where she would have been looking out the small window opposite me), nor was it that this (according to the plaque beneath the photograph) had  been her pub for 75 years.

No, Mabel and I had met before and it wasn't until that night that I woke remembering when.

We all make memories of where we've been or where we would like to be. I tend to buy books and it was in one of those purchased years ago that Mabel had made her appearance. A small collection of photos of British pubs, hers was a riveting face  and I remembered every detail of that well worn snug and her tired slump. You could tell her feet hurt. A small book of ancient buildings and their as-they-were interiors, I'd enjoyed flipping through it for as long as it sat accessibly on a living room table. I'd marked pages of pubs I thought we should someday visit. Even when it was eventually disappeared to a bookshelf I had occasionally pulled it down to "be there" and had spent many a moment with Mabel. Hers was an uncanny portrait, one of those that make you imagine an entire history. I sometimes thought I could hear Mabel sigh and wondered what she was looking at. Now I knew.

According to a 1995  article in the British Independent which chronicles the village's brief fling with running the pub themselves; Mabel Mudge, known to one and all as "Auntie", officially retired as Britain's longest-serving pub landlady on October 4, 1994. It was her 99th birthday. In 75 years at the Drewe Arms in Drewsteignton, Devon, she presided over one big change: the installation of running water and electricity.

Suffice it to say that we had a delightful week exploring Dartmoor, getting lost as night closed in on the Two Moors Way from Fingle Bridge past Castle Drogo, avoiding oncoming cars on high-hedged single-track lanes and finishing each day at Auntie Mabel's, as the Drewe Arms is still called in the village. We joined most of the surrounding population in the pub's Long Room for the final (and disappointing) game of the World Cup. Mabel's great-great nieces and nephew chased after their dogs in the square in the long summer evenings and their mother brought us a dinner tray of home-made roasted baby courgettes.   

When we returned home, I dug out the photo book and looked for Mabel. There she was (page 22) and will be. Turning back to the front (they are all lovely pubs) I laughed at what I had written to Tom on the flyleaf:

     "Oh down to the boozer we'll go, down to the boozer we'll go.

      We'll hold hands over Black and Tans 'til the candles burn down low."

Looking back at the Drewe Arms, I thought Auntie Mabel would have had a thing or two to say about that. 

 

 

 

 

Discovering Doc Martin

Permalink: http://megrobb.typepad.com/britishtravel/2011/02/doc-martin.htm

 
Cornwall, November

I am a big fan of the online forum, Slow Travel, whose devotees are  committed to touring depth rather than breadth, so it was no surprise that one of us brought up the subject of Doc Martin. We're not  talking clunky shoes--  this Doc Martin (Martin Clunes) is the popular ITV British television 4 going -on-5 series featuring an annoying but highly skilled London surgeon who takes up a general practice in a very small Cornish fishing village due to his having acquired an unfortunate phobia to blood. The Doc also struggles with what appears to be an unfortunate phobia to humans.

 So when the Slow Travel topic came up about staying in Port Isaac, the village  stand-in for the fictitious 'PortWenn' where Doc Martin is filmed, I replied:

"...and here I was--a complete Doc M neophyte  when my friend Gwynedd and I walked the SW Coastal Path from Pentire Farm to Port Quin  (a  three- footprint walk according to the map's scale of 1-easy to 3 -"strenuous") to Port Isaac last year. It was an absolutely gorgeous cliff-side walk around the Qellan and Varley Heads past Lobber Point, up and down seaside hills, hoisting Rosie the Lurcher over the stiles she refused to leap and finally the descent into Port Isaac. Noting a sign importantly announcing the home of Doc Martin I naively asked Gwynedd, "Who's Doc Martin?"

She was horrified--you don't KNOW? We walked down into the village, stood at the small beach where the VW gets sunk in  Episode 1 (little did I know) and up and down the 
High Street past the school house and the point of giggling girls (five of them in situ as we passed), looking for a: our husbands who were supposed to be rendezvousing with us and b: a pub that   allowed Rosie the Lurcher. No  sign of either, so we walked on to Port Gaverne  where we stopped at the extremely dog -friendly Inn for a warm fire and drink with our found spouses and then on by car to dinner at the tick-tock clock-eccentric Earl of St Vincent in Egloshayle.

 The view from the broad fields just up from Doc Martin's surgery out over the village is ancient and surreal at the same time. Huge cliffs mellow out into the  Terrace down below before yanking themselves back to precipitous drops. Fishing boats chug out of the harbor along the coast making their own trail of whitecaps in the aqua waters.   

Slow Travelers wanted to know if there are pubs in the village. There are   p   ubs and inns aplenty in Port Isaac (I think any village in Cornwall without a pub would have some pretty dreary days) but when we were w alking through after a long, somewhat damp walk in Full Dimpsey  (the Cornish term for low cloud and  fine drizzle), one was closed and two were barred to dogs. Rosie  the Dog was insistent on joining us for a warm hearth and a sof t rug.   

The Old School House Hotel, not surprisingly the filming site of the PortWenn school, looked pretty upscale.  I peeked into the windows as the tables were being laid for dinner and given we were trudging by so many times in spouse-tracking, I became pretty familiar with their progress, getting at first a warm smile, then next circuit an amused grin, and finally waves from my new best friends doing the set up.

The village must be far more crowded when it's summer and there are more people than lobsters, but in November, we stood out as what we were--gawkingingly muddy daytrippers in search of warmth. The only conversations we had were with the innkeepers who said no dogs, the giggly girls whose comments were clear but one-sided, and with Rosie the Lurcher who said she was hungry, footsore and saw no reason why we shouldn't stop now.

   The Southwest Coastal Path runs 630 miles (we have tried and tried to cover it all in shorter shifts--no lu ck yet) and some of the nicest bits are near PortIsaac. Enthusiastic walkers can hike (about 12 miles) in to Padstow if they don't mind some serious ups and downs, and take the bus back after a nice meal at a Rick Stein. Doing shorter   stints the way we came, head up the hill past Doc Martin's and walk about two hilly miles to Port quin admiring the sea and the thoughtful stairs provided on the steepest hills, and then walk back unless you feel buoyed enough by view and fresh air to take the 3 -footprint challenge  another few miles to Pentire Farm. It's a stunningly beautiful walk that fuels good daydreams to get you through a snowbound winter.

Ignored post by Monty posted Sep 30, 9:09 AM Show Post

Abel Tasman: Head Meets Rock

 

        Abel Tasman National Park, South Island New Zealand

January

It's not always Tom's fault. What I have discovered in the enlightenment that often comes with additional years as a planetary citizen is that the flaw may lie in my following Tom. There we are, moseying up and down volcanic hills and native bush on a single file trail and I knock myself out with an overhanging rock.  Life lessons learned from travel don't always come easily.

 My lovely and long suffering spouse loves maps. All maps. He pores over them on   winter nights, studies them closely before venturing out and keeps them to himself as we trek whichever trail he guides us to wherever in the world we happen to be. This is a win-win for me as I am of the persuasion that says start here, walk for a while and when in doubt bear left. We do not now nor will we ever own a Global Positioning Satellite Receiver for much the same reasons that some people prefer raw food.

 So back to this 'following' business. Imagine the day. We have spent the morning kayaking and then shuttled by aquataxi from Kaiteriteri to Tonga Quarry over the azure sea that laps the shores of New Zealand's South Island Abel Tasman National Park.  The sun shines, the sky is blue, the water warm. We hop over the side of the catamaran as we reach Kaiteriteri and wade ashore. Tom takes out his map. "This way" he says, although the large brown sign saying 'this way' is visible to both of us.

We walk. 

The Abel Tasman Coastal Path is perfect. No -really. Ferns, palms, waterfalls, native    bush, fine sand and sweeping views from the top of each winding rise, it's easy to daydream. This is the thing about following Tom. When there are two people walking and Walker One is in front and that person has the map, all Walker Two has to do is to keep Walker One in sight. Pleasant daydreams. No worries.

The last little rise of the first leg of this lovely tramp leads to a blue lagoon at Bark Bay. When the tide is out you can walk across the lagoon. When it is in, you stick to the shore. I do not have an enormous backlog of experience with blue lagoons and find them riveting. Gentle swells of peaceful water laze under offerings of flower petals and leaves.  Foot follows foot, eyes  follow water. Bang, the overhanging rock lying in wait just around the next bend runs me over. Tom, who has of course noted both the height, distance and perimeter of the rock and carefully bent under it clearly expects I will do the same.  Hearing my thud, Tom turns back as I rise to stand and-- hit my head again. Bam, down I go. Tom makes the huge and advisably avoidable mistake of laughing. I crawl under the rock, check my head for gaping holes, grab my hiking stick and we trudge along the idyllic seaside, me pouting and Tom keeping a healthy distance still ahead, still sputtering. 

When we finally stop to throw ourselves down on the soft sand beach fronting this aqua heaven I announce that I plan to return to this spot and this place tomorrow. By Myself. And I do.  The next day I ride the water taxi-drawn-by-tractor from Marahua's main street to its harbor l aunch to Bark Bay.  I spend an hour diving into the lagoon's far  side as the tide sweeps out and carries me and the other ten year olds back to shore. I alternate reading my book on the comforting sand with floating lazily in the Tasman Sea. I idly watch hikers  attempt to swim across the lagoon with backpacks on their heads either in an effort to avoid the longer walk or as protection against overhanging rocks.

Recovering, restored and rock-head free, the water-taxi carries me back to Marahua  where I say yes to a mea culpa dinner at Hooked on Marahua and we spend it talking about the Next Walk. We get to the point we always reach after these little setbacks and remark for the millionth time that our 'what not to do ' list is getting to be a lot longer than the 'to-do's'. This is what we came up with for a top five tips to walking in Abel Tasman:

1.  Do watch where you're going stupid, as there may be overhanging rocks. 
2. Don't laugh so hard your tonsils hurt when your walking companion knocks herself out on an overhanging rock.
3. Don't continue to indulge in what  you annoyingly call 'chuckling' for the next fifteen minutes even if it did look pretty funny.
4. Don't escalate the situation by 'accidentally' poking your walking companion's sandal with your walking stick no matter how much your head and feelings hurt.
5. Do seek solace in a blue lagoon. If one is not immediately available try a blue margarita.
6.  And a bonus: Do have the seafood chowder at the Hooked on Marahua Cafe.               

Once we have wandered back to our hillside chalet I sit on the deck in the gathering dusk with the roaring cicadas, watching the kind of  sunset that makes you think in color. Tom lights careful candles, spreads maps over the floor and makes plans. 

 

 

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Hogmanay Happens Without Us

December, Edinburgh

Hogmanay, Edinburgh's enormously popular New Year's festival, will be missing our company this year.  It's a long way to go for a party and our Massachusetts hometown is promising us midnight fireworks.  Maybe next time.

Our first Hogmanay was adventure and we liked it so much we did it again.  And again. When they do that pan-global tv midnight sweep after Times Square on New Year's Eve, it's Hogmanay that shows cascading booms of color exploding over Edinburgh Castle. They do not show we two eating fish and chips outside in the icy chill off Rose  Street  as we have forgotten to book anywhere for dinner, or watching  the Proclaimers in Princes St Gardens, the only ones stone cold sober as we have forgotten to bring a thermos of champagne, a flask of whiskey or a  plastic liter of  Buckfast, the alcopop choice of the untutored teenagers swarming the six digit member street party that rages outside the Gardens. 

Hogmanay is music and it lasts for days. Determined not to miss a thing,  we join the world's largest Strip the Willow, fork out 7 quid so we can carry real  fire in the Torchlight Procession from Parliament Square to Calton Hill, get a little teary over the thousand massed pipers in full regalia parading through the dark night, and jump in and out of the Princes Street Party which seems to have overspread from its original venue despite Edinburgh's Constabulary's best effort. We once even bought tickets for the candlelit classical Concert in St Giles which some people swear by but it seemed too sombre a start to a whoopee night and  I am pretty sure I could see chilblains creeping up my legs in the icy Cathedral chill. The Keilidh is always sold out before we commit but we grab tickets for the Concert in the Gardens which puts us in an excellent if slightly deafening position for the Midnight Moment fireworks pinged off Edinburgh's 7 hills: Blackford, Braid, Calton, Castle Hill and Rock, Corstorphine,  Craigmillar and of course Arthur's Seat.

We have not (yet) joined the Loony Dook plunge into the sea on New Year's Day, but there's still next year. 

Once the fireworks grand finale has come to a crashing end, there is a throat- choking moment only partially caused by the  clouds of smoke around the Castle. Just like the Whos down in Whoville post- Grinch, the entire city sings. Auld Lang Syne pours out of every street, window, hill and stage, even  native-speaking Japanese lip synchers join in. There is a terrific roar from those whose heads are going to be very sore in the morning and the live music crashes on.

We make our way through the crowd of silly- hatted partiers past the naked man dancing on top of the ice cream truck and  students mocking our American pronunciation of Happy New Year (Happy New Yearrr with the emphasis on a light and upwardly inflected year in Scots and Happy Neww Yeer with a dead heavy flat fall on year in Amer) to one of the many strategically- sited  free bus stops which the City provides to return revelers from whence they came. We climb up to the top deck front windows as we leave the celebrations for  dark, snowy North Berwick, weaving our way around the eastern side of the Firth of Forth through Musselburgh and Prestonpans, Cockenzie and  Port Seton. The bus makes an unscheduled stop to pick up an inebriated teenager  running after it in the snow who climbs in for a round of laughing jibes with the group of girl gigglers in the back and stops again when he changes his mind and wants to get off.  

Gullane and Dirleton are winking their lights out as is  North Berwick when we  get to the end of the line. Walking slowly with the other stragglers under a star-lit night sky, we hum a little Auld Lang Syne to the sea gently booming beside us. 

 

 AULD LANG SYNE 
Words adapated from a traditional song by Rabbie Burns (1759-96) 

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to mind?Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And auld lang syne? 

CHORUS: For auld lang syne, my dear, For auld lang syne, We'll tak a cup of kindness yet, For auld lang syne! And surely ye'll be yourpint-stowp, And surely I'll be mine, And we'll tak a cup o kindness yet, For auld lang syne! We twa hae run about the braes, And pou'dthe gowans fine, But we've wander'd monie a weary fit, Sin auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl'd in the burn Frae morning sun till dine, But seas between us braid hae roar'd Sin auld lang syne. And there's a hand my trusty fiere, And gie's a hand o thine, And we'll tak a right guid-willie waught, For auld lang syne 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Galway Love

Galway, November

We went for the music but stayed for the romance. Wandering the German   Christmas Market (bratwurst and beer garden) which occupies the green space in Eyre Square for  a month before Christmas, we joined the pedestrian parade looking for The Perfect Pub.  Slurping salty north Atlantic oysters by the fire at the iconic Quays  was lovely, but besides us, a Guinness -slinging couple at the bar, and the oysters; the place  was empty.  Outside, the pedestrian shopping streets were packed with shoppers, revelers. and street musicians, despite the increasing chill as night rolled in. Joining them, we looked at merino cardigans, Irish baby bibs ("make mine a pint of milk") and eyeballed a window full of fiddles, guitars, whistles and accordians while shopkeepers talked economic disaster. Line -caught haddock and chips from McDonagh's eaten on the quay by the roiling Corrib; the fragrant, steamy fish  warmed our hands and bellies against the increasingly Arctic air.

Live music in Ireland frequently starts right around when I start yawning, but Tig Coili has two sessions where one bleeds into the other at  6:30 and 9:30, so we circled back to grab a seat. This  engaging little pub is sandwiched between  Mainguard and Shop Street creating  a sort of  this side/ that side music experience as visitors exit and enter through opposing doors. The musicians weren't there  at 7 but we pulled stools and waited. One by one  players sauntered in, dropped an instrument box on the bench, hugged a few people, took a drink from the bar and went outside for a smoke.

By 8 the place was packed and the music (oddly, Irish pub bands consist  increasingly of banjos, balalaikas, and bozoukis) rockin'. The two doors opened and shut with frigid regularity but the couple fooling around in the entryway held my attention as they beamed enough warmth to heat up the entire room. I caught the long haired young woman's eye and she held up...a ring, so it was no surprise when her tall, beer- happy companion  rapped his pint glass for silence and in Scandinavian -accented English announced that he had just asked "this wooman" to marry him and she had said yes.

A round (ale) on the house along with a group  congratulation with many well wishers, and the band played on. The music got cheerier and the craic was cookin'. The band dedicated the next song and two more glasses of ale to the newly engaged duo.  I suspected the song (in Gaelic) might not have been completely dedicated to the  joys of love and marriage as several  giggling flat caps at the bar slapped each other at the refrains, but it didn't matter.  People  took it upon themselves to congratulate the young couple and drink to their happiness.  Cameras snapped and there were repeated cries of "Slainte!".  The band asked if they would be requiring their services at the wedding and the couple said sure, if they happened to have a gig in Stockhom that week.

Looking around the gathering as the music played over and around the happy, Guinness-fueled gathering, I thought  I could see each one of us imagining this couples' life--sharing the news with friends and family, getting married, raising a family, growing old. Would they always cherish this night? This place? These well wishers? Would they come back here for anniversaries? Bring the kids? Would they dance to this music at their wedding?

We sat through another set and braced ourselves for the dark stroll back to   our lodging. Opening the door into the cold night leaving the fire and the light and the music behind us, we held hands and walked back into our own lives.

 

The Art of Invisible Travel

 

  It is Saturday morning, and it is my birthday and the two, as we are all well aware, are a rare collision. Cold outside but warm under the covers, the phone rings at 8. I pick it up, expecting to hear some early- bird birthday cheer.

Good morning?" I sleepily say into the receiver.  A quick talkin' no nonsense automaton with no time for niceties announces itself as  the Fraud Department from American Express.  Fraud? I sit up. The automated voice  reads a list of  recent transactions made on my card.  I am to press the number 2 if I have not authorized them. I rub my eyes and pay more attention.

The first charge is $1.67 to UPS UK, made three days ago. I  yawn and don't think I have mailed anything in Great Britain on Wednesday as I believe I was here in the U.S.  on Wednesday and even though I have turned a new decade, I believe I am  unlikely to have forgotten my location, but there is no conversation with my personal robot so that we can discuss this,  so I press 2.  The second charge is to the Stop and Shop. I  press 1, thinking about the lasagne I still have to make out of the cheese, pasta, sauce and spinach collected on that charge as my family birthday dinner looms ahead.

Next comes an unkown pending charge to Apple Computer. I don't believe that I have purchased anything from Apple Computer, especially as we are a PC/Apple home and I am the PC, but I can't commit without more information and there is  no number for Can't Commit so it is as I am puzzling over that charge that I hear that my card has  bought me, or someone posing as me, a $1500  air ticket to Mexico. I press 2 and a human voice shoves the robot aside and offers me a "Good morning."  I cannot help but feel a  tiny frisson of expectation at the two word combination of "airplane" and "Mexico" on a cold October morning.  My family are masters of the practical joke, there is every possibility that this is their roundabout way of offering me a lovely birthday present indeed.

The very nice  Amex Fraud Alert Support Person tells me that my card has purchased the poser -me, a nice ticket on AeroMexico and all I need to do is disavow it and they will cancel my card and re-issue another.  Now that I have someone besides Robovoice to talk to, I find myself more interested in where the ticket is taking the poser- me, what date and  at that price, is it economy or business class, which seat have I chosen and is it one bag or two fare inclusive, but the Fraud  Support Person can not tell me any details. He asks me to confirm my card  number and I announce that as it is my birthday, and as  I am in my warm  bed and have no intention of getting out of bed in this very cold house which is not in Mexico in order to retrieve my credit card, he just asks me a few personal details known only to me, but how do we KNOW I am me and not someone who is not only posing as me but has accessed my personal details as well? And how did poser -me Get my card number anyway? Who's the leak? The kid at the gas station on King street?   Sly Amazonians at Amazon? I go off on a totally nonsensical thought trail which has that tired lady at Stop and Shop packing for Cancun, and I almost regret calling the card in as she always looks like she needs a vacation.

The Fraud Alert Support Person at Amex while polite and moderately helpful clearly has no interest in the hypothetical. He wishes me Happy Birthday (not in his script so he says it quickly, with an audible smile) and says I will receive my new card within 4-6 business days.  Even after hanging up, having agreed to a new card and no heebie jeebies, I have them anyway.

 When we were in the UK in September I went to our local bank and informed them that I would be using my ATM card in the UK. The teller did some hocus pocus with a little machine and announced it free to use. I do this ceremony regularly now, having been locked out of my card twice, once in Istanbul and once in Scotland. What my local bank does not tell me is that I can only use my card when it is "in my presence" which means I cannot use it to book a hotel on line or order a great deal saddlepad to have sent to our last stop.  i do not know how anyone will be able to tell if my card is actually in My presence, or poser- me's presence but a human body is definitely required. This means that in order to do online,  I have to use my fallback Master Card as the UK is very anti-Amex (which is rather hilarious actually as my Amex card is with  Virgin Atlantic) and when we return from our trip I have three anxious phone calls from Master Card about suspicious activity on my card.

Although it is nice to know that  while all these credit card companies who may be single handedly keeping the US Postal Service afloat,  send reams of  "you have been pre-approved" ways to spend money I don't have, which I believe may have paid no small part of what seems still to be chronic World Wide Recession;  are looking out for both me and  poser-me with nearly the same tenacity that the CIA hunts terrorists, it is inconvenient and very nearly defies the why of credit cards rather than cash anyway. It is almost ironic later in the week when I receive a thick letter on creamy paper from my local bank informing me that they, or a third party branch of they, have inadvertently sent all of my details to another third party, including any online payments to credit card companies from my checking account but not to worry, the  last third party down the line burned it all. The letter says I am now enrolled by my local bank as a way of softening their glitch in a free year of Identi-Safe which sounds like a witness protection program, and encourages me to call if I have any questions.  I do, so I call and recount the curious coincidence of this inadvertent leak on my bank's part and my Amex card having purchased a ticket to Mexico. My local bank assures me that there is no possibility of this and yes, isn't that a coincidence ha, ha.

So all this leaves me with a few observations. 

1. Who's in charge here? There seem to be a lot of people and robots and poser -me's who know a great deal more about my financial transactions than I do.

2.  When we  go to Ireland in a few weeks, will card after card lock down? Will it be like  Istanbul when we looked at the lifeless little pieces of plastic standing between us and  our next meal ?

3. If poser-me uses our card to buy a ticket to Mexico, which one of us gets the airmiles?

Dartmoor: Whinging Our Way Up Hookney Tor

 

Dartmoor, July

  The wind comes up sharply as we climb towards Hookney Tor on a deeply ravined  path hidden by the lush man-height bracken that jumps up in midsummer, crowding out the grazing --and the view.  Puffing a little with the incline, we reach this enormously impressive granite beacon, which looks either like a giant's building blocks or a giant pile of  poop, depending on which way you look at it.  Dutifully climbing it to look across the valley, the county,  and possibly the nation and  the world (I think I can see Russia from here) and managing not to be blown off the highest rock, we  trudge on to the next surmountable mound of stone, Hambledown Tor.   Dartmoor pony foals cavort goofily across the hillside, annoying their mothers but  pleased with themselves. 

We can also see (and definitely hear) a long line of  teen-aged walkers carrying very new full packs, headed our way. On closer inspection they are also wearing crackling new rain trousers and jackets.  It's not raining.  Bedrolls on their backs and plastic map covers  dangling around their necks, they look  moderately miserable.  Climbing down to make room for the first of their limber legion,  we meet several pairs on their way up walking in a very loose interpretation of a school crocodile. Two girls tell us they are on a school outing and have to walk the whole #*#* Two Moors Way in four days. Asking us how far it is to the  next #*#* tor and despite our reassuring, "Not far," they announce (colorfully) that they are not climbing another #*#* tor, swing left and downhill off the main trail--  ditching the group who stretch  back along the trail behind them. The kids on the tor top loudly hoot and holler, their voices echoing along the moor.

We've wandered the Two Moors Way (which connects inhospitable Dartmoor with inhospitable Exmoor) several times now, and not just because we can start (or end) at the  ever-hospitable ever-burning  log fire at the Warren House Inn. There's something incredibly inviting and ancient about this tract of moor. Once, on a bright spring day,  we heard a cuckoo in the trees by the old mine  and despite the Brits  pronouncing it cuck--oo, the one we heard  definitely said koo koo, no small trick.

The drop from the Warren House takes us sharply down to  Headland Warren  past the buried and pleasant mining works and the old  home farm evidenced only by stone fences and a hardy cherry tree which still survives by what must have once been a front  door.  These warrens have been home to centuries of rabbits who have clearly enjoyed the  decline of a national  craving for lapin stew.  A long circuit along the valley bypasses  the 13th century longhouse at  Headland Warren Farm tucked into the tiny valley where you can just make out the small march of standing stones on the  opposing hillside.  Up across the tarred road it's a straight  climb to  Birch Tor which  in a  windy moor climate has no birches) past the Four Aces; stone enclosures used to protect the miners' vegetables from the rabbits, then on to Hookney. 

The great rocky tors are of course what we all come to see in Dartmoor.   Some hikers "bag" tors the way they do bens in Scotland, madly running up and down as many as they can in a 24 hour period. Tour busses pull up to the easy- looking access to Hay Tor on a regular basis, and walkers can visit the less accessible tors via a network of paths which intertwine with the Two Moors Way. The tors draw us to them; marking where we are, where we were-- affording us a chance to climb them so that we can see the far distance--and more tors. 

 Grimspound Bronze Age settlement  sits neatly and forever just one side of the hill between Hambledown and Hookney Tors. A  meadow-sized stone circle surrounds 24 stone huts which housed very short people here when the weather was warmer, about 1300 B.C.  Tom wanders off to sit in one of the circular stone foundations and I plunk myself down higher up the hill in  what I assume is the chief's house, admiring what was surely a chief's view and  noting the ongoing arrival of sixteen year olds. Those who  have already reached Hookney Tor are now doing what teenagers do when they climb a pile of rocks, and I wonder idly where their grownups are.  The girl duo short- cutters are no longer visible when a teacher-type clad in neat cargo shorts  whizzes by hauling his own heavy backpack, and  sprints tor-wards in admirable leaps.

A few moments later his female counterpart pops up near me in my little hut   and politely asks if I would like her to snap (my) photo.  Caught off guard I say thanks but not really, I'm just hanging out here for a while. I like this house and its view and have come to appreciate its setting  tucked in to the hill, away from the wind. I ask if she is with the school group and when she nods yes, I think I'd better, teacher-to-teacher rat on the two who've escaped. She very accurately describes them for me;  ("One dark hair wearing the map and the other dark hair wearing the attitude")and when I say that's them officer,  she sighs, thanks me and runs  to head them off at the pass, informing me that she is keen not to lose any students on the first day out. Running easily with a full pack on strong legs up the tor that we had just straggled down, across the moor in hot pursuit of the scoundrels, she is impressive. 

I rock back in my mysterious little  round house and wonder what it was like to be nearly grown around here 3000 years ago.   After a while I get lonely and  go  join Tom in his little house where we both sit for awhile reflecting on life, the past, rocks, and teenagers.  When you're sitting in what is left of a very small hut on a barren hillside, in a very small village which ceased to exist an  incomprehensibly distant time in the past, even the non believers (Tom) can sense those other lives. 

We watch companionably as the last of the stragglers catch up to the larger school group and   disappear over the horizon. Taking a purposely different track than the school group, we head back to the  log fire at Warren House.  Climbing up the last long hill,  we hear a lamb plaintively baaing from one of the bracken ravines, and hope it has the good sense to find its way out.   Teenagers. Bah.

Three Cliffs Gower on Horse

   Wales, Gower Peninsula, July 2010    

 Three Cliffs is one of the outstandingly gorgeous beaches in the outstandingly gorgeous South Wales Gower Peninsula.  Cited as one of Europe's Ten Best,  it comes complete with a long flat beach, caves, rivers which flow into the sea and a very satisfying castle. Last time we visited we hiked in and out --on two feet.  This time I borrowed an additional four.

Booking horseback treks in the UK is a popular holiday activity. I generally aim for "hacks" as these are faster rides (treks being beginner stuff) and life with my lively horse Archie has well prepared me for action.  This ride, at Parc Breos near Swansea off the A4118,  hard by the Gower Heritage Centre where you can take gurning lessons,  looked like a mixed bag when I got there. The day started wet due to torrential rain and lowland flooding and hoping the car didn't sink when I gunned it over  road lakes that weren't there yesterday. Arriving late, I was assigned the last pony in the paddock, Chico; a  lovely but contrary  round-barreled bay Welsh  who had the enviable ability to hide in plain sight and was a bit of a gurning champion  himself.

Our orders were clear.  Brush your ponies, bridle them and set them free.  Stand with your back at the fence and slide down to the gate, avoiding any equine hijinks on the playground. Next, we had  a 15 minute demo on how to ride a horse. This was a good thing for the three young German riders clad in admirably white sneakers and jeans who were new to the sport, and interesting for the rest of us, with me being the only "native" speaker, even though my accent is New England.  Lining up for saddles and sent out to re-find our mounts, I looked for Chico, but he had disappeared. Bea, a small Italian child who seemed to know everything anyone really needed to know, cheerfully acknowledged my confusion and pointed to the pony behind her, " 'Ere is the Chico!"  We saddled up. Do  not touch the fittings. Get on from ground. Wait for rain to stop. When rain does  not stop, get on anyway. Six Germans,  two Danes and me. One gets yelled at a lot for violating  ride protocol, but as she clearly does not understand English, she smiles and carries on. I occasionally hear German chatter which comes back to me with "The Chico" casually popping up and I discern that everyone else is counting themselves lucky for riding a horse who clip clops rather than clippity clips.

The rain  finally lets up,  and it is a memorable ride  through country  lanes and bracken-thick trails to  the summit of neolithic   Arthur's Stone. We "experienced" riders  have several satisfactory gallops as the ride sections off to allow beginners their walk and the wilder contingent their high speed coastal chase. We pass down to Three Cliffs  Beach. I am terrifically grateful to the  dancing- in- his -footsteps  Chico for carrying me both up and down.  We easily cross the two rivers while the tide is  reassuringly far, far out. Three Cliffs  allegedly has the second fastest/highest tide in the world  outside of Canada's Bay of Fundy. It's not unusual for helicopters to have to swoop in to rescue bathers, kayakers--or ponies.

We have a gallop up the dunes and tie the  horses to  puny pieces of gorse so they can graze and rest and we can head for the Three Cliffs cafe for sandwiches. The German twenty-somethings all picnic by the headland and kiss and  doze in the sun. I eat lunch in the cafe garden with the Danes (father and daughter) and two young German sisters, one of whom is deathly afraid of bees. There are bees.

It's interesting, the Danish father accompanying his 13 year old daughter. This is the fourth family I have encountered this summer where the parents have taken up horseback riding as a common denominator for joining their offspring on summer holidays. The week previous, I rode out near Brecon with Gary and Vivian from Hong Kong who were having their last summer with their Cambridge-bound daughter--on horseback.  If it's a trend it's a nice one, far nicer than say the ones my parents had where we went on holiday with their friends, most memorably during Republican or Democratic National Conventions which  saw the production of great adult angst and the consumption of a lot of adult gin.

Having finished my sandwich at the cafe, I wandered back to the clifftop to gaze   meaningfully over the  sun speckled sea, while to my left the German couples posed in FaceBook bound life- endangering positions over the rocks. That masthead arms -out thing the Titanic movie spearheaded is still very au courant. I admired the blueness of the sea, the steep limestone cliffs and the perfect reality of being here and not anywhere else, until Bea called to me, "You must come and find The Chico --we leave!"

I found The Chico--wound deeply in the gorse, his gratitude for my releasing him unapparent,  re-mounting by leading him into an odd circular depression in the dunes which may have been where the Tardis once landed. We  trotted through a golf course and down a huge cleft in planet earth, emerging up the other side to a few arced golf balls and a hugely threatening sky. I dug my rain jacket out, a dicey operation as The Chico was still dancing and insisted on doing a four square dosey-do without partners, but I got the sleeves on and the zip zipped and then woosh.

The thing about lightening storms when you are on horseback is that you are usually  "out" somewhere in say, "the countryside" and you tend to be trapped between the metal stirrups which anchor you to the saddle, and the metal shoes which anchor your horse to the ground. This is generally a Good Thing, but when you  see a series of forked lightening hit the beach fifty yards from where you are drenchedly descending to ford the rivers necessary to return to the cliff from whence escape is possible, it is actually a Bad Thing. The Chico and Bea on her little Welsh pony Baby ("Baaby, now you be good pony, we go here now") and I were last in line. Chico descended the cliff to the beach in the same way that I climb ski  slopes--sideways. Each time thunder roared, he shifted to a quick 360. Bea looked nonchalant and the rest of the ride had already found the beach and were trotting towards the two rivers. River One--forded.  The distance between River Two was a tide filled beach, two lightening strikes and Thor hurling down thunder claps that sends ponies like The Chico, mad.

Bea, Baaby, The Chico and I brought up the rear and watched as the rest of the ride (outdistancing us both by height and by speed) crossed the enormously rushing intensity of what had been a gentle broad stream two hours earlier. The bigger horses gained their footing on the far side as Baby and Chico were coaxed in. Daredevil Bea stayed right at my side as I nervously watched to ensure that Baby's head  stayed above the rushing tide, and felt Chico's feet leave terra firma and swim against the current. Bea mouthed something at me, but through the deluge, the crash of thunder and the crack of lightening, I couldn't hear her. She looked pretty cheerful though.

Chico found land just before Baby's tiny hooves did, and we raced up to meet the Ride, trotting along fields and roads until we finally reached the home stretch. Lightening, thunder and drenching rain hounded us the whole way back.

Later, when we released the ponies in the paddock, The Chico balefully melted into the crowd and we stood in the rain watching them head for shelter.   I asked Bea what she had said as we crossed the river. She thought a moment and answered, "My boots, these boots with which I ride, they are full of water." She demonstrated by pulling one off and emptying a gallon from each foot. I found I could do the same and we laughed. Ha ha.

There was an old hand hanging around the corral and I said, "Wow that was some ride--we were on the beach in forked lightening." Welshmen don't chew baccy, but this one might as well have. He paused, looked me in the eye and said, "Oh that's happened."

"Happened, like on a Ride?"

"Twice," he said.

"So... what happens when the Ride gets struck by lightening?"

"Oh, everyone falls off."

"They fall off? Then what?"

"They get back on and ride back." 

"They ride back? Are they okay?"

" Oh yes. Of course their heads feel funny for a few hours."

I thanked the immensely capable and terrifically cool Ride leaders  one of whom was telling the other that this had been the most dramatic outing she'd been on. When I asked them what they would do  had the Ride  actually been struck by lightening, one drew her finger meaningfully across her neck. Goners.  Soggily wandering to my car, I was over- helpfully assisted in backing and turning by the German young men who were celebrating their survival with a  suspiciously pungent cigarette, and headed home.  Choosing the longer, twistier but high ground single tracks  to avoid flooding, it was a slow drive. Once back at our friend's small village bungalow, wet boots, jacket and hat abandoned in the yard, I had a very  welcome, deep hot bath.  By the time I emerged, the sun shone. 

                                                        Wales. What's not to love?

 

Bafana Bafana

    Bath, Somerset, World Cup

One of us is a soul thumpin' soccer playin'/world football fan. The other can take it or leave it but  doesn't really mind having to watch  fast men in shorts, kick a ball.

It's Sunday, June 30, 2002, and we're in the UK  which is experiencing an intense bout of World Cup Fever.  We're in Bath at Flan O'Brien's a sort of sort of Irish pub  It has the best tv in town. The place is packed and the Guinness is flowing a lot faster than the local brews. We have the last two seats (0n the radiator) and Tom is not shy about heading back through the throng for a pint.  It's Brazil versus Germany and we are rooting, as is everyone else for "Brasil" our fellow enthusiasts wearing yellow tee-shirts in support. There are some unkind but searingly funny comments about the German team. Both teams are playing brilliantly and the score is nought/nought.  It's an all UK/Irish (and our puny American duo) crowd, until the tall, thin blonde woman in the long raincoat wanders in. She too winds her way to the bar and asks in a strong German accent for a bottle of... Heinekin?  The tv is loud, but not loud enough. The ribaldry stops for a moment and we are all a bit more self conscious about what we say about the "other" team.  There are some thrilling plays but the score stays zip-zip. The German woman does not shed her raincoat, even though it is quite warm and clearly not raining in the pub. She stands quietly watching, making her beer last. I wonder if she is an enthusiast, a patriot or perhaps has a brother playing midfield. 

 A huge cry erupts, glasses aloft as the first half ends and the winners are anybody's guess. The German woman buttons her coat and slips out the door. We follow, I buy the kids yellow commemorative T shirts colorfully emblazoned Brasil at one of the stalls  and watch the second half back at the flat. Brazil wins 2-0. Tom sees this as a good reason to go play a round of golf and then head down to the Hobgoblin to celebrate.

Three years ago, in Cape Town, a twelve year old from nearby Khayelitsha Township earnestly told me that he hoped to play in the World Cup. Or watch it. Or have South Africa win it.  We bought little stickers, the silly acronym oval ones people use to show some kind of insider's track to Nantucket (ACK) or their planet (Earth) that said South Africa 2010, and put them on the car's bumper when we got home. People looked at us oddly when we parked at the Stop and Shop. South Africa? What about it?

Now it's here and we're part of the world which is set to watch the first match between USA and England in Rustenberg at 8:30 p.m. their time , 2:30 p.m. our time and 7:30 GMT. There will be much shouting down the phone between here and Wales I suspect.  According to the BBC, The British Beer and Pub Association predicts that nearly four million fans will flock to pubs, downing an extra nine million pints of beer. You do the math.

It's likely  both nations will  stay in competition. Or  their play will lead to huge disappointment. "Rounds" end later this month as the winners emerge,  and the Real Games will happen when we're in the UK in July, starting back at Flan O'Brien's in early July and following the games as we head west.  It's not easy being Yanks. If the U.S. is still in play we may have to wear raincoats and ask for a bottle of (arrgggh) Bud.

Bath on Bike

We're headed back to Bath for a few days in a few weeks and I for one, will  insist on exploring on two feet rather than two wheels. The only way I'd say that biking in Bath is at the top of my list of must-dos would be if you took that lengthy list, turned it upside down,shook it hard and jumped on it a few times. Anyone foolish enough to insist on biking the Bath Skyline Trail should note that the updated (shorter single loop) version has little levels in the map key indicating steepness of terrain. They're not kidding. 

Looking Backwards 2002: Somerset, July

   Fortunate are those who find the rental company early (the one hidden behind the railway station) hire a shiny new two wheeler and pedal down the very flat and pleasant Kennet and  Avon  tow path. Less fortunate are we who take our time and saunter in to find the choice of hire is down to two bicycles which look suspiciously like the  ancient three speeds  tossed  in the basement back home twenty years ago. Solidly made of heavy steel , squeaky brakes, squeaky gears, we "adjust" our hard little euro- seats and pedal in the opposite direction.

Tom, as always, has a map. The National Trust suggests we take the Six Mile  Bath Skyline Circular Walk. I point out that map says walk, see it's in the title.  Tom says bike. First stop, straight uphill. The map itself (50 p back then) is quite pretty. Folded into an easy eight quadrants, the front shows a bucolic view over the city, three quadrants describe Features of Interest and ask us to keep in mind that the paths may be muddy so stout shoes are advisable.

The map itself is shades of green with the darker bits the lilting woods (Rainbow, Bathwick, Smallcombe, Bushey Norwood and the Fairy Wood). Prior Landscape Gardens is on our  route.  The map, decorated with  butterflies and birds, is flat and there is no indication that the walk-- is not.

The next five hours are spent pedaling bike, braking bike, viewing Features of Interest, pushing bike, throwing bike (hard) and self  (gently)on ground at regular intervals, and wobbling through the middle of cow pastures, contemplating the challenge of stile-biking. My stout shoes are more than muddy.

 Prior Park, delightful as it is, with its gorgeous Palladian Bridge view of Bath,  is on a serious gradient not mentioned on the map. Walking down to the Bridge is a good idea. Biking is not.

Rainbow Wood Fields is described on the map as offering  budding Dog's Mercury, Wild Garlic and Hart's Tongue Fern for the walker's enjoyment. Enticing Features of Interest include birds. There are those of us who will recall Donovan singing sweetly about Chiff Chaffs, and there are few who would not be willing to pedal down a summery meadow path in hope of sighting a Willow Warbler or a Green Woodpecker. While we do find the Wild Garlic (not difficult even with eyes closed), the map is mum  to what makes a Chiff Chaff.

There comes the moment (as it always does) when, glaring down at the map, I point out, with some expository description, that what might be a lovely walk, does not make a lovely bike  ride. My bike refuses to a: lose weight or b: do any of the work itself.  Only one of the forward gears works and the brakes are the kind that require the rider to drag her stout shoes on the ground to avoid hitting things.  I suspect that once again, just as in that first ride many years ago over the dunes from Herring Cove to Race Point Beach,  Tom, on his "men's bike" has the sleeker ride. Mine is clearly designed for being gently ridden side saddle down level village lanes. No one in America would attempt this vertiginous ride unless suitably mounted on a high- tech 22 speed mountain bike with five brakes and wide gel seat which cost more than a Volkswagen. 

Having now cycled through most of the nonsensical loops of the map's dotted red line  along Skyline Walk, we race down  the  long hill to the Fairy Wood, up the steep climb to the University and pant for breath. Pushing the  bike through hummocks  and  bovine deposits on  bovine pastures affords a view over the city of Bath--not bad. View of extremely annoyed charging mother of darling baby calf--not good. 

Circuiting Bushey Norwood (early Iron Age hill-fort guarded by cows left undisturbed and unseen by us)  around  the golf course (more cow pastures), and Bathwick Wood,  past the Golf Club (toilets closed to non-members)we stop for a breather under the arch of Sham Castle.  Finally coasting down, down, down, feet gently slowing the descent as we head for the lowlands, we glide along flat lanes to the Bathampton Cricket Grounds  ("friendly"game in progress) and head for The George.

No place finer than The George on a Sunday afternoon. Sited right on the canal, its lazy  courtyard is full of Sunday diners, so we take our drinks up to the canal bank and watch the cricket on the other side. The great thing about cricket is that you can look at other things for a while (narrow boats, walkers, cyclers, Willow Warblers)  or leave altogether to go get another drink or a sandwich or walk to London and back, and you've missed little.

By the time we lazily pedal back along the canal  towards Bath, the sun has shifted towards evening and I wish the day would never end. Tom laughs so hard at this that he falls off his bike, pretending that he meant to.  The bike ride, I agree, now we're on flat land, was exhilarating. We idly watch a few couples  headed towards  incipient divorce trying to navigate their holiday hire narrow boats through the canal locks.

"Maybe", I say, later on, after we have wheeled our way through Stanley Gardens, returned the bikes, eaten enchiladas at Las Iguana's and are sitting  outside the Hobgoblin in the suprisingly dark  city night, "we should try that next time." "Try what?" asks Tom, happily halfway through his  pint of Wizard's Staff.

"You know, narrow boating." 

Gabriel's Wharf

  

It's London, the weather is November and not nice. We've taken the Cockney -narrated ferry (again, same Michael Caine jokes) downriver from the Embankment to St. Katherine's  Pier .   The gray clouds are still high enough to be hopeful. Hungry, we're heading over London Bridge for walkabout food.

The press of  Saturday people at  Borough Market make strolling impossible and at times simply breathing is alarmingly at risk. Visitors are generally like us; in search of immediately consumable food rather than dinner fixings.  The handsome displays of peppers and wine and bread and pheasant go undisturbed. We wait in a long queue for sausages grilled by Aussie twenty-somethings, purchase an armful of fragrant heather sprays  and spend time hanging around the  Wensleydale Cheese because no one else is.  

A South Bank  River Walk on  a gloomy day calls for a Thames side drink on the deck of  the  Thames-side Inn.   Leaning over the rail watching the  Thames police launch shuttle its crew of  seriously yellow suited div ers on their way to a mysterious something, holds our attention until they get swallowed by larger craft. It's not that this pub is any great shakes, but it juts right out into the Thames in a pleasing, under- the- falls kind of way. The Founders' Arms down the walk  has a terrific  multi- directional river webcam, and maybe we're on it, viewers in Tokyo watching our tiny selves watch the great gray river. 

Strolling down Gabriel's Wharf past the book stalls, maps, and prints, the weather closes in and paperbacks are resignedly covere d by tarps. This part of the South Bank teems with walkers, diners, skateboarders and legions of  Maclaren double baby strollers whose prisoners are encased in waterproof plastic shields. Carved out of old riverside garages, chic shops and businesses line the walk between the London Eye, which  currently stares  at dismal skies, and the  power plant -turned-Tate Modern. The drama of the rain-fed Thames gives new mea ning to the word roil.  

  We join the river rubberneckers witnessing  a drowning. Thames- bank  sand sculptors create exotic installations in the hours between tides. One combo street theater group, who call themselves Dirty Beach,  regularly carve elaborately sandy living rooms complete with sofa and tv from the gritty river bank. 

Today's sculptor is into big heads. A glum woman with sharp cheekbones, pouty mouth and flowing sand locks looks resigned to meeting her maker; her eyes closed against her tidal fate.  The artist's tip bucket is handsomely full but I toss in another pound coin.  A cigarette dangling from his mouth in either a purposefully rakish bohemian artist kind of look, or simply as a way to keep it sand-free, he grins a thanks, but while his back is turned the Thames tosses a wave over the sand head. 

The artist banks a channel to temporarily divert the breach against the inevitable, but the tide has turned. His woman is a goner. The water flirts with her hair, stealing strands  and toying with her head and ears.  The channel floods and smooths her chin and cheeks. I can't watch the inevitable and we walk on, leaving the rest of the ghoulish voyeurs to see her out to sea.

A perfect day, we lose ourselves in early dark to the crush of pre-Christmas Oxford Street, shop for but do not buy a  new duvet cover, ride the steamy number 137 bus back to  Sloane Square and share a drink by the warm fire at the Cooper's Arms. Looking  deeply at the fire over my glass,  I ask Tom if he can't just make out a sort of head shape right there in the  glowing embers. Tom says I am being macabre and we sit in the  quiet pub thinking about the weight of water. 

 

 

Symonds Yat Yet Again

  

November Wales/England

One of the things about traveling with someone else, anyone else; is that they may  have strong memories of having been there before--without you. Sometimes this is engaging and you squint to imagine this person you're looking at now, being in this place the two of you are standing in; then. Interesting becomes irritating if their previous experience took place with someone they felt very fondly towards who was not their mother. Fortunately Tom has traveled only to the UK with me, some of our offspring and their offspring-- and his friend Joe.  Most of our memories are our memories.

Tom and Joe bicycled through the UK after college (a very long time ago). Every now and again he mentions that they passed this way, down this road (Stonehenge, Oxford, Chepstow, Abergavenny) and went to that pub. It wasn't until this autumn that he felt a strange but insistent pull to return to  the insular Wye Valley's Symonds Yat, and it wasn't until we missed the  turn off the B4432  that he clued me in to why we were driving backwards. 

"We're going where?" It's hard to get excited about visiting a place called Yat. It's even harder when you pull in for what the Other Half insists will be a five minute stop, and he has a falling out with the parking meter. It requires coins, we are low on coins and we are in the Middle of Nowhere. Worse, there is a  painfully well behaved  auto queue behind us of  booted hikers who clearly ai m to spend more than  five minutes at the Yat, and they  do have coins. Since I am driving, I leave Tom to figure it out and drive into the Forest where it turns out the parking lot is not actually very near the parking meter. By the time Tom shows up (he borrowed some coins from someone behind us who thought he had an 'interesting' accent, "You're not from around here, are you?") I am away up the ridge, looking for the promised Wye Valley view.

Symonds Yat lies in England a blink away from Wales. Tom had a bike tire blowout here on that sepia trip which required much bike pushing, a float across the Wye by hand pulled ferry, and a friendly repair on the west side. It's odd, these moments of memory, when you are instantly transported to who you were then. A couple of  twenty-one year olds swooping their  bikes down the hills through the cool arborage of the  Forest of Dean going fast, too fast, and the inevitable rock in the road. 

We are on a large rock at Symonds Yat East, on the Gloucestershire side and Tom's  ferry took him to Symonds Yat West, which is Herefordshire. It is all very green and sheep friendly, but the woods behind us are vaguely reminiscent of state parks in Missouri, which always seem to  carry a faint aura of doom. A sign tells us we might see adders, falcons, deer or dormice and warns us away from the sometimes savage wild boars. We crunch leaves for awhile on a circular forest loop, climb a hill and gain the view. Limestone cliffs carved by the rushing Wye drop down to green valleys and cliff hugging villages. Tom thinks he sees the repair shop that fixed his flat, but surely those middle aged mechanics are today's village ancients. 

We have tea at the park cafe and avoid the school children on a forced march who have made it no farther than the cafe picnic tables. The hot tea is good, and we settle on a bench with our feet on a fence overlooking Wales. If we were birders, or horticulturists or photographers or anything other than wow here we are tourists, we would have a focus to our view. But we are resigned to just looking. I am very nearly past being tremendously annoyed at being hijacked to Symonds Yat.

A short bridge hangs over the road to the ferry but it's not until later that we follow its  single track to the shore.  The ferry is Not In Service after the great winter rains that cause the Wye to rush madly through its channel and flood the verdant valley. Back on the B4432 Tom looks keenly for the very spot his bike tire blew but is not sure if it was after this bend or on that straightaway. Eventually he turns his back on his young self coasting down that hill, headed enthusiastically towards the rest of his life. We emerge into the real world, dodge an oncoming lorry headed for the A40 and carry on.

Arthur's Seat-by the seat of the trousers

 
 
 
 Edinburgh, October

We're often really dumb walkers, largely due to a compelling need to go off-piste, which is an American flaw. Brits tend to stick to the paths. Americans bypass the detour, jump the road closed tape, get stuck, and send up flares.

 It's a  lovely day in Edinburgh.  We've had a glorious walk. Cosmic blue skies, warm air; fall is here and  the hills are alive with walkers, rappelers, and students who actually think adults have no idea what a bong smells like.

 Climbing up from Duddingston past the ponies and the meadow and the village and the pub; we head across the field and steep grassy path, up the eastern terraced slopes of  jackdaw- rich Crow Hill. Aptly named, we're dive-bombed by two of them, either of which would leave little room for the other 22  blackbirds in any virtual pie. Up meadowy Nether Hill  and not up Arthur's Seat directly across the way (too many people), we lean over the edge and look down.  A trail which drops  somewhat precipitously and exits where we want to be, looks enticingly brief, saving us the long walk down the crowded Radical road. Our OS map tells us it's Guttit Haddie, which means gutted haddock  and that's exactly what it looks like; a jigsaw serrated hollow down the back of a steep, but manageable trail.  What we can't see from our happy glimpse from Nether Hill is the part 30 yards on, where the path has suffered from what the Brits ominously call Retreating Cliff.

  Both of us are complicit in the decision to leave the beaten path, so there is  no your fault discussion when we find ourselves stranded half way down the badly eroded verboten slope. I sit, Tom sits, and we look down, down, down and consider the very real possibility that if we persevere in our foolish descent we will crash and burn. But how out? This is suddenly not just impulsive and dumb, it's dangerous. No way up, no way down. We Are Stuck. I, for one, am not in favor of tumbling down 100 feet of volcanic arroyo, and if my read of Tom's perch on his rock is right, he is as glued to it as I am on my rock.  What to do, what to do. 

Gazing over the horizon,I'm day dreaming a little about the sea and the city. Tom looks up and sees the Japanese students before I do. I've missed the drama of the students standing where wed stood at the top of the hill, looking down at our scramble and excitedly deciding to follow. Tom does his best to wave them back but it's wave and wave and here they are hand to handing down the rocky drop; fellow  international outlaws.

I watch with a mild sense of horror. As far as I can see, there is no way out and the students (six of them) are steering their way towards my rock. Girls with  handbags, boys with city shoes, they demonstrate the impressive capability of twenty year olds to go because someone in the group said to.  This being stuck on the side of a mountain  feels hazily akin to a similarly stupid situation I may have been involved in on Mount Tamalpais back when I  too, was twenty. Time stands still!

The six smile, wave, talk non stop, and find a route below us which involves a few energetic leaps and bounds and we watch as they bounce off the last rocks and land on --land. There is a Japanese argument over what now, until they melt below our horizon and we unfreeze, look each other in the eye, take a deep breath, slide straight down rock face, and follow. Our leaps and bounds are not quite as dexterous, but we rapidly find ourselves down and alive. ,

Wearing what prove to be nearly indelible imprints of our volcanic slide on our backsides, we try to brush each other off, examine arms and legs for pebble shrapnel and generally appreciate our return to terra firma. Looking back up towards whence we've come, we see a few hopeful faces foolishly peering down at us from way, way up there. Turning our  bad example backs,  both feet on good Scottish turf, we  gingerly take the low road to Duddingston. By the time we've found the pub and the sun has gone, we've lost that sudden brush -with- disaster feeling which is, of course, how we humans carry on; don't you know.

 

Templar Mystery

Gullane, East Lothian, Autumn

Having been possibly the last person on the planet to have read the DaVinci Code, my knowledge of Freemasons extends only to secret handshakes and the seedy local  Masons' bar that  housed our kids' annual soccer banquets. I did see the movie (twice--on airplanes, I really liked the part where they gallop into the fancy museum party) and developed a mild interest in the idea of an ancient order of Templar Knights. 

 We took Tom's mother and sister to visit Rosslyn Chapel, which was shrouded as it always is, in scaffolding, and filled with people who'd read the Da Vinci Code with far greater passion than I. An unfulfilling drive down the four lane A1 to Old Craighill Junction, Rosslyn Chapel doesn't look like much from the outside. We  eavesdropped a tour, and I stood for a few minutes looking at the maize glass, an impossible piece of insider's information about North American corn, that pre-dated the European "discovery" of North America. Or, was it impossible? Weird place. I bought the Rosslyn Chapel bottle opener, the one with the Templar Knight as handle, and a piece of  pretty good shortbread at the Chapel's cafe and store.

Back in Gullane   I had  been coveting the tomatilla-like Chinese lanterns growing  in the abandoned forecourt of the empty Templar Lodge with the big For Sale sign. These lovely, delicate orange autumn flower pods dry beautifully and are a staple fall stock for us here in Massachusetts. They brighten the house from  autumn  harvest through long, cold winters.  I wanted those flowers; that piece of home. Now.  Checking out the scene, just across the street from  the Oxfam charity shop , the Gullane Delicatessen and behind the Gullane One Golf Club  first tee,  I slipped  inside the border yews, gathered an armful of  glossy smooth horse chestnuts (also a mainstay of a New England autumn) and snipped a bouquet of Chinese lanterns. I  greedily went back the next day for more, and hung them in upside down bunches on the whitewashed wall of our fisherman's cottage. They looked swell. 

Stealing flowers from the Templar Lodge gave me a bit of the heeby jeebies. I kept looking over my shoulder at something not quite there, and Tom refused to come any farther than the  horse chestnut tree.

There are all kinds of odd stories about this place.  The most recent one was a few years ago, when a Japanese film company put up a  'round the clock  rooftop webcam  streamed back to Tokyo internet. They aimed to track UFO activity on volcanic, Traprain  Law. A slab sided, sugarloaf shaped hill, home to ancient peoples for thousands of years, it stands in direct view across the fields to the Templar Lodge.  Steven Prior, the defunct hotel's manager, who himself dabbled in the paranormal, told BBC reporters at the time, "Some Japanese golfers on holiday here saw something strange up there, and word of this seems to have got back to Japan. There is a long Celtic tradition of fairies on the hills ... you wouldn't take your baby up there for fear of it being turned into a changeling." Ethereal starships, hovering  faeries, a million points of light; old tales talk of Templar treasure offloaded on the nearby beach,  secretly borne to Rosslyn's underground chambers and vaults.

Who planted those flowers?  Physalis,  sprouting through macadam in one large clump, they looked purposeful and non-invasive, while they are prone towards taking over in warmer climates. Why?  Did they arrive from a scattering of seeds sown by the ever present wind off the Firth of Forth? Pods from another galaxy? A last gasp effort to throw a little color at a last gasp hotel?

 The Lodge was,a very long time ago, a  Scottish "fortified house"built in the High Middle Ages, modestly prepared for attack. How it became a Templar Lodge, a  black leather bar hotel, and eventually a conference site for UFO enthusiasts  who featured shapeshifter replacement witnesses, reflects more about time and place than it does mystery or intrigue.

The village of Gullane pushed hard to retain the Templar Lodge as a hotel, but no bites. Approved recently as  renovation flats and private homes; the Lodge is history. Whether or not the Knights of the Templar, alien illuminati, or simple Scottish ghosts disturb the high end conversion, is anyone's guess. I can totally imagine a brace of  lost-in-space knight- ridden war horses racing through the parking lot, scooping up magical Chinese lanterns (said to be good for gout), and galloping on, over the hill, down to the sea; splashing across to Fife.

 

Cotswolds-Which Way 2

 

  Cotswolds, November

Last we saw the intrepid walkers, they were high on a Cotswoldian ridge overlooking--Wales. Now three in the afternoon of a winter's day, the sun dropping down in the sky, they consider their options.

 They examine the map.  As usual, they are doing a walk backwards. Left-handed and left brained, this is not a problem for him. She has to hold the map upside down, roll it and shake it, squint a little and crumple it back to him. Here, you look. Calmly, he irons out the map with his hand.  If they take this first bridleway after those woods, and along that fence which keeps the shee p there and the walkers here, it should lead them to the fields which eventually end in lane, and the Ford Road. 

 He pauses for effect. They can of course not take the bridleway, opt for the longer route and follow this ridge to its eventual dip--and the Ford Road. She says bridleway (she has this thing for hoof  prints) and he obliges. They wallow through two miles of mucky path which makes them rethink the wisdom of sharing the road with  thousand pound creatures who have twice as many legs. Trudging on,  they are mindful (ouch) of the prickly hedges and brambles, only partially pruned by the wan efforts of a volunteer citizenry who have made some (but not much) inroad on keeping the path open. She stops to pull an impossibly heavy tree branch from the path as a gesture of country code good will and he lets her struggle until she finally asks for help. It's a really big branch.

   Arriving at a small lane, he thinks this must be where they go left to the road. She has her eye on the horse racing stable the lane runs by, allows as how this actually doesn't look like the path on the map, but eagerly agrees to explore it in hopes of equine sitings. The aggressive stable lad whose aggressive dog growlingly keeps the walkers at bay, advises them that the trail they are looking for is not here; it is over there, although he does not actually ask them which trail they are looking for. They retreat. She pats some ponies,  they rejoin the bridleway  until they reach the right farm, the right lane, and, eventually the next choice. This trail  follows soft winter pastures lined by gentle woods,  few farms, many sheep and no humans. The medieval  Campden Lane brings them back to the Ford road.

  Faced with four simultaneous signs:  This Way(local footpath), That Way (Cotswold Way), Over There (Gloucestershire Way)or Follow the Road, they choose This W ay (local footpath) as one of them is always in favor of offroad shortcuts. He reminds her that this nearly always gets them lost, but she's already out of earshot.  They climb a stile into a  field of nervous, skittery sheep who scatter as they approach, like lambs before wolves. Their long shadows must look like stalking giants. The path, obliterated by sheep tracks (only sheep and wolves follow sheep tracks) is not even remotely  evident.  These walkers have learned (due to much experience and numerous  arguments involving stupidly circumnavigating fenced fields) to look ahead for the next stile, which usually appears in some sort of break in the trees or fence. Aha, there it is at the top of the field, a long climb up. Sheep baa, they hike, here's the stile and whoops, just past this copse, there's another one just down there, a much easier route. Ha.

Another climb across golden stone harrowed fields, they reach the perfect little farm high on a hill overlooking everything.  It's late on a winter's day and the house's  chimney trickles smoke as its inhabitants settle down to an early tea. The walkers know this because they  are horribly nosy Americans and have walked quietly along the hill, and watched. Passing the house, its view and its sheep, they open the gate and  gain the tiny lane to the ridge which harbors bucolic North Farmcote.   

 Rejoining the Cotswold Way  which  now travels an ancient cobblestoned drovers' path, they are on the home stretch; a good thing, as the light is leaving the sky-fast. Just before the Way dips into the darker woods, they stop to see shepherds and collies sort out the sheep high on the hills above them. Whoops, nips, hallos, and a  few  invectives guide one group of hotfooting sheep into a new field and replace them with what looks like an identical set. The shepherds on their quad bikes and their sheep- sneering collies glare at the walkers long
 enough to hustle our duo on their long darkening descent through the forest.

 The drovers' path sits below the woods, worn down by a thousand years of wagons and two and four legged feet. Trees have reclaimed any effort to farm these hectares. Private Keep Out signs along the wood warn walkers to--keep out. The Cotswold Way is clearly suffered by locals and not necessarily embraced as a bucolic right to roam. Past the fruit farm, along the slippery  cobbles, they emerge victoriously back at Haile's Abbey very grateful to find their car where they left it, and that they have not (this time) lost the car keys. 

The sun sets over the little twelfth century church, its light softening the air, sending rosy rays to warm the moment to idyllic. Smiling, walking back to look over the gate where   this day began, one of them wonders if the other has eaten all of his "hikers" chocolate bar.  Breaking the last bit into two pieces, he hands her one. Life is good.

Cotswolds-- Which Way...1

Cotswolds, November

 Cotswold Which Way 1

Tom, like many big picture/detail people, loves maps. His heart sings when he sees  an Ordnance Survey, and I had to finally haul him away from the lure of  their neatly color -coded stacks at the Waterstones near the British Museum, as we were late for a date with a pint, at the Museum Tavern.  I don't know why I bothered,  as I spent the next hour talking to a voice muffled behind a map marked  #45, The Cotswolds.  

OS maps are great. They come with little symbols showing castles, barns--and pubs, as well as individual trees and the smallest, teeny tiniest, path.  Local Tourist Information Centers (TIC) usually offer even more detailed maps showing local walks. Circular walks, pub walks, water walks, hill walks--these little maps are swell.   

So it wasn't much of a surprise for me, when Tom slipped into the   TIC in Broadway (the one in the Cotswolds, not cross 42nd street), and re-emerged  with, "A Complete Footpath Guide to  Winchcombe and surrounding areas"  which identified five long distance paths, footpaths, bridleways, byways, forest rides, and other "permissive" paths at a scale of one mile to the forefinger (or three inches), reproduced in this tidy one pager by Finial Press in Stroud, by permission from our friends at Ordnance Survey. 

A few hours later, sitting on a tree stump along a farm lane, looking down across the pastures of Sudeley Castle, trying to eating a cold yogurt with a small spoon, on a cold day, without taking my gloves off; I too, took a a look at the map.   "This guide takes you off the beaten  track..." said the first fold, which is of course, what had instantly induced Tom to plunk his 50p down for it, "...into the hills and valleys surrounding ancient and attractive Cotswold towns...whether you want an hour's walk or an all day's ramble."   

I located the former tree, now tree stump, holding our picnic (the cheese and crackers held down by Tom's backpack against the wind, the apple slices stolen by gulls who were themselves off their beaten path) just along the Warden's Way near Park's Farm. Although we had moseyed rather than marched (or rambled rather than hiked?) since leaving the parking lot at Haile's Abbey (with a quick run -in to see the medieval wall paintings at  Haile's Church) on the Cotswold Way, we had covered nearly three and a half forefingers of this designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.   

Tom joined me, pointing out the many, many pathway choices in front of us, in our quest for a circular walk which would begin and end--at our car. Cotswold Way, Windrush Way, Warden's Way, Gloucestershire Way, and the  mysterious Wychavon Way. We could make ours a greatest, greater, or great loop, depending on whim, and our remaining hours of daylight. Failing to take note of the map's casual contours, I traced my fancy, we threw our cracker crumbs to the gulls, and headed up a ridge so steep, we could see Wales, which was not exactly what I had in mind. 

Still, it's a heady feeling when you've put one foot in front of the other, past churned  fields of unharvested golden Cotswold stones, and woods hiding the dark, dangerous, snufflingly secretive world of farm bred boars.  The  distant view opens and opens and opens, until you can see the whole range of those mighty  Welsh mountains, and wonder why the sun seems to be stuck there, and not here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gales in Wales

 

Porthcawl, Wales, Late November

It doesn't take a  BBC weatherwoman to know which way the wind blows. It blows on me and thee and the great North Sea--and I for one look out sharply for Oregonian coastal-like sneaker waves when we are walking anywhere within a mile's distance of water.  It's the kind of weather that leaves you drenched in the five minutes it takes to find your car in the Europcar hire lot at Heathrow. In the wake of the largest amount of rainfall in the shortest amount of time in recorded history, bridges across Cumbria are collapsed or closed, as are schools and work. Local authorities advise people to ignore their satnav (there are apparently no settings to rule out downed bridges) and stay away from water. Sadly, some people have been swallowed (or have 'gone in' as the news reports) by the River Usk and the River Dart.

   The Workington Bridge over the Usk (Cumbria) is about to come down leaving residents with no access to schools, food--and work, other than by a bad, bad carbon footprint 90 minute diversion.Residents are fearful of their local economy suffering irreparable loss. On Sunday, a local Reverend, exhorted her congregation to, "Pray for the Brewery" in hopes that Jennings Brewery, the town's largest employer, now on the "wrong side" of the bridge, will stay, despite the absence of a way in--or a way out.  By comparison, Wales, if it weren't for the winds,  and the great sea waves, would seem lame.

But the Welsh winds are anything but ignorable. The sea here in Porthcawl (home of  one of the great annual Elvis Festivals) is a-roil and the wind, ceaseless.The Sunday outing for many people, in cars lining the promenade, is to have tea while watching the sea; throwing sandwich crusts to gulls who find it nearly impossible to land long enough to snatch them before the wind does.It is so windy that the bags are sucked out of rubbish bins, ebbing and filling with volatile air, tossing their contents to the sky. 

A short drive down the coast to Kenfig,  leads to the gorgeous stone Prince of Wales  where the locals are taking refuge from the wind but as it's Sunday--no food,  and on to the Angel for a hot meal, where our neighbor looks morosely at what must surely be his last pint. The bar tender orders him a cab, and he says sadly, "Not quite yet lovey.  Soon, soon."

 
Our little car rocks and rolls in the gusts, but the Fairway Hotel seems stolidly rooted and only the sound of the gale, and the age of the bed keeps us awake. We eat a full  (well almost full--skip the beans, fried bread, fried mushrooms but yes to black pudding, egg and  mushy seaweedy lavah bread), Welsh breakfast at a table defiantly inside the great picture windows, watching the weather head across the sea. Tom says it may be just too windy to leave.  The car is speckled by white sea foam, seats sodden with rain blown up through the undercarriage.

Who visits Wales when it's wailing?  You get quite used to the wind after a while. The Chippy on the  promenade is open, despite the risk of one strong gust's sending it seaward, and dog walkers are actually buying ice cream cones to slurp as they walk backwards into the gale, their dogs hopeful that chunks of vanilla cornet will blow their way.

A temporary expat's Scottish Halloween

 October 31, East Lothian
From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggetty beasties and things that go bump in the night, may the  Good Lorrrrd deliver us.

 Our mother used to tuck us in bed with this terrifying, yet comforting little homily (along with the one about bedbugs),and in the cold autumn evenings told us the ghostly story of the doomed Tam O' Shanter, who galloped his mare Meg through the darkest of dark nights.

It's no wonder that Hallow'een is my favorite holiday, for many excellent and compelling reasons;the crisp fall night, the moon, the leaves crackling, the ghoulies and the ghosties--and the chance to peer nosily into other peoples' living rooms, one night a  year. We  used to live in a neighborhood where our teenaged babysitter's father handed out shots of single malt  to the adult chaperones, but we moved.

Tom buys armloads of  corn candies and small chocolate treats, dumping  them into large bowls to offer willingly in lieu of tricks. He is ever hopeful that there will be leftovers. 

When we lived in Scotland for a while, a couple of years ago, we weren't sure if they "did" Hallow'een. We enthusiastically knew about Samhein--the Druidic summer's end, which involves bonfires and  mystical otherworlds, but these ceremonies seemed more popular in touristy Edinburgh than in semi rural Scotland, and when I mentioned it to a friend, she laughed. Okay, I get it.  We asked someone else, and were sniffily told, in no uncertain terms, that Hallow'een is an American import Scotland could better do without. BBC Scotland devoted a certain amount of airtime to this  rowdy behavior producing controversy in the days leading up to the end of October, but it was clear  by the costumes, candies and pumpkin bags on the High street, and the energetic preparations for monster bashes at local pubs, that Hallow'een is alive and well north of Gretna Green.  The Scottish term for all this was "goin' guising" but it sounded pretty familiar. Tom stocked up, I cut pumpkins, lit them and set them in windows, and we waited.

Here's how it works at home. Really little kids show up way too early, sometimes before it's even dark, which should be outlawed. The wear costumes from Old Navy, Disney or the expensive Waldorf toy store downtown. Their careful parents allow them to take one peanut- free sweet from Tom's brimming bowls and are hopeful that it will be an  organic gummy Fruit Snack.  The kids squabble over Three Musketeers.

By six, the tiny ones have given over to mid sized goblins who ask if they can have three candies. Some of them (fewer and fewer) collect pennies for Unicef.  By 8 pm the middle and high school crowds, out on their own, dressed casually in a last minute sheet or black jacket, cruise for goodies. Finally, at 9, on the verge of blowing out the pumpkins, we get the college crowd-- first years still hungry for their childhood, wearing the best costumes of the evening, and decorously thankful about cleaning us out of the remnant  Raisinettes and Smarties.

Things, (she said darkly), are different in Scotland. The pumpkins sat, one in the window and one on the front door step, burning wickedly in the dark. Our neighbor's tiny children came by at 6 (in Scotland in late October it is dark, dark, dark by 4:30) and then silence. I went outside to case the joint, looking for marauding bands of ghoulish adolescents. It was so quiet I could hear the sea in the sheltered bay, a couple of  hundred yards behind us. 7 pm, no one. Tom looked hopefully at the (modest for him) bowl of Mars bars. By 8 I figured it wasn't worth it to stick new candles in the pumpkins, I'd just let them burn down, if the strengthening wind didn't blow them out first.

At 8:15 the door was hammered by the sound of a million demonically thundering fists.  I eagerly opened the door, ready to let that devil in. A trio of twelve year old Harry Potters looked me over politely,  and asked if I was ready for the riddle. A riddle?  What about I give you a treat, you agree not to trick, and that's it? What kind of celtic madness is this? I didn't guess that kid's riddle (some  insider's Scottish joke), nor either of his mates. Cost-- three handsful of sweets, and a lesson learned.  Six more sets of Harry Potters, a few Dumbledores and a Deatheater, twice as many tortuous riddles; an hour later, the cupboard was bare, and I was a confirmed idiot. 

By 9:30 All Hallow's Eve,we blew the pumpkin out, turned the entry light off, and  walked across the dark village green, down the windy lane to the fire- bright pub, for a pint. The wind whipped up a few ghoulies, a bogle and goblin or two, taunting us with gusts of the sea, on our  dark walk home. 

Tam O' Shanter

Robert Burns

This truth fand honest Tam o' Shanter,
As he frae Ayr ae night did canter:
(Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a town surpasses,
For honest men and bonie lasses).

O Tam! had'st thou but been sae wise,
As taen thy ain wife Kate's advice!
She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum,
A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum;
That frae November till October,
Ae market-day thou was na sober;
That ilka melder wi' the Miller,
Thou sat as lang as thou had siller;
That ev'ry naig was ca'd a shoe on
The Smith and thee gat roarin' fou on;
That at the Lord's house, ev'n on Sunday,
Thou drank wi' Kirkton Jean till Monday,
She prophesied that late or soon,
Thou wad be found, deep drown'd in Doon,
Or catch'd wi' warlocks in the mirk,
By Alloway's auld, haunted kirk. 

 

 

My brief life as a Hibs fan

November, Edinburgh

 
Hibernians! Hibernians!

It's not easy being a Hibs fan. You have to wear green, jump up and down on stadium seating and worse--know all the words to the Proclaimers' songs. 

It's soccer back in the USA, a sport more known as the venue of soccer moms than soccer  dudes, but its football in Edinburgh, and it's us versus them.  Draped in green Hibs' scarves, standing on the stadium seats, we're cheering our team, the Hibernians against the Hearts with song, volume and energy. The Hibs (Hibernians) do not have a  recently stellar track record, but this is the golden year.

I am a bystander, a  dragged- in companion to three enthusiastic Hibs fans; Barry, Gwynedd and my Tom, who is also a diehard Cubs and Red Sox fan, and knows adversity when he sees it. The game begins with each team parading out, and squaring off.  Both teams's supporters' noise from the stands (the Hearts--Heart of Midlothian or  Jambos, are the "other" Edinburgh team) is loud and semi musical. Imagine rows and terraced rows, of loud men wearing loud colors, singing as loudly as they can-- the green half of them singing, "Glory, glory to the Hibees" and the maroon half singing   "the Hearts' Song" --fans swaying slightly to the tune, waving football scarves like matadors to bulls.

Although the stands do have seats, no one sits. Football clubs in Edinburgh do not serve beer at games but there is  plenty of evidence of its consumption on the streets leading to Leith's Easter Road Stadium, and in the general demeanor of the fans. That they remember all the words to all the songs is remarkable, but it's also possible that singing keeps them sober.  Barry and Gwynedd are clearly part of the Hibs fraternity, Tom and I lipsynch.  Hearts score, Hibs sing. Hibs score, Hearts sing. Yellow jacketed officers patrol the foot of the stands in an effort to keep fans from rushing the field--a popular pastime. There is of course, a certain amount of that universal, men in herds, stands shakin'  foot stomping. Removing it from play, I wrap my Hibs scarf -as muffler around my head.

And so it goes. I am caught up in the game, and the songs and the general energy. Football is Fun! It's a close game, but the nod goes to Hibernian and the fans go wild. Really wild.  Then lights dim.  Hibs supporters throughout the stands wrap arms across each others'  shoulders--and sing, some in three part harmony. Curiously the song is the melancholic, somewhat obtuse Proclaimers tune, Sunshine on Leith, which may be about broken hearted love, interminably grey skies in Scotland--or football.  Although I am pretty sure some of the Hearts fans are singing rather unsportsmanlike lyrics to the same tune,  we all--Hearts and Hibs fans alike, have a wee tearie in our eye.

 .

My heart was broken, my heart was broken
Sorrow sorrow sorrow sorrow
My heart was broken, my heart was broken

You saw it, you claimed it
You touched it, you saved it

My tears are drying, my tears are drying
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you
My tears are drying, my tears are drying

Your beauty and kindness
Made tears clear my blindness
While I'm worth my room on this earth
I will be with you
While the chief, puts sunshine on Leith
Ill thank him for his work
And your birth and my birth

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

Snowden for Slackers

Wales, Summer

It's not like we're driving up Mt Snowden.  Consider Mt. Brandon, on the Dingle Peninsula. People walk, drive or bike up the hairpin road on the Connor Pass.  Some hire folksy  gypsy caravans, and try to convince their  non like-minded  caravan- pulling horses to drag them up.  Fair weather cyclists ascend by van, and descend by bike, flying down the curves and turns--missing that noble greater sense of freedom that comes from having  painfully pedaled up in order to coast down.

On Mount Snowden it's walk or train.

 We're  taking the train.  Here's why:

1. Riding the historical, belching, rack and pinion steam train up Mt Snowden seems a clever way to see a big mountain in a short time.
2. The weather is not very nice
3. It looks like rain.
4. It takes three hours to hike up
5.  It takes three  hours to hike  down
6. The summit cafe is closed for repair
7. The summit is closed for repair
8. We're already surrounded by legions of end-of-term, team bonding, mountain climbing,  day out school children, headed up
9. We're Americans. We don't feel like walking.

Done deal. Tickets bought, check. Walking map purchased showing route train takes, which coincidentally follows most popular(easiest) ascent trail (there are six), check. Binoculars, check. Hiking poles, boots, water bottles and  rain gear, stuffed back in car, check. Here comes the train.

LLanberis (two L's make a Welsh Y with a slight choking sound in the back of the throat) Station is our launching pad. A  vintage -clad conductor  takes our tickets, closes the  carriage doors, jumps into the engine and  appears to also be driving the train. The fact that it is a generally good day for slackers means our numbers require a double car, one engine, and we fit ourselves into what is  an  increasingly small space. Fortunately we are not, as our some others, seated with passengers whose girth  requires more than their allotted space.  Unfortunately, our group includes talkers. They have a lot to say a lot about, but as they are saying it in German, it is all German to us.

A quiet man and his quiet son sit directly across from us and thankfully they stay quiet all the way up. We're quiet too. It's the quiet family and the loud family and the big  family and all the rest of us in the very small carriages climbing the very big mountain. Toot, Toot (steam engines do say that, toot, really), we're off.  Steam engines also say chug, chug and ours satisfactorily chugs its way, pushing us uphill through a lovely valley and a hand hewn cutting and past the happy  hikers who are at the first leg of their  long walk up the Llanberis Path. They wave, we wave, I am pretty sure I can hear some rude school children alluding to our laziness and we leave them in our smoke.

Did I mention that we're sitting backwards? This is what happens when Tom and I ride  trains; cog, steam, diesel or Amtrak we are last in and we get the backwards seats. This is actually okay when it's flat and you're whizzing along and it's Penn Central next stop, but incredibly disconcerting when you're going backwards and uphill and the engine is behind you. 

The train does its train thing and the scenery moves from valley to hill to beyond the tree line, chug, chug until the halfway station where we 'take on water' which of course is a bad thing for boats, but apparently a good thing for steam trains. There have been choruses of oohs and ahhs and there it is, by passengers who are facing forwards, which we assume means summit sightings but could of course mean dragons or oncoming trains on our track. We concentrate on looking at everything we have just passed and the legions of  happy school children in their inappropriate --for-mountain-walking uniforms skipping up the trail, socking each other and grabbing a smoke. 

Our train, designed to go all the way to the summit,  passes through a huge rocky valley which I am pretty sure must be where they filmed Planet of the Apes but Tom says of course not, that was Arizona. The train stops. We all sit in our carriages waiting for it to start. It doesn't.  The quiet father and son get out. We get out. The loud family and the big family get out and the conductor/engineer tells us this is as far as we are going. Everybody out.  We're at Clogwyn Station I think, since that's what the tickets say, but there isn't actually a station.

The train sits, we stand. Everyone is out of the train, there is no shelter--and it starts to rain--a little. We walk around the  bleak perimeter which ends precipitously  at the top of a huge gorge which requires peering over to see down, accompanied by cries of, don't go near the edge. We look at a summit high above us but aren't sure if it's our summit or another summit (there are a number of those around here). It rains a little harder. I remind Tom that it was his idea to put our rain gear back in the car. He reminds me that I said we didn't need it because we would be sitting in a train. It's really raining.   No conductor/engineer in sight. The loud family is not happy. We look up, we look around, but our looking is seriously hampered by the fact that we are in dense fog--and wet. This is a lot like being on a whale watch in bad weather,  except that of course it's Wales and the biggest mountain outside of Scotland, not whales and Stellwagen Bank. Ha.

Toot, toot. The doors to the carriages miraculously open and we climb back in. The 
quiet father and son are missing. No one counts heads and we begin our rack and pinion descent, our view limited to mist which is just as well because in some places we pick up speed while going straight down. Once we are back in the Rock y V alley it begins to  clear a little. We can pick out familiar boulders, and  wet walkers. The school children are hilarious in their soddenness, their drenched school uniforms a giddy indicator that lessons are over and summer is here.

We turn a corner and my eyes connect, for just a moment, with the eyes of  our outward journey seat mates--the quiet father and son-- who are walking their way back. 

Remembering the mountain foot by foot.

Slacker be gone--I wish we were, too.

Cotswolds-- Warden's Way

 

Late Winter, Cotswolds      The gate  stands at the top of the meadow, a mile past a meandering little river which winds through a golden Gloucestershire village. Its frame bent just enough to look as if it might have been shoved aside by a small, impatient dragon - it is the kind of Narnian door that promises adventure. You ping the catch back, stride through and hey presto, you've wandered into a sixteenth century landscape that's real--but too real to be real, if you know what I mean. It takes a mighty intervention to "preserve" space like this.

A  row of  trees-- the many -armed, and mysterious whych elm, solid beech and comforting oak, stand leafless in the January sun. An ancient stone fence stolidly rings the fields. Just off in the near distance are the chimneys of an old manor house tucked down in the hollow by the stream. I have to shake my head and roll my eyes around for a few moments to get back to my own time, but am still a little startled to look down and see my legs in jeans and my feet in rubber boots, which definitively mark the here and now.

It is almost balmy here, at high noon, in the coldest part of an English winter. I have peeled off my jacket and stuffed it in Tom’s daypack, along with gloves and scarf and hat and anything else I am supposed to be carrying, in favor of his carrying it. The sun is doing its best to think spring.  The ground is relatively dry, although we have worn our  wellies into which we, habitual walkers of wet lands, have nonchalantly tucked our trousers. When we reach the next little, immaculate-right-out-of-the-movie village before returning on the slightly circular path, we ford the deep stream and splash around for a while; big kids in a giant puddle, only mildly heedful of the strong little current which could  trip either of us,  if we don't stop fooling around.There's no one here but us.

It's January and it feels, smells and looks like October. This happens sometimes in southern England, and it is more than pleasant. The Warden's Way, an easy wander, winds through some of the Cotswolds' loveliest, preserved, and best kept villages, and it is hugely  popular with weekend walkers, and weekend walkers' dogs. Today, we have it all to ourselves, which gives the whole place a surreal aura--kind of  a ' post-Plague' deja vu. The wealthy weekend owners of these former workers' homes, are off skiing in Gstaad or just hunkered down in their Mayfair flats. It's too cold for tourists--except for us.

This is the kind of walk that makes the possibly dubious into  confirmed believers of  the Right to Roam. The concept of own- and- share dovetails sweetly with  a general  awareness of the Country Code-- which means that we carefully close the gate after opening it, do not throw our litter on the ground, nor our beer bottles at the stone fence and refrain from scaring sheep. We could not do this at home, where No Trespass is a treasured citizen's right and the concept of walking across common ways, is nearly as foreign--as sheep...

We're not walking all of the 13 mile Way--just the bit between the  pub (Coach and Horses) parking lot on  the busy three lane  A429 on the off side of Bourton on the Water. Given the swift winter afternoons, our window of  walking light is not enormous. 

 The River Eye (more the Stream Eye), flows benignly beside us for much of our  little walk, gearing up for its quick immersion into the greater River Windrush (which, oddly, looks just what it sounds like). When we find ourselves in Lower Slaughter (fortunately not what it sounds like), the water wheel turns only as a visitor attraction, and, as we are the only visitors and we don't stop, it turns unsung until spring brings the proper number of gawkers.

 Our satisfying splash through the river leads us back along its banks, through Upper Slaughter, past the Manor-turned-Country House Hotel, over the meadows and through the gate. Russet fields, a few sheep and regrettably soon,we're looking at civilization. The car park pub is way too real; cheek to jowl with the highway and the byway. We climb into the car to head for the lively Crown and  Trumpet, and join the loud crowd viewers of the Spurs/Arsenal game, in poncy Broadway.

Walking Some of It Backwards

 

 

A Nice (short) Walk from Lower Slaughter to Upper Slaughter 

Walk through the village to the Old Mill.

Take the footpath that runs along the side of the mill. Signposted ‘Wardens Way’

Walk along the riverbank and then cross three fields.

Cross a stone footbridge over the river.

Walk to the road then turn right.

Re-cross the river and turn immediately left sign posted 'unsuitable for motors'.

Walk ahead for 150 yards.

At the ford, re-cross the river by a stone footbridge.

Walk up the hill and at the small village square; take the road to the left.

Walk 50 yards and turn right at the footpath sign.

Retrace your steps back to Lower Slaughter.

 

 

British ghosts

 

Spring, Devon

I have to, at the very beginning, admit that I have a tendency to see ghosts. It's not my fault,and it's always a surprise. I come from a long line of tea leaf readers and people who who have convincingly two -way conversations with relatives who have 'passed over'. My mother, on the advice of her Séance- enthusiast English mother, banned Ouija for two generations after an unfortunate experience in 1927.  My "other" grandmother  (Russian) did eerily accurate  Yiddish fortunes; predicting babies,  events and bad weather.

 When I say ghosts, I don't mean wispy smoky see- through things,  I mean real people who don't apparently exist in the here and now. Sometimes they bump in the night  or  walk by with a martini in hand, and others they stubbornly insist on getting into what I think is my bed, and they think is theirs. Once I demanded that we leave our week's farm cottage rental on a Blue Flag beach on the Dingle Peninsula after our first 24 hours, because an old man squeakily rocked all night in our bedroom chair, insistently saying, "Geddout geddout."  I have probably the world's longest suffering husband.

So--this time it was Devon, in an old coastguard cottage high on a stormy cliff.  I hadn't  slept well  after an intense weekend of visitors and activity, and woke up in the middle of  the night, in that way that says you won't fall back asleep unless you get up.   Deep  country pitch dark, I opened  the curtains for a bit of moonlight as I had done many times before (sometimes the moon shone straight over the sea, round and full  into our bedroom window). I headed downstairs to make a nice cup of tea.

 Opening the door to the landing,  I sleepily noticed a person tucked into the comfy hall chair, huddled into a wool blanket gripped closely by his or her two hands, distinctive in the shaft of moonlight.  I  sleepily said,” Oh sorry,” closed  the door and went to look for the landing light. All the light switches in the cottage were hard to reach and it was dark. I needed help. “Tom?”  We were, I thought, the only ones in the cottage. No answer. Back to the landing.  Tiptoeing a bit closer,  looking again at the person silently curled into the chair, I stage whispered,  “ Tom is that you?" Tom yawned an answer from our  bedroom, “What?"”. 

Waking up a lot faster than is advisable for anyone at any age, I  very nearly  fell backwards down  the long, steep stairs, but fortunately my arm shot out a  life- saving grab at the railing. The person in the chair thoughtlessly made no move to help me, even though I was fairly voluble in a rather unladylike way about my near -miss dive down the staircase.  In fact the figure did not move at all. Asleep...or?

I ran back into  our bedroom to check to see if Tom really was still in our bed (yup), and  back again to  to see who was in the  hall, already really annoyed that I'd been startled--and scared, and ready to have a few words with our midnight visitor.  Gone. Poof. Tom got up and patiently, helped look for my ghost.  The chair was empty--no blanket, no coat, nothing that could have tricked me into thinking it was a someone.  Bedrooms-check, landing- check, windows-check.  I sat in the chair too--very briefly, just to see if it was still warm and it wasn't--in fact--it was cold.  Tom, who has learned over the years not to patronize me about these ghostly sightings, sat briefly in the chair, pronounced it neither warm nor cold, reminded me that the whole house was cold,  and went back to our hot water bottle- cozy bed.  I stayed awake for hours.... listening. The two dogs snoring in the kitchen, said nothing. I switched the lights on and off for awhile and tiptoed around opening and closing doors, trying to recreate the scene--but my ghost had, apparently, taken his woolen blanket and fled. 

We woke to bright sun, and two men putting up painters' scaffolding outside our bedroom window. Tom agreed that we would make breakfast and drive up to  the moors.  We walked. And walked. The weather was gorgeous and the moors were incredible and the huge circular walk had tors and fields and jumps and medieval villages and bogs and French school  children and chocolate bars and a picnic by a bucolic stream. We  wandered through little  moor villages and had dinner in lovely Harberton, at the nine hundred year old Church House Inn (broccoli bake and Lost in the Woods ale) with its ghosts, then back to dogs and the cottage--and our ghosts.

I have to admit that I made myself stay in bed at night once I was in bed-- all the weeks that followed. Some nights the dogs or the wind or the sea or the creaks of an old house kept me awake and I took to reading with one of those silly book lights which gives just enough illumination to read three lines and to double check the shadows.

Bird is the Word --Russell New Zealand

We don't always walk. Sometimes we just stand.  We might wave our feet a bit and  there may be some mad dashes to find shelter--or the toilets-- but not a lot of ground gets covered. Still, at the end of the day we feel like we walked and sink gratefully into the couch in front of the fire, with a glass of that nice sauvignon blanc in hand, the rain outside where it belongs.

And so it was at this year's Russell  (New Zealand, Bay of Islands) Birdman Weekend Extravaganza.  Russell  is, as Kiwis lushly say about views, friendships,hugs and small children--gorgeous. A small village accessible most easily by a small car ferry Opua to Okiato, it is summer home to money, yachts and high end "cottage" rentals. 

It's winter now and off season rentals are a steal, which is why we are cozily ensconced with our children and their three, four- and- unders, in a gorgeous villa with a side of honeymoon cottage overlooking Russell  Harbor.  Warm fires, porridge for breakfast, a ride on the high speed  Mac Attack to the wave shattering  Hole in the Rock, and we are in love.

Serendipitously it is Birdman Weekend.  Friday  evening kicks it all off with the Drag Queen Race where local   teachers, electricians, fishermen and solid citizens sport high heels and feathers to race along the pier to a series of mini challenges which end at the pub. The day leading to the race, we are told down at the hardware and the pharmacy and the Four Square  grocery that it's all in aid of the schools but, (a certain amount of foot shuffling here) of course the contestants are doing it for the laugh, all hearty blokes'  blokes. Har har. The race happens as the winter day starts dropping into darkness--a swishy saunter down the pier, through the obstacles, much laughter, local crowd and everyone back to the pub, although I note that several of the contestants seem loath to remove their costumes and there is much arch toe pointing and leg flashing.

The weather--is winter in July, which even here in "sub tropical" Bay of Islands is not warm-and the sea is more than chilly.  Although the week has been warm, sunny days, Friday night is expected to bring in a storm. A big storm.  We keep festive umbrellas at hand along with softer than soft fleece  Katmandhu  caps and scarves.   It's not raining yet--but the very nice Scottish couple who are caretaking our holiday home tell us somberly that the prospects are poor. The  weather is expected to be worse than predicted. As we are neophytes here, we have no idea what that means, until a freight train wind tells us somewhere around midnight, that  the roof is trying to fly off.  The fireplace is full of rain, and the squalls are enough to send three year old Elena straight back to Massachusetts at about the same speed as an Air New Zealand  747 had we not held her very, very tightly.

 If we had been home in rain date America,  tomorrow would have been canceled; and we listen mockingly to the locals at the pier saying the show will go on--but it does. The  Russell Birdman Festival  has to be one of the most honorable do or die extravaganzas anywhere outside of Australia. It pours. It gales. People come. Everyone is soaked within ten minutes but no one cares. The littles line up with wet hats and scarves and  umbrellas whipped inside -out by the wind and we all watch as contestants saunter down the pier to their own music-walk the gangplank-and jump in. Gorgeous.

High school  wet- suited divers await underwater for mishap (the Pope takes longer to surface than is entirely comfortable for the crowd) and a small fleet of fishing boats and motorized dinghies  escort the leapers to shore. Betty and Wilma (Flintstone) toss in their foot-mobile before  jumping--and the local St John's Ambulance sacrifices an inflatable patient. Birdman him/herself runs mysteriously, neatly and swiftly,  before arcing cleanly into the harbor and swimming back to shore.  Drama and laughter combine with the music and the ingenious announcer to create an ambiance of fun and adventure despite the drenching rains, gale force winds and sea of umbrellas.

The littles, wet, but satiated by the hot sausages from one of the family stalls under the overhang (home-made sausage wrapped in white bread with a big splat of Heinz ketchup that tastes gorgeous, but leaves trails of bloody ketchup to be hosed off by the rain) stay until the very cool all -the- way -from-Auckland thumbs-up  Funky Monkeys get down at the  Pub Around the Corner where the adults drink beer (or sav blanc) and refreshingly hang out in back, refraining from the New American Parent need to pretend that they too, are four.

Later that night, back at the pub with a pool cue and a beer, I try to pry--who IS Birdman? The Maori bar tender (he was the cute one in  that fabulous red frock in the drag queen race)-- says his lips are sealed --it's the village secret, and tries not to let his eyes stray towards anyone in that huge happy group by the fire.

North York Moors--Reservations needed on the Inn Way

North Yorkshire, July
It's getting dark and I'm hungry. Really hungry--and cranky and muddy and I'm pretty sure that my  absolutely favorite-of-all time irreplaceable shiny Italian red leather sandals are history. This forest is  impenetrable  and Tom has admitted that we are, as he puts it, "path free" which is his unique way of avoiding having to say those inflammatory three little words: We Are Lost. I know we're lost, he knows we're lost, but Tom is more likely to focus on the what next and I am thoroughly engrossed in the what now.

When someone asks me if I'd like a stroll to the pub for dinner, and when that pub is the  Plough Inn  in Fadmoor, North Yorkshire  which combines ambiance,tiny rural village pub location, and lovely food which might include a  creamy Wensleydale pasta and will definitely offer something fragrantly lamb and rosemary; my shoes  (as  in this case the now sadly wilted red leather Italian sandals) are on and I am out the door.

Tom has thoughtfully extended that invitation this evening as we have been pleasurably walking part of  the Cleveland Way for a large part of the day, arriving back at our self catered  cottage  to discover that the cupboards are bare and our supper choices are limited to oatmeal and a bottle of Old Peculiar.  

The pub is a good distance by road and I don't pay much attention to Tom's suggestion to take a short cut--always a cautionary sign.That was hours ago, well at least one hour-- and the sun was still high on this North Yorkshire summer evening  when we followed the little red line on Tom's TIC  map  to the local leg of  The Inn Way, off the hard packed earth road, into the deep deep woods.

What could be more delightful than following a walk called The Inn Way? The map shows it as a six day 89 mile circular walk Helmsely to Helmsley connected by--inns. Our little jog of it would take us to our little inn, The Plough and Tom does not notice--or somehow chooses not to let me know he's noticed-- that this section includes the highest point of the entire walk, which I sincerely hope is behind us-- Sleightholmdale (cottage)  to Fadmoor (pub).

The path we've been following seems to have been either an old path used possibly once or twice a century, a newer one that was a poor idea, or Not The Inn Way At All and   has pretty much petered out by the time we've slid nearly vertically up a muddy embankment, crossed over another forest road to nowhere, and we've had to make the kind of decision that involves direction and setting sun and whether Fadmoor is to the west, the north west or just plan north.

I like to wet the tip of my finger and hold it in the air to test direction which Tom says is ridiculous because (he was a multi-badged boy scout) that is how you test for wind direction not for direction direction, but it works mysteriously well for my personal radar and as Tom has had a serious credibility dip what with the getting lost and all--we go my way which does self righteously lead us out of  the forest  over and through a many -hectared  barbed wire sheep field--and then another one and three more just like it, so that by the time we stumble around a huge farm and through the sort of  muddy and animal- rich ground detritus huge farms tend to collect and onto the Fadmoor road and into the Plough Inn, we are instantly stopped at the door and asked if we have reservations.

Reservations? At the pub? Ummm...no, could we just eat at the bar? What no bar dining without--a reservation? Could we just get a drink and (I beg) possibly some crisps? We are shuffled to a corner of the bar where none of the spiffy diners (where do these people come from?) have to see our poor, bedraggled selves.

Slinking out when we are done, we walk very, very slowly all the way back down the village road out to the main road, and the long hard packed earth road, down the steep hill, to the stable that is our food- free self catering cottage. I drink the  beer. Tom quietly makes mush.

Flying In the Wake Of Disaster

1.  

Note: They say that if you can't walk there---fly.  Planes are the safest way to travel very long distances and I far prefer them to say--cars,  for many reasons, most particularly that airplanes are steered by experts with many years of intensive training who operate these enormous creatures under strict regulation which keeps thousands of them aloft without mishap. I can't personally say the same thing for the operators of motor vehicles, especially if one of them happens to be one of my twins.

In the past few years however, as we are all of course aware, some planes do not stay up. Some land serendipitously in the Hudson River without mishap, some bump off runways on icy nights, some fall into the vast deep sea north of Rio and once, not so long ago, four were used as weapons and aimed at buildings. I wrote this piece thirteen summers  ago  on a BA flight  from Glasgow to Boston as the world and most particularly, New York, was grappling with the concept of terrorism and air travel.  TWA Flight 800 had very recently fallen into Long Island Sound. "739 apparent eyewitnesses" including my cousin Judy's husband Joe, who was emptying the trash  in his Long Island backyard when he saw a streak of light shoot skywards, "suggest that an external missile strike by a U.S. Navy vessel caused the crash."  The FBI concluded that the plane had a physical flaw. I like airplanes which have four engines attached to them and  frequently find myself, seasoned traveler, watching the seat belt demonstration in the front of the cabin, even though I learned how to buckle one fairly confidently  when I was four.  TWA no longer exists.  Neither does Pan Am. So it goes.

 

It’s the third week of July, the year 1996, four shy of the millennium and there are rumors that the world will come to a grinding halt as computers fail to breach the Y2K gap. There are those who are already stockpiling food and water against this possibility and there are those who say fugeddaboutit, the world is about to end. Most of us are just trying to raise our awareness enough to remember to put a 2 where the 1 is on our checks. Ob la di, ob la da.A week ago TWA’s Paris-bound Flight 800 mysteriously fell out of the sky over Long Island, killing all 230 aboard.   It may have been blown up by terrorists. Or maybe not.  What we do know is that, for some yet unknown reason-- it stopped working.

We’re sitting in Glasgow Airport reading the Sunday papers before heading home. The airport is filled with golfers and students and families. Our conversation is punctuated at regular intervals by stern airport announcements in a strong  Glaswegian burr, “This is a secerrrrity alerrrrt. Please do not leave yerrr baggage un-attended at any time. All unattended luggage will be immediately destrrrrroyed.”  This PA announcement is novel to us, and we half keep our eyes peeled for any suspicious anything. We’d watched as the gate agent who checked us in at British Airways went several polite rounds with an expensively-dressed couple whose bulging bags were well over the weight limit. The agent was insistent. Those bags were not getting on that plane. Our plane.  Our turn.  Having persevered at some cost, and a bit rattled, the agent asked us the same question twice in a row, “Have you left your bags unattended at any time? Has anyone unknown to you asked you to carry any item in your baggage?” “No,” we answered twice, having personally wrestled our luggage to, into, and out of, our tiny Ford Fiesta. Besides, we thought, how dumb do we look?

 As we stir our last cuppa, we are amused by the piles of unattended luggage left by hungry students as they queue for tea and breakfast. They are not immediately destroyed. My backpack harbors my goes-everywhere Swiss Army knife which glides through the security x-ray undetected. Husband Tom sets off the alarm with his college lacrosse legacy steel arm plate and a pocketful of pence and is carefully wanded, patted and excused.

Once on the plane our Flight Service Manager  immediately launches into the evacuation drill. Usually blasé about all this, we join most of our fellow passengers in carefully following his directions while examining the plastic-coated diagram in our seat pockets. I check to see if the life preserver is under my seat. I can’t see it, don’t know what it would like if I could see it,  nor do I know if there’s really an oxygen mask tucked up over my head just because the FSM says there is. The airline has forgotten to put headsets or those little bags with eyeshade, booties and toothbrush in our seat pockets. Who’s to say they remembered to pack the safety stuff?

As the FSM goes into detail about all the clever things they have ready in case we land unexpectedly, he does not mention what to do if we should fall unexpectedly, except to kick off our high heels and crouch low in our seats with our hands over our heads. Those of us who grew up with duck and cover know a placebo when we hear one, a soothing but useless remedy for certain death. The  FSM is not asked the question which is on all of our minds because of last week’s news, “So…what do we do if the plane explodes?”  

 We taxi towards takeoff. As the 757’s engines churn, the passengers remain absolutely silent. Even after the uneventful liftoff we remain still; holding hands, fingers, or, as in our adolescent son Xander's case, a fierce fistful of my shirt. No attendant buzzers ring. The pilot breaks the silence after eleven minutes—the amount of time  which elapsed before Flight 800 stopped ascending and abruptly disintegrated over the sea.  The flight crew unbuckle their seatbelts and bustle about pressing wine, beer, and vodka and tonics on us even though it is only 10:30 in the morning. We accept.

 I think about the Boston college student, on her way home from London, one of those who fell out of the air on Pan Am Flight 103, "Maid of the Seas" a few years ago over Lockerbie, not too far north of here, killing all onboard and a dozen Lockerbians on the ground. Her mother told local reporters that she, “…had a horrible wrenching conviction” long before she reached the airport to pick her up, that her daughter’s plane, “…hadn’t made it.” I think about the Celtic cairn of stones that marks where she did land.

 We finish our wine and have another. We watch two movies. We eat lunch. We drink tea. We approach JFK, looping over Long Island Sound as we come in. A bumpy landing heralds our arrival, in one piece. All but a dozen passengers gratefully disembark, leaving behind their scattered pillows, blankets and cracker wrappers; detritus from a  movie sleepover.  

 Those of us who are Boston- bound remain on board for an hour while mysterious things are done to the plane.  More food? More fuel? Bomb check? A Captain or Someone in Captain’s Clothing walks around the plane peering at things, kicking tires.

 We take off again. I think about the Flight 800 high school students eager to try out their French, thrilled at the start of their long-awaited adventure, the Flight 800 parents taking children to see Paris, the Flight 800 Flight Attendants and meticulously trained pilots and  the Flight 800 executives checking watches to wait out the ascension ban on laptops. The view is late dusk over Manhattan and then, the blue, blue Atlantic Ocean.

No one talks on our plane as we rocket upwards. No one excitedly points out the circles of small search and rescue boats stretched out off of eastern Long Island. Eleven and a half minutes. We are at 13,000 feet. The water is crystal clear. We silently examine it for shadow and shapes possibly the size of wings, of engine fuselage, of bodies. Our plane rises and rushes on, up the coast past Newport, Cape Cod, into Boston.

 When we land, a beagle sniffs our luggage for contraband. A woman near us is told to empty out her suitcase and has an apple and a tangerine confiscated. We locate our car and head for the Pike. No planes fall on us as we plunge into the depths of the Callahan Tunnel but Tom has to slam on the brakes  to avoid the cabby who  swings his taxi suddenly in front of us. I catch his eye in his rear view mirror and he smiles. 

 

Tramping Te Mata

  July, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand

Americans hike, Brits ramble, and Kiwis tramp. Tramping up and down is a popular hike in New Zealand as these engaging Seussian mountains often come from lava mamas. Their shapes are so pleasing and there are so many of them, appearing just over the horizon almost everywhere on both islands, that they cry out to be patted. You can almost imagine taking a herd of them for a little  bobbling walk.

We've spent several days in the "real" mountains northwest of Napier, staying in a camp already well up in the snowy range so we saw snow--which while amusing when it is summer in New England, quickly grows less so when your hands get cold, there is shy cabin heat  and when the sun sets it is just you, the mountains, a huge night  sky and a lunar- like absence of  humankind. Icy mornings are made bearable by rapid sunrise and the lively gong, crackle, pop of Tui birds. Tom did some walking but I stuck to letting trekking horses haul me up the heights. Magnificent, not to be missed, and over-- once we headed down to sea level at cerulean Hawkes Bay, the upstart home of good grapes.

Staying at a vineyard cottage on the leeward side of Te Mata Mountain, we keep looking up at it on our walks along the river or through the fields and figure we'd better just get it over with and climb up, won't the view be fab. We could always drive up part way, as there is  an auto road right up to the tippy top, even though we've only ever given in and done that on Mt. Washington many years ago which seemed like  (and was) an excellent idea at the time.

Te Mata is a comforting shape. A mythical Maori sleeping giant, it peaks beyond a connecting range of worn mini summits which remind us very much of our own ancient Holyoke Range, popular with---harrier hawks (natch), as well as hang gliders. Easy peasy, a gorgeous sunny day worthy of California's best, sends us in search of a place to leave the car which doesn't offer itself until we are  past the megamansions  balanced precariously on fault line cliffsides, partially up the Te Mata road. Whoops.

 
We pull in next to a van full of school holiday adolescents giddy with having completed their climb. The Peak Trail leads to ...duh, the peak of Te Mata, four hundred meters up and we are feeling pretty dumb and Mt. Washington-like as we realize that our car has climbed 200 of them for us. The little thing is sitting there  desperately gasping for Diahatsu Sirion breath, imploring us to get out.  We feel almost silly pulling out our walking sticks for this romp in the park and head for the trail, which follows the road for the first few yards until it starts to wrap itself thoughtfully around the mountain. 

I have plenty of time to take photos as Tom stops  every now and again to check to see how his broken rib (horse fall in mountains) is holding up, so I get to enjoy the day, the view and begin to gain a deep fondness for this funny eruption between the flat Pacific  coast and the Ruahine, Kaweka and  Maungaharuru Ranges which lie just there in the distance-- wild and gentle and inviting all at the same time. 

Craggy Range and the green and seductively elusive gannet sheltering Cape Kidnapper's lie just east.  We can just make out Mt Ruapehu in Tongariro, the nearest active volcano, reassuringly distant from us.  There are really no bits of this popular tramp that might make me think twice about climbing it with a leashed  four year old, unlike most of the New Zealand paths we have climbed, which have a tendency to offer sheer drops on hair pin turns--much like some of the roads the Diahatsu has cleverly kept all four tires on, despite the terrain's clever attempts to toss us over.

Reaching the peak is no big deal and when we get there the parking lot is full. The Peak Trail wanders down the other side and meanders through a good chunk of mountainous Te Mata Park but we plan to look out and head back, as there are two wineries on our list of afternoon activity. We stand looking over the Heretaunga valley and the sea and the mountains and the teeny tiny school boys from the van near our car, who are nervously shouting with laughter as their teachers dangle them from ropes off  limestone cliffs. We admire the tiled map local artists and school children have made for our enjoyment and imagine what it must be like to parachute off that launch ramp. Later someone tells us that it is not unusual for one of the parachutists to occasionally slam into the lower humps of Te Mata if the wind is wrong, or to wind up on a coastal thermal which deposits them, if they are lucky, on Waimarama Beach, miles a way, last stop before Chile--a long tramp home.

Arthur's Seat

Edinburgh, October

 

We are climbing Jacob's Ladder--all 209 steps of it.  Rising up from a small lane in Duddingston, it is my favorite staircase of all time and all places outside of  the Roman Steps and those that lead to my bedroom.  It takes us to the high meadows towards Arthur's Seat--the 823 foot high  lumpy volcanic  crag-- highest of all seven craggy 'hula' which make the "tine of Auld Reekie" today. Hard aside   Edinburgh's  Holyrood Park, on beyond the Scottish Parliament (new) and Holyrood castle (old)  it is  viewpoint central for anyone wanting to see there from here.  Arthur's Seat itself is a hearty, brief climb and where I first heard the apt British term, "I'm a bit puffed" from a nice woman in a narrow wool skirt and pearls who beat my friend Lucie (who isn't called Sierra by chance) and me up by a whole minute, although she pronounced it with a Scottish twang as "poofed" which means something else altogether.

We are in thrall to this inviting open space and climb from every entry point-- from the bottom via the Radical road,  from the center via Salisbury Crags and  from our car parked nicely by Dunsappy Loch to picnic on Dunsappy Crag. This walk from  tiny, exclusive Duddingston on the far side,  makes a most excellent to and fro destination  if it includes the Sheep Heid Inn which is the oldest pub in Scotland but still serves good beer and good food, although I for one, have never taken advantage of its skittles alley.

If we do the walk the other way around,descending to Duddingston to have dinner at the Sheep Heid, wandering post- meal to gaze at the tiny loch and imagine the houses  on the other side of the wall; we wander back  to Holyrood by the Innocent Railway, flashlights (torches) in hand for the early winter dark.  

Under date April 20, 1826, a correspondent to Hone's "Every-Day Book " gives an amusing account of gathering May dew on the first of May:On the very summit of Arthur's Seat a moving mass was to be. seen, dressed in all the colours of the rainbow, many of the male sex in kilt, all dancing round a May-pole. Whisky, or mountain dew, rather than May, was in repute. Groups were to be observed on knoll and flat, music and dancing were the order of the morn among all.Under date April 20, 1826, a correspondent to Hone's "Every-Day Book " gives an amusing account of gathering May dew on the first of May. On the very summit of Arthur's Seat a moving mass was to be. seen, dressed in all the colours of the rainbow, many of the ...

From The Celtic Magazine -

Jet Lag 3-- Napping with the National Trust

 

Fast forward Jet Lag Plan A: go to airport, park car, check in, transit security, buy book, look at Charlestown out Terminal E windows, and wait for Aer Lingus flight to leave so can get snack and drink at Sam Adams pub, get in plane, have drink, eat food, read book, fly over ocean, land, get off plane,  transit immigration, find hired car booth, negotiate insurance coverage, negotiate Heathrow roundabouts and straight on to A road, M road, A road, possibly a B road or two, stopping to refresh/refuel at motorway stops which look like and are about as thrilling as--motorway stops-- to eventual destination.  Plan A is useful when it is freezing, raining or so windy you have to tie your scarf around your head  to keep it from flying off.

Jet Lag Plan B: We have such a great track record for visiting the UK when the sun shines, that we're thinking of hiring ourselves out as a national PR scheme. So, Plan B means starting the holiday as we mean to go on--outdoors. Here we are, same shape re it's morning here and night at home,and we're in a small car hurtling along the M4 headed towards high noon. And yawning big time.  Tom has a plan (Tom always has a plan). We have two key needs: nap and food, but we still need to get where we're going at a reasonable (pre-dark) hour.

The National Trust, the privately-run historic preservation organization which also owns huge chunks of British Open Space,  nearly always has something on the way to  where we're going  that has nice little walks, a nice cafe, and a nice tree to nap under. We have long been card carrying members of the Trust via the American branch, the Royal Oak, whose generous invitations to join them on the occasional garden tour or great house circuit we have sadly to decline due to the enormous disparity between what a trip we plan costs and what a trip they plan costs. They send out a newsletter and an annual membership which gets us into every single one of their extensive holdings, as well as offering a satisfactory feeling of contributing to open space when we walk around a breath- taking peninsula which they have single handedly wrested from development.

Here's how Plan B works. Using the National Trust map and/or guide or website pre-trip to "gather information" about what's on our way, Tom elects two or three top choices  which he thinks we  might encounter sometime around the Big Yawn.  So--say we're headed for Cornwall (which is a long drive any way you look at it) and we're passing  Bath around 11 am.  A quick left off the M-4 and we're following the A46  to Dyrham Park where there is a car park with a brisk walk (the Cotswold Way runs through it) to the Big House and gardens full of little nooks and crannies with viewing spots, green lawn and shady trees.

We unfold ourselves from the car, locate the lightweight travel rug-blanket we try not to forget (when we do, we have to buy another at the Trust Shop--which keeps our friends in rug re-gifts at a fairly steady rate) and meander for a stretch. A stop at the cafe for sandwiches, maybe some soup (soup--a good antidote to almost everything) and a bottle of  sparkling ginger lemongrass soda sees us back to the meandering until we find the Perfect Spot.  Skipping the Big House completely (it  would be thoughtful if the Trust would extend membership benefits to include naps on some of those comfy daybeds or down piled mattresses the formerly wealthy slept on) we settle on the travel rug beneath the spreading chestnut tree or beside the ornamental foliage--  and pass out.

Waking half an hour or so later really quite refreshed  and pleased with ourselves, we visit the always excellent Trust  toilets (usually 'green' as in electric hand dryers but no heat) and head for the car, the motorway and the rest of what we assure each other, will be  the best holiday ever.

Canterbury or Bust

 

 Some dedicated walkers are those who yearn to tread paths other people meaningfully created  a long time ago-- possibly because there were no busses, and no M4.  Well worn trails which sometimes sink below the field beside them, towered over by ancient hedges, they have been the  cause of many a weary foot (true pilgims shun shoes) on a hopeful pre-Gortex journey. The Canterbury pilgrimage to visit the shrine of  Thomas ah Becket (who was murdered  in 1170) is one of those--and it is surprisingly popular. Not only historic and a rather lovely meander through the Weald and along the chalk cliffs, there is always the possibility that visiting Becket's bones could yield miracles to those in need of instant cures for leprosy or blindness, although there is no exsiting record of where dem bones were hidden.  

There are organized treks that anyone can join, but true afficianados are those like these  kids who did the walk on a field trip.  Alabama author Jerry Ellis, who has  a passion for walking in the footsteps of his  ancestors and  claims to have thumbed enough miles to circumnavigate  the globe five times,  has written both about walking the Trail of Tears from his Cherokee clan  and Canterbury on his Brit side .  His research involved stopping at pubs and  talking to a lot of bent-arm beer drinkers, which is always a nice way to walk.  Perhaps the most  engaging walkers are those like  Ed and Will  who want to BE a Canterbury  pilgrim and aren't  too worried that  they've shown up a eight  hundred years too late to catch up with the posse.  

 The Pilgrim's Way   is a loop  of the 153 mile  North Downs Way which runs  from Farnham to Canterbury via--Dorking.  The national trail follows the bucolic  top of the chalk downs, while the pilgrims are  at the bottom--with all the  sprawl.  The "real"  Chaucerian Pilgrim's Way from Southwark Cathedral in London to Canterbury Cathedral  is easy to follow--it's the A2.  Enthusiastic walkers who want to alternate the six lane experience for a few less  congested routes need look only to our friend Google which estimates it will take them approximately 19 hours and 18 minutes by foot to hike the 57.6  miles  cathedral to cathedral.  

 What do you do once you get to Canterbury and you've kissed the Cathedral? One of our young friends who was on the women's rugby team at  University there told us her most enjoyeable moments were  when they danced victoriously on the tables down the Hobgoblin.

The The Bishop's Finger is pretty good, too.

Jet Lag 2--Right Hand Drive Full English

Heathrow Airport Perimeter Road   

I'm sitting in the rental car adjusting mirrors and making the windows go up and  down while Tom walks around kicking its tires. The car is French, or masquerading as French-- as the steering wheel is British right and the French drive on the right. Here it is left, left, left. The thing I can count on is that no matter its nationality, I'll be signaling with my windshield wipers all the way to  Bodmin Moor.

 It's 3am Our Time when we head out to the M4--me steering and Tom shouting out" Lanes!", " Look left!" and directions-- like we haven't done this a million times.  Navigating the roundabouts between the airport and the motorways  pump up enough adrenalin to see us well past Reading.  I'm relaxed, enjoying the ease of just shifting into fifth gear-- and pointing straight.  BBC 4 is on- air and we're whizzing past  green fields, large lorries and  hysterically small, slab sided Daihatsus.  

Despite the lure of signs we don't heed, like Windsor Castle (once is enough) we motor on until we, figuratively speaking thank god-- hit the wall. There are a number of ways to deal with a sudden attack of slo mo. The nicest one is to stop and eat.  Too soon and not far enough along for a pub lunch, we pull off at the motorway Road Chef  in  Membury, south/east of Swindon  which has recently gone  upscale. No MacDonald's this--- it serves a most welcome (and possibly the most expensive) Full English Breakfast from here to Aberystwyth . One bright yellow  fresh sunny side up egg, two rashers perfectly done bacon, one sausage, and a delicately sauteed tomato coupled with a slice of granary bread and a pot of tea.  A look around the shop area (nice deals on fleece) a purchase of a chocolate bar and the new Hello if they were all out at Heathrow, and we're back on the road.

  By 11 am we desperately need to stop for obvious post- tea reasons, and we're yawning .  One option, if the weather is not excellent-- is to pull off again and nap in the car.  Motorway stops in the UK are apparently a popular place for a quick snooze as our nodding  neighbors  are either all asleep--- or dead.

It has become extremely windy, a fact we find quite comforting as it pleasantly buffets our little hatchback which, despite being bottom of the heap economy, has Upper Class seats that lie nearly flat. We quickly doze off, rocked by the wind, oblivious to everything around us.  Bing--half an hour later we wake to some eastern standard time clock, taking a minute to connect with reality:  ummmm....we're in a parking lot , in someone else's car,  in someone else's country-- but the familiar sight of   ginger Harry on the cover of the Hello on the dashboard brings it all back. Tom peers out and oddly informs me that, "The dog is gone."  I pat him, hand him a chunk of  Cadbury's Bourneville  dark and head back to the motorway-- good for another very few hours.

Jet Lag 1-Before Walking Comes Flying

 

We live in Massachusetts; which means the flight time to London is only about six hours--nearly the same as travel by jet to LA, and roughly similar to sitting in stalled traffic en-route to Provincetown on Labor Day. The big travel difference-- other than one large ocean and most of eastern Canada-- is of course jet lag.  London- bound planes from Boston leave generally around 7 pm,  arriving at 6:30 am  at Heathrow or Gatwick. With a five hour time difference, that's  smack in the middle of  what is  prime REM time  for most of us. There are  as many "cures" for jet lag as there are for hiccups.  Don't eat-do eat. Drink water but don't drink alcohol.  Go to sleep earlier for a week.  Put a bag over your head and stick Kleenex in your ears.    After much trial and error, we have pretty much settled on our own course of treatment which  allows us to cheerfully get through the night and the next day with only one Dramatic Incident.  Here's how it goes--but a caution--we're big believers in serendipity:

Step One--  We buy some of those horribly hose-like black DVT socks and  actually wear them on the plane.  Unlikely as it is that we will get DVT as it is something only other people are afflicted with, we figure we will be really,  really annoyed with ourselves (and certainly with each other) when our brains swell because we were too cheap or too vain to wear the socks.  A walking holiday comes to a grinding halt when you can't actually  walk.  Of course the socks are so tight they could make your brain swell anyway.   We also buy a bright blue little packet of  homeopathic   No Jet Lag   tablets and forget to take them.

 Step Two:  We try for a flight upgrade. I mean really try.  We have  been fortunate to have amassed enough airmiles to often turn left at the jetway door and it makes us very, very happy to be able to do so, as we will have the option of actually sleeping.  I generally put my head down (on down and covered by down) for a few hours but Tom is enslaved by the on- demand video selections for most of the ride.  The upside of this is,  it's terrific, the downside is, they make you eat and drink.  On Virgin Atlantic (our flight of choice) you can, if you choose,  eat your way through several menus  from Halifax to Dublin, with interludes of fine wine and a glass or two of single malt at the bar while a flight attendant makes up your "bed."  There is plenty of room to  tug on your DVT socks. 

If   we're down back  we will have had a thimble of house white, a plastic container of  the cafeteria lasagna I personally always avoided  in college, and several hours of a stranger's head in our laps.  Should there be any flight turbulence my dinner tray will launch little packets of salt and pepper and most of my dessert at Tom.  The litre bottle of water we  bought airside for an outrageous $3.50 throws itself under my seat and ends up as an aisle hazard five rows down.  I lose my reading glasses around 10 pm  which is okay as I am deeply into following our journey on the interactive skymap. We will have had to put our DVT socks on back at the airport because, given the space available,  we can't actually reach our feet.  The breakfast yogurt and hot tea are most welcome but we realize that we've  now eaten  three meals (not forgetting the fried clams at Dine Boston pre -flight) in the space of seven hours and it is only 2:30 a.m.  Eastern Stomach  Time.  Suddenly we don't feel so good.  

Step Three:  Cabin lights are on and we are securing for landing.  I find I've been sitting on my reading glasses all night and use them to fill out our landing cards--same family/two names/two cards.  Tom puts on his shoes, first carefully  removing the mustard sachets and pepper packets.  We disembark with heartfelt thankyous to all flight crew for working so hard to keep that great bird successfully in the sky and speed walk through corridor after corridor (Tom says he's  pretty sure that sometimes the plane actually lands  at Gatwick and we're  having to walk  to Heathrow).  Ushered into the huge immmigration line- bender with all the sleepy babies and parents and people wearing saris and flipflops in midwinter London; we  have our passports stamped so that we can run downstairs to huddle together again around the luggage carousels.  If we have flown up front we get to wave a Fast Track   pass to saunter down an easy check-in with a bunch of suits and happily use the stairs while everyone else crowds the escalators to the Baggage Claim Area.  We nearly always lose one another here- a sort of ritual we seem wedded to, as one of us dives for a trolley and the other is riveted by the scene.  Kids precariously perched on trolleyfuls of bags, celebrities or celebrity look alikes,  friends from Boston you have to say hello to as you didn't know they were on the plane, and the amazing size of some of those suitcases which make your head ache while you mentally calculate  what it cost their owners in overage fees.

Step Four: Tom's golf clubs are always a source of some drama as they could show up   anywhere--or as he  steels himself, perhaps not at all.  By the time we've discovered/remembered/retrieved what we sent in the great belly of the beast, we  steer course for the race through customs which has a three trolley lane with a tricky hairpin bend in the last furlong.  We blinkingly emerge through the duty free  shop which offers 7 am  teeny tiny cups of Bailey's to a herd of non takers, to the Arrivals Hall.  A sea of greeters with chauffeur signs hope that ours is the name they display so they can get going.   It's not.

Step Five:  ATM and toilets (self explanatory but this is generally where I lose my DVT socks) and purchase of new Hello magazine (rather not explain).

Step Six: Rental car. This is  dicey as it could be a Big Hassle if the rental agent is on commission to sell us stuff we don't need. Americans are prime suckers  for taking out enough extra insurance to buy their own car.  This is at times the scene of our One Dramatic Incident.  After "agreeing" to the 500 pound deductible, additional driver fees (surely only one of us can be driving at a time?) and signing here--- and here and here,  we nearly always zone out on what number bus station we are supposed to stand at for the shuttle van. Pushing the trolley out the hall's rear doors  it is SO good to be outside looking for it.  By the time the shuttle bus finds us, we are grinningly pleased with ourselves. We're here.

next steps .....

Riding New Zealand--On Four Feet

 

  Marahua,  Abel Tasman National Park, South Island, New Zealand

January, 2007

Ride the horses from Lord of the Rings said the flyer on the wall at the Abel Tasman tourist information center in tiny South Island Marahau, New Zealand. It showed pictures of thickly muscled steeds romantically galloping on a moonlit beach. Two hour rides cost $85 NZ dollars (about $63 US dollars-pretty much the going rate). I wrote down the number and tucked it into my backpack, then sauntered down the summery quiet road for a late day January swim in an azure sea.

It wasn't until we were back at our chalet perched high above the coastal beaches that I dug out the stable phone number. My call got an answering machine so I left a message and enjoyed a nice chardonnay on the chalet's deck in the warm early evening as cicadas began to simmer down a little, letting through the bucolic sounds of people cutting and baling hay in the fields far below.

 I called again a day later and talked to Matt who told me he wasn't sure if they were doing any rides out as the sun was shining and they were making hay. I peered over the deck railing and just made out a small figure in a red jumpsuit sitting on top of a baler with a cell phone in his hand. Half the meadow was cut and baled.  The crew were using a small wagon hauled by a ridiculous mini (when they might have been using a Lord of the Rings giant war horse) and seemed to be alternating the actual loading of bales with swigs of beer and moments of general hilarity. They would not be available to offer rides until it rained. The forecast looked bright.

We ate our dinners at one of the two cafes down the hill and when we went for our fish and veg at     the hippy Park Cafe eaten under a large open window with a view of the sea, I saw another flyer announcing camping and horseback riding so I wrote that phone number down too. When Icalled I got Old MacDonald's Farm and Holiday Camp and the person I spoke with, possibly Old Mac himself, made me a booking for the following evening as Brian, the hostler, liked to go out when the weather was cooler. I quite agreed. It seemed sadly unlikely that Old MacDonald's Farm would offer any equine Lord of the Rings.

The next day spent largely and perfectly hiking and swimming and in water craft, I drove down the hill from our chalet, took a left past the café and a sharp right to the camping farm where they told me to go back out, drive a bit farther and turn left into a field with horses. So I did   all that and bumped across the meadow towards the horses Brian and Luke were tethering to a rope barrier. Luke said a brief hello, unhooked one of the horses, athletically swung up and cantered off bareback, a daredevil in shorts, his dreads flying heroically behind him, leaving me, Brian, the two remaining tethered horses at one end of the field and several others who roamed free casually cropping luscious green New Zealand grass.

Brian and I sized each other up in a laconic sort of six gun- free western style. He wore old jeans and an ancient button down shirt and I had on all weather combo riding/hiking boots and an unfortunate pair of what had become pink half chaps. I borrowed a "helmet" from his trailer and helped brush the mare Brian was generously allowing me to ride. Neva a savvy bay, was station (ranch) bred with curiously large round hooves and had that look that you sometimes see in wise mares which is sort of a warning: measure up or you're off. Brian gently combed and saddled her and kindly asked her to accept the bit he had warmed in his hands. She graciously allowed me to ascent to the saddle, adjust my stirrups and take up the reins. I politely thanked her but not as much as Brian did. Brian adored Neva, and with good reason.

It was just the two of us, Brian and me, and we walked the horses towards the beach via the arts colony where Neva took a dump and Brian got off to ceremoniously clean it up. We walked through the parking lot near the beach where two young men sitting on a car bumper well into an evening's inebriation commented derisorily on our namby pamby girly sport and then by the Park Café until finally we were on the huge flat beach. Brian had not stopped talking but Neva seemed to have taken a shine to me so I was happy. I could not tell Brian why America had voted for George Bush (twice) nor could I reassure him that the economic and environmental future of the world wasn't hanging by a thread due to the outrageousness of American corporate greed but once we were really ON the beach he took a tiny talk- break and we both just enjoyed the gorgeous evening and the fine horses and the incoming tide.

Brian enjoyed talking, but like Neva, he seemed to take a shine to me as well and told me his own story which was not atypical for these parts; a wander down the coast, a trailer, stay for 8 or 10 years maybe get restless and leave sometime soon but maybe not. He lived for his sheep and his horses. Brian said the summers were fine in Marahau but the winters were kind of slow. I sort of half listened until I startled at the word "murderer" and then relaxed just a little when Brian clarified that it was sheep (his own) that he murdered and ate and when we got back he would give me a couple of chops which I assumed were those of the lost lambs and not violence directed towards me personally. A gentle but driven soul, Brian relished the shock value of the word "murderer" so much that a small spray of spittle accompanied his pleasure in speaking it aloud.

By this time we were dancing in the sea and had several sweet gallops up wedge shaped sand banks and through the waves and it wasn't until Brian mentioned that he wasn't sure where we were that I came down from my riding- a horse- on- the beach- holiday- high. What did he mean? I could see the Park Café, the trees sheltering the parking lot, the coastal path and the little mountain with our tiny dot chalet a few hundred yards across the flat beach.

Brian looked increasingly anxious as he scoped the beach and told me that he rarely came out this far and was not really, really familiar with this part of the sands especially as they constantly shifted. Somehow in between his rambling dream of someday taking trail ride groups up the old mountain pack roads he said existed beneath the dense foliage of the coastal volcanic mountains (which he could only do he graciously said, if all the riders were as accomplished as I) and his continuing and vocal annoyance at the avoidable but potential disasters awaiting the outside world, I gleaned an undercurrent of what lost could mean on a darkening beach with an incoming tide.

Although it may have seemed sensible to just aim, say, for the Park Café and gallop on in, Neva said otherwise. Her eager gait slowed to a crawl as she very, very carefully placed each pudding bowl hoof on spongy ground, never leaving her weight on any hoof for more than a teeny tiny moment. Brian was somewhere off to my right, concentrating on the same intricate ballet. It did occur to me that I might get off and walk as the mystery of what Neva was doing slowly unraveled and became the one word Brian had not spoken-quicksand.

Having had many an encounter with the demon bog during "walks" in the UK, quicksand is still the stuff of myth for New England me. A quicksand is just that-a water saturated sand that does not create enough tension to support weight. It is exacerbated by any nearby running or subterranean water -for example, gulp, an incoming tide. Vibration makes it unstable. The vibration of a hoof or a foot can destabilize the viscous sand and create the sucking effect that essentially closes around the unfortunate limb like wet concrete. Remember that tubular woven straw trick toy where you tell your friend to stick both fingers in and pull back, trapping their forefingers until they relax and let go and then they wonder why they stay friends with you? Quicksand has the same reaction. Once you pull back (one would say a natural reaction) the tension of the sand causes it to lock and tighten. Struggling makes it worse-and hurries the descent into whatever depth the sand remains unstable. Although not usually very deep, people die in quicksand because they panic or succumb to exposure-or drown.

Neva of course didn't need any of this advice and Brian had, amazingly, gone mute after cautioning me NOT to get off. We did a four legged tiptoe over quivering sand as the tide began its evening rush towards shore. The sun had gone down behind us leaving heavenly red clouds over the mountains, all of which we were able to examine in great detail as we minced along. Brian was, I must say, very cool. His faith in Neva and his own horse was paramount and infectious and he knew to leave them quietly alone to do their work. Neva's great hooves continued their dressage over the dicey sands which took enormous physical effort as she had to remain completely balanced step after step after step. I tried to sit as relaxed and light in the saddle as I could, taking my cue from Brian who sat back dreamily with reins dangling from one hand.

I could feel Neva make contact with her first bit of solid sand one hoof at a time. Her pace instantly altered and she strode out purposefully headed for shore, leaving Brian to navigate the last soft patch until he could trot up to us. There was no altering Neva's plan as she worked out a route to a distant path that eventually led us over a leaping ditch, through a river and on to dry land.

We circled back through the car park, ignoring the now truly drunken louts who I mentally imagined up to their necks in quicksand trying uselessly to raise their cans of lager to their mouths, down the road over the bridge past the café, back through the art colony and into the long field. Brian's spirits had perked up enough to allow him to argue the future of global nuclear threat which took us right through the unsaddling and brushing down and offers of well deserved Polo mints to the champion horses and at last it was time for me to say goodbye to the magnificent Neva.

Brian asked me if I would like to go out again before we left Abel Tasman and I thought yes I would but as it turned out I accepted a counter offer the next day to kayak to Bark Bay and hike back and  then we were gone; headed north to Picton and the Marlborough Sound.

Uprivering on the River Dart

  Dartmouth, Devon,  June

The little twelve pas senger Dartmouth Ferry that runs up  to Dittisham (you can take the Dittisham-Greenway ferry across to Greenway with just a shout, a bell and a wave) is a lovely ride.  It is a  bright, cheery red  and turquoise overhung by a  yellow half cabin and terribly inviting; making it always tempting to jump in and head up river even if your arms are full of shopping, the ice cream will melt and you're actually headed the other way.  The converted traditional fishing boats (there are two—Champion and Warrior) delicately chug their way through Dartmouth's busy harbor packed with scores of fancy sailboats, many of which never actually hoist their sails; serving only as sleepover water decks for fizz sipped in riverside splendor by their weekend owners.

 We’re going up- river on Champion as Warrior is in need of a repair and we’re headed for  a five boat day—which is very nearly, perfect. Dartmouth offers many opportunities to travel short ways via the river and we’re working hard towards a  penultimate day out that will include every single one.  This is as far as we've gotten.  Our plan is to head to Dittisham where we will disembark at the end of the long pontoon, walk to shore, secure two wrapped picnic sandwiches and a boat. The Anchorstone Cafe  provides both.

 The sandwiches are an easy choice (one fresh crab mayonnaise on wholegrain,  one Devon ham with golden yellow Sharpham Rustic Devon cheese baguette) but we have had to choose from the dizzying selection of boats--  Wayfarers, Luggers, Toppers or  motor boats and as we have no idea what the rest are—we go with the motor boat. The only motorboat we see as we pass down the jetty, is half drowned. 

Jasmine from the boat hire/cafe gets us up to speed. Her younger brother brings up a seriously big possibly circa 1963 cavernous dinghy with a small outboard, her name on her bow,  Sian.“Have you anything smaller?” I  tentatively ask, “Only that one,” he grins, pointing to the unfortunate sunken boat which looks decidely not seaworthy. We climb  into Sian, carefully stow the sandwiches, look at the river map we are handed which shows where to steer clear  when the tide is going out, rev her up and head backwards.  I have to stand up to see out and hope that a: I don’t knock myself into the water and b: I don’t crash into anything.  I make Tom scrunch down in front as the boat straightens out and heads upstream through the Dittisham harbor.  Sian's great nose comes up as the motor digs down. I can see the ancient  oaks that line the banks, the blue, blue sky above and the crab catchers standing by that boathouse on the shore. What I can’t see is anything directly in front of me, which is good news as apparently nothing is, but bad news as there might be soon.

We had imagined a gentle putt putt up river, dangling our feet in the stream, munching sandwiches, possibly arriving at Totnes for an ice cream and a stroll or perhaps dawdling up the Bow to the Maltsters Arms and then gently motoring back.  We do get to the sandwich part, the dangling toes is out of the question unless we hang on to the side of the boat with our fingertips but there is little chance we will reach Totnes. The tide is turning—fast. This is where  the map comes into play. It has x’s on the spots we are to avoid, and turning around, I carefully pick our way through them, rounding that bend, avoiding the Chinese junk curiously looped to that float and doing, if I say so myself, a most excellent job of artfully navigating inter-tidal treacheries.

Green fields, waving walkers, pastured ponies, houses-we-wished-we-owned high up on the hills we  motor slowly past, it’s all part of the bucolic river life we would very much enjoy becoming accustomed to.  Feeding the last sandwich crumbs to the gulls, we slide past the dock at Greenways and plot a path against the rushing tide as we cruise back into the  Dittisham float. Jasmine sees us (or is anxiously looking for us) and sends her brother out to grab the  stern and haul us into port. As we wobble out, headed for the Ferry Boat Inn and a congratulatory pint of Devon-made Jail Ale, we are  riveted by the arrival of the Picnic Boat . A small canopied  transformed fishing craft—it has room for a romantic couple at a well stocked picnic table in its stern—replete with champagne, what looks very much like fois gras, prawns and lovely grapes. Turning our backs and thinking, “some day” we happily climb up to the pub and look out its windows at our next watery leg. 

 

 

 

 

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New Zealand---Anti-clockwise

 

Taranaki, New Zealand
February, 2009

The first time we went to New Zealand I was totally obsessed with the idea of  being on the other side of the world.

The day we got here, after  an exhausting three weeks sharing a small space with our children and their children, making up for the months immediately past and future of our not being there; after two flights and eight hours just to  get to LAX, six hours at the airport celebrity spotting and partaking of free wine and green lipped mussels in the Air New Zealand Lounge, fifteen hours and two planes to Christchurch and a complete and mysterious loss of an entire day en route as we crossed the international date line; we  finally reached a room with a big cushy bed and a bathroom that we had all to ourselves where I watched the water go down the drain.

Not claiming any personal expertise in most things scientific, I do like to think that I have fairly good  powers of observation, as I enjoy looking at things.  I looked at the water swirl around the basin,  counter to all my personal observations in all my years of emptying baths and running taps.  I realized, with a great and profoundly satisfying pleasure, that I really was standing in a bathroom on the other side of the world.  In flying over the dark Pacific I had peered out the cabin window and thought the red crescent moon, sheltered in the darker lit circle of its real self, appeared to be on the “wrong” side and that the Little Dipper hung upside down and backwards, but who was to say that wasn’t the time and the wine talking.

But then, as I say, I’m no scientist and operate largely by feel; knowing west and east only when the sun is out, or I am near the Hudson River.  I had been one of those children who really had believed that, if you dug a hole straight down on the beach, you would be able to crawl through to China and had not only systematically dug summer after summer, but learned very purposefully to use chop sticks in the eventuality of hitting the right beach, the right hole, at the right time.  I knew enough not to tell anyone what I was doing, because grown ups were otherwise convinced by a science I was skeptical about.

 I would very much have appreciated what one of the twins tells me is a Google tool called Dig Here .  You identify your own back yard on a world map, press the button and it shows you where you would come up if you dug straight down.  Peter says tunneling through his living room floor in Pittsburgh leaves him floundering in the Indian Ocean well off the coast of Perth, Australia. Amazingly, using the same tool has me here-- in New Zealand--if I were looking through the hole dug in our then Scottish garden-- although I too would need some seriously powerful water wings  to paddle ashore.  Sadly, my childhood fantasy of digging to China would have happened only if I were digging somewhere off the coast of Cape Horn, where I don’t believe chop sticks are requisite dining implements at all.

But here it is—my scientific truth. The bath water, as observed by me, and despite all myth -busting data "real" scientists have documented,  enters the New Zealand drain I am looking at counter clockwise to how it gets there in my sink in Massachusetts.  Even if you splash it across the sink, it still reverts to this anti -directional flow. I welcome an opportunity to watch a swimming pool empty but suspect, given environmental austerity, one is unlikely to arise. The tides and the wind do, thrust by the Coriolus Effect,  come in “anti” clockwise-- making westerly winds bad and nor’easters good—a phenomenon that I doubt I can ever feel any ease with as the local weather report puts a big, sunny, happy face on the letters NE in the winds forecast.

My wrist watch however, plods on—heeding the universal mandate to tick to the right, even though it has failed to recognize that while it is Saturday here, it is Friday in Boston. Jar lids still screw and taps close to the right. It is only the stars and the winds  and the seas that register the enormity of planetary distance and gravitational pull. I haven’t yet experimented to see if New Zealand wine pours itself backwards, but put that on my observational list of must-see’s. 

Orkney Day Tripping

September

Orkney Day Tripping Video--YouTube

John O' Groats is such a fabulous name it attracts lots of us who should know better.  Walkers who collect charity funds by walking  874 miles-- the longest reach in Great Britain-- from Land's End (Cornwall)  to  Scotland,  aim for here.  A recent rambler completed his second coast to coast  trek --naked  .  Dunnet Head , the windy overlook just outside of town, is considered the most northerly mainland point in Great Britain.   It's magnetic appeal draws those who just want to stand here and take a picture-- as well as those who want to to sail out of its port to Orkney --a collection of small windswept islands whose inhabitants ally more with Norway than Scotland.  They raise cows.  An island joke is that they used to raise chickens but there was a high wind and the chickens all blew away. My friend Alison says that sometimes the winds are so strong, the children at the primary school have to be tied to ropes at recess.

We've driven  in the rain, passing the nuclear power plant that is closing down in Dounreay  where the only employment will be as part of its clean-up, and arrive at our base in Mey--the Castle Arms where, in mid September, we are two of its four guests.

  The morning's ferry, the locally owned and operated Pentland Venture which has surely seen better days, is us, some others, and a boat full of hearty  Germans who enjoy the sun and breeze up on deck on the outward leg and climb into tour busses with German tour guides when we reach Orkney. The rest of us climb into the single English language bus, even though some of  us are Japanese and French, and take off for a whirlwind tour of the sites--Skara Brae  (a neolitihic village  excavation whose most meaningful message is twofold: people were really, really short 5000 years ago, and they lived in what look today like miniature golf courses), the ancient Ring O' Brodnar  stone circle and the Churchill Barriers whose wartime design and execution were the work of Winston C.  and 1500 Italian POW's even though they didn't finish until 1945.   The wind is strong--and getting stronger. We get a message from the bus driver after the Italian Chapel  (the one the POW's stuck onto the end of a quonset hut) that the weather is "deterrrrriorating" and we'll have to cut the Kirkwall free- time to hustle, because our boat is leaving---now.  We arrive at port just after the German contingent and chase a  safety-overload -double crowd on to this last ferry. As soon as the last of us has cleared the gangplank it is drawn up; the gates slammed shut and the small ferry chugs off into the gathering gloom, even though it is  only four o'clock on a northern Scottish early autumn's day.  The only seats left are on the upper deck which is okay and kind of exciting until we hit open water and the waves jump over deck and on to us. The wind winds its way through each of us and every thing. Although the people who live here know wind as their daily element,  it is growing stronger and seems just on the verge of savage-- but none of us  is actually saying so. 

The German crowd  cheerily raise their voices over the elements (which now include a sharp, drenching rain)  to be heard, and seem to be thrilled. I am not thrilled-- nor is the young woman from Swansea sitting next to me.  By the third great swell, I announce a desire to be  lashed to the deck-- as there is little to describe the alarm to the uninitiated caused by a large wave breaking over your head on a small boat.  I'm soaked to the skin--she's not. We holler small talk  over what is now full fledged storm about her "miracle" trousers which are waterproof, windproof and cost a hefty pile of pounds.

When I look over at Tom, he seems to be, annoyingly, enjoying himself.  He smiles encouragingly at me and I wonder what our children will do without us once we are washed overboard or go down with the ship.   The Welsh woman next to me asks me politely if--- given there are the three of us, and she and I are staring fixedly at the one life ring strapped to the deck in front of us--could we share?

I think for a minute about striking a quick deal--her miracle trousers for one hand on the life ring but say, "Of course."

We reach the small, deserted harbor at John O' Groats pushed in by enormous waves which seem intent on taking us right over the jetty and on to Inverness-- the boat is  expertly hauled around and chained to the pier.  Stumbling down the stairs as they still pitch and sway, we make our way out, run across to the car in lightening  and thunder and huddle with the heat on full blast until we have thawed enough to drive back to the Castle Arms.  The storm that night is the kind that sends the lights on and off, a Morse Code of chance and we hang out with the Germans at the inn's pub and its comforting fire, thinking Dr. Who-like about the end of the world.

the Holly and the Ivy

Devon, November, 2008

The Holly and the Ivy Caper YouTube

Joan loves throwing parties.  Handing us a pair of garden shears and a large black plastic bin bag, we are sent off to gather sprays of ivy and holly for the holiday table. "Big, glossy leaves like these mind you!' she tells our retreating backs as she holds a shiny rhodendron branch over her head.  It's not raining-yet.  There's a back path, a bit overgrown but navigable that leads behind Warfleet inlet  up to Gallant's Bower and the circular walk via Little Dartmouth and back by the sea leg of the South West Coastal path to Dartmouth. Feeling uneasy about "borrowing" bits of greenery from the National Trust woods we decide to get the  sneaky work  done first and  then enjoy the walk. 

I get stuck (literally)  in the undergrowth and thick leaves of yesteryear, trying to go more deeply into the steep hillside forest to snare ropes of green.  The wood is ivy thick  and I imagine that the trees we are gently and only very partly freeing from their tendrils, are taking a gratefully deep breath.  Tom snips the twined bouquets from theeir higher branches.  Pretty soon we have what Tom considers to be more than enough greenery.  He throws the bag over his shoulder Claus-like and we walk up the rest of the path, through the ancient fort, past the bluebell wood (it's not May so no need to linger) to the view just below the Coast Guard cottages which encompasses all of the harbor, the River Dart exiting to the sea and the opposite shore where the coastal path wanders on, requiring the Lower Ferry to get there from here. 

Reaching the muddy  farm lane, stirred up by huge tractor tires ,and lined by  tall hedges which will be full of birds and flowers and wild garlic when it is not November, we reach the gate of Little Dartmouth.   There are changes going on here--an old barn gone, two new ones erected and the planning permission and scope charts posted for us to comment on, so we do-- reassured that the meticulously layered stone barn remains, apparently useful only as an office as it is no longer large enough to house that huge tractor and the other mid- western lookalike farm machinery. This place used to have a spitting llama in the near field with the lambs and a donkey, but maybe its absence is also a sign of the times. The near field is, according to plan, now a barn.

Little Dartmouth is National Trust land and as we let ourselves through the gate into the home fields with the home cows and the  enormous round bales of home hay, we feel particularly conspicuous wearing a big plastic bag on our backs (we keep trading off).  A modestly popular spot for weekend walkers, we're getting some pretty odd looks from a couple with matching jackets and the young woman who works at the pub we were at last night. Her dog races over to give us the kind of  serious  sniff that accuses us of  a poacher's haul-- at least three  rabbits and a brace of pheasant. Hiking it higher in an attempt to look casual, the bag splits a little and a holly arm boings out in a last desperate attempt to scream a botanical cry --murderers, kidnappers, help. I think for a moment that it would be nicer to wear this bag over my head than on my back, so I tell Tom it's his turn to carry it.

We're walking more purposefully now,  with an eye to putting at least a field's distance between us and the rest of the world.  Tom  takes the loot for a detour to the cliff bushes thinking he looks like a casual walker and nods at me to get a move on.  I try to but  I have to ask those two young women who keep stopping to kneel what the little white things are they are collecting from the cow grass into  small waist bags. They look at me in that special way people who know a lot about something have for people who know very little, and inform me of its  Latin name which I assume, means mushroom.  I collect some too, but forget they are in my pocket until we are back in Massachusetts where they look  and smell more like gorgonzola crumble than a fungus delicacy.

Here's where the path splits. It goes up and back to the lane  or down the kind of steep  down where you have to hand hold small tree branches and negotiate mud in order to reach the sea. The South West Coastal Path goes this way, under the cliff and over the tide -filled  gorge by footbridge and we go with it. Ordinarily we might go down to the sea rocks here but the flapping black bag does not make for surefootedness on slippery boulders. Once the trail curves back up and past the odd  little cave with a bench tucked into it for windy picnics, we're on the home stretch.

Hungry and thirsty-- Dartmouth Castle and a cup of tea next stop.  Our eery  tramp through slippery oak leaved trail to the river's rocky promontory, leads to the Castle cafe--- which has  just closed.  It is raining.  I am carrying the sack now and all I can think of is ditching it.  We head down the lane, up the drive to the house, toss the  bag in the door and jog into the village. The crab sandwich shop is also closed, but the sort of lonesome pub Tom likes because it has Old Speckled Hen on draught, lets us bring in warm  Cornish pasties from next door which we eat by the gas fire, watching the rain and the wind blow over the harbor while the boy at the bar plays video games on the pub's computer.

When  we get back it is  nearly party time.  Joan, pleased with our stash, has arranged the greenery stylishly in the center of the long white clothed table  which is much admired by the guests who arrive and are handed a glass of fizz. Dinner is a huge success with much  laughter, rich conversation and  great food.  Serendipitously, no one lights fire to the centerpiece like we sometimes do at home, and Joan promises to set it free when we're done.

Cautley Spout

June, 2007 Sedburgh, West Yorkshire

Even though we  have had a wonderful stay at Cumbria's Cross Keys Temperance Inn I've probably ruined any chance of our being welcomed back.   Ever.   It's not really my fault.  The traveling sisterhood will understand the demons that visit when it's been raining for hours and you've read all the books, eaten the last KitKat and sort of extemporaneously decide to cut off your hair. I didn't mean to dump it all in the definitely non 21st century toilet when I mindlessly hit plunge.  It just happened. 

We've been on our way "north" from weeks spent "south" and a few days stop in the Lake District where we've booked at Sedburgh's  Cross Keys Temperance Inn  in West Yorkshire's Howgill hills.   The driving rain which has hounded Yorkshire all summer has pushed us up the hills and along the A-66 past tanks and troops who are ready for flood assistance.

It's rained and rained-- and rained.  No, really, it's amazing--as though those deepest lakes of  Coniston and Windermere have sprung enormous leaks and geysered their waters heavenward.  Not good driving weather we nearly miss the Cross Keys and when we pull into the small parking lot ours is the only car. The Inn isn't really much as size goes with only the two rooms but opens for meals at lunch five  days a week and dinner on weekends.  Our confirmation e-mail warned us not to arrive when we have as no one will be here,  but  it's raining, and the door is open.

A fire in the downstairs library is old but still warm. We peerinto the dining room and nose around a little until we hear jangling pots and pans and voices laughing in the kitchen where two women  cooking our dinner tell us just to go on up and choose a room as we will be the only guests on this wet night.  The narrow little  staircase takes us up to another cozy  library with a bedroom at either end and we choose the cheery pink flowers , double bed and deep bath with a window that looks over the farm next door on one side and the  rain slick A683 on the other.

I have a core need born of  Yankee life  in a cold climate that drives me to take  full advantage of a deep, hot bath when on offer  and when I emerge it has stopped raining.  Tom and I look at each other, grab our shoes (and my clothes) and sprint outside because as lovely as the Cross Keys is, what we have come to see is Cautley Spout .  Sliding down a small bank and over an even smaller footbridge--there it is.  A spout is a thin, powerfully long waterfall and this one, the longest in England, drops magnificently as the  Dales- driven River Rawthey falls 200 meters to the plain where it  regroups as river and rushes between pasture banks to meet us. 

We walk as far as we can in the evening dusk knowing we have no chance of climbing  the  ridge of the Spout which is  part of the Coast to Coast Path before nightfall.  Accompanied by  wanderingly friendly, hairy black Fell ponies as night falls, we  walk back. 

Our meal at the Cross Keys is wonderful (we are one of three tables and I have the recommended buck shot -free rabbit pie) and as a National Trust- owned historical Quaker temperance inn we are, in these liberal times, allowed to provide our own wine.  When they tell us we are the only ones staying here, they really mean it. The rain starts again as we climb back to our room, the lights downstairs go out, the key turns in the lock and the last car edges wetly onto the road-- leaving us both guest and landlord of ourselves.

 We sit in the library reading from its eclectic offerings and savouring the sense of  being alone in a wild  storm in a  sixteenth century inn.  I find a book about William Penn's journey through Yorkshire in 1684 when he stayed here--back when it was a hotbed of radical Quakerism.  Too early for bed, I watch the rain for a while,  take another bath and cut off my hair.  If there are any ghosts they are  thoughtful  in a Quakerly  way and allow us to  sleep easily to the sound of  steady rain.

It is still raining the next morning but we can see  the Cautley from the breakfast room window even if we can't climb it.  I guiltily thank the nice woman bringing us our food who is also our host and full of stories about climbing and riding up over the Spout and the generations of locals who come to the Cross Keys for its famous green eggs and ham and don't own up to the hair fiasco even though Tom thinks that all plumbing is in working order.  I take my oddly  lightened shorn head to our next stop and a wet  walk  along part of Hadrian's Wall Path where any ghosts foolish enough to be out and about will  be those of  second century Roman soldiers miserably yearning for sun and warmth.

 

Okay-- how'd this ticket to New Zealand get in here?

 When the kids announced they were moving to New Zealand for a year everyone said "Ooh we'll come visit!" I figured that would be about as likely as the million people telling us  the same thing when we lived last year in the UK.  The only transatlantic visitors hearty enough to join us were Tom's sister and his 88 year old mother. I told the kids not to bother renting a place with an extra bedroom. So they didn't.

Which is why I am scratching my head looking at this e-ticket that clearly indicates that a: it is my passport to Auckland next month and b: I have done it again.

 I am  bizarrely  looking forward to 24 hours in the air (think  how many books you can read in a day when it's impossible to sleep, there's nowhere to walk, the phone and internet are off  and someone brings you food on a regular basis) and a week on the ground so that I can do it all over again, but am startled at its actuality.  The kids and I  had talked about our visiting them but not in precise terms and delightful as they are we rather thought we'd wait until at least one more of them was out of diapers. 

Tom and I talked--could we bear to exchange our summer's plans for backpacking in the Highlands for winter in New Zealand? Could we bear not to?  We agreed to forego a week at the Cape, the Scottish sojourn and all that summer New England offers  for three weeks in July to see the littles who Tom seriously worries will not be allowed to return home once the New Zealand rugby team the All Blacks get a look at baby  Lewis' solid thighs and prodigal walking.  Replete with well earned air miles we figured a trip down under would be "free".

So where did this February ticket come from?

I put it down to the three I's:  Impulse, Internet, Ice. The first two are not surprisingly, interconnected.  Air New Zealand runs one of those websites with fare names like "Sweet Dreams" which dangle enticing prices for long journies with "free" stops in places like Papeete and Nadi only to snatch them back if you dawdle.  I spent most of one cold Sunday trolling the competition, going back and forth to my calendar and my checkboook, adding in the number of lovely airmiles accumulated by traveling to the other side of the planet and back and daydreaming about a world which the kids reported was "too hot".    The too hot may have been the clincher as it always is for those of us who have just shoveled another fifteen inches of snow and refilled the wood stove for the third time in four hours.

I  call Air New Zealand whose 800 number rings you right through to Auckland where you get to talk to an enthusaistic agent who talks funny and complains about the heat-- and put a ticket on hold.  That service costs more than the web but gives you time to come back to your senses.  I have a cup of tea, take a walk in the snow, do some "real" work, come back, open the  Air New Zealand page--and punch in the million numbers  it takes to spend close to  four figures.   My gamble costs me missed opportunities for cheaper connections to Los Angeles but I am non refundably going to New Zealand in four weeks and already imagining hugging those babies, turning pages, and  looking out the plane window at the Big Dipper hanging upside down.

Cotswold Mud

January

It's nearly night but the wind has lulled to a dusky stillness and I say to Tom, let's take a walk.  Just a little one as we spent the day in the wind walking  the Cotswold Way up to Broadway Tower and down through woods  and meadows but our rain gear has satisfactorily dried by the cottage fire and the air smells lovely.

We agree we'll just mosey down the lane a bit past the pub which is not yet open but Tom brings map and torch anyway because we have now agreed that map and torch go together like boots and coat-we shouldn't leave home without them.

My boots  (high top cozy green hunter wellies same as the queen--so they say-- wears to walk the corgis) are good. My  rain coat is a  foil to the fleece that is my must layer in an English January and I throw on a waterproof cap with visor--just in case.

The lane leads to a gate. The gate leads to a trail. We look at each other,shrug and go through over the bridge down the path. Tom stops to look at his map. There is a circular  walk we might just squeeze in before real night, the air is still soft and the  brook lined path ahead inviting. Why not?

Soon we meet mud. The cow trodden farm hillside we are climbing is so slick that I  telemark vertically up the slippery  slope.  The farm itself sits comfortably mid hill surrounded by ancient outbuildings, fragrant smoke issuing from its several chimneys, lights softly glowing from its low windows. The trail circles above the farm's yard on a single track lane as we cross the top of the hill in what the Scots call the  gloaming--a blue twilight whose rich deepness yields an equally deep pleasure at our being here in this place at this time.  We see the lights of the village we've walked from blink on across the hills. They seem surprisingly far away.

Does the circular track start here? Or over there? Tom gets out the map and the torch, carefully studies it and leads us down a fenced perimeter--into the  deep--dark--woods.  Like a shade pulled against the sun, the thick trees, even in leafless winter, eclipse the light and we are blinded by the dark.  My eyes have trouble making the transition  and the trail having turned again to that slick muddy slide,  I do the sensible thing and grab Tom's arm for balance.  Okay, okay I admit I also grab it because the trees are really enormous and it is really dark and there are some odd little  crunchy noises coming from that  shadowy patch below us. 

Tom balances me, the map, the torch and himself as we negotiate the hairpin turns pocked with tricky holes that make our boots squelch and slide. The teeny torch does nothing more than show us  feet and as it is in Tom's hand it is his feet we are staring at.  The crunching noises have ominously stilled when suddenly a violent gust blows in rain and all of the tree tops above us become huge winged creatures who rise up angry, flapping and screeching and way too close. My feet shoot out from under me, I grab Tom harder--AND HE LETS GO. I shoot down the slope  sure that I'm about to be monster dinner and stop only when the mud grabs hold and leaves me sitting in its slimy tentacles.

"YOU dropped me!" I yell at Tom even though he  helps me up and does the best he can to not laugh and says that he didn't mean to drop me but the good news is that he saved  his map and glasses and they are not muddy at all.

I am so mad that I stalk off dripping mud and leaves and tears and even though the rain increases with my foul mood it does little to hose me off. I slog up the long hill until finally reaching the village road, tramp down  it in what is now a full tempest arriving at the cottage well ahead of Tom but have to wait to get in because he has the key. We do not talk for the whole hour it takes me to try to wash mud from my hair, my face, my boots, my trousers and my jacket.   Realizing that this is the best I can do in this trying situation I allow Tom to join me at the pub's fire where he placates me with scampi,  a hot baked potato and a large Chardonnay.

It isn't until we are ready to leave for the airport two days later and I catch site of the back of my jacket that I come to a fuller comprehension of the tenacity of Cotswoldian elements. I will fly back across the Atlantic Ocean branded by streaks of what I can only hope my fellow passengers know is just mud. 

The Wrong Kilt

 

Gwynedd is upset but not as much as  her daughter the bride. 

  "What do you mean they haven't got the kilt?"

I can hear her over Gwynedd's mobile phone as can anyone several blocks either direction of Prince's Street--and certainly the unfortunate man at  Edinburgh's  Moss Bros fancy dress hire who is the bearer of extremely bad tidings. The wedding is imminent and the groom, demands the bride, is wearing the kilt. I am here only as a bit player--the drama is between these three: mother, daughter and Moss Bros.

What am I doing here anyway?

It had  seemed perfectly insane--but also enticing.  I'd  called Tom on an early September day to share the amazing news that Julia and Will were getting married--in Edinburgh in early October and he'd  said, "Let's go".   Let's go?  Travel  to Scotland for a weekend?  "Sure--we've got airmiles."  Well, we do have airmiles and we could probably swing a Friday off work but,  as I pointed out to Tom--we hadn't actually been invited.

He called Gywnedd, Gwynedd called  Julia, I checked with the airline and we were booked more of a loooong weekend as we would be leaving on a Tuesday night when there were available seats.

Which is why I am here whiling away the time looking at the display book of Worse Case Scenario Weddings at Moss Bros where people usually hire tuxedos except  in Scotland where they hire kilts. The groom had ordered his kilt at the Swansea (what do the Welsh know about kilts?)  branch of Moss Bros and they'd gotten it wrong. The attendant says  he may be able to cobble together a substitute after a frenzied series of calls to Swansea to secure measurements but not the family tartan. He suggests the Scottish National tartan  and Gwynedd--in hyper mode now--automatically nixes it as she is Labour Party through and through but then comes to and realizes he means a different Scottish National (not the secessionists) and as the tartan looks very much like the one originally ordered, we take it and drive home through driving rain and two rainbows  feeling pretty smug 

Moss Bros tells us:

Contemporary Highland dress comes with an impressively dashing array of accoutrements:

•  

  Tartan kilt fastened with a kilt pin

• A decorative sporran (useful as a wallet and as a weight to prevent the kilt from swishing out of control) 

• Knee-high hose, secured with coloured flashes 

• Black-laced brogues, tied around the ankle

• The skean dhu (black dagger) which is tucked into the hose easy to grab in battle

• Tartan trews as an alternative to the kilt

• Shirt and tie (or bow tie and wing collar for evening)

The groom is there when we arrive and after dinner and a healthy sharing of a few drams of the very smooth Bunnahabhain (Bunahaven) single malt he has brought with him, the men take him aside to try his outfit on.  He strides into the kitchen in his clan finery-- lurchers and spaniels intent on licking his shiny shoes  and it is clearly apparent to all of us--but none so much as the bride--that it will not do. The groom is a strapping great lad--a kite surfer and outdoorsman on whom the kilt fits more like my mini in 1966. The bride is not happy--it will all have to go back.

The ridiculousness of the big man in the small outfit however makes all the whiskey cheerful men decide to put the outfit to good use. They leave for a bit and shortly later return with Tom happily decked in the kilt below and his new All Scotland  football team birthday shirt on top.  Tom has secretly always wanted to try on a kilt (don't all men?) and he enjoys himself parading around, striking Robert the Bruce poses for the camera and displaying his hairy shins as Moss Bros also forgot the knee socks. 

There are many funny jokes made, more Bunnahabhain consumed and as it is also Tom's birthday, a candle lit cake. I suspect that Tom's wish as he blows them out,  is to keep the kilt.

The wedding goes off without a hitch at the Registry office, as does the wedding lunch and the wedding dancing even though these Glasgow Uni grads have no sense of dance music.  Julia demands a Gay Gordon and we have a march around the marquee. It is freezing and the dancers are clad in puffy down jackets as we warm to the music.

We party late, enjoy every minute and leave early the next day casually arriving home in time to sleep,  get up and go to work as though we are old hands at this whirlwind transatlantic travel thing.

By Tuesday it is all faraway and long ago and I can only vaguely (Tom is wearing his birthday All Scotland tee short)  recall that we were in Scotland just the other day.    

Speed Bonny Boat--Skye

 

Over the sea to... we're on a ferry sailing from dreary mainland Mallaig, Skye next stop. It's gray, cloudy and we are  surrounded by excited twelve year old American boys who are not minding their captor. The sea is smooth and dark and two seals who saw us off, have slid away back to the shallows.   

"Speed bonny boat, like a bird on the wing, onward the sailors cry;  carry the lad, that's born to be king, oér the land to Skye....".

My mother was lulled to sleep with this sonorous but historically misleading folk tune by her mother and her grandmother; both Brit transplants to hot and humid 1920's Missouri.  The two older women remained homesick forever. I sang it to my first born with awe that I was singing "that"song to my own baby. The song is a sweet one but it doesn't actually allude to the terrible cost of Prince Charlie's quest to be king, the Jacobite   revolution, the Culloden massacree and, not inciden tally, the subsequent pre- US Revolution relocation of Tom's (my good humored partner) lowland forebears to North Carolina. Young Prince Charlie escaped, was hidden all over Skye by Flora  McDonald and many others, and eventually made it to France.

 Loud the winds howl, loud the waves roar, Thunderclouds rend the air; Baffled, our foes stand by the shore, Follow they will not dare.

Bart (that long ago infant first born) had this song played for his mama/son dance at his own wedding, impossible to really dance to, it ensured we would both be using our dryclean- only wedding best sleeves to wipe tears. I sang it one dark, long night two years later while rocking Bart's colicky newborn son Oskar. Oskar seemed to calm to the tune, listen and sigh; the song's connecting him to all the babies of all our pasts. 

We are following in the wake of another son Xander and his future wife Kai who took the "Harry Potter" train from Glasgow to Mallaig and then this same ferry to Skye just after his 21st birthday when he was supposed to be studying in London.

Walking the pier their first evening in Portree, they passed a fishing boat and said howdy to its captain who was still on board. What's it like fishing here, they asked?  Ha! Hard work! He  threw them a challenge.  If they showed for sailing at 5 am he would invite them to join him as crew for a day's prawning. When Xander opened his eyes early the next morning Kai threw him his shoes and a jacket and hauled him down to the pier. The two of them, wearing full foul weather gear worked an unforgettable fisherman's 12 hour day sailing out of Portree's dock with its pretty pastel color houses --hauled prawns for breakfast, hauled prawns for lunch--hauled prawns for tea. 

  Many's the lad fought on that day, Well the claymore could wield, When the night came, silently lay Dead in Culloden's field.

So it was not without a few silent tears (I don't pretend to be anything but a melancholic ýearner) that I watch the Maillaig shore disappear behind our Caledonian ferry as we churn off to Skye. And I think we are not alone because I can half-hear that singular tune low-humming from many chilly throats as I walk the slippery top deck.

   Burned are their homes, exile and death Scatter the loyal men; Yet e'er the sword cool in the sheath Charlie will come again.

Long after his Scottish army was destroyed at Culloden, their families burned and driven out of clan fiefdoms, Charlie died a drunk in France, never returning to Scotland.

Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing, Onward! the sailors cry; Carry the lad that's born to be King Over the sea to Skye.

Over the Radical Road

Edinburgh, Spring

 

 This is the kind of day that makes me hunger for  Scotland when I am away.  A huge blue sky, clear, bright light, and air that carries a blended tang of sea, grasses, peat and....impossible as it seems here on the edge of urban, cosmpolitan Edinburgh--cow.

I give a good sniff, appreciating each nuance of what makes this exact moment in time unique and wonderful and realize that Tom ha s stolidly kept walking up the vertical  climb of the Radical    Road. Rather a radical in his own right, Tom looks deep in thought and may have forgotten that he came here with me.
It's not that easy to run up this incline that wraps itself directly under the volcanic Salisbury Crags ostentatiously perched above Edinburgh's Holyrood Park. I love the name of the road ( it's pedestrians only) and its invitation to climb it is overwhelmingly compelling. We hustle up it whenever we are here, and increasingly that is whenever we possibly can be.

Yesterday we spent the day walking through Edinburgh doing other things and every time we  paused on any kind of a hill at all, there the crags were, dotted with small figures who had yielded to temptation. Climbing Calton Hill, directly across the city, we looked across to where we are now.  
  It's a beautiful climb and it leads to everywhere. This whole volcanic morass boasts lochs and meadows,the ruins of an abby, a church and of course, Arthur's Seat (that's in local lilt an eerily familiar Bostonian 'Airthurr"). The highest point on this broad expanse of meadow and crag, it is THE 360 degree view point. Sometimes I am pretty sure you can see Oslo if you look really, really hard and it is one of those days when the air is so clear that is makes you super attuned to smell, taste and view.

It's been a long morning, some of it spent getting lost in a car looking for a place we didn't find, and about which we had words, so it is no surprise that Tom is marching to his own drummer and that I am running to catch up. Here is where I pass St. Mary's School-turned condo across the park, where we first stayed, cheek to jowl with the crags and over there are novice rapellers, learning to cleat and leap. 

Headed uphill I am only a little conscious of the gradually changing light and it is only when I finally and breathlessly reach Tom and grab his arm to slow him down that the advent of mad, wild, black clouds just to the north of us make themselves known. We both feel the literal chill of a dark shadow passing over us and look up to see a mass of angry, chaotic storm clouds blowing towards us off the North Sea, bringing a cold gust of what's to come.

 We are of course not alone on the path. Elderly women in cloth coats walking hand in hand, mothers pushing prams, fathers and sons and dogs, backpackers; we are an assorted lot, but here for the same reasons. Having reached the zenith of this particular height, we debate whether we have time to walk on to Duddingston, a small village over the hill and home to the famously cozy Sheep's Heid Pub where a pint and a sandwich might be nice, or carrying on up to Arthur's Seat to get the whole miraculous view. 

 

 Turning to gaze once again over the cityscape, the storm shows itself as closer and meaner. When the first drops of rain begin, a couple of the walkers turn tail and run. It's only when the torrents unleash that we ourselves face the reality that is 

Scotland; fair one minute, foul the next. Being hearty New England yankees we rarely let the weather turn us back, but are not wearing our usual wet weather gear, and is that lightening...and snow?

 Heading back down the hill as quickly as we can, we are showered with rain, dusted with snow and finally, pelted with hail. We pass several walkers more determined than we, including two Japanese tourists bravely holding maps over their heads to ward off the elements, two mums with babes in prams sheltered by see -through plastic shields, and one somewhat dazed young woman in a very wet woolen coat and high heels, delicately carrying a handbag in one hand and a blown-out umbrella in the other. Arthur's Seat or bust. Sliding down the last grassy slope we skid into our car, fortunately parked in one of the Holyrood lots, and wait out the storm, which dramatically blows past us, headed for the Highlands.

 

.

Charlotte's Web

North Yorkshire  calls me.

It embodies everything romantic in my walker's soul despite the reality of Emily, Jane and Charlotte's particular corner of it being uninhabitable.  North Yorkshire is dales that hide sweet villages and hidden gardens, moors shining golden and purple under a soft autumn sky, real pubs with real ale and real fires and a wildness that embodies all that Nantucket used to be back when it was an island and not a causeway just off the Hutchinson River Parkway.

There are other Yorkshires in the east and west and south but it's the magnetic north that pulls me.

On our first Yorkshire stay we rode the  train from London and spent a week in a flat just behind the Minster with fifteen year old Xander who was  immensely patient with his parents and took full advantage of his temporary access to beer disguised as lemon shandies.  The sun shone and  the River Ouse sparkled as crews in  racing sculls avoided slamming into gaudy narrow boats moored to the shore.    We walked the city walls in the early morning  mist and thought we could just see  the Howardian hills.  Xander and I galloped horses across green meadows in Helmsley, picnicked on fresh milk and apples by a lively stream and won a round of beer at a Monksgate pub on quiz night.

It's years later and we have visited York twice since then, most recently after Christmas this year.   We stayed  one dark winter's night in a bed and breakfast overlooking Kit Kat Stadium, the chocolate home of York Football  and wandered  into  the city center to  eat dinner.  That eye catching  seventeenth century bakery with the funny gables and leaded windows is now an Aisan fusion restaurant where they do a nice mojito and pint of prawns.  Teenaged girls giggled bare-armed and  already drunk down High Street  despite the bitter bitter cold.

After dinner we moseyed back towards the Minster only incidentally rediscovering the  quiz night pub and its  friendly neuk with a cheerful  fire.

Tom had a pint of Samuel Smith's Winter Welcome and I had a glass of  a creditable chardonnay which really marks the change time has wrought as I would have settled  for the only plonk  suffered by serious beer pubs way back then.

Our visits to the greater Shire of York have been far more frequent. A week here and a week there or a few days as we pass through on our way to or from Scotland, it is an intentional diversion always beckoning as we negotiate our way up the M-1. 

There is an excellent motorway stop near Penrith where you can get a good sandwich and a cappucino and sit outside on  these big boulders looking across to the Yorkshire Dales and wrestle with an immediate longing to abandon the car and walk on.

 

 

Channeling the BBC

Massachusetts,Winter

There is a definite aroma of   Highland in my kitchen.   As I am in Massachusetts and nothing is on fire (other than dinner--but what's new about that) I am sniffing for  source.

 

This happens mysteriously  in mid winter. Peaty air wafts from my state of the art Logitech V20 laptop speakers which are audibly  producing the BBC broadcast "Around Shetland". As the Scottish radio announcer lets us know that the weather has "deterrrrriorated" with gales and gusts causing the cancellation of the Scouts meeting in Tingwall and the Alcoholics Anonymous session in Scallaway, the comfort of an earthy fire warms the room. The Shipping Forecast is up next.  

 

A big fan of Les Blank's old smellaround films where you could sit in the movie theatre watching AND smelling beans and rice, I am not at all surprised that the BBC can bring these wild islands in northern Scotland right into my kitchen. They do amazing things.

I work at home a lot. Although there are long days when I really don't want to hear another voice, there are many more when some grounding in life outside is encouraging. The BBC is, thanks to the miracle of internet, my best friend. I can start my day with The Latest News Bulletin and  BBC 4 . When  I need a cheery  break it's off to  Good Morning Scotland; although it is already noon in Glasgow.  Switching back to BBC 4 (my true love) I get the News at One, and on Sundays a read through of  what's in the papers. The BBC offers many of their listings on play it again status.  Midday gets me Woman's Hour and the Afternooon Play,  with timely interjections of  The News.

By early evening I'm ready for a break and the Archers. I used to think Jill Archer was a total drip,  but she is doing a surprisingly thoughtful job of raising her  annoying husband's dead lover's son Rory.

.

By nighttime it's Traveling Folk or  a  BBC4 documentary on global warming or hiking with  Rambling Claire and in the very late hours, there is always  local news from the Borders or Highlands or peaty Shetland. Sometimes I listen to Radio Wales or Radio Devon or Radio One. When I just want background comfort I dial in Radio Gaelic which is almost always an incomprehensibly speedtalking  rather impressive woman who I  imagine walking  around her kitchen with a microphone clipped to her apron as she  throws together a plate of clooty dumpling and giant haggis, dashing over every now and again to spin a disc. She plays nice faraway music like accordians and lonely fiddles.

Here's the thing about the British Broadcasting System(which also includes tv).  Approved by a Royal Charter it mandates that programming must appeal to a "diverse" population.  Nationalized  means that it is owned and run by the state, and not by the whims of  a profit making public.  It offers  54  radio stations and eight excellent tv channels (BBC1, BBC 2 etc) nationwide offerings are dedicated to a particular key stations including sport, Muslim and Hindu prayers , comedy, drama, talk, news and music, music, music.  There are no ads. None.  BBC stations are paid out of taxes. Each television in the entire nation is taxed at the substantial rate of  131.50 pounds for  a color tv, 44 for black and white pensioners over 75 pay nothing and blind people pay exactly half.

  When we're in the UK my husband listens to BBC 5 (sport) on his battery radio while he's taking a shower.  When I travel long distances for work I download a day of BBC on my Ipod and listen to Rambling or News at 8 , Book of the Week or the omnibus edition of the Archers all over again. Back when we had a Subaru Forester I was content just listening to PBS and the  instant weather channel but now the  Toyota radio is just a conduit for  my Ipod. Sometimes I have to shake off a poncy britedge  to my yankee speak when I get to work.

 

Such a deal.

It's a national treasure.

 

View srett's map

 

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Holiday in Swell Country

This holiday was intended to be pure respite—no energetic long walks, no rushing around to see new sights, no days spent in dark museums. Although we did make a longer than we wanted to (it takes a carbon- guilty day each way) round trip drive from London to Scotland, we loved our stay with friends and the drive through Cumbria and Yorkshire in midwinter light. We did not love the M4, the M1 nor the roundabouts at Heathrow, but then who does? Besides leisurely walks with the Lurcher puppy Rosie along the Firth of Forth (try saying that one three times fast), we did celebrate New Year’s day by taking one modestly energetic ten mile circular walk with Barry over meadows and down a Scottish drover’s road in the rain. We’d hoped the Crown in East Linton might be open midway for a beer and a sandwich but it wasn’t and we made do with a yogurt from the Coop. I got a heel blister from hiking in wellies with sliding socks and had to hop around on one foot while trying to apply a bandaid (plaster) without falling face forward in mud. We left the next morning figuring we would make Gloucestershire before nightfall but the drive took longer than we’d thought—as it always does in England.

 By the time we got to our National Trust holiday cottage (booked cheaply as a post Christmas short stay) in a teeny tiny village reached by a long, dark lane, it was dark, raining, we were cold and I announced that if we heard one more BBC4 radio report on Gordon Brown’s impending visit to China I for one, would go completely insane. Well versed in the requirements for holiday cottage stays we’d stopped at the Evesham Tesco which we fortunately found easily but which was unfortunately out of everything. Well, not everything as there was plenty of tea as long as we chose PG Tips but no smoked salmon, no whole meal bread, no fresh milk, no eggs, no yogurt. A woman stood weeping by the condiment section, “Where are the jars of jam with strawberry bits?” she moaned as I reached past her to snag the last jar of ginger marmalade. The coffee aisle hosted a voluble gathering of Polish shoppers who were clearly  displeased  by the dearth of ground roast.

 Totally tourist (no one can actually afford to live in these little pockets of quaint) Snowshill is a picture book village (the parent part of Bridget Jones was filmed here) which means that  it’s maintained pretty much just as it was and just as it was means it’s dark once the sun has set. Since the sun sets around 4pm in winter it’s  pitch black in the hours when we’re used to being able to see.

No street lights, no window light, we had to shine our high beams to make sure we were unloading into the right cottage (door left open, keys on table) since from the outside, the row of sixteenth century cottages built into the hillside look pretty much alike. The golden stone cottages stood stolidly by the lane wearily awaiting the next holiday tenant’s ooh’s and aah’s. Ours was notable because it was the smallest, had eaves looking out over its sloping rooftree and sat squarely in the middle of its larger kin.    Plus it looked just like the picture we’d cut from the Trust catalogue and had magneted to our fridge since November. We could just make out the white letters of Spring Cottage painted on the door’s lintel.

 Rentors of UK holiday cottages usually leave a welcome tray of two cups, two spoons, two little plates, cookies (biscuits), a pint of milk, tea bags and coffee crystals. We fired up the electric kettle and enjoyed a little pick me up even though as Americans we don’t do Nescafe.  Having lit the fire using  handsful of the fragrant peat bushel we’d carried with us from Scotland as the English are not in favor of this peasant fuel, we did as we always do when we first arrive at a holiday let; rearranged the furniture, tuned the radio to BBC4 and tossed our walking gear artfully around the front hall. 

 

 Warmer and having regained a holiday mood, we agreed that although tea and biscuits may provide basic sustenance, alcohol is mandatory.  We inched our way down the pitch black street towards the light leaking out of the Snowshill Arms and spent the evening in front of the pub fire downing Donnington’s Best Bitter along with the post fox- hunt swells (some of whom actually wore gaiters and Argyle knee socks) and a very nice plate of scampi and chips. Ah, thought I as I reached for another flattened fried shrimp and a swig of fine ale, this is the life. I announced to anyone who cared to listen that I could be found right here at this seat, in front of this fire for the duration.

 When, after a few rounds shared with the swells, we serendipitously re-found the door to Spring Cottage, I took a deep hot bath and crawled under the down duvet in our cheery yellow bedroom. Tom was still downstairs attending to the fire so I had to yell. “So—long walks, late afternoons reading by the fire, BBC 4, dinner by the fire and then pub, fire, bed.” No response. ..”And peat—I want to wake up to the smell of peat and have breakfast by the peat fire.”

 I fell asleep. Tom, who far prefers his peat in a nice glass of Laphroig, tended the fire and hoped he wouldn’t torch Spring Cottage, which is something the National Trust politely asks its tenants to avoid if at all possible.

 

Heads Down and Don't look Back

 

December, 2008  East Lothian, Scotland

 When people in the US wish you happy holidays, they generally mean, enjoy your time off. In the UK it is a far more literal term as it implies you are actually going somewhere to have a holiday. No one "vacations" at home, they just "stay" at home. My friend Gwynedd explained this to me when I tossed out an "Enjoy your holiday"  as we left the village veg and fruit shop. The veg and fruit man was still standing  dumbstruck in the doorway watching us waggle down the street with our little paper bags of earthy new potatoes and carrots. "He either thinks you know something he doesn't  and he's taking a trip, or you're nuts." Looking back over my shoulder, I could see that he'd decided on the nuts interpretation which seemed appropriate for someone who sold them.   Also note that I called the new potatoes earthy and not covered with dirt, as earth there is dirt to us and dirt there is dog shit to us.

Still, many Brits do take holidays during Christmas as most people have substantial time off from work and school and a week in sunny Majorca sounds pretty good  when it's usually dark at home. There is also a curious national affinity for driving a couple of hundred miles to a place where it will still be dark so that you can pay a lot of money to  have a holiday in someone else's  holiday cottage  and write cheerful entries about the rain and the fireplace in the guest comment book when you leave." What a lovely house in a beautiful location, we had a fantastic holiday.  Kids are longing to come back - thanks for a great week"

This is one of the years when we decided to join them.

We’re very fond of visiting the UK right after Christmas. Airfares hit rock bottom, we’re often in time for Hogmanay or some other excellent New Year’s bash and there’s usually no snow. Well at least there’s a lot less snow than December generally offers New England.

The best part though is in knowing that no matter how work pushed we are in the lead up to the “holidays” nor how endless the tasks inherent in celebrating with an ever increasing number of family under- fives, we know that the real gift is when we clutch our passports and ditch them all.

Having returned only a few months earlier from our year away from everything, it seemed frivolous to even consider leaving again but it had been an eventful interlude and by the time we’d had our second blizzard, we were more than ready to cash in some air miles. Some nights I would ask Tom to “tell me the story” of our impending escape. I’d make him include every detail and start from the moment we got in the car to go to the airport. Usually we were both nodding off by the time he’d seamlessly seen us nestled in our plane seats balancing flutes of champagne, but it was a comforting sleep that followed.

Although Tom and I were neck and neck in ruining Christmas (usually one of the twins does that) it only made our impending departure that much sweeter. Tom stuffed too many  mimosa oranges in the garbage disposal and stopped up the sink on Christmas morning and I broke the stove mid turkey. The next morning while the plumbers were taking apart the kitchen, one of the two year olds was pushed off the top of the couch by her older brother on my watch and had to make a VIP ER visit to have her  on duty doctor uncle (one of the twins) play hero by relocating her arm.

By the time we slunk out the next day we knew we deserved the ice storm that dogged us all the way to Logan.