Cheesehead On The Move: A Sherlockian's Story

Cheesehead On The Move---Part 2--- A Tale of Three Towers

2008-10-16T10:16:00.000-07:00

Tale of Three Towers; Part 2 of a Sherlockian’s Story
By Gayle Lange Puhl

Do not tell me how educated you are or how old you are, tell me how much you have traveled and I will tell you how much you know.
The Prophet Mohammed

I would like to begin this account of my trip by emphasizing that this is my account and no one else’s. Sixty-two people participated in this adventure and I am sure that sixty-two different stories could easily be told and each would be correct and truthful. I write the accounts of my travels for several reasons. First, I write because I want to remember and savor the experiences. Secondly, I write because I have always, in one fashion or another, written things and I enjoy writing. I write for my own satisfaction. And finally, I want my family and my friends to know and understand me a little better and I think the best way to do that, especially for those who will never meet me, is to read my adventures expressed in my own unique way.
Bill H. of the English department of the Evansville High School in Evansville, WI organized the first European Trip in 2006 thru EFTours of Boston, MA. The itinerary covered the United Kingdom from London up to the Lake District, over to Edinburgh, Scotland, and back down to York in Yorkshire. That trip was written up and posted by me. It may be read by paging pass this account deeper into this blog. I really suggest that you consider doing that first. I’m not going to do a lot of explaining about things I’ve covered in the first blog. Life is too short, time is a river, footnotes are a pain, etc. I did decide to look for the Sherlock Holmes connection each day of the 2008 trip like I did during the first trip. You go ahead and page forward and read the adventures I had in 2006. I’ll wait.
Finished? Yeah, it’s pretty long, isn’t it? I hope you enjoyed it. Continue, please.

These youngsters however, go everywhere and see everything. They are as sharp as needles too; all they want is organization.
A Study in Scarlet

The first trip had twenty clients and three chaperones. The second trip had fifty-four clients and six chaperones. Two tour directors from EFTours guided us around Paris and the U.K. It was planned as a 9-day trip to Paris and London. An extension was available for a 3-day continuance to Scotland. Fifteen clients and two chaperones took the extension.
Bill H. and Dan C. came into my study hall room at the high school on April 25, 2007. They waited until I had finished taking attendance and signed passes, then asked me a simple question: would I like to be a chaperone on the ’08 trip to Paris and London?
Would I? Would I? WOULD I?? I said yes.
Bill H. explained that they had decided to ask me some time before, but had waited until that day because it was my birthday. Here’s to the best birthday present ever!
They left, I did a little dance, announced to the students that this is what Mrs. Puhl looked like happy, and then just glowed for months. Later I found that I was also going on the 3-day extension to Scotland after Paris and London. Best birthday present ever!
Finally reality hit. As the date of June 18, 2008 neared, I started writing out list after list after list. There were things to be collected, things to do, things to pack. Finally, on the morning of June 18, I scratched off the last item, take out the garbage. My daughter Gayla and her daughters Ainae and Anicia picked me up in her van and drove me to the high school building where the Van Galder bus would pick us up for the trip to Chicago’s O’Hare Field Airport. I gave them directions about bringing in the mail and watering my Peace plant.
This year’s group of kids, parents, other relatives and chaperones was so large that it had been divided into three sections. One group of thirty had left at 8:30 am to catch their plane from O’Hare Field in Chicago. The second group of thirteen and my group of seventeen left Evansville together for O’Hare at 11:30 am.
Our 2008 EFTour was called “A Capital Connection”. The trip was 9 days long and covered Paris, France and London, U.K. A 3-day extension, chosen by the fifteen people Bill and I were chaperoning, covered Edinburgh and other points of interest in Scotland, U.K. The other chaperones were Dan and Mindy from the first trip, and Tanya, Dan’s wife, who knew French from college, and Dan L., who quickly became known as The Other Dan, a friend of Bill’s. The Other Dan had led a group from his own school back in ’06.
This trip featured a free day in each city except Edinburgh, with an extra day in London for those taking the night train northwards. This allowed for extra adventures, some of them quite surprising.
The Sherlock Holmes connection on the first day of the trip was the fact that of the seventeen people of our extension group Dr. Watson and his son Nathan were with us. He was a veterinarian with a local practice in Evansville who had a fine sense of humor. He had heard all the jokes and let me tell a few more.
The bus left Evansville on time, dodging the city road construction in Evansville and heading for Chicago on I-94. We got to O’Hare with no problems and gathered up our bags. Walking into the International Terminal we recognized the escalator that kids from the first trip had camped beneath two years ago. That escalator had become legendary in tales about the trip back at Evansville High.
We got thru the baggage check-in and boarding without mishaps, although I had a flash of déjà vu when I set off the metal detector again. I was searched because the shirt I was wearing had metal buttons. Our group of thirty from the bus was divided back into the thirteen and seventeen booked on different flights.
Our seventeen left at 5:30pm and the last group of thirteen left at 6pm. We went to London first and the other group went straight to Paris. Therefore, we would arrive last in Paris.
We boarded a 747 British Airways flight to London. I needed an aisle seat and one of the girls had been assigned a seat away from her friends. I offered to trade if the girls could find another aisle seat. They found me that seat so the girl could sit by her buddies. I sat next to a man named Jeff from Cincinnati, Ohio. He was going to Africa on a church mission to help build an orphanage. Jeff was quiet and had an elaborate tattoo on his right arm featuring roses. We were in the back of the plane in the economy section, right up against the back wall and handy to the lavatories. We also were served first from the refreshment cart.
The flight took six hours and went smoothly. I could not sleep on the plane, despite the nice little packages with socks and sleep mask they gave everyone. The dinner was baked salmon with penne, vegetables, lemon cheesecake, a malted milk chocolate bar and tea. Each seat had a little television set into the back of the seat before it. I watched episodes of “The Family Guy” and “The Simpsons” and the movie “This is Spinal Tap”. I saw the full moon outside the plane over a thick bank of clouds, so it does get dark on the way to England.
Just before we landed at Heathrow outside of London we were given a box with a roll, jam, butter and orange juice. Tea and coffee were offered during both meals. I preferred tea.
We had to catch a connecting flight to Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport from Heathrow. Our bags were checked to go on ahead automatically to the correct plane. There was a short wait in Heathrow Airport. In a large lobby area some European cars were on display on platforms. Nearby was a food stand called The Global Café. I wandered over to look at the posted selections and to marvel at the prices.
We left from boarding area M18 to board our Paris flight. That proved to be an Airbus with a center aisle and three seats to a side. Because it was a short flight, there were no TVs. Shortly after we took off, we were given a meal of scrambled egg and bacon sandwich with juice and tea. It ended up being our lunch. We arrived in Paris about 1 p.m. on June 19th.
At the Paris terminal we were met by Helen S., our new tour director from EFTours. Jim P., our tour director from the first trip, had met the group of thirty people and the group of thirteen that had earlier flown from O’Hare on different planes. They had left on their bus. Our group boarded a chartered French motor coach to leave our bags at our hotel. Then a problem developed. Jim had had to devise a new plan because the hotel where our rooms had been booked couldn’t handle sixty people as called for in the original plan. Another Quality Hotel in Paris had to be found. Since Helen was not familiar with the second hotel’s location, we drove back and forth down residential streets of the Paris suburbs in order to find the correct hotel. At one point we gave the bus driver a round of applause because he navigated a very tight turn between a brick wall and a stone pillar on the corner of a narrow street. We enjoyed many fine views of French buildings and businesses on the way.
It was established after a few enquiries that the problem was navigating that great big motor coach into the right street to reach the hotel.
Finally the correct route was located, luggage was deposited, and our group took the Paris Metro (subway) to the nearest stop by Notre Dame. On the subway ride I was amazed to see bright graffiti spray-painted on the walls of the tunnels we traveled thru. It reminded me of Chicago. The only saving grace was that most of the writing was in French. That meant that I couldn’t read it, so it became like unexpected flashes of abstract art. It was to be seen throughout Paris, but was most noticeable in the subway tunnels.
We had free time to explore the famous Gothic cathedral before we were to regroup with everyone under the statue of Charlemagne on the plaza in front of it. I had already hit an ATM and got some euros. I took pictures inside the cathedral made famous by centuries of pious Catholics, Victor Hugo and Walt Disney. The first thing I heard inside the building was an American woman saying “There’s a notice about pickpockets, Harry!” I got out the binoculars and my British Polaroid 35 mm camera.This was not the last trip’s camera, but it was the same make. I was so pleased with the performance of the camera I had borrowed from a friend in 2006 that after I returned I decided to get my own. After a phone and on-line search I discovered that it was not American-made, but British. I found one offered for sale second-hand on e-Bay from England and bought it, the first thing I ever bought on-line.
I walked slowly around the outer edge of the nave wondering at the interior and the stained glass windows that gleamed thru the gloom. I knew that my little camera and the press of the crowd wouldn’t get me the best photos, so I determined to get a good guide book, one loaded with professional pictures and informative text.
I picked out a guide book at the little souvenir stall in one corner at the back. The saleslady was talking in French to her saleslady friend and took no notice of the people waiting to purchase books, postcards and religious medals. I said, “Madame! Madame!” and finally “Madame!” All those Pepy LaPew cartoons were finally paying off. I was not more than four feet away from her, but I might as well been at the top of the Eiffel Tower for all the attention she showed my repeated calls. Around me, other people were crowded up to the stall, each waiting to complete their own purchases. Frustrated, I rapped the guidebook on the top of her cash register to get her attention. She stopped talking and glared at me. I was very impolite! I had interrupted her conversation with her friend! She began to complain, telling me that I should have said “Allo, Madame.” Someone behind me said, “She did.” Stymied by the gathering crowd, she grudgingly took my money and made change. As I turned away, I could see that others were pushing up to her station, keeping her from resuming her conversation and actually making her work. If I was Catholic, that might have bothered me, but I’m Lutheran, so it didn’t.
The sun was shining brightly as I exited the cathedral. Outside near the Charlemagne statue, I saw Jim P., our tour director from the 2006 trip, talking to Bill. He was surprised to see me and gave me a big hug.
“Why didn’t you tell me she was coming?” he asked Bill.
“I did.” Bill said.
“I didn’t know it was going to be you,” said Jim. Jim always did have trouble with my last name. We rejoined the travelers from the other two flights into one big hungry group.We all took the Metro to our dinner restaurant, the Casino. Jim didn’t know that I was a chaperone, but after Bill told him, he invited me to sit at his table. We talked and laughed, telling stories about the first trip to Helen and The Other Dan. In particular, I told my version of the Queen Mum story and he told his. The funny thing was, it turned out the stories didn’t match. I guess you had to be there.
The meal was chicken and carrots with strawberries and yogurt for dessert. I drank a lot of water. In fact, I ran that poor waitress ragged for water. It’s a problem in Paris, not drinking alcohol. It’s like visiting Monroe, Wisconsin, and not eating any cheese.
After dinner we divided again and went back to our hotels. One group went to Helen’s hotel and the others to Jim’s. I was with Jim’s group.
Everyone’s bags had been stored in two rooms and when it came time to sort them out, mine could not be found. I was worried, because my meds were in one of the bags. Bill and Jim were great, Jim even offering to find me a doctor if I needed one. After a search the bags were located and I finally retreated to my room. It had been a long time since I took out the garbage out back in Evansville.

It would be a great pleasure to me, therefore, if you could come on to the Continent with me.
The Final Problem

On June 20, I woke up in Paris! The Sherlock Holmes connection today was that the Great Detective had a French grandmother, the sister of the artist Vernet.
I had paid a premium for a single room throughout the trip, some of the best money I ever spent. My room was small but nice, painted in a neutral color with a wall of windows that slid open overlooking the front courtyard. There were no screens. It had a double bed with a reddish duvet and white pillow covers. The big windows opened on a sliding track but had no locks.
Down the hall of the suite the toilet had its own little room, with the bath/shower and sink in a room on the other side. The bathroom was large enough to hold a place to hang up my shirt after rinsing it out. I had chosen my wardrobe to be rinsed out as needed. The tub was large and had high sides, with a half door of glass. The TV in the bedroom had sleep controls and carried CNN, BBC and several channels in French and German.
The first night I had a shower and watched “Crossing Jordan” in French. I had no problem following the plot because I had already seen it at home. As I do normally, I woke up in the middle of the night, then again at 4:30. I found I could fall back into a nice sleep while a French voice murmured in the background. I wish I could adapt this knowledge to good use back home.
June 20th came with the dawn. Orange juice, tea or coffee, rolls, cheese, sliced ham, corn flakes and milk were offered for breakfast downstairs. At 9:30 we started off. Our hotel group filled a bus. The other hotel had their own bus and Helen as their tour director. During the day the people of each bus saw the same things and places but at different times. This pattern was followed all thru the trip, with the groups meeting for dinner at night.
Notes taken on the bus---a little house with concrete trees embossed on the outside—houses six or seven stories tall, four or five windows wide, iron balconies at each window with flower boxes planted in colorful blooms, tiny but lavish gardens in each front courtyard—public buses installed with strap hangers---long narrow automobile license plates that look like the ones in England---stores labeled pharmacies, the L’Acacia restaurant, Ban Hotel, Speedy Auto Shop---flea markets---large trucks parked on the side of the street with men standing next to them, the sign of a strike. Helen had explained the day before that yet another big strike was happening, apparently something the French considered a national sport. Motorcycles dodging thru traffic---Century 21 offices---houses of dressed stone with white stone hooded windows---walled gardens---houses of stucco, brick, flint, fieldstone, dressed up with white quoins at the corners and around the windows---fancy iron gates enclosing courtyards---out of the suburbs and into the city---a shop labeled Coiffures---Brasserie, a café and bar---into Paris---large grey metal oval containers on the sidewalks, French public toilets---flower beds of pansies and gardenias lining the avenues---the bus driving thru traffic tunnels with columns like those of the one that took Princess Diana---bridges over the Seine with barges and boats lined up below---fancy domed subway entrances on the streets---tall buildings with Mansard roofs studded with cute round or square windows---smart cars---trucks with tied-down sides---the Arch de Triumph placed in the center of an enormous roundabout with streets radiating out, each lined with trees trimmed in the shape of tall rectangles---little stone balconies over stone-trimmed storefronts on seven-storied buildings with Mansard roofs, windows behind iron balconies and apartment houses topped with chimneys sporting thick, round chimney pots---square cobblestones in the streets, patched with spots of asphalt---Speed A Rocket Pizza---more streets and we are at the Eiffel Tower.
This was the first Tower of my story’s title.
Everybody out of the bus! We landed at a plaza set over a museum complex, the Palais de Chaillot, with a great view of the Eiffel Tower in the near distance. This symbol of Paris was designed and built by Gustave Eiffel to celebrate the 1886 Paris Exposition. He was the same man who designed and built the Statue of Liberty as a gift from the French people to the American people in 1883. The Eiffel Tower was planned to be temporary, to be torn down for scrap after 20 years, but it became so popular that it escaped its original destruction date. The Tower was finally saved during WW1 when a radio antenna was placed at its top. That proved to be so useful that no one really thought it a good idea to scrap it after that. However, a con man during the 1920s was successful in selling the rights of scrapping the Tower to two different junk dealers in Paris at two different times because of the persistent rumors that the government considered the Tower ugly and wanted it torn down.
I took a picture for a German family on holiday as they stood before the tower. Bill took my picture in front of the Tower. I walked around and took pictures of some of the statuary placed around the plaza outside the twin museums. At the sides of the plaza were set gold-colored statues of men and women. At the back of the twin museums, facing the Eiffel Tower, were two bronze statuary groups positioned out to overlook the wonderful view.
I bought hats and shirts for the folks back home at a nearby souvenir stand. We got back on the bus and headed thru the previously military district of Paris to the Hotel de Invalids. This was a hospital built by Napoleon I for use by his injured and maimed soldiers. It was a large handsome building in the Empire Style with a huge dome. Under the dome is Napoleon Bonaparte’s tomb. A ticket was needed to enter, but we could only stay 20 minutes. I walked around and took a couple pictures and was the last back to the motor coach.
Much of downtown Paris was torn down and reconstructed on new and improved lines during the mid-1800s. The style that developed was called Belle Époque. It featured wide avenues, lots of columns, dressed stone, heroic Greek and Roman architectural touches laid on with a trowel, white paint, Mansard roofs, fanciful details, classic statues and a general air of power and intellectual superiority.
Our homegrown architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, of Spring Green, Wisconsin, hated Belle Époque.
The bus drove down the Champs-Elysees, the richest shopping street in Paris. Shops lined the sidewalks---Louis Vitton---Prada---Gucci---Hermes where Oprah was denied entry because the store had closed for the day---St. Laurent---expensive shops without number---movie theatres---huge Old England store featuring fine and expensive ready-made suits and shirts—on a side street the fabled Paris Opera House, built during the time of Napoleon III and reputed to have a secret lake underneath it---a street of perfume shops--- the home of the French Ballet---Cartier—Baccarat---Tiffany---Van Cleef & Arpel---more streets---the Ritz Hotel---the Rodin Gardens and Museum with a glimpse of “The Thinker” from the back among the trees---a statue of King Louis XIV.
We drove past the Place de Concord, the huge square where during the French Revolution in 1793 the enemies of the revolution, including Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, were beheaded for the good of the state. It was the scene of the famous ending of Charles Dickens’ novel, “A Tale of Two Cities”. The spot where the guillotine stood was marked in the pavement.
The Chamber of Deputies at the end of the square---view of the Arc de Triomphe down one street---Tulleries Gardens---Musee d’Orsay, a former railway station converted to an art museum---the Louvre---driving down one side of the Seine then over yet another bridge---Ile de la Citi, the original island site of the early Paris---prison towers that held Marie Antoinette---dark green boxes that served as art stalls and book stalls attached to the balustrades along the side of the Seine---a bridge built with the stones that once made up the Bastille, the famous French prison---tour boats on the river---Pont Alexander III with molded heroic figures black and touched with gilt, judged the most beautiful bridge in Paris---bus stops with metal shelf seats that only accommodate two people---Metro tracks running alongside the Seine---and the motor coach headed out of the city, on the way to Versailles, built by Louis XIV.
Louis XIV was known as the Sun King. He ruled for 64 years, having come to the throne as a young child. He believed that he was the state, that everyone including the nobles had to do what he said, and the peasants were not to be considered at all in the great scheme of life. In other words, he was a serious candidate for “Supernanny”.
He distrusted everyone, and built the palace Versailles out in the country (12 miles, a day’s travel!). He forced the court (i.e. anyone who was anyone) to move in and live in cramped little rooms and be around so he could keep an eye on them and discover what they were plotting. If he liked you, he gave you the castles and property that belonged to the people he didn’t like. He spent a lot of money building Versailles and waging wars against other countries. The nobles and the regular people were squeezed to pay taxes to pay for it all. And he didn’t care! His son died and his grandsons died and when Louis XIV finally died his great-grandson became Louis XV. The new king continued the bad spending habits he had been taught. His famous quote was "Apre moi, le deluge."
His son Louis married Marie Antoinette but they were way too young (she was 14, he 17) for the responsibility of marriage. Young Louis had a medical problem that involved a surgical solution and in those days of leeches and unwashed sharp instruments and no anesthesia it took his advisors seven years to talk him into the operation. By that time Marie was a glamorous shopoholic Valley Girl and he was heavily into clocks. She settled down a little as the children started to appear but she couldn’t live down her reputation and Louis XVI (his dad had died) had the reputation for being a clod who couldn’t handle his government or his wife.
He supported the American Revolutionary War, mostly to annoy the British. That cost a lot of money and let democratic ideas spread freely throughout France. Because the money had been borrowed the economy went down the tubes and taxes and the price of bread went up and the next thing you knew the mob marched 12 miles to Versailles from Paris, grabbed the Royal Family and made them sit thru a heavy-duty audit of their lives. Things were just never the same after that.
Versailles was the capital of France for 100 years. The king(s) lived there and he wanted only the best. That was what he got. The best gardens surrounding the best buildings, decorated with the work of the best artists and sculptors, filled with the best furniture, peopled by the noblest in the kingdom wearing the best clothing and the best jewels and fancy 3-foot high wigs, eating the best food---and not one bathroom in the entire joint! How would you like to be honored as the nobleman who carried the King of France’s personal potty chair around, ready for instant use? Talk about your seats of power!
We got off the bus and grabbed a sandwich before entering Versailles. Well, “grabbing a sandwich” really meant standing in line in front of one of the only two restaurants in the neighborhood while 237 other people stood in line for a sandwich or got a sit-down meal at the same place. That didn’t take into consideration the 158 people waiting to use the only bathroom available. I gave up waiting for that, stood in line for something to eat, and put down my notebook on a window ledge while I ate my sandwich and washed it down with some pop.
The next thing I know we were climbing up to the courtyard of the palace thru a side gate and being led thru the most beautiful rooms I had ever seen. Our local guide, Isabelle, did a marvelous job leading us thru the major rooms, including the King’s suite, the Queen’s suite and the Hall of Mirrors, where international treaties were signed and heads of state were entertained. It was interesting to see that as each king added on to the buildings the decorations became more and more elaborate, as if each generation was bent on outdoing the last.
The Revolutionary mobs trashed the place after the Royal Family was removed, but they did leave the original paintings on the walls and most especially on the ceilings. It was like walking thru the middle of a series of enormous Easter eggs by Faberge.
After the tour I hit the toilet and the gift shop. I was wandering the geometric gardens filled with flowers and shrubs laid out in formal patterns and edged by wide gravel paths when I suddenly remembered that I had left my notebook back on that window ledge. My heart dropped to my socks. I searched for the correct side gate and crossed the street with my knees weak in fear to find---the notebook just where I had left it, joined by a few sandwich wrappers and a discarded paper coffee cup. I didn’t think my writing was so bad that if left to itself it would start a garbage dump!
At 3:45pm our busload rendezvoused at the gold-covered Main Gates designed by Mansard and got on board our motor coach to return to Paris. We drove to the shopping district and were given free time. Some went to tour a French perfume factory/shop. I’m affected by strong flowery smells so I passed that up and instead walked a couple blocks to the Opera National de Paris Garnier, more commonly known as the Paris Opera House. The large ornate building was built between 1862 and 1875. It had been compared to a big wedding cake and its building styles ranged from Classical to Baroque. There was a legend that deep underneath was a lake. That story was the basis of the novel “Phantom of the Opera”, a successful book later turned into several movies and a Broadway musical. There was no admittance past the lobby, but I got some pictures and bought some postcards.
I was glad to see the Opera House. Nicholas Meyer, a movie director and author, had written a series of Sherlock Holmes pastiche stories. One had been made into the movie “The Seven-Percent Solution”. Another was “The Canary Trainer”, which had Holmes investigating the reports of a mysterious stranger haunting the Paris Opera House and influencing a young singer.
Lots of Sherlock Holmes’ fans like the stories so much that after they read the originals, they feel inspired to write new ones. I’ve done it myself, finishing one short story just before this trip started.
On the way back I visited a French-American pharmacy (the American drugs like Advil and Tylenol were kept in a drawer) and bought more souvenirs at a temporary stand. I tried out one of those grey oval French sidewalk toilets and took back half of what I had said earlier about the French. Jim had asked us during our bus ride in why the door would stay closed for twenty minutes for each use if required. It was so the Paris “ladies of the evening” could give each “customer” full service.
We gathered again and walked to the Flann restaurant. It served unusual pizzas and we ate our fill, including the dessert pizzas which featured chocolate. I drank a lot of water and filled my water bottle.
Fifty-nine of our group decided to go to the Sacred Coeur, a church on top of Montmartre, the artistic area of Paris. It was situated on what looked like the only sizable hill in the city. Half of our group would normally have taken the funicular, a little cog-wheel train that carried people up to the top. Unfortunately, Helen got a phone call from another tour director that said it was closed for repairs. The Other Dan became separated from the rest of us on an errand and told us later back in Evansville that there was nothing wrong with the funicular and he had ridden it to the top.
We stood on the sidewalk near the Moulin Rouge, a famous nightclub, as Jim promised that he would take the easy route up Montmartre to Sacred Coeur, the route he used to lead up elderly tourists. I’m crazy about Jim, but our definitions of “easy” have never jibed. Never trust an Englishman when he murmurs that it is “Not very far”, or “Not hard at all.” These people “made do” and “managed” thru two world wars and years of peacetime rationing. The indomitable British “stiff upper lip” that carried them thru Dunkirk and the Blitz of WWII plus generations of English cooking had been inherited by their children, who thought nothing of rafting the Amazon River in shorts and sending trusting, white-haired David Attenborough out to Africa to interview prides of lions and hordes of locust. They even let John Cleese loose with a bunch of lemurs on Madagascar. It’s a real wonder these people ever lost the Empire.
Traditionally, the Left Bank of Paris area had low rents, good restaurants, and many garrets in which to starve to prove your artistic chops. Picasso, Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, and many other known and unknown artists had lived and worked there.
The restaurants with their back rooms loaded with paintings by undiscovered geniuses given in exchange for meals were still there, but by 2008 the rents had gone up and French yuppies were taking over the best garrets, the highest ones with the finest views of other garrets. The houses, shops and bistros were all charming, lit in the gloom of night, and the cobblestones fitted right into the Parisian décor. All of this was prettily placed on a 45-degree angle up the side of a mountain.
O.K., O.K., maybe the sidewalks of Montmartre weren’t set at a 45-degree angle. Maybe they weren’t set at a 35-degree angle. But I’m not taking any bets that they weren’t set at a 25-degree angle. Paris had appeared flat except for this aberration.
I did not have an easy time keeping up with the others as we made our way up the cobblestones to the church. All the way up, I hummed inspirational songs like “One Foot in Front of the Other” and “It’s a Long Way From Tipperary”. Reaching the top was a victory for all concerned.
The Church of the Sacred Heart was holding a service, so no photo-taking inside was allowed. There was a large plaza set on the top of the cliff before the church’s steps and the view of Paris was spectacular. There we could take all the pictures we wanted. People looked at the view, checked out the bathrooms, and walked down the hill a little to go thru the souvenir shops. I sat with Sarah B. for a while, then sat with Carrie A., her parents Karen and Bob and her son John for a while before we started on down to regroup at a square a little below the church grounds. Others had already started to gather when we found it. It took quite a while and a little work, but finally we were all accounted for.
Walking down was much faster than walking up and there were no need for inspirational hiking songs. Brakes, maybe, a big net to catch us at the bottom of the hill, but not hiking songs. The Paris Metro got us back to our suburban street in good time and the brisk, lengthy walk to the hotel gave us glimpses of little courtyards behind the iron gates of the buildings on the way.
I had a shower and went to bed. Tomorrow is another day.

“You say he was painting. What was he painting?”
The Retired Colourman

The sun rose on June 21 and it was another day in Paris. The Sherlock Holmes connection today was that Holmes, fleeing Moriarty just as that evil mastermind was about to be arrested in London, let Watson’s and his luggage go on to Paris on the boat-train, secure in the belief Moriarty would follow and wait for it to be retrieved by Holmes and Watson in a few days. Instead, they got a couple of carpet bags and went to Brussels.
My knees were sore and I took care to rub in Icy Hot along with the sunburn lotion. After the Continental breakfast at the hotel we traveled the Metro to Paris again and spit into two groups. Sometime during our trek around Paris I noticed that we were standing next to the famous theatre, the Comedie Français, where the amazing French actress Sarah Bernhardt had performed during the 19th century. Cool!
Jim led a large group on a tour of the Catacombs. It was an underground complex where many years ago, to allow building expansion in Paris, the bones of thousands of former residents of the city’s graveyards had been gathered up and deposited in man-made caves deep below the city. This is a tourist attraction ranked right up there with the Paris sewers.
After due consideration, I decided to join the second group led by Helen and visit the Musee d’Orsay, a converted railway station housing the finest works of Impressionist painters of the latter quarter of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, like Monet, Cezanne, Pissarro, Degas, Gauguin and Van Gogh. Since I have over 55 art books at home on a shelf and at least 48 of them were about those artists, it was a no-brainer.
Before we set out, a young man dressed in a shirt and shorts, with a pair of swimming goggles and a snorkel on his head and a large yellow plastic inflatable duck around his middle approached us. There were four or five young men with him. I thought he was a peddler and shooed him away. Helen talked to him in French. It turned out he was having a sort of bachelor party and his friends had taken him out on a scavenger hunt. One of the things he had to get was a picture of himself in that getup with a group of tourists. We all posed with him and Helen thought it was very funny that I had shooed him away. I had never heard of such a bachelor party custom before. Peculiar people, these French.
Helen led us thru the Tulleries Gardens while I hummed “Tu-la-ree, tu-la-rah” under my breath. They were fashioned like the ones at Versailles and were very formal with gravel paths, clipped trees, benches and loads of statuary. It was originally the grounds of a French castle, and after the castle burned down the gravel paths were extended, more trees were planted and new old statues were found to fill the space.
The formal French gardens I saw in Paris were different from American parks because they do not have big areas of green grass edged by flower beds. The Tulleries had lines of trimmed and shaped trees with benches set out on gravel paths next to statuary. Designed in the 1700s and 1800s, the gravel drains the large spaces and would minimize the debris and moisture picked up by the fashionable long flowing skirts of ladies strolling along the paths. It also allowed carriages to drive along without damage to the paths.
The Musee d’Orsay was just across the Seine from the Gardens. We crossed on foot over a bridge and saw that the next bridge over was an old heavy stone bridge that looked just as I thought a bridge across the Seine in the middle of Paris should look.
As we stood in line for tickets, I got out my folding cane from my backpack. This move was at least three days overdue. It gave me more endurance, as it had when I had brought it out the night before on Montmartre. It was a brilliant move because, inside the museum, I found strangers would offer their seats and employees would direct me away from the escalators and toward the elevators and the handicapped restrooms. It also, along with my American accent, air of guileless friendliness and mild Mid-Western appearance, marked me as a harmless older lady to whom it was safe to reply if I asked any questions or attempted to strike up conversations. Parents smiled benignly as I questioned their children. The streaks of grey in my hair didn’t hurt, either.
The museum had five levels, three of which were set out as galleries. The inside was one huge arch with a glass roof, showing the railway station’s bones. I followed the map supplied to my favorite artists.
Theodore Robinson, an Impressionist artist and a friend of Claude Monet’s, who was raised in Evansville and for whom our intermediate school was named, wasn’t listed. I checked later and discovered that since he was an American, he didn’t rate a permanent display in the French museum.
The fifth level was devoted to the classic Impressionists, the second level was Art Nouveau, and the bottom level where the train tracks had been was devoted to statuary and special exhibits. There was a passageway over the gift shop at the front that revealed views of the entire arch and the art displayed below.
At the top level I walked out onto the outside terrace and took pictures of the city, including the Louvre and the Sacred Coeur on the other side of the river. I sat next to a young American family from Kansas. The little boy was about nine and was traveling with his parents and his younger sisters. He was enjoying the trip. I wondered how much he would really remember.
Slowly I walked thru the galleries. What a treasure trove! The Musee d’Orsay collection was small, fewer than 6,000 pieces, but each one was “choice”.
Impressionists to the right of me, Impressionists to the left of me, into the valley…wait, I’m thinking about something else. I picked out a Paul Cezanne as my new favorite: Uncle Dominick the Advocate. Very heavy knife strokes, thick layers of color. I saw Whistler’s Mother---turkeys by Monet---“Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe”---little studies for Le Grand Jette by Seurat---of course I’ve seen the original in the Art Institute of Chicago many times. It seems funny that Chicago back home has the finished painting while famous Paris gets just the preliminary studies. Several Rouen Cathedrals by Monet---several large unfinished canvases by Toulouse-Lautrec featuring people from the Moulin Rouge---Degas paintings of ballet dancers including “The Dance Lesson”---a great glass display case housing many Degas sculptures including “Young Dancer of Fourteen” wearing the cloth dress Degas put on it himself, an early example of “mixed media”.
One little boy was solemnly going around taking digital pictures of each painting. I don’t think he really looked at them, he just took their pictures. After the third time he got in my way, I thought, “Get a guidebook!” A grown man had refined the idea. He took digital pictures only of the pictures he liked, and then carefully took an additional shot of the little info card on the wall next to the painting.
Guards were all over the place, of course, but I was impressed by one female guard who was decked out in the dark blue coat and skirt uniform standard with her job, but sporting a pair of strappy gold high-heeled sandals on her feet.
Our group met at 1:30 in the lobby by the gift shop. The others wanted to go to the Catacombs but I didn’t. The Other Dan took great care that I knew the right Metro station stops to get to our regroup spot later in the day. He marked the stations and wrote Bill’s phone number on the map in case I got lost. I wasn’t worried. I knew that I could always ask directions. A lot of people in Paris spoke English and were very friendly. I just stayed away from any cathedral salesladies.
I was pretty tired and hadn’t had lunch. I went back into the museum and up to the Musee Café. Big windows looked over the Seine toward the center of Paris. The room was crowded but I got a little table in front of the pastry case. I ordered tomato soup and a crusty roll, a glass of milk and a chocolate bun. The milk was not like back home in Wisconsin. It looked normal, but when I tasted it, it was odd. According to the bill, it was some sort of French latte. Two long thin packets of sugar came with it. I added the sugar and found it palatable. I marked it down as part of the Paris experience.
The chocolate bun was like the chocolate croissants we can get in Evansville at the Real Coffee shop, but it didn’t have as much as filling as back home. I was sort of disappointed. I thought that every pastry in Paris would be memorable. After all, they had the original recipes.
The tomato soup was wonderful, more tasty and light than any I had ever had, including my mother’s. It was sprinkled with tiny particles of chive. I figured that they had to have made it from fresh tomatoes. Now I knew what Gordon Ramsey was talking about when he ranted on his TV shows about fresh ingredients. I mentioned the soup to our tour director Helen later and she looked skeptical when I said I thought it was made fresh. All I can say is, if the Musee d’Orsay uses canned tomato soup, I want nothing but French canned tomato soup after this.
I visited the gift shop and got a guidebook and some refrigerator magnets. My place back home is so small fridge magnets make more sense than posters. Outside on the entrance plaza was a row of 6 black sculptures. They were bronze allegorical groups, placed in a row, created for the Exposition Universelle of 1878 that was held in Paris. They represented South America, Asia, Oceania, Europe, North America and Africa. I asked a guard to take my photo next to them. That was another picture of Mrs. Puhl happy.
Then I walked two blocks to the Metro station. Bill had already given me my ticket. I caught the right train and with help from a woman with two young daughters got off at the right place. A question addressed to a young couple in the underground train corridors got me to the correct exit.
I was early, so I found a seat at a bistro across the street from the Metro station. I ordered a diet 7-up and sat at a tiny table next to the sidewalk. I wrote in my notebook as I enjoyed my drink. Back by the bar a wide-screen TV played Madonna videos in English. Despite that, I really enjoyed it. In fact, I savored it. I was sitting at a sidewalk café in Paris, writing down my impressions with a drink next to my elbow, waiting for friends. I felt like Earnest Hemingway or Gertrude Stein. Well, all things considered, I felt more like Gertrude Stein.
My group showed up 20 minutes early. We ate at a local restaurant and had salad, pork and rice, and a choice of little French pastries. They were not sweet and had crushed fruit fillings. I went with Jim and Bill as they walked across the street to Jim’s favorite wine shop and picked up a couple bottles at an inexpensive price. Another shop had cheese samples and I tried a Blue cheese. Not bad. We regrouped again and took our motor coach to the banks of the Seine just a few blocks from the Eiffel Tower.
Jim told the story of the Texan. A tour director named Jim once had a group of people to guide around Europe, including a big, patriotic Texan. Over the days of the trip, Jim learned that everything was bigger and better in Texas. In particular, things were done faster. When Jim mentioned that a cathedral had taken 237 years to build, the Texan squinted up at the building and said, “Why, back in Texas we’d have that thang up an’ decorated in three months, includin’ the carvings.” Given a view of the Coliseum in Rome, the Texan dismissed it as a “four month job.” After six days of this, Jim was pretty sick of the Texan. When they got to Paris Jim trucked them around to all the sights but one. They saw Versailles (it could be built in two months) and the Louvre (a month and a half construction time, tops). The tour bus kept circling a certain Tower, but Jim never mentioned it.
Baffled by the silence on this subject, the Texan finally asked, “Jim, what is that big ol’ thang thar?”
Jim said, “What? Where?”
The Texan pointed. “That ol’ thang, thar.”
Jim looked out the window, but turned back with an air of bewilderment. “My goodness,” he said to the Texan. “I don’t know. It wasn’t there yesterday.”
Now we boarded a tour boat to take a ride down the Seine past some of the most famous buildings in history. Jim advised us to sit on the left side. That gave us a great view of the bridges and buildings featured in the tour description given by a guide on the P.A. system.
Many of our group sat on the outside seats along the edge of the boat. We waved gaily at the people sitting and holding picnics on the quays and atop the brick walls of the opposite side. At one point we did the Wave a few times. The boat tour passed buildings like the Musee d’Orsay, the Louvre, Notre Dame and the Tullerie Gardens. At the gardens behind Notre Dame, huge bunches of greenery hung down the sides of the island walls, dangling towards the river. I used an entire roll of film on the bridges and buildings on the tour, including a lot on the Eiffel Tower. It was just a couple blocks away and clearly visible from the water.
The street that ran thru the legs of the Tower had been closed off and a fun fair set up on the pavement. A merry-go-round, carnival rides and music stages were surrounded by thousands of people. It was the night of the Festival of Music. The Musee d’Orsay had closed early because of the Festival. All of Paris and its suburbs were holding a party tonight. Later, on the walk home to the hotel from the Metro station, we could hear songs and see signs of revelry from nearly every house on the way. Later in the darkness of the night there were grand firework shows all over the city.
Back at the hotel, I found I had lost my room key. Before the clerk opened my door for me, I did my famous parlor trick, drawing a cartoon of Jim using the first letters of his first and last name as a base.
French television has its own points of interest. The set in my room got French, German and English channels. BBC and CNN carried stories of Midwestern flooding in the States and on the economy, including the fact that in Europe gasoline was $9.00 a gallon. There was a story about Kenya kids running to earn shoes and a mini-documentary about an English doctor who went to Burma and investigated how aid was reaching the worst-hit areas of the cyclone-ravaged land. He had to use a hidden camera because the government didn’t want the world to see how bad off everyone was. There had been reports of corruption in the distribution of aid. There were a lot of scenes of wrecked huts made of tin and palm leaves, beaches littered with rubble and shots of dead and bloated bodies bobbing in the water. He concluded that people were getting aid but not always the aid they needed.
My bath had only a half door of glass and a sprayer head on a flexible hose. That made it very easy to flood the room. After my shower I sopped up the water off the floor using all the towels and retired for the night after looking for fireworks out of the window. I hadn’t touched my paperback, Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods”, since the plane. I was too tired to read at night, so I decided to keep it for the train ride to London.

The richest and glossiest of curtains and tapestries draped the walls, looped back here and there to expose some richly mounted painting or Oriental vase.
The Sign of Four

It was Sunday, June 22 and we were going to the Louvre. I wore my white shoes yesterday and I felt a little hot spot, not quite a blister, on the bottom of my left foot. Back into the suitcase with the white shoes! I took no chances with my feet on this trip. I applied more Icy Hot on my knees and ankles and put a fresh set of Dr. Scholls’ foot pads in my black sneakers. As I did every morning I checked my blood sugar and found it acceptable.
We had breakfast at the hotel and took the Metro to the Louvre. All of us were getting very practiced at using the Paris subway system. Many of the stations were decorated with scenes of attractions found on the streets above. The cars each had a sign showing the line’s station stops on order. Jim made sure that we all knew the names of the correct stops for each day’s trip. It was very similar to using the “el” in Chicago.
The Louvre began as a fortress in 1190 and was added to and enlarged for nearly 900 years, first into a palace and then into a national museum. It stood before the Tulleries Gardens and just across the Seine from the Musee d’Orsay. One of the first things Bill and I did inside the Louvre was ask at the information desk about the Theodore Robinson paintings he had seen in the museum three years before. The guide at the computer explained that the Robinsons had been in a temporary exhibit then and really belonged at the Musee D’Orsay. I had not thought to ask about them the day before because his work had not been listed on the floor chart included in the price of the ticket. We were disappointed by the news but we resolved to enjoy the treasures of the Louvre anyway.
I saw the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, the Venus de Milo, caryatides from Greece, Diana and the Hound, and other statuary. I saw a lot of paintings. I took note of the artists---Delacroix, Cimabue---de Gros---he did one of the King of Naples showing the king in military gear sitting on a rearing black horse with a tiger skin under the saddle, very striking, but then all the rulers back then had egos large enough to fill the Albert Hall. The famous “Victory Encouraging the French”---there were lots of people taking each other’s photo in front of that ---paintings by Ingres of what seemed to be the entire Riviera family---more Delacroix---D’Appollon---lots of Boucher---mostly rather naked picnics---Sherlock Holmes' ancestor Vernet with nice landscapes---acually there were two Vernets, Joseph and Herbert, both with nice landscapes---I met Bill briefly at one point and we exchanged notes---rested on a seat in a little round room decorated like the ceilings and walls of a room of Versailles and told a young Australian couple about Wisconsin’s House on the Rock, the Premier Tourist Attraction of the Mid-West---the man said that sounded just like the kind of place his dad would like---talked to nice Kansas ladies at the ladies’ toilet.
In one exhibit room there was a huge painting of a lady in a turquoise dress. I saw a woman posing for her picture before it. She put out her hand to steady herself and touched the frame. A female guard on my left suddenly clapped her hands and shouted and advanced on the bewildered woman with the dirtiest scowl I have ever seen one human being give another. The guard was muttering to her male companion in French but I could tell that she was voicing her opinion of stupid tourists that have no thought to the value of the works around them and that it was too bad the guillotine was no longer in use by the courts.
I saw Robert paintings and Boilly paintings. It really expanded my appreciation of artists other than Impressionists. The Louvre was enormous and I could have used three days to explore it. With an electric cart. And a native guide.
Downstairs I saw the Greek items and the Venus de Milo and other statues. The Venus de Milo was placed out on the floor with plenty of room around it. In front were some American tourists taking pictures of each other standing before it. Behind it were some Japanese men were taking each other’s photo as each stood in front of it’s behind. Tastes really do differ among nations.
I made my way to the pyramid that serves as the entrance and exit. I found a little food stand on the mezzanine overlooking the pyramid atrium. I got a ham sandwich, a chocolate muffin and a container of orange juice. A lot of people were eating and there were few tables so I shared a small table with an Asian-Canadian. He was a substitute science teacher who had just been fired from a job in London because the tough kids at the school disliked him for his race. They talked back to him and when he complained the administration found it easier to fire him than fix the problem. The other teachers were too cowed to do anything because the administration wouldn’t back them up.
He wanted to hear about U.S. schools because he thought that after President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act the teaching standards in the States had generally gone down the tubes. I was glad to tell him his fears were unfounded, at least in Evansville. I spoke of our science programs and our project of building an eco-car, the AP programs, the distance-learning Japanese classes, the Spanish classes, our program of hosting students from other lands, the conference-winning sports programs, the music and drama programs, the math department, the English department, the art department, how we had actually gotten an award from the NCLB for our test scores. I told him that Evansville was growing and how even though we had built a new high school a few years ago, there was talk of expansion.
I explained how if our kids talk back or misbehaved they were warned, then written up and steps taken and if the problem was bad enough, the police were called. He smiled when I told him that an Evansville police officer was actually on the school board. He told me a bit about Canadian and English school systems and said he was glad to hear that things in the States weren’t as bad as he had thought.
I met the others in the Louvre plaza in front of the modern glass pyramid. Travis A. gave me his seat. I told him I had never been so glad to see him before in my life. He had been in my study hall. Having grouped together, we broke up into traveling bands again. Some of the kids went to the Eiffel Tower to ride to the top. Others wanted to shop.I joined Cassie and her parents, Karen and Bob, to walk to the Ile de la Citi to see Sainte-Chapelle and Notre Dame.
We walked along the river and over a bridge to reach the island to our destinations. Green-painted bookstalls were lined up along the wall that separated the street from the river. They held prints, books and postcards, fridge magnets and tiny models of the Eiffel Tower. We even saw some “dirty” French postcards from the Victorian era. Mostly they involved young ladies with hair piled high on their heads dressed in white sleeveless vests and long bloomers. I bought two watercolor prints of romantic Paris street scenes. We waved at the tour boats below and some of the people aboard waved back.
Sainte-Chapelle was built in 1248 by Louis IX to house a crown of thorns purported to be Christ’s. It is next to the Palais de Justice and when France had the death penalty the poor condemned prisoners were allowed to pray there before they were taken out in the courtyard and executed. Karen and Bob and I waited on a bench outside the entrance of the Palais de Justice while Cassie went off to stand in line for the chapel tour. We sat a long time and watched a horse and carriage carrying a young couple trot pass.
My water bottle was nearly empty. I looked across the street toward a couple of sidewalk cafes flanking an important-looking entrance where a uniformed official was standing. He was guarding the door of the Prefecture of Police. Next to the entrance a woman was standing in a strange posture. I blinked and realized that she was standing next to a green water fountain filling her water bottle.
The water fountain was unusual. I think it was made of bronze. A tiny green roof was held up by three green classical nymphs standing on a decorated plinth. From the center of the roof a steady stream of water flowed down. Later I looked in my guidebook and saw a picture of it. It was called the Wallace Fountain. The woman was filling her bottle from the stream. I crossed at the corner and nodded to the guard, then filled my bottle from the fountain. It was beautiful and so very French, I thought. I never noticed another like it anywhere in Paris.
Cassie finally reappeared. She said the line was long but the chapel was very lovely. She had thought about all the poor prisoners praying there before they were executed and was glad they had the chance to pray in such a beautiful place. I took a picture of the fancy green and gold gates that led into the Cour du Mai from near our bench into the Department of Police compound.
We arrived at Norte Dame for the second time, and admired the massive, highly decorated outside. A couple of our people had actually walked to the top of the bell towers a few days before. Now we entered and slowly circled the inside. A service was taking place, so we were very quiet and respectful. The organ was playing and I admired the stained glass windows, the chapels along the sides, the black metal rood screen and the ancient wooden choir section covered with hand-carved figures depicting the life of Mary, Mother of Christ.
While the others looked over the gift stall, I put two Euros into a machine and received a souvenir medal of Notre Dame. I noticed that there was a nun dressed in a white habit sitting by the exit with a basket in front of her. She was handing a pamphlet to each person as they passed in front of her. I pointed her out to the others. She was taking donations and giving out info on the charities that benefited. The others dropped some money in her basket. She spoke several languages and said “Thank you” to each contributor in their own language. To sort of make up for my actions the other day, I gave her something too. Bob said later that the money went to children’s charities.
We walked across the street to a block of tourist shops. I got hats for the kids and a zippered hooded sweatshirt for Gayla, her one request. It was black with pink piping and had the word “Paris” stitched across the front.
We retraced our steps over the bridge. In the middle of the arch were benches. We sat and watched the boats below and the pedestrians around us. Bob and Karen noticed a young couple kissing as they stood by the balustrade. Karen said she had never thought of kissing anyone in public like that. I looked at Bob and said, “If a man doesn’t kiss his wife in Paris, where is he going to kiss her?” We walked to another bench and by this time they had considered it. Bob and Karen kissed, a kiss that lasted a good little while after their daughter Cassie had taken their picture.
On the other side of the river, we walked past more green bookstalls, these with a lot of DVDs and paperback books. I suddenly noticed two books on one shelf with English words on them. In fact, they had the best English words on them. Sherlock Holmes! I called to the others to stop.
The paperbacks were French translations of A. Conan Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles” and “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”. My mind flashed back to my friend John Bennett Shaw, a Sherlockian who had accumulated one of the largest and finest collections of Sherlock Holmes-related books and items in the world. It was currently being inventoried by its new owner, the University of Minnesota.
I didn’t have any foreign translations of Holmes’s stories in my own modest collection. And after all, Holmes himself had once shown Watson a little volume he had “picked up in a bookstall in Paris”.
How could I pass the paperback books up? I couldn’t, not in a million years. I emptied my money pouch and thankfully, the stall keeper accepted the amount I had, although it wasn’t quite enough. That was the Sherlock Holmes connection of the day.
Now I was penniless in Paris. It was for a good cause, of course, but there wasn’t an ATM in sight. I was with great friends. Bob treated me and the others to a Coke at a little bistro as we waited for our Metro train and bought my ticket as well. I needed something to eat and Cassie let me share her French fries. All in all, it was a great afternoon.
We met the others of our group at another Metro station and walked to a restaurant. Dinner was a flaky pastry with a cheese filling, chicken with mushrooms over rice and a delicious peach tart. We sang “Happy Birthday” for one of the girls and Jim brought out a little cake from the kitchen.
We took the Metro back to the Palais de Chaillot. It housed 4 museums and was built for the 1937 Paris Exhibition in a Neo-Classical Style. The plaza between two of the museums was where we had seen the Tower the first time. It was just the most perfect place to view the Eiffel Tower.
It was dusk and soon the Tower would light up. Meanwhile, Jim and Bill and I went to a nearby bistro. We had refreshments and talked about plays in London and other aspects of London life. We all had a good time laughing and talking.
When we rejoined the others the Tower was lit up and just beautiful. More pictures were taken, including a couple with Bill, Dan and me in memory of “The best birthday present ever!”
A group broke off to visit the Moulin Rouge show. They told us later that it was amazing. There were singers and dancers and jugglers and a magic act, among other things. It sounded like a cross between Las Vegas and the old Ed Sullivan Show.
The Metro took the rest of us home. Unbelievably, this had been our last day in Paris. The days had passed so quickly. Some day, maybe in my next life, I would like to come back and spend a week. There was so much to see and do and it wasn’t until after I left that I realized all the things left undone.
The Eurotrain was taking us to London early the next morning. At the hotel I packed up my stuff except what I needed in the morning and took a shower. I dropped off to sleep so tired that I couldn’t even appreciate the murmur of French voices on TV.

“When an actor I had, of course, learned all the secrets of making up, and had been famous in the green-room for my skill.”
The Man With the Twisted Lip
June 23 appeared with a serene sky. Our departure time was 6 am. I woke up at 5:15. I got downstairs at 5:40 and had juice and cereal for breakfast. I grabbed some tiny muffins wrapped in plastic to eat later. We roused the late sleepers and finally left at 6:25am in the motor coach for the train station.
We were booked to take the Eurostar bullet train from Paris to London under the English Channel. When it got warmed up, the train moved at 250 miles per hour. The line to board it moved at 25 millimeters an hour.
As I stood in line I gazed around at the high arched ceiling and the immense space inside the station. It reminded me of the story of the old farmer and his son. The son had left the farm and gone to college. He became a successful lawyer in New York City. He brought his old father to the Big Apple to show off its marvels. One place he took him was Grand Central Terminal. They stood together by the Information Desk in the middle of that immense space and the son asked, “Well, what do you think, Dad?”
The old farmer looked around at the vast gleaming floor, the beautiful wide staircases, the soaring windows and the lofty ceiling and replied, “Well, son, it would sure hold a lot of hay.”
We finally got thru the train station to the tracks. There was a little space at the end of each car for the passengers’ luggage. Each took up about two seats’ space. I think the luggage toted on board by all the passengers took up more square footage than the actual train. Bags were stuffed in overhead racks, piled at the ends of each car, stacked in front of the exit doors and shoved under seats. I then realized that the train was full of Americans. Europeans can travel 4000 miles with one carry-on bag with wheels. A sample American would travel the same distance with enough luggage to maintain a family of four thru the cocktail parties, museum openings, gallery showings, and pub crawls of a complete season of “Sex and the City”.
Jim carried one of my bags onto the train and Travis put it in an overhead bin. Another stayed with me and my wheeled bag went to block an exit. Later an announcement was made on the train’s P.A. system that any bags blocking exits could be left behind at a station when it was tossed aside to allow passengers to board the car using that exit. Elijah T. and I got up and he kindly moved my bag. I watched later as at each station the people boarding the train sensibly avoided using that door because they would have had to transfer 3 tons of luggage just to enter a car that had no empty seats.
My tiny pre-packaged muffins had gone to the late-rising kids on the bus ride to the train station for their breakfast, but I did have a Ziploc bag of boxed raisins, Hershey kisses and Tootsie Rolls to munch. I sat next to a window gazing out at the French countryside. Flat red or brown roofs, white stucco or red brick or grey stone houses, trees in clumps, all under a clear blue sky. Some of the kids were going to the diner car to get pop and snacks. I was broke so I ate my raisins and chocolate. Church spires in villages far from the train tracks---large fields planted in grain----no farm houses like in the U.S.---perhaps farmers live in town and commute to their fields---some metal and wooden farm sheds---a red and green combine in a field---power lines---grain elevators---radio tower---hay bales wrapped in green plastic---open-sided machinery sheds---concrete overpasses---mesh wire fencing mounted on steel fence posts next to the tracks---bus station on the edge of a little town with a huge parking lot---factories---more fields---tunnels---red flowers on bushes next to the train tracks---clumps of bushes mixed in with the flowers---lines of trees by tracks---stone barn at edge along a ribbon of highway trimmed in round and rectangular crowns of leaves---a French trailer park!Another village with another church spire down the street---broad fields---small village by small lake—larger groups of trees---more fields---wooded hillside with a charming village complete with church and spire and brick and stone homes---A white water tower shaped like an enormous automotive oil funnel instead of the bulbous water towers we have back home---tall white modern windmills on the highest hills over the fields---rounded tunnels---more trees.
We crossed a river. It wasn’t until I was home after the trip that I learned from Paul Theroux’s new book, “Ghost Train to the Eastern Star” that that river was the Somme, the valley of which in 1916 became the bloodiest battlefield of the First World War. On the first day of the battle 60,000 British soldiers, laden with enormous heavy packs, were cut down by German machine-gun fire. That was the largest number of men ever lost by the British in one day. This first battle of the Somme lasted 4 months and the final toll was reported as more than one million men. The British lost 420,000, the French lost 194,000 and the Germans lost 440,000. No advantage was gained and no lessons were learned. Twenty-five years later the same countries were back in the same fields, killing each other again.
I had promised myself a session with the book I had packed, Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods”. Bill Bryson was my new find. Before the trip I had read “I’m a Stranger Here Myself”, a story of his and his family’s life in the USA after living in England for twenty years. He came from Iowa and had married an English girl. “A Walk in the Woods” was his account of an effort to walk the Appalachian Trail with his friend, out-of-shape Stephen Katz. It was hilarious. I decided to get every book of his after I got back home. That turned out to be a good idea.
White sheep in the fields---tall trees trimmed to leafy tufts along a road in the distance---windbreaks around houses---another odd-looking water tower---cell phone tower---red tile roofs---hills covered with woods---the train stopped at Calais.
I looked up from my book and noticed that it was dark outside. We were in the Chunnel. I had thought that the noise level, loud enough during the open part of the trip, would increase in the tunnel under the English Channel, but it appeared to be the same. I was as impressed by that as much as I was by the whole train tracks under the sea thing. What amazing soundproofing! My ears did pop a few times.
Arthur Conan Doyle had been an early supporter for a tunnel under the English Channel. He figured it could bring much-needed food to the people and send out war materiel for the Continental conflict he forsaw, later known as WWI. He feared German submarines could blockade England and starve it into surrender.
Just think, the entire fabled English Channel was rolling over our heads. Protector of the British Isles for centuries, conquered only by the Romans and the Normans, defeater of the Spanish Armada (with a little help from Sir Walter Raleigh, the British Navy and Mother Nature), obstacle to the Nazis, now no problem to us as we glided in cushioned, lit, air-conditioned comfort right under the age-old barrier on our way to London. Some of the kids were even asleep.
Suddenly the sunlight returned. England! Outside the window, industrial train yards---lots of trees---not much of interest until we arrived at St. Pancras Station (also known as King’s Cross), and loaded our bags on a motor coach. Off we went!
We were in the Elephant and Castle area, named after a long-vanished inn---Southwark area---taxis with high roofs---the Oval cricket ground---Brixton Road---more row houses like the 2006 trip---Camberwell area---shops and stores---a mixed population of people from all over the former British Empire---St. Giles Church---big brick blocks of council flats---the English equivalent of public housing but more charming to the eye with architectural touches and little window flower boxes---Peckham---Peckham Lodge---red brick with white quoins around windows and on the edges of each corner wall---three golden balls hanging over the door of a little corner pawnshop---double-decker buses---the Fox and Hounds pub---the Hobgoblin Tap---Deptford---Lewisham---St. Mary the Virgin, a big stone block church with a bell tower and arched windows filled with stained glass---thru thick woods---onward we went until we landed at the Croydon Travel Lodge.
It was not an impressive building. 10 stories tall, it was made of concrete and glass with an ill-defined entrance. It could be that we were to spend the next three days going in and out the back door, but since the back door opened onto a parking lot and the front door opened onto a principal street with a grocery store, a bank and a betting office right down the block, I guessed it must be the front. There may have been a large HOTEL sign facing the street, but I don’t remember one.
I needed a bathroom and some real food. Instead I got the wrong room key. Clearly marked with the correct room number, it failed again and again to let me into my room. When the elevator door opened near where I was standing and cheerful voices invited me down to the lobby I was afraid I did not respond well. Later I had to apologize to people for my ill-chosen words. Someone finally did come to my rescue. I hope I remembered to say thank you.
Because we were going to the theatre that night, Jim took us to a Japanese restaurant for lunch. Being a large group of sixty people slowed up the service some, but we did enjoy the large servings of noodles and dumplings.
I was so glad to be back in England again. I had warm memories of the 2006 trip and had great plans for this one. Again, it was a case of wishing for an extra week of time here. I would just have to do the best I could with the opportunities offered this time.
The wonderful London Underground (subway) system, known also as the Tube, took us to Embankment Station by the Thames. We walked by the houses of Ben Franklin and R. Kipling. Down an alleyway I could see the sign for the Sherlock Holmes Pub and Restaurant. Jim made no move toward it, but I knew I would see it later. That was the Sherlock Holmes connection of the day. In fact, the whole experience of being in London was the Sherlock Holmes connection. In the stories Holmes knew the city well, and was able to identify samples of soil from each part of town. He could name every street, and in the dark from a moving cab, no less!
We stopped at Oscar Wilde’s monument and continued thru Convent Garden and on to Trafalgar Square. The lions, the fountains and the statue of Admiral Nelson were gleaming in the sunshine. There was a concert set up there. Jim let us loose for supper and gave us directions to our theatre.
About half of us had earlier paid Jim for tickets to the musical “Lord of the Rings”. My grandson Andrew, who loves the theatre and performs and directs in local productions when he can, had shown me scenes from “Rings” on its website on the Internet. He said he would be so jealous if I saw it before he did, because it was playing nowhere else in the world. The production cost $12,000,000.00 and no plans had been announced to move it from London to New York when the time came. I chuckled as I paid Jim for my ticket.
I bought a sandwich and a drink at Covent Garden inside the big building that replaced the open space in use in Victorian times. I watched a little kid play with the pigeons that flew in the wide open ends.
I fed the birds some of the crusts of my sandwich and thought of the pigeons that flock to the tourists in Daley Plaza beneath the Picasso in downtown Chicago. There the pigeons have a system. They perch in the cover of the trees at the edge of the plaza and send out one or two birds to strut and peck around the sculpture. When an unsuspecting tourist drops a few kernels of popcorn or crumbs of bread for the “little birdies”, a sudden dark cloud descends upon the hapless Good Samaritan. It looks like the birds in the telephone booth scene in the Alfred Hitchcock movie “The Birds”. I once saw a little girl call out for her mother in the middle of a hungry feathered onslaught. When the last bit of food disappears, so do the pigeons, back to the cover of the sheltering trees.
The musical started at 7:00 pm at the Drury Lane Theatre. The show was amazing. We were seated in the balcony. Below us, the stage was decorated with brown woody growths reaching out from the proscenium arch into the box seats three stories high on either side of the stage. The floor was rounded toward the audience and draped in gloom in the back. A curtain made of more woody roots and branches arranged around an enormous empty hub was raised as the musical began. The floor, as the story progressed (and believe me, they included all three books), rose up and down in varied sections, one minute the floor of a Shire inn, the next a path thru the forest dappled with shadows, and then a mountain trail peppered with boulders and cliffs.
The special effects were mesmerizing and the characters’ depictions were true to the books. Many of the lyrics of the songs came straight from the story. There was no break-out smash hit song (Andrew Lloyd Webber, for a wonder, did not stage this epic) but my favorite moment was toward the end of the second act when homesick Frodo and Sam sang about telling stories around the hearth back home in the Shire. It was set in a cave on the way to Mordor. Chunks of the floor were elevated as a ledge for the Hobbits to rest upon as Sméagol slept on the rocks below.
The entire musical was a masterpiece involving the use of lights and shadows, colors and filmy lengths of cloth, bizarre creatures and a Gollum that entered by climbing headfirst from the upper flies down the woody branches of the stage curtain to the stage floor.
During the intermission a very British thing happened. The curtain went down, the lights came up and ushers set up little stands by the doors and at the end of the aisles to sell candy and little pots of ice cream to the audience. I had read that they did this during movies, but I was astounded to find that they offered this service during live theatre. Bill and I were seated together and he bought me an ice cream.
After the show we gathered on the steps outside the theatre before some “Lord of the Ring” posters and took a group photo. Then it was a brisk walk thru the darkness to the Tube station and home to the hotel. I couldn’t figure out how the shower controls worked so I took a sponge bath and fell into bed. What a night!

I remember the date very well, for it was in the same month that Holmes refused a knighthood for services which may perhaps someday be described.
The Three Garridebs

June 24th brought sunlight thru my hotel windows. My room was nice and large, so large that the front office could have added a couch, coffee table and a Laz-E-Boy recliner with its own floor lamp beside it and still had room for parking. The bed was a double one with a grey duvet.
Breakfast was available in the lobby. At the far end chafing dishes filled with eggs, bacon and sausage were laid out next to the tea and coffee urns. At the other end near the lobby desk were baskets of corn flakes and muffins with orange juice and milk. Neutral ground was the toaster next to the windows. Since we had the Continental breakfast, we were allowed only to get a hot beverage before being sent back to the counter with the Kellogg’s boxes and the vitamin C. There were two different kinds of bread by the toaster. The little cartons of corn flakes were larger than the ones sold in the States, however. Conversation with Bob revealed the mysteries of the shower and I resolved to try again tonight.
We gathered behind the hotel and found two vehicles waiting for us. One motor coach was not large enough to carry the entire group of sixty so Bill asked me to ride in a small white van with fourteen others as their chaperone while the large bus picked up everyone else. We led the way thru the suburbs to London.
Row houses---little flower gardens set behind brick walls with top ledges that swooped from point to point---bay windows---stone and brick walls---stone window hoods and sills---small houses lined up down the street---Chinese takeout---computer store---local bakery shop---irregular quaint rooftops above the two-story apartments windows---St. Leonard Church, an old fieldstone section with arched windows and a dressed stone extension added behind it, all surrounded by many sculpted, tilted, old gravestones within an elaborate brick and wrought iron fence---old trees in church yard---fruit and vegetable stands in front of shops on the sidewalks---colorful trim of blue, orange and green on storefronts beneath brick facades---every block sports lots of chimney pots---a sign of original old buildings, says Jim---the Crown and Scepter pub---red brick council houses with laundry strung out on balconies ---satellite dishes installed by apartment windows---gardens in pots on roofs and balconies---in Lambeth a pub named the Lambeth Walk, a popular dance step of the 1920s---the Houses of Parliament---Big Ben---the London Eye, an enormous Ferris wheel built for the Millennium celebration---we cross the Thames River---the van stopped at the Tate Britain art museum to pick up our local guide---the museum has a Doric front with Corinthian columns and an impressive show of steps---our guide for today was a red-haired woman dressed in green with a long skirt---we drove past London Bridge---the Courthouse where the former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney and his wife Heather Mills got their divorce---the pub The Olde Cheese, a favorite of Dr. Samuel Johnson, a famous author of the eighteenth century (more of him later)---stopped at St. Paul’s Cathedral---no tour this time but instead a short free time---thought ahead and bought a sandwich and a bag of carrot “batons” or sticks at a Marks & Spencer grocery for lunch---used the loo in the crypt at St. Paul’s---no time to stop at the gift shop---admired the monument of Queen Anne that graces the space before the cathedral---back on the van---again the Houses of Parliament---Whitehall---the Queen’s Horse Guards, decked out in red coats and mounted on black horses---past Trafalgar Square with the fountains and lions---a Starbucks opposite New Scotland Yard---wonder how many doughnuts they sell each day?---got off by Buckingham Palace.
Queen Elizabeth was expecting a dignitary from Japan that day but meanwhile there were a couple thousand people there to watch the Changing of the Guard. I got a spot to stand by one of the exits off the Mall near the Palace. It was a good place to see the troops leaving.
Buckingham Palace is the London residence of the Queen of Great Britain and was the Sherlock Holmes connection for the day. The quote at the beginning of this section told how Holmes managed to avoid a knighthood from “a certain gracious lady” for services to the Crown. The Literary Agent, A. Conan Doyle could not achieve the same result. Conan Doyle had worked to organize, set up and serve in a field hospital in South Africa during the Boer War in the late 1890s. After he returned home he wrote a history of the war and a book explaining the British view of the conflict.
Offered a knighthood for these efforts, he thought to refuse it but his mother objected, telling him it would be an insult to the Monarchy to do so. The man loved his mother and finally accepted the award. So it was Sir Arthur after that, although the common man “knew” it was really because of the detective stories and Conan Doyle was frequently addressed as “Sir Sherlock” for the rest of his life.
We only had to wait a little while until the action started. I was located on the north edge of the area before the Palace and was able to get some pictures as the uniformed band marched past. Other troops, some carrying loaded weapons and some riding black horses and all in colorful uniforms, marched out of the Palace’s courtyard and exited in different directions. Just as we gathered to return to the van two open carriages, each pulled by a snappy pair of horses, drove up the Mall and entered the Palace gates. One carried a woman wearing an elaborately decorated hat and sitting next to an Oriental gentleman. Having no Royal horse and carriage awaiting us, we ex-Colonials got back on the van and started up again, headed for Hampton Court.
We drove thru the ritzy section of Westminster---Harrods---Albert and Victoria Museum---going south-west---houses with enclosed gardens in the backs, walled with brick and equipped with arched garden doors painted green or dull red---cemeteries, including the aptly named Mortlake, stretched on for blocks, all sorts of monuments and headstones dotted among the trees and grass behind fancy tall fences and gates---on the three-lane highway we were taking to Hampton Court we were flanked by a large tow-truck that had hitched behind it a red double-decker bus with a crumpled front fender---the name on the truck was Sovereign Accident Unit-Truck and Bus Recovery---we saw cabs painted with ads, others with ads on plastic film stretched across the sides.
On the road to Hampton Court---road signs for Middlesex and Hants---toward Richmond and Twickham---traffic very stop and go---a fish and chips shop called “The Laughing Halibut”---modern glass buildings on one side of the street, quaint little cottages linked together with brick front walls on the other---much restoration going on---Kew Road---over the Thames again---semi-detached brick houses with walled gardens.
Henry VIII received Hampton Court as a gift from Cardinal Woolsey in 1528 in one of the most famous brown nose moves in history. It didn’t work; Henry still got his divorce by making himself the leader of the Church of England and Woolsey lost his job. But Henry was noted for his skill at real estate management. Hampton Court was a fine property before he got it and he expanded it to even greater heights. His son Edward and his daughters Mary and Elizabeth used it as one of their residences growing up. Later when William and Mary held the lease in the late 1600s more improvements were made. The Baroque Maze swallows visitors every year, but the British government has a strict policy of recovering them before nightfall.
My favorite room was the Tudor Chapel Royal. There was a special place in the Chapel apart from the other pews where English royalty sat during services. It was overhauled by William and Mary and featured dark woodwork. I walked thru different sets of rooms connected by arcades and courtyards---loved the Clock garden, which had a big clock set in stone over an outdoor doorway---Fountain Court---Henry VIII rooms---William and Mary rooms---Tudor kitchens---gardens in the back---got photos of the trees trimmed to mushroom shapes next to a pool of water.
I rested on a bench in the columned arcade lining Fountain Court and ate a chicken breast and bacon sandwich---talked to a 85-year old retired sportswriter of one of the newspapers of Fleet Street---back when newspapers were on Fleet Street---and his wife---he had an interesting career, mostly writing about racehorses.
I hit the gift shop. I had decided early into the trip that each time I visited a palace or castle I would get an affordable guidebook. I also bought postcards and refrigerator magnets. I picked out what I wanted, but the clerk didn’t hand back the guidebook with the magnets and change. Unfortunately I didn’t realize it until we were in the van and half-way back to London. I looked it up later on the Internet and to replace the $9 guidebook, with shipping, would cost me $27. I looked for a Hampton Court book in other gift shops all over the country and never found one---darn!
Back to that sandwich, the English really, really like bacon. The humble pig and his by-products hold a warm place on the menu of the British Isles. Bacon rolls, sausages, ham, it was available day and night, all year around. In fact, it was hard for me to find a pre-made sandwich for lunch anywhere in England that didn’t feature bacon. It made me feel at home every time I bit into one because my dad raised corn and hogs. Years ago I even wrote a paper about Sherlock Holmes and pigs.
Back in London Helen tried to get us to the restaurant where we would meet the others and have dinner. After we got off the van she found it was the wrong address. There were two locations, separated by blocks of Soho, the “arty” part of London. So we took “the scenic route” thru the cobblestone streets and back alleys. We picked our path through blocked passageways draped with steel chain link fencing hung with signs that cheerfully announced that the 110-year old Victorian-era sewer pipes exposed amidst the piles of rubble were due to be replaced and 2008 was the lucky year. I saw bemused men in hardhats and shovels standing by heavy machinery. What did they think of this ragtag, chattering band of American teenagers and adults, draped with backpacks and purses and lugging plastic bags of tourist loot? We passed lots of pubs, Chinese restaurants and “unusual” bookstores; at one point I jokingly put my hand over one boy’s eyes.
We reached the restaurant on Firth Street and were seated upstairs while the rest of our group of sixty sat downstairs. The place wasn’t very large. None of the London restaurants we ate at were what an American would call roomy. We were served the typical English food of “bangers and mash”, sausages and mashed potatoes, with strawberry cheesecake for dessert. Despite what had been said about British cooking it was all tasty and the cheesecake was light and delicious.
Next stop was “Wicked”, the hit musical. We walked over to the theatre district and waited across the street from the “Spamalot” theatre. When I asked Jim about it, he said the show was a huge hit and tickets were sold out for months. The front of the building sported an enormous plastic Holy Grail mounted over the marquee filled with figures of characters from the show. Posters by the lobby entrance had reviews like “Most fun since the Black Death” and “Bringing you entertainment since 907 AD”.
We waited by a bus stop where one sign said “Get on bus here” and another said “Bus route discontinued”. Justifiable confused people came by, stood for a while, noticed the signs or asked us why the bus just went by without stopping and then wandered off.
At the “Wicked” theatre, we climbed up to the second balcony and had a clear view of the stage. The walls were decorated with large fluted shapes hiding the lighting. A huge dragon hung from the flies over a curtain painted with a map of Oz showing each country (Munchkinland, Emerald City, etc.). I had never heard the soundtrack from this musical. I only knew a couple of songs from promos on TV talk shows. Amazingly, I hadn’t even read the book from which it was based. So everything was new and it was wonderful.
A set made of scaffolding with gears and platforms stuck all over it framed the story of the years before Dorothy Gale landed in Oz. In fact, she was only briefly mentioned at all. The main characters were the Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch. I liked the songs “Popular” and “Changed for Good”. During intermission they brought out the ice cream again and I bought Sarah B. one. A kid had traded with me so I had an aisle seat and could stretch out my knees. The whole evening was just so nice.
Afterwards we all took the Tube back to our hotel and I got the shower to work. I hung up my rinsed shirt and fell into bed.

“There were one hundred and forty-three diamonds of the first water, including one which has been called, I believe, ‘the Great Mogul’, and is said to be the second largest stone in existence.”
A Study in Scarlet

Wednesday, June 25th was the last day of the tour for forty-three of our number. It was also a free day. The sun was shining, the birds were singing and we were setting up little expeditions all over London as we ate breakfast in the lobby of the hotel. People were forming up to go to the Tower of London, the London Eye, even the British Museum. The adults were very nice about taking bunches of kids around with them so everyone could see the places they wanted.
Before we left the hotel Bill called on anyone who wished it to give spare money for tips for Jim and Helen for the great jobs they had been doing. I put my hat on the table and in a few minutes it was filled with pounds and American money. I sorted it all out and at Bill’s instructions wrapped it up and tucked it in my neck money pouch. Before the day would end I would hand it over to Bill who would divide it before giving the tips to our excellent tour directors. Jim was leaving that night for a job in Turkey while Helen would escort the extension group of seventeen to Scotland. I don’t know how much it was I was carrying but I never felt so valuable. It was safe in the neck pouch under my shirt. Nobody had been near that area in years.
A lot of us went to the Tower of London. Jim divided us up into groups. The admission fee varied according to age. I paid a little less because I was over 55. This policy extended to many public attractions in England, a benefit for older people or “pensioners”. Helen told me later that if I retired to Ireland, where she was from, I would pay no income tax, along with other breaks, because of my age. Hmmmmmm.
I joined up with my Paris friends, Bob, Karen, Cassie and John A., together with Michelle G. and her daughter Sarah G., to tour the Tower of London. The Tower of London was situated on the banks of the Thames to the east of the City, a prime defensive position. William the Conqueror had begun construction on Roman ruins and so the main feature, the White Tower, was made in the Norman style. Over the centuries many improvements had been added, including multiple curtain walls set with defensive towers, barracks, battlements, dungeons, Royal apartments, strong rooms to house the Crown Jewels, a Water Gate entrance from the Thames, an early version of the Royal Mint, administration offices, and a moat. There was even a well in the middle of the basement of the White Tower, so the defenders would have water during a siege.
That was the second Tower of the title of this account.
The moat was dry now, and strangers were allowed to enter each day upon payment of a fee. We entered near the Bloody Tower where the little princes had been imprisoned during the reign of Richard II. They were underage and a threat to his rule. Strangely enough, a few weeks after entering the Tower they were never seen alive again. Hundreds of years later, during repairs of the Tower, a wooden box was found under a staircase. Inside were the bones of two young males. Identified as the Lost Princes, the bones were reburied in Westminster Abbey.
We walked the Tower Green where noble traitors were executed, away from the common mobs that watched other hangings on Tower Hill, just outside the walls.
We walked through the Royal Crown Jewels display, quite a large and sophisticated exhibit. There was a film of the coronation of Elizabeth I in 1953. In large glass display cases were placed the crowns, scepters, Royal robes, orbs, swords, etc. called the Crown Jewels. I’m sure there were hidden cameras and other security devices all over the place.
The glass boxes were an improvement over the way the Jewels were displayed in the early 1800s. Then they were kept in a large cage where visitors could peer at them through iron bars. A nearly successful attempt to steal the complete collection had happened during the reign of Charles II in the 1600s. The aptly named Colonel Blood and his henchmen, having wheedled their way into the confidence of the Keeper of the Crown Jewels, attacked him one night as he was closing up the exhibit. The old man was tied up and stabbed and the loot bundled into a sack. Just as the men were leaving, the Keeper’s son returned unexpectedly from a trip abroad and interrupted them. The varlets were captured and the Jewels recovered. Charles II, oddly charmed by the swashbuckling Blood, pardoned him after the trial.
We saw the spot in the courtyard where the memorial to the chopping block was. Within a few yards of the pillow-shaped memorial were the execution spots of ten people, including Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard and Lady Jane Grey. The first two were wives that displeased Henry VIII and poor Lady Jane was forced by her ambitious family to declare herself Queen after Henry’s son Edward died. Henry’s oldest daughter Mary was the rightful heir and the whole mess was straightened out at the chopping block. I always felt sorry for Lady Jane. It just goes to show, in-laws can be a pain in the neck.
The site was in a rather beautiful place, just outside the Chapel Royal, surrounded by trees. The Chapel Royal of St. Peter ad Vincula was made of ancient stone with stained glass windows. We weren’t allowed inside because there was a service being held at the time. Within were the graves of Anne, Catherine and poor Lady Jane, plus the Earl of Essex and Sir Thomas More, and others. It served as a working church for the Yeomen Warders of the Guard and their families, who live within the walls of the Tower.
The Warders, also known as Beefeaters, were experienced members of the British military and practiced tour guides. They also kept an eye on the ravens that lived at the Tower. An old story said that if the ravens were ever to leave the Tower, England would fall. Charles II decreed that they should be forever protected, although they interfered with the observatory of his astronomer, mounted on the White Tower’s roof. The birds were allowed to roam freely during the day, but were locked up at night. As an added precaution, the key feathers of one wing were clipped on each raven and spare birds were raised at another location.
The whole place, though not large, appeared more like a tiny village than a fortress. A row of Tudor houses in one corner of the grounds made up the Queen’s House, where Anne Boleyn had stayed in the days before she was crowned Henry VIII’s Queen. They were also the same rooms she occupied three years later just before she lost her own head. The place of execution was clearly visible from the windows.
Being the most comfortable apartments in the Tower of London, Anne Boleyn’s daughter Elizabeth had lived there when she was imprisoned by Queen Mary while accused of treason. She was finally released for lack of evidence. She bided her time until Mary died years later. Then she stayed in the same Tower apartments in the days before her coronation as Elizabeth I. They were now kept ready if the current Queen had need of them.
We walked up the winding narrow steps that led to the chamber in the Beauchamp Tower where condemned prisoners carved their names and short messages in the stone walls before their sentences were carried out. Part of the White Tower was roped off for repairs, but Bob, as ex-military man, made a special trip to see the weaponry stored there.
We had sandwiches for lunch and took time for the gift shop. There I got a guidebook, fridge magnets, bookmarks for the grandkids and a special Henry VIII magnet for my youngest grandson, Brennen. He was ten years old and I held him spellbound one afternoon before the trip, telling him Henry’s life story, leaning rather heavily on the grabbing of church lands, the taking over of other peoples’ castles, and his solutions for marital problems.
The Tower’s toilets for women featured a roller towel. Of course, this being Great Britain, there were no paper towels anywhere.
Cassie led us on the Tube to the London Eye. It is an enormous version of a Ferris Wheel, erected to celebrate the year 2000, and now a popular tourist attraction.
We walked across the Millennium Bridge, then thru a plaza on the side of the Thames to the Eye. Under the bridge a small band was playing, with a cup for coins on the pavement before them. As we walked through the plaza we came across other performers, called “buskers”, who held licenses to entertain the crowds that throng the places of London where people gather or pass. On small plinths down the length of the plaza were stationed various mimes. One danced “The Robot” to music. Another was costumed as a statue, complete with real pigeons perched on his shoulders and head. I couldn’t tell he was a person until I saw his coattails flutter in the wind. Another mime had a costume with elongated arms finishing in large fake hands. He and the costume were colored copper and looked like something out of “The Wiz”. His act was to pose for photos as he embraced tourists. Each had a container for donations before him.
One mime was portraying Charlie Chaplin. He motioned me over. He flirted, winked his eye, gave me a hug, and posed for a photo. I played along, saying, “I’m so glad to meet you. I’ve always loved your work. I think “Gold Rush” was your best film.”
He kissed my hand and wouldn’t stop. I got a bit flustered. “Oh, my goodness, haven’t you had lunch yet?”
I dropped some coins in his cup as the others laughed. The last time my hand had been kissed was in Toronto, Canada, in 1986, and the man responsible was wearing a kilt.
The price for the ride was reduced for older people here, too. We got our tickets and stepped into a car as it slowly rotated past. The Eye never stops. After construction it became a London landmark, featured in postcards, guidebooks, and on TV. It played a pivotal part in a “Doctor Who” episode. I first saw it on an episode of “The Amazing Race”. The cars had glass walls and a long seat in the middle and carried us 450 feet up in the air, affording magnificent views of downtown London, including the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, just across the Thames. The trip took 30 minutes.
I noticed a neat optical illusion as we swung down back to the platform. If you gazed at the Houses of Parliament, across the river, there was practically no sign of motion. If you turned your head to the buildings near the loading platform of the Eye you could see the roofs sliding past. It was rather disorientating.
Cassie led us to the magnificent Classical façade of Waterloo Station and onto the Underground to Piccadilly Station. We arrived there at 4 pm. We were to meet the others under the statue of Eros at the roundabout in Piccadilly Circus at 5 o’clock.
I had been here during our first trip in 2006. The others went off to shop at the sports store Lilywhites and other places. I headed straight for the Criterion Bar, just a few steps from the station. As all Sherlockians know, the Criterion Bar was famous. This was the Sherlock Holmes connection of the day.
I pushed thru the revolving doors and stood just inside. On the left was the famous “Long Bar”, stretching back half the length of the room. Overhead, the gold mosaic ceiling arched from one wall to the other in a beautiful barrel vault. Beneath that was a large narrow room filled with two rows of tables and chairs and with a raised restaurant area in the back.
Set slightly aside from the others, on the right, stood a small round table and two chairs. On the wall behind the table was a plaque well-known to Sherlock Holmes admirers. It read

HERE, NEW YEARS DAY, 1881
AT THE CRITERION LONG BAR
STAMFORD, DRESSER AT BARTS
MET DR. JOHN H. WATSON
AND LED HIM TO IMMORTALITY
AND SHERLOCK HOLMES
The Sherlock Holmes Society of London
And the Baker Street Irregulars-1981
By the Inverness Capers of Akron, Ohio

This meeting, as told in the early paragraphs of the first Sherlock Holmes novel, “A Study in Scarlet”, led to the partnership of Holmes and Watson that resulted in the wonderful stories we all know and love. Well, I know and love them.
I was greeted by a handsome waiter by the revolving door. I smiled at him gently and said, “I am a Sherlockian, and I am sure I’m not your first.” He smiled back. I made my modest requests and sat down at the table by the plaque. I spent the next forty minutes bringing my notebook up to date. I don’t drink alcohol, so I think I may have made Sherlockian history as the first adult Sherlockian to ever sit at that table and drink a large glass of milk.
The Criterion Restaurant and Theatre was constructed all within one building in 1873. It was designed by Thomas Verity. It included an unusually large (by London standards) restaurant, along with reading, billiards and hairdressing rooms, a cigar divan, a concert hall, ballroom and a charming theatre. The entire building cost over 80,000 pounds (about 8,000,000 pounds in today’s money). During the London Blitz of WWII, the restaurant was fitting with false walls and ceilings to protect the ornate interior. After the war, it was turned into a Boots 24-hour chemist’s shop, then restored in the 1980’s to its neo-Byzantine origins. The Criterion Restaurant I saw featured potted palms, a vast bar with ornate drum lamps, beautiful marble walls and was finished off with a glittering gold mosaic arched ceiling, evoking images of fabled Arabian nights. I paid the bill, picked up an info sheet about the history of the Criterion Bar the nice hostess had copied for me and joined the others outside.
We walked to an Indian restaurant that served salad, curried chicken, rice, vegetables, nan bread, and huge crispy chips. The meat and the vegetables were very spicy. Frankly, that was my least favorite meal. At the table I handed the tip money over to Bill.
After we finished we walked to Charing Cross Station. On the way we passed a number of bookstores on one street. In one window there was a mannequin dressed as Sherlock Holmes in suit, shoes, deerstalker hat and an overcoat with a cape. It was very exciting. We couldn’t stop but I decided to find it the next day.
Outside the train station I saw the famous Charing Cross, commemorating the homeward-bound journey of Edward I and the body of his beloved wife, Eleanor of Castile. She had died away from London and in great procession her body was brought back to the capitol. Crosses were put up at each resting place during the trip. Now the Cross was sheathed in scaffolding as this replacement Victorian monument underwent repairs.
We took an Underground train to the East End of London. There we broke into two groups, each with its own guide, and were given a tour of the haunts of the infamous Jack the Ripper. I was very interested in this because it happened during the time the Sherlock Holmes stories were being written and it was a natural subject for Sherlockians. The big question is “Could Sherlock Holmes have caught him?” I had read a lot on the subject and seen the police pictures.
Working under the twin handicaps of it being daylight without a murky shadow in sight and the fact that the Germans had bombed the heck out of the area during WWII because it was close to the docks and fuel tanks that supported the English with supplies, our guide Heather put on a very informative talk. She walked us down several streets and alleys that hadn't changed from the 1880s.
There were some changes, though. The site of Mary Kelly’s little room where the last of the murders happened was now a parking garage. Visualizing that murder took a little imagination.
She was very graphic about the horrors performed. The kids liked that. The tour ended at Mitre Square, one of the crime scenes. It was not a large courtyard, and was surrounded by modern buildings, but it was paved with the original cobblestones Jack crossed on his nefarious mission.
She ended the tour by showing photos of some the crime scenes and some autopsy photos. As part of the tour we passed the neighborhood church where during the Ripper’s time the local prostitutes loitered outside, looking for business. During the years of Queen Victoria, the area just outside a church was one of the few places where people could congregate at anytime without getting arrested. The local police had to assume they were praying.
Between speeches on murder and dissection, Heather talked to me about Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s older brother. She and her writing partner had wanted to enter a film writing contest that lapsed just a month before. Their idea was to write a Victorian period film script that used Mycroft as a connecting link in the investigation of a series of murders. She wondered how important Mycroft had been to the British government. I explained that at times, Mycroft was the British Government. In the James Bond movies, who did you think was the first M?
Being a Sherlockian means that one can, if one wishes, attempt to connect Holmes and Watson to the real Victorian era. What was the real weather in Devonshire on the days of the year when the Hound of the Baskervilles case took place in 1889? Who was Prime Minister during the time of the theft of the Navel Treaty? What was Mycroft’s real place in the British Government? Linking Holmes to other literary creations like Ian Fleming’s James Bond and TV’s medical drama “House” is all part of the fun.
We took the Aldershot Underground back to Victoria Station. We had some time and people were hungry, unsatisfied by the Indian meal. We were allowed thirty minutes before the train was due. We split up to get food from the stands and vending machines in the station. I headed straight for a Burger King and got a Whopper. So good!
We rode the Tube back to Croydon. For forty-three of our party this was their last day in London. They were to meet in the lobby in the morning with their luggage at 6am to go to Heathrow Airport. They would board a plane to fly back to Chicago and home. The rest of us were to gather in the hotel lobby with our bags at 9am. This would be our last day in London.

“I have my eye on a suite in Baker Street,” he said, “which would suit us down to the ground.”
A Study in Scarlet

Thursday June 26 dawned bright and clear. Since I woke up early every morning of this trip, I had given up using my travel clock alarm. I showered, packed, and went downstairs for breakfast. There were only seventeen of us left, including chaperones, so all our luggage went into one room to await the bus that will take us to the train station tonight to start for Scotland. People were arranging to go to different places on this free day. One group was going to the Tower of London, others shopping or on various adventures. We were all to meet later for dinner and the train. Dr. Watson was going with Dan and a group to Wimbledon to see the championship tennis matches. I was going to Baker Street. The whole day was the Sherlock Holmes connection.
Running a little late, we took the East Croydon Underground to Victoria Station. Helen had given me directions to the Baker Street Underground Station. I didn’t know London had the Circle Line, which was a bit like Chicago’s Loop.
The trains took me to the right place without trouble but since I had started late, I decided to go first to the Marylebone Public Library. It contained the largest collection of Sherlockian items held by a public library in the U.K. That was begun when the Sherlock Holmes collection gathered for the festival of Britain in 1951 was broken up in 1957. The items making up the sitting room display of chairs, pipes, wax dummy of Holmes, etc. was sold to Whitbread and Co. who remodeled a pub around the Sherlock Holmes theme. The other articles, printed editions, books of commentary, bound copies of the “Strand Magazines” and other publications, uncounted magazines and scion publications, etc. were given to the Marylebone Public Library because it was the closest library to Baker Street, being only a block away.
People still wrote to Holmes, notably school children, and for years the Abbey Insurance Company on Baker Street maintained a secretary to answer the letters. Letters that needed more than a form letter response were sent to the Marylebone Library around the corner where Ms. Catherine C., librarian and Sherlockian, answered them. I had never met Catherine, but we had e-mailed each other over the years. Over the Internet I arranged with Catherine to view the collection during my free day. Unfortunately she was absent that week, but she left my name at the front desk so the other librarians would help me when I showed up.
I stood on the sidewalk in front of the Baker Street Station, totally bewildered. I hadn’t expected such a busy street scene. Marylebone was a divided boulevard thick with traffic and pedestrians. I asked a nice tall white-haired man wearing a brown tweed jacket for directions to the library since what I saw didn’t agree with the map I had gotten from the Internet. His directions got me across Marylebone, and then he repeated them. But instead of turning like I should have, I walked forward. He astutely noticed that I was obviously a brain-damaged American female and just when I was wondering what to do next he came up from behind me, rather winded, accused me of an inability to read a simple map, and set me back on course. Thank goodness I had a photo of the library entrance or I may have never have found the place.
The building was built in 1887 of dressed stone with a gabled entrance portico flanked by columns and topped with a stone helmet resting on a shield. Steps led up thru doors to the main floor reading room and information desk. I introduced myself and was introduced to Nikki S. and her colleague Michael. It was, as I feared, near her lunch time, but she took me down a labyrinth of stairs and corridors to the locked room that held the Collection.
I had seen the Sherlock Holmes collection housed at the Toronto Municipal Library in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, years ago. It was kept in its own room in a parlor setting, with bookshelves, furniture, a fireplace and framed pictures on the walls. The Marylebone Library didn’t have the space needed to properly display its Sherlockian treasures. Nikki said one day they hoped to have a proper display space, but for now everything was stored in a basement room in glass-fronted bookcases, file cabinets, on shelves and in cardboard boxes.
I could have stayed a week. The collection was constantly growing, and for me it was Aladdin’s cave. It seemed that every book or story Conan Doyle ever wrote and every book, article, essay, pastiche, parody, poem, picture, photo, club program, illustration, magazine, musical and play program, and cartoon ever produced about Holmes and Watson and their world was within those four walls. I thumbed thru bound copies of the “Strand Magazine” and even found myself listed as a contributor to the “Baker Street Journal” back in the early 1970s. I was delighted to find my name misspelled.
There were translations of Holmes stories in many different languages and items from scions, or clubs, from all over the world. The file cabinets held, among other papers, letters written to Holmes at 221b Baker Street from the public.
Urged to take whatever I wanted to look at upstairs, I took a file of letters, some issues of The Sherlock Holmes Magazine and some other things. Nikki, Michael and I went back to the reading room and she went off for lunch. I sat looking at the material for a while, then I went out to find my own lunch, a tuna sandwich on a roll and a rather dry brownie filled, in the British manner, with bits of dried fruit. When I returned, I spent more time with the material, reading the letters from the public and articles from the magazines. Reluctantly, I soon handed everything back to Nikki and set out for the next goal.
The Sherlock Holmes Museum, 221b Baker Street! Well, actually there never was a real 221b, but when you are encouraging a legend, what does it matter? Show me where Zeus sat atop Mt. Olympus and where he stored his thunderbolts. Show me the spot where Grendel’s mother gave birth. Indeed, show me Hogwarts. Reality never got in the way of a good story. Enjoyment of a good story should never get in the way of reality.
The letters written to Mr. Holmes at 221b Baker Street ended up at the lost property office on Baker Street. Across the road was an authentic 1880s lodging house still standing after decades of change around it. Registered as a historic building by the British government, it was a stroke of genius by some intelligent people to obtain possession and restore it to the same appearance known to the Great Detective and his Biographer. As a result the Sherlock Holmes Museum was founded as the only museum in the world dedicated to a “fictional” character.
It had a nice gift shop on the ground floor. An “English bobby” directed me to buy my ticket in the shop. I did so and then walked up the seventeen steps to the fabled sitting room. Accustomed to the rooms as seen in movies and on TV, I was surprised at how small they actually were. But this was really how small the lodging houses were in the 1880s.
The front room was filled with everything mentioned in the stories as being in the sitting room. The breakfast table was laid out in china and silver, Dr. Watson’s medical bag stood on his desk, Holmes’ chemical apparatus were on a table in the corner and his Persian slipper filled with tobacco stood on the mantelpiece. Armchairs were set before the coal fireplace and the very pictures on the walls replicated the famous room.
Off to one side was the door leading to Holmes’s bedroom, with his narrow bed and shaving stand across from a bureau holding his box of greasepaint. Pictures of famous villains hung on the wall over his mirror.
Except for its small size, the front room looked quite a bit like the sitting room of the Jeremy Brett TV series of Sherlock Holmes stories. Upstairs were rooms set up to display more items mentioned in the Canon. In one corner was a large bust of Holmes, wearing his dressing gown and holding a curved pipe. Included in the displays were mannequins portraying, among others, Irene Adler, the King of Bohemia and even Professor Moriarty. A case holding a diorama of a scene from the Hound of the Baskervilles stood beneath a window.
At the very top of the stairs was the one thing never mentioned in the stories; a Victorian loo with a blue and white china basin and toilet. There was a deep row of lace on the towel hanging by the sink. The bathroom fixture company Kohler from Wisconsin would be proud to claim it as their own.
Greeting visitors was Mr. Holmes, Mr. Stewart Quentin Holmes. After he changed his name on advice from his numerologist, his acting career picked up. He appeared on “The Amazing Race” several years ago, when one of the jobs required of the contestants was to go to the Sherlock Holmes Museum and complete a task. He and his acting partner, who portrayed Dr. Watson, had even been as far away from London as Texas to do readings at colleges. They traveled, like the original Holmes and Watson, anywhere their services were required.
He was very pleasant. With white hair and the correct profile, he looked the part and explained the various items in the rooms with easy knowledge. He even posed for photos in the deerstalker hat. He obligingly took photos of visitors as they wore the available deerstalker cap and handled the pipe and magnifying glass. I told him about the Sherlock Holmes story I had finished just before starting the trip and he handed me his card so I could send him a copy. He encouraged me and the others touring the rooms to see everything and even to sit on the chairs. Upstairs I found the guestbook and signed it. Everyone else in the museum that day seemed to be from Romania.
Downstairs in the gift shop I went a little crazy. Well, crazier than normal. I picked up bookmarks, pins, china cups, postcards and other things. My largest purchase was an authentic deerstalker hat. I just couldn’t resist. Won’t the kids at Evansville High School get a kick out of it when they look out the windows every day in winter and see me walking up with my deerstalker hat and long speckled wool coat?
Time passed much too soon. Finally I had to catch the Bakerloo Line down to Charing Cross Station. From there I walked to Northumberland Ave. and the Sherlock Holmes Pub and Restaurant. This place was where Jim had surprised me on the 2006 trip. Now I had time to really look around and even to eat something.
The upstairs had been redecorated over a year ago, but the glassed-in corner was untouched, showing the sitting room with all the things collected for the display for the Festival of Britain fifty-seven years ago. On the walls were playbills and photos of just some of the many actors who had portrayed Holmes and Watson on stage and screen throughout the years. The excellent oil painting of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle hung on the same spot on the restaurant’s wall as before. I walked out onto a little deck equipped with tables and chairs that I hadn’t noticed during my first trip. On the brick wall was a menu and a silhouette of Holmes, complete with deerstalker hat and pipe.
Downstairs I ordered Spotted Dick, just to say I ate it, and a glass of Diet Pepsi. Spotted Dick proved to be an English steamed pudding, somewhat like a bread pudding with raisins, sitting in a puddle of vanilla custard. Every dessert in the U.K. was referred to as pudding, even ice cream.
I sat in the taproom to eat it and brought my notebook up to date. I noticed with interest that while most bars and pubs have sports or game shows on their TV, in the Sherlock Holmes Pub and Restaurant they played episodes of Jeremy Brett’s TV program "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" with the sound off and the captions running along the bottom of the screen. Perfect!
I left the pub determined to find that bookstore with the Sherlock Holmes mannequin in the window. After a few minutes I realized I had no idea what the heck I was doing, so I went back to Charing Cross to get a train to Chancery Lane.
Everything went fine and I walked up the Underground steps to the street where I was to meet the others twenty minutes early. But there was no place to sit down and still see the entrance I had used. So I stood in the shade against a building a few yards away and watched for the others. Finally they found me (I had been there all the time) and I crossed the street to join them.
We walked for quite a while to find the restaurant. On the way Bill had us detour to see Dr. Samuel Johnson’s house. Dr. Johnson was a very interesting man who wrote the first English dictionary and was a great conversationalist. He said, “If a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.” His biography was written by James Boswell, who gave his name to the idea of a biographer. Sherlock Holmes once said to Watson, “I am lost without my Boswell.”
We ended up at The Olde Cocke Tavern for fish and chips. A very large carved and painted rooster hung over the front door. The building was very narrow and we filled the upstairs room, lit by a multi-paned medieval-style window that filled the entire end wall and overlooked the busy street below. The room had dark paneling and a high ceiling. I wondered if this was the same Olde Cocke Tavern favored by Dr. Samuel Johnson himself.
Bill and I sat a small table supplied with two club chairs. I showed off some of my Baker Street purchases and modeled the deerstalker hat. All of it went over very well, but Bill really liked one of the bookmarks. It had an imprint of the quote, “Good old Watson! The one fixed point in a changing age.” He showed it around to the group and particularly to our own Dr. Watson.
The fish was a little overdone for my taste, but the chips were good. Afterward we walked to another street, where Helen turned us loose at an Internet café. Next door was a souvenir shop. While the others e-mailed home and shopped, she led me across the street to the very bookshop I had searched for earlier, the one with the Sherlock Holmes display in the window. She had to make a phone call, so I took photos and bought the latest mystery by Ann Purser, an author I had discovered on my first trip to London two years ago.
We rode the Underground back to our hotel in Croydon. Bill told us that he had gotten a phone call message from his wife saying that one of the kids on that morning’s flight had lost her passport at the airport. I didn’t hear the end of that story until later. She had gone to the bathroom right before boarding and couldn’t find her passport afterwards. The Other Dan stayed behind with her while airport officials searched for it. It was very serious. There is a large black market for American passports.. The student wouldn’t be able to enter the United States without that little blue booklet.
Everyone else boarded the plane. Just as it was lifting off the passport was found. They had missed their flight, but a very nice British Airlines lady arranged for them to board a flight to Chicago on another airline. That accommodation was practically unheard of. The two arrived in Chicago just two or three hours after their original flight landed.
I stopped at the ATM and got some money. English money was good in Scotland, although Scotland had its own money too. The pounds and pence of Scotland featured pictures of Scottish writers and other famous citizens. It was issued by the Bank of Scotland. English money was issued by the Bank of England.
We had left our bags in one room at our hotel. Now I picked out a clean shirt and some necessaries and put them in my day bag, making sure I included my new paperback. The motor coach met us and our luggage outside the hotel. At the station, the kids got some treats and water. Helen arranged for a golf cart to carry most of our bags to the train and included me in the load. I decided that it was necessary that I had my folding cane out all the time for the rest of the trip.
After the luggage was put on the train, we were assigned couchettes. Helen and I got singles, the others doubled up.
Each sleeping space in coach had two bunks with a ladder and two pillows each, four clothes hangers on straps on the wall, two mirrors, a fold-out sink with running water, carpeting, a waste basket, a sealed sanitary toothbrush pack for each bunk, and buttons for the lights, the temperature control and to call the attendant. The toilets were down the hall at the end of the car and resembled airline toilets.
I spread my stuff around and followed Bill, Helen and the others to the club car. Tables for four were on the left, smaller tables for two on the right. Strangers were scattered along the length of the car, but Bill, Helen and the others found an empty table on the left. I looked around for an empty table and saw none. I then asked a nice-looking older man sitting alone at a table on the right if I could join him. He replied “I’d be delighted.” I sat across from him with my cane under my hand.
My new companion looked to be a vigorous man in his late 70s or early 80s. He had pure white hair, a youthful pink face and a charming smile. He was dressed in a dark business suit and had a drink before him. We talked. It was the most amazing conversation I have ever had in my life.
After a few minutes of talking, I asked his name. He was almost apologetic. “It’s double-barreled, I’m afraid.” He was Mr. C-J. He was born in Nepal while his father was a British officer in the 5th Gurkas, Nepalese soldiers who volunteered to be part of the British Indian Army. His dad was a life-long British Army officer who later served on the Allied Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, D.C. during the early 1940s. Mr. C-J’s father was in on the planning of the North African invasion campaign and the Normandy invasion during World War II. As a brigadier general, he “took notes” during the Yalta Conference where President Franklin D. Roosevelt met for the last time with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union to discuss the future of the Western world after the war finally ended.
Mr. C-J worked as an investment banker in the heart of the financial district of London, the City, for over 50 years. He specialized in pensions. His wife died had three years ago. They had four children with one son working for a time in Chicago at a bank. Mr. C-J was going up to Scotland to attend a reunion at his public school. “Public schools” in the U.K. are what Americans call “private schools”. He said the name of his school, but it passed right out of my memory. Excitement, I suppose.
The reunion involved his being a “Fellow” of his class. He downplayed that, saying all he had to do to become a Fellow was “sign a piece of paper”. He showed me a couple pictures of his boarding school on his digital camera. I saw large, long multi-storied stone buildings ringing a green grass quad. He joked that back when he attended girls were not admitted, but now that he was no longer there, girls were all over the place.
For college, he had “read history” at Cambridge University.Because of his business background, he was asked to serve on the boards of trusts involving the Winston Churchill memorial and also the Church of England. He had just resigned as financial advisor to the Archbishop of York. He displayed a playful stripe in his personality. Mr. C-J told me that during his first meeting with the Archbishop he addressed him as “Your Grace”, and then worked down the list of the Archbishop’s titles to his first name of “John”. He grinned at me as he told the story.
He had a most charming smile. He liked to travel.He bought me a drink (Diet Pepsi) and another for himself. He listened to my account of our trip so far. I told him about Evansville High School and my Tillotson connection to England and how we knew so much about the family because of our ancestor John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury.
When I mentioned Baker Street and Sherlock Holmes, he laughed and said he had a friend at the reunion that collected “Biggles” books. He showed me a copy he was bringing to him as a gift. Biggles was an air pilot who starred in a series of hardcover adventure books for boys, sort of like a grownup Johnny Quest, but in a very English Boy’s Own Paper kind of way. The author had the character flying in WWI and afterwards through the ‘20s and ‘30s in many types of aircraft. Sometimes he worked for the British Government and sometimes he had adventures on his own, with a band of friends. The last story was written in 1940.
I was originally from upper Illinois so we talked about Chicago, where his son had worked and he had visited. We found that we both liked history (he asked if I was an historian!), travel and American Presidents. We talked about President Lincoln. I was from Illinois and told him about my trip to see Lincoln’s home and tomb in Springfield.
We talked briefly about President Kennedy but we talked particularly about President Harry Truman. He tried to remember the name of the author of a book about Truman; I said “Merle Miller” and he pointed at me in delight and said “That’s it!” The book’s title was “Plain Speaking”, written from interviews Truman had given the author in the early 1960s.
We both spoke about Harry Truman’s ability to live for thirty-five years with his imperious mother-in-law in her house and how he had never answered her back when she gave her opinion of him, which wasn’t very high. She never thought Harry was good enough for her daughter. Even when she lived in the White House after Truman became President of the United States she would remark to the staff and the guests that her daughter Bess could have done so much better than Harry and she would give examples. Mr. Truman just grinned.
He had loved Bess Wallace since they were both six and nothing her mother could say or do changed that. When Mrs. Wallace died Harry Truman had to purchase the only private home he had ever known with his family from her estate.
We talked about how the times find the man, as they did Lincoln in the Civil War and Truman in WWII and Korea.
I told him I liked the Romanovs, the British Royal Family (he liked that) and many different kinds of books. He asked me my impressions of presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama.
About 12:30 am he excused himself to go to bed. He said he hoped to see me again in the morning. I realized while I was talking and listening to him that that this was one of the “old guard” Englishmen of the stories no one writes anymore. Mr. C-J came from a military service family, traveled in high circles, made money for himself and others in one of the most famous financial centers of the world, did public service as a private citizen, knew a lot of historic people and yet he was smiling at me and buying me a drink! I tried to be as quiet and intelligent and show how interested I was as I could. I knew this conversation was a real, live, honest-to-God, once in a lifetime privilege and experience that could never be repeated.
After he left I moved to another table closer to Bill and the others. I was bursting to tell of my encounter with Mr. C-J but instead I sat and thought, “I’m not going to say a word. I’m going to wait until they ask me.”
After a little time their conversation died down and Helen turned to me. She asked, “How are you doing?” I told her. It was fun to watch because as I talked, Helen’s jaw slowly dropped down as far as it could go. The others looked similarly stunned. When I finished, I asked, “Do I get the points?”
“Oh yes, you get the points!”
After I got home I googled Mr. C-J and found everything he had told me was true, plus some facts about his family I have included here. He had not mentioned to me then but I discovered on-line that he had received the Order of the British Empire from Queen Elizabeth II a few years ago for his activities on behalf of the Church of England. It was really him, for I even found a picture.

Maps were drawn and charts prepared, in which the future city was sketched out.
A Study in Scarlet

I slept fitfully in the bunk that night and awoke at 5am. It was June 27th, a Friday. The train had stopped. I got dressed and looked outside. Through the corridor windows I could see that we were stopped on the line somewhere in the country under a cloudy sky. A workman was walking up and down the tracks. I decided that we had either stopped to let another train pass or that the workman was checking the carriages for signs of wear and tear that could happen during a high-speed trip.
I took my notebook up to the club car to update its contents. I admit I was hoping to meet Mr. C-J again, but he wasn’t there. The attendants were delivering trays of food to the first class compartments, so I decided he wasn’t coming out anytime soon. I admired the Scottish scenery awhile and went back to my cubicle. I finished Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods”. Later an attendant handed in a boxed breakfast of rolls, jam and juice.
We got off the train at the Edinburgh station. There was no sign of Mr. C-J, but Helen came up to me in the station and grasped my arm. “You certainly know how to meet the most interesting people!” she said. A motor coach waited for us and swallowed our bags into its luggage maw. They would emerge when we reached our hotel at the end of the day.
We drove into Edinburgh. The entire city was the Sherlock Holmes connection of the day. Arthur Conan Doyle was born, raised and educated in Edinburgh, finally obtaining his medical degree at Edinburgh University. One of his professors was Dr. Joseph Bell, the model for Sherlock Holmes. Dr. Bell taught that the many tiny details of a patient’s appearance could help in the diagnosis of his medical problem. He taught that every doctor was a bit of a detective.
We stopped to see the grounds and exterior of Holyroodhouse, the palace where the Queen stayed when she was in town. She was expected this week for the Highlander Tattoo held at Edinburgh Castle. We peered at the flagpole over the roof of the palace, because the style of flag would tell us if she were in residence. There was little wind and we reached no decision.
We had a bus tour of Charlotte Square, a beautiful example of Georgian architecture where Robert Louis Stevenson had lived. We got a tour of New Town, which was built in the 1760s. All of original Edinburgh was made of stone, brick and cobblestones and built on top of an extinct volcano. Space was limited and that was why they had to plan out and build New Town.
Edinburgh Castle was visible from all over town. One could see where J. K. Rowlings, the author of the Harry Potter books and an Edinburgh native, got her ideas about Hogwarts. Later one of our party stopped at the café where she had written the first books, sitting before a large window with a fine view of Edinburgh Castle. There was a plaque on the wall designating the place as a landmark.
Our motor coach drove up to the Esplanade in front of Edinburgh Castle and we disembarked. The others walked thru the castle gates, past the statues of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce who were the greatest Scottish heroes in history. William Wallace was “Braveheart” who fought the British back in the late
13th century. Robert the Bruce was a contemporary who also fought the British in the early 14th century and became King of a united Scotland.
Helen and I rode a van (courtesy of the Castle) up to the top square. Quite a difference from my laborious climb of two years ago! Helen and I had tea and scones in a teashop in one of the buildings lining the Square. Afterwards I walked around and looked at the Castle.
I saw the Scottish Crown Jewels. I walked thru the Scottish WWI Memorial while paying special attention to the frieze in the apse representing the many different people who served (nurses, infantrymen, sailors, a man with a pair of snowshoes, etc.), and I strolled the Great Hall.
When the time came I walked down to the Castle entrance and joined the others. We broke up into groups again and began walking down the Royal Mile, the street that led from the Castle down into Edinburgh and ended at Holyroodhouse. We were given a meeting place on Princes Street and invited to see the Scottish National Gallery, the Princes Garden and to shop in downtown Edinburgh.
Bill, Helen and I walked down the Royal Mile a little ways and stopped at the Jolly Judge Pub for lunch. Bill and Helen had haggis over a baked potato. I was still working on the scone from the Castle so I had a tuna sandwich on a roll.
I walked with Bill and we explored. I bought some scarves and we watched a magician and a wool spinner perform on the sidewalk.
Bill took me to the Writer’s Museum, filled with the artifacts of Scottish authors Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Walter Scott. It was a little house in a courtyard entered from the main street thru a Close, or alley. The stone building was perfectly proportioned inside and quite beautiful. It went up three or four stories but didn’t look that big from the courtyard.
We both had seen the Scottish National Gallery of Art on our first trip so instead we rested on a bench in Princes Garden. Bill rested so well he fell asleep. One of the kids came by and took his picture. So did I. I let him sleep for about twenty-five minutes or so before we started to walk again.
We walked along Princes Street while I pondered the fact that many of the shops and stores there two years ago had changed. The Marks and Spencer sign was gone, the little 1 pound store next to it was now a cell phone place, scaffolding surrounded several buildings, and in general the street looked differently.
Princes Gardens on the near side of the street had not changed. It was designed to fill an old riverbed and displayed the landscaping and flowers for which it was famous. The Gardens are long and narrow but there were winding paths and places to sit. A tiny outdoor theatre was located in the middle.
Long wooden benches stood on the sidewalk along the iron fence that bordered the length of the Gardens. Near the bus stop I showed Bill the bench with the plaque I remembered from the first trip. Each bench had a plaque on it in memory of someone. Each bench and plaque was donated by various people and organizations for use by the public. The one I showed Bill was donated in memory of Ludwig von Beethoven from a fan in 1986.
Our gathering place was next to a white church on a corner of Princes Street. I went inside while Bill walked on. It was St. John the Evangelist, a Scottish Episcopal Church of the diocese of Edinburgh. Construction began in 1816 and was completed in 1818. It was designed by William Burns, who chose the revived perpendicular gothic style of architecture.
Inside St. John’s was decorated in white and gold and had a beautiful ceiling. The plaster ceiling vault, with it’s hanging corbels, was derived from Henry VII’s chapel in Westminster Abbey. The stained glass of the windows was installed from 1857 to 1861. Memorial plaques hung on the walls between the tall arched windows.
I talked to the lady who was closing up the little table in the back that sold postcards and pamphlets. She invited me to walk around the church. I read the memorials and learned that most of them were for young Scottish men lost in WWI. The soldiers were all so young. I remember one was for an officer lost during WWII. I rested on a bench in the back until a man closed the building. Then I sat on the steps outside where I was gradually joined by the rest of our group of seventeen.
We dined at Dario’s, an Italian restaurant, on pasta and pizza. Helen quizzed me on Native Americans past and present and about Buffalo Bill. Thankfully I had read several books on those subjects, visited the South Dakota Badlands, and lived in Wisconsin with its history of Chief Black Hawk and the Ho-Chunk Nation. All those Tony Hillerman mysteries with Lt. Leaphorn and Jim Chee paid off, too.
he wanted to know if Buffalo Bill was an Indian. He wasn’t, he got his name by shooting buffaloes to feed the crews building the Central Pacific railroad and later went into show business with a Wild West show.
Why did the Native Americans have gambling casinos? She had never thought of them as gamblers. I explained that gambling went back centuries in Native American traditions and the profits received today were used by them to improve the lives of their people.
She asked me about their different lifestyles in different parts of the country (thank you, Tony Hillerman and Mr. Bodie, my American history teacher back in high school). She asked about Wild Bill Hickock and the town where he had died, Deadwood, SD. I had visited Deadwood and seen Hickock’s grave. She wanted to know about Calamity Jane and did she really have a relationship with Wild Bill. It was more a case of hero worship, I told her.
I explained that the modern Native Americans tried to hold on to their ancient culture as best they could, having gatherings and upholding their ancient customs and religions. The New York State Mohawk tribe was famous for working on the construction crews that built the tall skyscrapers in New York City. People thought it was because the Mohawks weren’t scared of heights. I told her that they did it not because they weren’t scared, but because it was a modern-day method of showing their bravery in the face of danger and fear. That was a very Native American thing to do.
After the meal we got on the motor coach and drove to our hotel in Falkirk, outside of Edinburgh. It was the Antoine Hotel. There was no elevator on the ground floor, so we climbed a set of stairs to the elevator. I used it to the next floor, and got room 102.
My room was narrow with a double bed, a strangely familiar grey duvet, a desk under the wall of windows with a TV on it facing the bed and a bathroom fitted out with a big tub-shower with (gasp!) grab bars in the correct places. It also had, as had the other hotel rooms on this trip, an electric kettle for coffee or tea and a short round wastebasket with a step-up lid just like the ones I came across during the last trip. The difference this time was that these wastebaskets worked.

“It was very broken country, you may remember.”
The Blanched Soldier

I slept 8 hours and awoke on Saturday, June 28th. Breakfast was laid out in a dining room set for forty. Since there were only seventeen of us and strange people were walking in and asking if this was the EFtours breakfast, I deduced there was another group in the hotel with us. I was right.
They were a combined group from Ohio and California on a 23–day tour of Ireland, Wales, England, Scotland, France and Normandy. One couple was going on after that to visit friends in Germany for an additional five days. I exchanged a couple of war stories with one of their chaperones as the room filled up.
After breakfast, our group boarded a motor coach for our day’s itinerary. We were going to Stirling Castle, the William Wallace Monument, the Trossachs area and then return to Edinburgh to have Chinese food at the famous Jimmy Chung’s.
But first we went to see the Falkirk Wheel. I had read a short article about this in Time magazine a few years ago. Scotland, like much of Great Britain, was threaded with canals, built and used as a mode of transportation before being overtaken by the railroads in the middle of the 19th century.
Tourism still used the canals and at Falkirk there was a special problem. The area was hilly and there were two levels of canal outside of the city. The original eleven locks between them had deteriorated and so the canals were no longer connected. An engineer had designed an unusual solution. It was an enormous wheel, or propeller screw, that had two compartments to carry canal boats. They rode in watertight containers and as one rose up the other came down. Thus a maximum of four boats could be conveyed up or down using a minimum of energy because gravity did most of the work.
It had been “opened” by Queen Elizabeth II in 2002 with great pomp and ceremony.The Wheel not only worked moving the boats, it had become a tourist attraction in its own right. The boat canals were now open from Edinburgh to Glasgow, from the River Forth to the River Clyde. The canals had been refurbished and walking paths, landscaping, and other services were also improved at the same time.
The motor coach drove thru some nice countryside until we stopped at the edge of the road. A set of steps and bridges led up to the plaza and gift shop just beside the Wheel. I examined a scale model displayed in the shop and got a guidebook. Outside in the sunshine the large white Wheel stood between a canal below and a canal at the top of the cliff. A man came out and offered to turn it for the kids to see.
While they watched I walked back down to the bus and talked to the driver, Ian. He explained how the innovative Wheel worked and how popular it was and about the tourists it brought to Falkirk. He also told me about other attractions in Scotland and how much he liked to drive people around to them and hear the comments.
After the others returned we set off thru the greenery of the countryside to Stirling Castle. Drystone walls surrounded fields holding sheep and cattle. Some fields were edged in lines of trees. The land was gently rolling with rounded mountains in the distance. It had rained the night before and the skies were overcast. The sun was trying to break thru the drizzle.
Small sections of woods were scattered about. Pylons carrying power lines marched over the hills past Scots farmsteads of stone and concrete buildings. Train bridges crossed little creeks. A fast-moving stream paralleled the highway for a while. Closer to Stirling Castle the ground rose and the hills became more prominent. We were in the Trossachs area, where the Scottish Lowlands and Highlands met.
In legend, Stirling Castle was captured from the early Saxons by King Arthur. In truth construction appeared to have begun in the first part of the 1100s. In the 15th and 16th centuries it was rebuilt in the Renaissance style and became the finest example of that castle building style in Scotland. Mary Queen of Scots was crowned here. It was near here that William Wallace fought the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297. Farmers were still finding arrowheads and spear tips in their fields from that conflict.
The Trossachs area with its mountains, lochs and many hiding places was an important area in Scotland’s history. The Romans were here but found the native people too tough to conquer. In 120 AD the Roman soldiers eventually retreated to the South and built Hadrian’s Wall in an effort to contain them.
South of Stirling was the battlefield known as Bannockburn. This field was the site of an important victory over the English by the Scotts in 1314 led by Robert the Bruce.
Driving thru Stirling I saw tiny homes of pebble-and-dash adorned with stone quoins at the corners and windows. Small houses in a cold climate were easier to heat. Men carrying plastic trash bags and pointed sticks with which to pick up trash along the street were wearing yellow rain slickers striped with grey reflective tape. We passed many stone and brick buildings along the streets as we drove up to the Castle.
There was a sign for a Baker Street estate agency in Stirling. I took that as the Sherlock Holmes connection of the day.
After we all got off the motor coach, I rode a van courtesy of the Bank of Scotland from the parking lot up to the inner courtyard of the Castle. It was a regular service for older visitors to the Castle.
I saw the Royal Chapel with its 17-century frescoes by Valentine Jenkins. I walked thru the Palace rooms which were under reconstruction.
The Castle Experience display was very good. It showed the history and inner workings of the Castle. I entered each room of the Experience thru stone arches that had been padded with leather so people wouldn’t hit their heads. People back in the 15th century were shorter than we are today. Either that or the Castle designers wanted people to duck entering each room so it would be easier to attack them during an invasion.
I checked out the rampart defenses and the flower gardens. The Castle was built on a ridge so the flower gardens were laid out right next to the walls of the buildings. Informational plaques on supports were scattered around telling tourists what they were looking at. There was a fine crop of cobblestones, too.
Efforts were underway to make the Castle self-supporting, because a military force was no longer stationed there. Now a tapestry industry was active, copying famous European tapestries from medieval times for sale. I think special orders were also filled.
I met up with Helen and we went to a teashop in the Castle for lunch. I felt bad for wimping out of eating haggis the day before in Edinburgh, so I ordered it now. The name of the dish was haggis and tatties. I knew it was spices and other ingredients boiled in a sheep’s stomach and served over a baked potato but to me it tasted like roast beef hash over a baked potato. The only thing missing was the ketchup. We had slices of dense chocolate cake for dessert.
I never did find out what the “other ingredients” were.
Back on the bus, we drove to the William Wallace Monument, a Gothic tower standing 220 feet tall on top of a ridge.
That was the third and final Tower of this trip’s title.
The gift shop was down by the parking lot. Some kids rode the shuttle up to the Monument. I didn’t feel up to the stair climbing I knew would be required at the top of the ridge. I stayed down and admired the rolling scenery.
Nearby was the River Forth with a narrow stone bridge arched over it, the site of the Battle of Stirling Bridge, where William Wallace slaughtered 5000 English soldiers as they tried to cross a wooden version of the bridge two abreast. The soldiers crossed the bridge but got stuck in the marshy ground in front of Wallace’s army. The English never had a chance.
At the William Wallace gift shop I got a guidebook, some postcards, refrigerator magnets including one for my sister with the MacGregor clan tartan, and little booklets about the MacGregor clan, to whom my grandfather’s family belonged. I would send one set to my sister Lori.
In the far distance I could see a community of little houses with walled front yards and clipped hedges and flower plots around them.
The Scots we met talked about the Mel Gibson movie “Braveheart”. They always pointed out the Hollywood mistakes in history, but they were proud of the attention it had brought their country.
We drove to Calendar because that was where a star from the movie lived. Out in the countryside on top of a hill was a little wooden shed inside a fenced field. Inside the fence lived “Hamish”, a Scottish Highland steer. Even though he didn’t have a speaking part, he was part of Hollywood history. He appeared in the Mel Gibson “Braveheart” movie in a very small part. I carefully watched the movie twice after I got back home. I decided that Hamish had been one of a small herd of cattle in a sloping field far in the background of the scene where Braveheart put his wife on a horse to escape the English soldiers.
Hamish had a most remarkable spread of horns upon his head and a red mop of hair that was typical of the Scottish Highland breed. It was a real Cinderella story for Hamish. He was slated for the butcher’s shop, but when the movie was a big world-wide hit, his owners realized that dead, he was steaks, but alive he was a tourist attraction. So Hamish retired to this grassed-filled field next to a big sign in four languages that gave his bio and filmography. He held court each day as travelers and film buffs and Mel Gibson fans from all over the world came to take his photo and buy his postcards. I figured this was as close to a movie star as I would ever get, so I took his picture too.
Briefly, I wondered if the gossip show TMZ would be interested in my photo. He wasn’t drunk, but he wasn’t wearing underwear, either.
Back on the bus and on through the countryside---small stone houses---multi-arched stone bridge over a stream---mist over distant hills---a tiny stone church with drystone walls around it---trees lined up along a ridge---another stone house, this time with white stone window trim---a Smokey Mountain feel to the landscape---woods on both sides of road---stone walls running along beside the pavement ---I was getting sleepy---half the people on the bus were asleep---a sign said the River Teith---we were in the Trossachs, the country before the mountains of the Highlands of Scotland---into the streets of Callender---narrow twisty streets---Bed and Breakfasts and pubs along street---book shops---country store---pharmacy---a chocolate shop---busy High Street---the whole town quaint and very active because the Trossachs was a popular area for hikers and thronged with tour buses even during the winter---on to Loch Katrine---signs of deforestation---foxglove flowers---ferns---a loch below, the mountains above---hills crowned with forests---other hills bald at their summits---twisty drystone walls along the roadside---old bent trees growing out over the flat sheets of water next to the road---steep and narrow two-lane road---passed the Tate Moor Highland House---on the Trossachs Trail---this area looked like Wisconsin around La Crosse.
We stopped at Loch Katrine. This was the territory of Rob Roy. His legend was told in Sir Walter Scott’s novel, “Rob Roy”. His real name was Robert MacGregor, a herdsman turned bandit in order to feed his clan. His particular target was The Duke of Montrose, who at one point burned down Rob’s house. For harassing the rich and taking care of his extended family he got a reputation as Scotland’s Robin Hood. He was captured several times and usually managed to escape until the last time. He went on trial and was convicted but was pardoned in 1725 and retired to Balquhidder, north of Loch Voil. My Scots-Irish grandfather was of the Clan MacGregor.
Loch Katrine was also the site of Sir Walter Scott’s inspiration for the novel “The Lady of the Lake”, and several other romantic Scottish novels. Sir Walter was instrumental in reviving interest in Scotland’s national heritage. Scottish culture had been suppressed by the English for centuries until Sir Water orchestration of King George IV’s visit to Edinburgh helped to establish tartan as the national dress and allowed other customs to resurface. We had visited Sir Walter’s house during the first trip in 2006.
Our motor coach pulled into a parking lot carved out of the hills next to a stone gift shop and restaurant. A walking road had been blasted out of the living rock surrounding Loch Katrine, and was completed with bridges and explanatory plaques mounted on posts. There were fine views in every direction. Tour boats were moored near the restaurant. We split up and strolled along the road or went into the handsome building housing the restaurant.
Next to a closed tourist kiosk a boy was trying to climb up the cliff along the walk while his father urged him to come down. The boy was up about twelve or fourteen feet and was beginning to think his father had a point.
Most of our group walked ahead, down the asphalt path. I strolled along the side of the loch until I reached the white metal bridge, taking pictures as I went. I noticed that the massive rock walls edging the walk were covered with lichen of many colors, tiny green mosses, ferns and other miniature vegetation. It was very peaceful. I realized that this setting deserved more than just a postcard or a refrigerator magnet.
I began to write a song. It was to be sung with a lilt.

Old Drystone Walls
Over the fields on left and on right
Old drystone walls make a checkerboard sight
Standing so long, their origins lost
I like a wall with lichen and moss.

(Chorus)
Older by far than any can ken
Old in the stories told by old men
Lichen and moss, lichen and moss
Give me a wall with lichen and moss.

Stretching across the green British hills
Sturdy and strong without any frills
Built up of stone by workers long gone
I like a wall with lichen and moss.

(Chorus)

Rough grey and brown rocks for a crown
Gathered from field, from moor and from down
Pitted and splotched, cracked by the frost
I like a wall with lichen and moss.

(Chorus)

‘Round meadow and fell, through valley and dell
Ribbons of stone cast a wide ancient spell
Set by a road where two pathways cross
I like a wall with lichen and moss.

(Chorus)

(Repeat first verse and chorus)

Of course, I finished and polished this song after we returned home. I did sing an early version on the bus later, by request, and the kids seemed to like it. One girl even suggested that I sing it at the annual Christmas talent show at the high school in December. My musical son-in law later told me that it sounded like a British drinking song.
Our next stop was a woolen mill at Aberfoyle, set among hilly fields and sloping meadows of ferns and dried heather. The woolen shop was inside a stone building. A display of birds of prey like falcons, owls and eagles and a pen of different kinds of Scottish sheep were set up outside. Dr. Watson enjoyed these very much.
I bought a small picture book of Scottish castles and some postcards and a baseball cap with “Scotland” embroidered on it for my son-in-law. Outside was an ice cream truck selling cones and soda.
We rode back to Edinburgh on our trusty motor coach. Our tables weren’t quite ready at Jimmy Chong’s Chinese restaurant so some of us walked around the block to a nearby Internet Café. I sent an e-mail to Gayla and then returned to Jimmy’s to eat. This was the same place we had dined during the first trip. The food was good and plentiful and everyone enjoyed it. Unlimited refills from the buffet didn’t hurt either. I sat with bus driver Ian and Helen and Bill.
We got back to the hotel at 7:30pm and I went straight to bed. Others stayed up to enjoy themselves, but I took advantage of a good long rest.
I did watch a little TV. The most interesting thing I saw was the last 20 minutes of “Dr. Who” on the BBC. The plot development was unnerving but since the show will be shown nearly 2 years later in the U.S. I decided not to write of it here.

“It’s just as I imagined it,” said Sir Henry. “Is it not the very picture of an old family home?”
The Hound of the Baskervilles

We left at 6am the next morning, June 29th, without breakfast, on our way back home. We and our bags were deposited at the Edinburgh Airport to await our flight. We said goodbye to our tour director Helen. I wrote out the travel rules I had formulated during our trip and gave her a copy.

Puhl’s Rules of Travel

When you can---sit.
Where you can---pee.
What you can---drink.
Who you can---like.
How you can---enjoy.

Orange juice and “jam butties” packed by the hotel were handed around for our breakfast. The “jam butties” were soft buns with margarine and jelly inside. It was not what was expected but they were eaten anyway.
We were flying from Edinburgh to London’s Heathrow on our way back to Chicago. On the Airbus plane we were given a hot English “fry-up” breakfast of eggs, sausage, ham, fried mushrooms, fried tomato, juice and tea or coffee.
That was the day's Sherlock Holmes connection. Breakfast was often mentioned in the stories. In “The Naval Treaty” Holmes used a hot breakfast in his rooms at Baker Street as the setting for the restoration of an important stolen document, much to the shock of his client.
At Heathrow we had to stand and wait in long lines to get thru customs and reach our boarding area. Dr. Watson, his son Nathan and Mitch B. were very kind and carried my red bag thru the terminals right thru Chicago.
I decided that good travel tips included bringing many bandanas and to pack half what you think you’ll need along with rolling up your clothes in your bag. You should wear a shirt with a front pocket on the days you travel by plane so you have a handy place to carry your passport and plane ticket.
There was a large shopping area in the Heathrow International Terminal with lots of shops like WH Smith, Harrods, and Godiva Chocolates. I noticed that in one shop there was a display of cartons of cigarettes. Each box was marked with large letters on the side that read SMOKING KILLS. Not much subtlety there.
I ducked into a shop and bought some Cadbury candy bars for my family back home. I looked for a paperback copy of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows” but they only had it in hardcover. I bought one just as Bill came by saying, “Hurry up. We’re boarding”. We collected a couple more kids on the way back and made the plane without problems.
On our British Airways 747 over the Atlantic I was served a dinner of baked chicken, carrots and green beans and an English dessert, trifle. The ride was eight hours long and during that time I watched “Horton Hears a Who”, “The Other Boleyn Girl” and “The Story of Dewey Cox”. Again I could not sleep.
As we approached the Mid-West we were given a breakfast of bacon and egg sandwich and fruit. I wasn’t very hungry so I just ate the fruit and saved the sandwich for later. We landed safely and I ate the sandwich while we waited for the scheduled Van Galder bus to pick us up at Chicago’s O’Hare Field and return us to the bus depot at Janesville, WI.
I borrowed a phone at the airport and called my daughter Gayla for a ride home to Evansville. Because I underestimated the time it would take to get to Janesville my accommodating son-in-law, Steve, waited an hour before our bus arrived.
The day was sunny and hotter than the weather in Europe as we drove up the highway to Wisconsin. It was good to see American farmhouses and barns set among the fields of corn and soybeans so familiar to me.
In Janesville Steve was waiting with the other parents and friends who had arrived to pick up our group. On the ride home I told him some of the highlights of the trip, including my journey to Baker Street and of Mr. C-J.
After Steve dropped me off at my place I called Gayla and checked my plant and the mail. The Paris, London and Edinburgh trip was over. It was a great adventure but I knew I would probably never go abroad with Bill’s group again. I just couldn’t keep up with the kids. They could walk far and they could walk fast. We must have had to walk five or six miles a day in Paris and London and I just didn’t have the stamina, not even while using my cane. Obviously my best walking days are behind me.
The students’ wonder and enthusiasm were amazing. I think they and their family members had a great time. I know I did. I would love to go back again, but it would have to be at my own pace. I didn’t have any problems the day I went to Baker Street on my own.
However, I am very glad I went this time. Now I have to get my photos developed, and sort out the souvenirs and gifts I’ve brought back. I will polish my song and write out my notes to put on this blog. I will fill another set of three-ring binders with all the photos and postcards I bought back for easy viewing later. I have the e-mail address of Mr. Holmes of the Sherlock Holmes Museum and I promised to send him a copy of the Sherlock Holmes story I had written earlier this year. The diet Coke I bought at Heathrow just before we left London for home cost me four American dollars. I have no idea how much money I spent. I’ll think about that tomorrow.

The End

Second Verse, Exciting Like the First

2007-06-11T08:58:00.000-07:00

If you are here, you are looking for the accounts of my travels in Europe. As of this date, I have had one trip and that to the United Kingdom of Great Britain in the summer of 2006. I am now announcing that a second chapter of "Cheesehead on the Move" will appear next fall after I write up my adventures in Paris and London in the summer of 2008. I will help chaperone another group of students and adults from Evansville High School. It promises to be a bigger group going to wonderful places in France and the U.K. Stay tuned, travel lovers!

Part 1---Cheesehead on the Move---the U.K.

2006-11-05T11:51:00.000-08:00

Cheesehead in the UK; a Sherlockian’s Story
by Gayle Lange Puhl

“Pray sit down and tell me all about it, Dr. Watson,” said she.
The Sign of Four

It all started in April of 2005. I saw some posters taped to the corridor walls of Evansville High School in Evansville, WI, where I work as an education assistant. “The Ultimate Field Trip”, it began. There was mention of Dickens, Shakespeare, and Sir Walter Scott. I finally walked in the classroom of Bill H., head of the English department, and asked about it. He handed me a brochure.
It was a tour put together by EFTours, a travel company out of Boston, which had been conducting students all over Europe for 40 years. The trip would cover London, Warrick Castle, Shakespeare’s birthplace, the medieval city of Chester in Cheshire, the Lake District including William Wordsworth’s house, Edinburgh, Sir Walter Scott’s home, Hadrian’s Wall and York in Yorkshire. I was captivated.
All my life I had read American and English literature. Now here was an English Tour. My favorites included Agatha Christie, Charles Dickens, Jane Austin, Dorothy L. Sayers, The Father Brown stories, and of course, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his creations, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. I had been a Sherlock Holmes fan for over 40 years. On this trip, I looked forward to finding a Sherlock Holmes connection every day. Not to mention all the history I had read, from William the Conqueror thru Henry VIII, Mary Queen of Scotts, Elizabeth I, Winston Churchill and Princess Diana. Then there were the travel books by Paul Theroux and others. In addition, all the British TV on PBS I had seen, like Doctor Who, The Hitchhiker’s Guide, the domestic comedies, and Masterpiece Theater. My favorite rock ‘n’ roll group was the Beatles.
My grandmother’s family started in Cheshire, in a tiny town named Tilston. After three hundred years, they had established themselves in Yorkshire, from whence one branch had emigrated to the US in 1630. My grandmother was a direct descendent of that emigrant whose name was John Tillotson. Fate had spoken; this trip was foreordained. I had to go.
I returned the next day and signed up. I knew it would be a lot of money for me. I decided to save, earn a little extra, sell some possessions and redeem some saving bonds I had bought after my mother died and her estate was settled. I was sure it would be worth it, and I thought my mother would have approved of the trip.
Divorced, I had no one to answer to but myself. Even Gayla, my daughter, thought it would be good for me. She did get heartily sick of the joke I told about going on the trip. “I’ve got to have something to talk about with the other residents of the nursing home,” I said. Since I was a long time from any nursing home, this was funny.
The months passed quickly. I realized financial goals had to be met. To raise extra money, I asked a friend, John W., to sell some things on e-Bay for me. In addition, I designed, drew, printed and assembled a Sherlock Holmes calendar to sell. That took up the summer of 2005. The title was “If Watson Wrote for TV”. It contained fourteen original cartoons of Holmes and Watson covering the twelve months of 2006, plus a centerfold and the cover. Each month’s illustration was a picture from a story with a label linking it to a television show. The centerfold featured Holmes in an old-fashioned men’s bathing suit, all knobby knees and elbows, leaning over a tidal pool examining a jellyfish with his magnifying glass. That was from “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane.” The caption underneath identified the TV show as “Sherlock Holmes: Baywatch.” In total, I printed 56 copies and sold 50 in New York City, in Canada, and locally. I got mentions in the Baker Street Journal, the Canadian Holmes magazine, and on Chris Redmond’s website, http://www.sherlockian.net. I received orders from as far away as Texas and New Jersey, plus the bookshops in New York City and Toronto, Canada. After clearing expenses for the calendars and adding the e-Bay sales and other cartoons I drew, I covered my out-of-pocket expenses on the trip. I was satisfied.
As the travel date approached, I became concerned as to whether I could keep up with the kids on the tour. I started walking up and down the stairs at school, lost fifteen pounds, and in the spring of 2006, began walking to school and back home which was a total distance of 1.5 miles. It wasn’t really enough, but I was working at it. I made sure I had comfortable walking shoes, well broken in. I read books on travel and that was always one point emphasized. There would be no flip-flops or sandals for me! I worried about my diabetes but then found that Bill H. had diabetes too, so I felt encouraged. I didn’t take insulin. During the trip, I had excellent blood sugar numbers.

“Well, I have not made such a journey in years.”
The Three Garridebs

The weeks passed. We were to leave from the high school at 1:15 pm on June 21st, 2006. I had arranged to get the medications that I needed. I had packed my little red suitcase on wheels I got at Goodwill plus a duffle bag I had gotten from TV Guide as a free gift. It had lots of pockets. My purse was on a strap. My US money and my passport were in my carry pouch around my neck, along with my debit card.
My passport photo was the worse photo I had ever had taken. I discovered that I had to go to the County Clerk’s Office at the Courthouse to apply for a passport. It then came in the mail.
The day arrived. My daughter Gayla promised to water my Peace plant and collect the mail. She insisted that I shove some tootsie rolls into my luggage so I would have a source of sugar if I needed it. I pulled my black-brimmed hat on and we headed out.
We drove to the nearby high school building and joined the growing throng. Twenty-three people were going on the trip. Bill H., Dan C. and Jamie G. were chaperones. Jamie brought her daughter Hannah; Mindy R. brought her daughter Molly. I was the last adult. The rest were 16 girls and boys from the high school.
The kids were, Angela and Heather F., Jaime G., Lindsay H., Desirae L., Arron L., Elizabeth M., Eppie S., Leigh S., Jackie H., Brandon F., Parker J., Garret C., Myriah H., Marcus K., and Bethany S. The weather promised heat and sun. The bus showed up on schedule, photos were taken, and we were off!
After a couple of hours, we reached O’Hare Field, Chicago. O’Hare Field is the Midwest’s largest airport and has five terminals. We were left off at the International Terminal.
Chicago was where “Alexander Hamilton Garrideb” made money in the wheat pit. This imaginary character was supposed to have left his fortune to any three men with his last name standing in a row. It was a scam by Chicago native “Killer” Evans to lure Nathan Garrideb from his London room in the Sherlock Holmes adventure “The Three Garridebs”.
We stood in line to check our baggage onto BMI Flight BD705, Chicago to Manchester, UK. From there, we were scheduled to fly to Heathrow Airport in London. We were in plenty of time. Everyone had to take his or her shoes off at Security. After walking up to Gate M-16, I saw luggage being loaded on a plane just outside the window.
We waited for the announcement of our flight. Some of the kids staked out a stretch of carpet out of the traffic flow and passed the time playing cards. I talked to a nice older English woman who was returning to England after visiting her daughter in Sun Prairie, WI. She looked just like the description of Miss Marple in my Agatha Christie novels. I asked for the meanings of some unfamiliar English terms. I found out that clotted cream was a thick, rich butter.
Several other English travelers on a tour joined in the conversation. They talked a lot about the World’s Cup of European football, which was happening that month. The subject would return.
We were to leave at 6:30 pm, but mechanical problems delayed the plane. I went back down to the concourse to get a McDonald’s meal. I had to take off my shoes at Security again to get back to M-16. At 7:30 pm they delayed the plane again, I was glad I ate and took meds at 6:30 pm. The next announcement was that our flight was cancelled due to the mechanical problems. It was 8:30 pm.
Because of conventions, there were no hotel rooms in Chicago; within one half hour, there were no hotel rooms within 60 miles. BMI Airlines was willing to pay for transportation and rooms, but there were none to be had.
Later I found that the English friends I had made were bussed to the Pheasant Run Resort in St. Charles, IL. They arrived at the resort about 11:30 pm, finding the kitchen closed and only vending machine snacks and an offer of cold sandwiches for food.
BMI Airlines gave all of us still at the airport small square pillows and thin blue flannel blankets the size of bath towels. The blankets made me think that if they were washed just once they would end up the size of wash cloths.
Some of our group improvised. Mindy R. called her husband and he drove 120 miles down to O’Hare. He took her, Molly, Jamie G. and her daughter Hannah back to Evansville. One of the girls had an uncle who lived near O’Hare and he picked her up along with two of her friends and took them back to his apartment.
After reclaiming our luggage, that left Bill H., Dan C., the remaining students and me in the airport.
We discovered that BMI had to fly in another plane from the UK for us. It wouldn’t arrive until late afternoon Chicago time the next day. We could not camp on the carpeted floor of Gate M-16; we had to move down to the front doors of the International Terminal. Check-in of luggage would be at 11am the next day, June 22. There went our extra day in London. Now it was a 10-day trip.
We decided to stake out benches and floors to sleep on. The kids, the chaperones, and I decided it was not worth the time to go back to Evansville, so here we stayed. Nine or ten of the students selected a space under the escalators. They made a sort of cozy nest with the pillows and blankets issued by BMI and barricaded it off using their luggage. I think they ended up getting the most sleep of all. When the space began to close in on them, the boys got up and played hacky-sack by the phones. I put my red bandana over my eyes and finally dozed off. I woke at 2:15 am and again at 5:25. Normally I get up at 5:30 am, so at that point I just stayed up.
I was lucky to get 3 or 4 hours of rest. The airport lights burned all night. Flights came in at all hours. On the way out of the terminal, travel-weary air passengers tramped past our motley group draped over benches and huddled under the escalators. A recorded message kept intoning “Please do not leave your luggage unattended or the Chicago Police will blow it up” in multiple languages. All of that was not conducive to sleep.

“I’ve my own good reasons for leaving Chicago, and let that be enough for you.” The Valley of Fear

It became June 22. I took time to freshen up, snacked on a Rice Krispie bar and took my morning meds. Later as the students awoke, I found a restaurant and had a hot breakfast of cheese omelet on a croissant with orange juice. It was paid for by one of the food vouchers BMI had handed out the night before. All the kids were fine. I ended up with an extra breakfast voucher and I gave it to a fellow traveler stranded with two boys. She was returning to England for the first time in ten years. I spent some time talking with a few of the English travelers I had met the day before. We were all waiting for our new flight.
The weather was overcast and showery. I had not been on a plane for nearly 35 years and I wanted more reassuring weather.
I bought a little black carry-on bag at a duty-free shop. We checked our luggage in one more time at 11:00 am. It was a very long line. I complained at the check-in desk about the cancellation and received another food voucher. I decided to get some lunch before going through Security. I purchased a beef sandwich, chips and a drink.
I started through Security, took my shoes off, put my purse in the tub with the carry-on and the sandwich, and then started through the metal detector. Ooops!! I had forgotten to remove my money pouch from around my neck and more importantly, my medical I.D. disc. A female guard said, “Step to the side, please.” Darn that metal detector buzzer!
I was detained. I waited in a little side area. The guard was pleasant but professional. I told her about our cancellation and said, “I’m getting the full airport experience.” I held the diet soda in my hand as she asked me to stand. Then, explaining every step, she waved the wand over my body and patted me down. With the wand in her hand, the female security guard said, “If something goes off when I check this soda, I wouldn’t advise you to drink it.” “Yeah, heavy metals,” I joked. The drink passed muster.
My detention had lasted half an hour. By now it was 1:30 pm and I had not eaten anything since 9:30 am. My blood sugar had plunged into my socks. Clutching my bag, my lunch, and my drink I trudged up the concourse toward our gate. Everyone else had gone thru. I had never been this tired and the gate seemed miles away. I saw a porter pushing a wheelchair back down to Security. I asked if that wheelchair was busy. He turned it around and pushed me up to Gate M-16. I resolved to always eat on time after this, no matter what.
I got a seat and began to spread out everything in order to eat lunch. I turned to reach for something and kicked over my drink. I looked down at a big puddle of sugarless cola and ice cubes. It suddenly seemed to sum up the whole day. Other people and little kids were there so I didn’t swear. I got some paper towels and cleaned it up. My “Miss Marple” friend clucked sympathetically and poured a little soda into my cup. That and the sandwich helped me feel better.
At 5 pm we boarded the BMI plane. It was an Airbus. The seats were seven across with two aisles. I had a seat toward the back on the aisle. The seat was very narrow. I put the carry-on bag in the overhead and put my purse at my feet.
There was a LCD screen on the back of every seat. Among movies and TV shows on tape to view, I watched a little animation of the plane as it flew over Canada and the Atlantic Ocean past the islands of Greenland, Iceland, and Ireland.
I chose the curried chicken for dinner. Free alcohol was offered due to the flight cancellation, but I don’t drink. Everyone on board was very quiet when the plane took off, and then we relaxed. The plane flew into the East so it never got dark. We flew high over the cloud cover. I could see some of the students were sleeping. From my seat, I couldn’t see any of the adults in our group. I never got to sleep. When I got up to walk around and stretch my legs, I talked to the flight attendants at the back of the plane about the trip and my Tillotson relatives.

We had left the fertile country behind and beneath us.
The Hound of the Baskervilles

It became June 23rd. After a nice continental breakfast of rolls, butter, fruit, and milk on the plane, we landed in Manchester, the second largest city in the UK. We had been in the air six hours. At Manchester we never got outside the terminal. Because of the prior cancellation, before we could get on the connecting flight to London, we had to have our tickets checked again. I was impressed with a billboard on the wall that spun inside its frame so a different ad appeared every few minutes.
We moved thru more lines to Security. I rescued an Evansville sports jacket from the x-ray machine and restored it to its owner.
The plane to London’s Heathrow Airport was much smaller. Leigh S. had gotten her ticket mixed up because of the cancellation and her bags were missing. She was very upset. All I could think to do was give her a Tootsie Roll. Her luggage showed up at our London hotel later that day.
I looked out the plane’s window as we landed at Heathrow. It looked as big as Chicago’s O’Hare but the buildings appeared only two stories tall and were made of brick. These foreshadowed all the brick buildings that I would see in the UK.
Our group was met by Linda, who had been waiting two days for us to show up. She was to guide us to our hotel. We went outside and got on a tour bus that looked a lot like a Van Galder bus. Linda said that here they were called “coaches”. Van Galder is the local tour bus company based in our nearby Janesville, WI.
I had borrowed a camera from Joanne C. It was in the luggage compartment under the “coach”. I really regretted it during the forty-five minute drive into London. We passed hundreds of semi-detached houses. The English version of duplexes, they were the most popular style of housing in the UK. They were all built of brick with windows balanced on either side, a door either at each end or bunched in the middle, each a separate house. Door colors changed, window décor changed, sometimes the colors of the trim changed, yet it was one building with two homes in it. When the buildings looked alike but were lined up in rows, each sharing a common wall, those could have been houses or apartments.
Every place had a little garden, even if it was just some potted plants. I saw waving palm trees in pots on a roof. Some of the gardens were very elaborate with blooming flowers. I liked them. These were the people who supported a mystery series on BBC called “Rosemary & Thyme”, based on a couple of middle-aged female gardeners. I realized that truly we weren’t in Wisconsin anymore.
On our way to our destination we drove thru the London suburb of Notting Hill. Scenes of the movie of the same name, starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant, were filmed here and in Portabella Road. We passed the little bookshop used in the movie. It looked just the same, but Linda the guide said the original door had been removed and sold to someone in Japan.
Our hotel was near Paddington Station and north of Hyde Park in Norfolk Square. It was one of a long block of hotels all facing a center park called a garden. The garden was surrounded by fancy iron fencing. Across the greenery was another row of buildings like ours. They all were once expensive apartments when built over a hundred and thirty years ago. Then each apartment came with its own key to the garden. Now they were all converted into hotels.
Norfolk Square with its two identical blocks of buildings facing a central garden was one of the places put forth as a possible location for Dr. Watson’s surgery, established after he married Mary Morstan after “The Sign of Four”. The surgery would have been placed on the first floor with an apartment upstairs. Paddington Station was within easy walking distance. Perhaps Mrs. Watson cashed in those 6 pearls she still had at the end of “The Sign Of Four” to get her husband‘s practice off to an auspicious start at a genteel location.
Our tour director, Jim, was the guide Bill H. had requested last year. He was born and raised in London and had been a tour director for a long time, although he was only in his forties. He was knowledgeable and efficient and had a great smile. Right now, Jim was a man on a mission. We were burning daylight. We had one hour and fifteen minutes to shower, do our money exchange, eat lunch and meet back at the lobby to start the tour. I hardly saw my room. I showered, changed, walked up to Praed Street, got money from an ATM and found a lunch room. I ordered a “cheese and tom”, which turned out to be a melted cheese sandwich with a little tomato and lettuce on the side.

“What do you say to a ramble through London?”
The Resident Patient

Back at the hotel Jim walked us back up to Praed Street and into nearby Paddington Station of the Underground, called “the tube.” It was London’s subway system.
I never saw Paddington Bear. Each of us had been given a one-day pass to the tube. We filed thru automatic gates and gathered on the platform. The trains reminded me of the “eI” of Chicago. We boarded the Bakerloo Line to Embankment Station. I didn’t have my camera out when we stopped briefly at the Baker Street Station. The kids saw the Sherlock Holmes profile on the wall by the Baker Street sign. They yelled “Mrs. Puhl! Mrs. Puhl! Look at that! Take a picture!” That was the last time I got caught with my camera down.
We got off at Embankment Station near the Thames. Jim explained about the bombings of the East End during World War II. London blacked out every light it could, but the full moon shone on the reflective Thames and led the German bombers right up the river to England’s capital. We walked so fast I could not keep notes, but later I wrote down some of the places we saw.
We paused at the home of Ben Franklin. Franklin spent many years before the American Revolutionary War as a sort of product booster for the Colonies in London. He was a famous scientist and his invention of the lightening rod saved thousands of British buildings from fire. He was very popular in England then.
I hastened to follow everyone else down a side street (Craven Passage) and looked up. There was the Sherlock Holmes Pub and Restaurant! Everyone laughed. I screamed in shock and joy! The others took pictures of the exterior, with me in some of them, and I took pictures. Jim scheduled a little time in our tour for this; Bill H. set the whole thing up because of my long-time admiration of Holmes.
I went inside with Dan C. and Leigh S. We were directed upstairs. Lining the steps up to the second floor were framed playbills and photos of actors who had appeared in Sherlock Holmes plays, movies and TV shows. Upstairs part of the restaurant had more framed photos, a painting of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, etc., but the major attraction was the glass-walled display of Holmes’ study.
The collection was most complete. It was carefully gathered as a display for the Festival of Britain in 1951 and proved to be one of the most-visited shows of the Festival. In 1957, after a world tour, Whitbread and Company purchased it in its entirety.
The company set up the display behind glass walls in a building that had formerly been a pub called “The Northumberland Arms”. They renamed the restaurant “The Sherlock Holmes”. It was believed that this building was used by A. Conan Doyle as “The Northumberland Hotel” that figured so prominently in “The Hound of the Baskervilles” and “The Noble Bachelor.” The kids read “Hound” in English class. I toured the pub (the barmaid handled this excited Sherlockian very well) and bought some souvenirs. I came out with several menus and mugs and some great memories. The pub is across the street from the old Scotland Yard site on Northumberland Avenue.
We ended up back at the Embankment Station and took the tube to Charing Cross Station. Outside the big station doors was an elaborate monument that honored Eleanor of Castile, wife of King Edward I.
Their marriage was a happy and active one. Eleanor followed her husband on his Crusades and up and down England in wars against the Scots and the Welsh. She gave birth to the first Prince of Wales in Caernarvon Castle in Wales. Thus the Welsh were tricked into accepting a ruler who spoke neither English nor French.
Years later, after giving birth thirteen times, Eleanor of Castile died in Lincolnshire. Grief-stricken, Edward had her embalmed and brought her body back on a long, slow journey to London. Wherever the travelers rested, Edward erected a cross in memory of his wife. Thirteen crosses were raised, the last one in London at what is now known as Charing Cross. The name supposedly came from the French phrase “chere reine”; dear queen.
There was a fresh fruit stand set up right outside the entrance to the station.
Charing Cross Station was mentioned in nine of the Sherlock Holmes stories. I took a picture.
Next was Trafalgar Square. The National Gallery of Art and St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields Church stood along the edge. The column with the statue of Admiral Nelson, the naval hero, on top sat encased in scaffolding for repairs. A music video was being filmed at its foot and the music used was very loud. We walked to The Mall, with the Admiralty Arches at one end and Buckingham Palace at the other.
We saw Pall Mall, the street of exclusive British clubs, and Canada House, the Canadian Embassy. We saw Oscar Wilde’s monument and the Crimea memorial with a statue of Florence Nightingale. We saw many sights, including the German Embassy.
During World War II, the German Ambassador had been confined there. Adolph Hitler, in sunnier days, had given him a puppy sired by his own German shepherd, Blondi. Later, during the war, the puppy died and the German Ambassador buried it on Embassy grounds. The only grave within London is that of “Hitler’s dog”. The grave is clearly visible to tourists.
At Piccadilly Circus, I found the shady side of the statue Eros and sat down. Gradually it dawned on me that I was gazing at the Criterion Bar and Restaurant, next to the Criterion Theatre. It was at the Criterion Bar that young Stamford met up with Dr. Watson, an old friend who was looking for cheaper lodgings. Stamford took Watson to St. Bart’s’ Hospital and introduced him to Sherlock Holmes, who also wanted someone with whom to split the rent. Inside the bar a plaque hung on the wall commemorating these events. I got photos inside and out. After I told Bill H., Dan C and Jim about my find, Jim called me “Sherlock” the rest of the ten-day tour.
We went to Oxford Circle next, and went shopping. I bought souvenirs while some shopped at Lilywhite, a store famous for its sports clothes. Across the street I noticed in a store window that the mannequins were plumper than the mannequins in American store windows. They were dressed in lavender lingerie. Not exactly Victoria’s Secret, more like Victoria’s mother’s secret.
For supper we had curried rice and chicken at an Indian restaurant Jim took us to. Here we met the people from the Virginia school tour trip. After supper we broke up into groups. Some had tickets to the Shakespeare Globe Theatre and others went to the Millennium Eye, the world-famous Ferris wheel with a wonderful view of the city. The Eye had been featured, along with The Sherlock Holmes Museum in Baker Street, on one episode of the American TV show “The Amazing Race.”
I never walked, ran, climbed stairs or dashed thru traffic so much in my entire life. I decided to take my aching knees and feet back to the hotel. I took the tube back myself with one change at Notting Hill. On the way, I met a schoolgirl who had finished her last day of school. She proclaimed she was never going to wear a uniform again. She asked me how hot it got in Wisconsin. I answered sometimes 85º to 97º. She gave me a disbelieving look. I had forgotten to say Fahrenheit, not Centigrade.
At Paddington Station, I recognized the area and went to the ATM to get more money. An Englishman tried to ask me for directions. I said, “I’m sorry, I’m a stranger here myself.” I had always wanted to say that. My accent told him I could not help him. He practically apologized for asking. At the hotel, I overhauled my luggage and was in bed by 10:30 pm.

“…London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.”
Study in Scarlet

The next morning was June 24th. Now that I had gone to the ATM twice I should talk about the differences between US and UK money. Local merchants told me where to find ATM machines; most were built into the wall near a post office. They dispensed paper money after I went thru the normal procedures of pressing buttons just as I did in the United States. The money came in ten or twenty-pound notes. I never saw anything larger. Five-pound notes were more likely to come from change after a purchase. Everything else was coins. They ranged from a penny, two pence, five pence, ten pence, twenty pence, and fifty pence up to the one or two pound coins. Anything less then a pound was referred to as p. We valued our pounds at $2.00 each. Actually a pound was a little less, so using the $2.00 estimate helped me keep my spending within budget.
My traveling alarm clock, a Christmas gift from my daughter, worked well that morning and I watched the BBC News as I dressed. Our continental breakfast was a buffet of fruit, juices, milk, rolls, toast, butter, jams and marmalades, tomatoes and sliced ham. This was just what I ate. Later in the trip English hoteliers also served corn flakes, muesli, and some offered regular and chocolate croissants and muffins.
We gathered on the steps of the Norfolk Plaza Hotel after breakfast to board the coach the tour had chartered. A couple of the kids had overslept and kept us waiting. Jim was not amused. The cardinal rule on a tour was that you were never late. In Wisconsin we called it Vince Lombardi time. The famed Green Bay Packer Coach counted you late if you were not in your seat on the team bus fifteen minutes before it was scheduled to leave. These kids were too young to have heard of the Coach’s rule.
When we were in London two other EF Tour groups met us. The Virginia school group of ten had joined us for the first day’s dinner. Now the Oklahoma’s school group of ten joined us for the bus. The tour coach that we rode in the UK had seat belts and we were strongly encouraged to use them.
Today we started on Praed Street and headed toward Hyde Park. Along the street, I saw shops like “The Sussex Arms”, “The Sussex Fish Bar” and a Greek restaurant. We also saw a Subway, a KFC, and a McDonald’s. I didn’t count the Burger King places because that company had begun in England.
The iron rail fencing of Hyde Park gave artists the perfect prop for their canvases, all for sale. We passed Marble Arch, the site of the Tyburn Tree execution grounds of centuries past. It was also near the popular Speaker’s Corner.
Then it was on to a dazzling list of historic places, all of which I tried to scribble in my notebook. Park Lane – Dorchester Hotel - Ritz Hotel - St. James Palace - Piccadilly Street – Fortnum and Mason Headquarters (famous grocers’) – Haymarket Street – Texas Embassy Restaurant – National Gallery - Canadian House which is the Canadian embassy - Trafalgar Square with the fountains - St. Martin – in- the - Fields church where the Queen worshiped if she worshiped while in London - The Strand - West End Theatre - Savoy Hotel.
On the way we saw English taxis painted every color of the rainbow including black (one was bright pink), some covered with ads for plays and stores and cell phones, complete with dot.com addresses - St Clements’ Church with World War II shrapnel – Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub – Fleet Street – Downing Street – The Old Bailey - the streets twisting and curving – and on to St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Here we got off the coach and gathered by the statue of Queen Anne. She was the reigning monarch when the Cathedral was rebuilt between 1675 and 1710 after the Great London Fire of 1666. Below her statue, sitting in a chair with her noble robes spread around her, were figures that symbolized the English dominions. Very little was known about America at that time and the figure of the Native American wore an oriental turban.
Christopher Wren designed St. Paul’s and dozens of other churches and buildings, all needed after the fire.
Our special guide for St. Paul’s Cathedral made the whole experience wonderful. We saw Italian mosaics, coffered and barrel ceilings, marble columns, a black and white tile floor, black rood screens tipped with gold designs protecting the wooden carved Quire – I liked it all. I really liked the story of the Italian mosaic artist who put the face of his wife on all the angels on the ceilings.
St. Paul’s was built in the Baroque Style, which means a lot of embellishments and decorations. The tall stained glass windows were lovely. I liked the Whispering Gallery that edged the Great Dome. There were monuments to Admiral Nelson and the Duke of Wellington, England’s’ greatest military heroes.
Our guide told of the Cathedral’s history, including the dark days of World War II, when the area was heavily bombed and hundreds of volunteers patrolled the Cathedral every night to keep it from burning. They succeeded. We also toured the crypt below, which was hung with memorial plaques to many famous Englishmen. Winston Churchill’s funeral had been held in St. Paul’s, although his body was buried in his family’s plot in the country.
We came out of the Cathedral and back into the coach. Now the tour took us into The City of London. We passed many banks including the Bank of England, the “Old Lady of Threadneedle Street”. This area was where the Great Fire of 1666 started, burning the old half-timbered, thatched-roofed buildings of the city. As we moved on, we passed the Pudding Lane Monument to the fire.
On to Tower Bridge – London Bridge – past the Battleship Museum set by the Thames. English flags were hung all over for the World’s Cup. There was an egg-shaped new construction on the site of World War II bombings in the East End – it was a modern office building nicknamed “The Gherkin” because it looked a little like a pickle - our coach drove past the Tower of London – the Hung, Drawn and Quartered Pub near the scene of the public executions of traitors.
Our coach passed Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre – Blackfriars Bridge – Whitehall with Buckingham Palace in the distance – past The London Eye – Inner Temple – Middle Temple- Somerset House filled with art – over Waterloo Bridge – past the Savoy Hotel – the Embankment that runs next to the Thames - #10 Downing Street with black gates blocking off the cross street – many government offices housed in big buildings, each with its own marble-columned Palladian or Georgian facade – Big Ben – Parliament – Westminster Abbey- London Bobbies wearing Kevlar vests – past New Scotland Yard – The Albert Pub with a picture of Prince Albert hanging over the door - Westminster Cathedral – Victorian Station – the Royal Mews – and we arrived at Buckingham Palace.

“I was looking out for loiterers on the street, but I saw none.”
The Hound of the Baskervilles

We walked around the side of the Palace with a tall iron fence on our left. The cobblestones were starting to become annoying. There was a crowd in front of the gates of the Palace. Taking place was the second half of the Changing of the Guard Ceremony. Some of the people were leaving so we were able to get good spaces. I got photos of the Regimental Band marching out and the Guards marching in the forecourt. The weather was sunny and the multicultural crowds were cheerful and interested in the colorful activities.
Back on the bus we passed Samuel Pepys’ house and Cleopatra’s Needle, and this was where we broke for lunch. I had a deli sandwich in the Victoria Embankment Gardens, a park near the Needle, with Bill H. It came from Egypt (the Needle, not Mr. H.), during the Napoleonic Wars. As captured war loot, the stone obelisk was shipped to England, and then floated down the Thames to be sited on the river bank along with a pair of black sphinx. Just before the group started the walking tour, Bill H. and I ran across the street and snapped a couple of pictures.
The Charles Dickens walking tour began with the Dickens guide explaining that back before Dickens’ time, the Thames was a lot wider. Then, as now, people crossed the water in boats. He showed us a water gate of stone steps and an entrance arch that looked just like the one Shakespeare the character used to follow the girl in the movie “Shakespeare in Love”. Hey, I take my references where I can get them.
Dickens’ childhood workplace, the blacking factory, was gone now but had been near here. We stopped at the house where he had been taken when he became ill at the factory. It was a nice house. He lived in a crumbling tenement. He was faking respectability and never went inside, but he immortalized the boy that helped him, Bob Fagan, in a future book, “Oliver Twist”. The railings of the steps included iron snuffers for the flambeau torches used to guide the coaches and sedan chairs around London at night before street lighting became well established.
We walked past the Adelphi Theatre, one of Sherlock Holmes’ favorite places of entertainment. Nearby was the Lyceum Theatre where Holmes and Watson met the mysterious benefactor of Miss Mary Morstan, a meeting that began “The Sign of Four”.
The Dickens’ walk had a goodly share of sights, including a stop in a Dicksonian alley furnished with the original gaslight lanterns. We saw the Rules Restaurant and the Charles Dickens Coffee House. That was a hotel where he stayed when he was in London checking the galleys of his later books. Back then it had a different name.
Just past the Wellington Pub was Somerset House, originally a palace, which held government offices when Dickens’ father worked there. Now it was filled with art galleries. The plaza outside, with its statues and fountains, was in “Notting Hill” the movie, I think. The fountains became an ice rink in the winter. We dashed thru the building and down very old and worn stone staircases. Next we saw the Inner Temple where Pip from “Great Expectations” worked.
The Inner and Middle Temples were two of the four Inns of Court, where law offices had been established for centuries. They got their names from the nearby Temple Church, founded by the Knights Templar of “Da Vinci Code” fame.
We enjoyed the walk and our guide’s knowledge and his London stories. Jim next took us to Covent Garden near Bow Street. The police headquarters in Bow Street was where the London Police had their uncertain beginnings. Holmes and Watson unmasked Hugh Boone the beggar there in “The Man with the Twisted Lip”.
Our group was released for free time. The Virginia school group asked directions to the nearest Hard Rock Café, and then vanished. Muffled yelps of “Burgers and pizza!” drifted off behind them. Leigh S. and I walked around looking for an ATM; she then joined some of the kids at the Punch and Judy Pub. I needed to sit down. I bought a seat at the outdoor Fuel Café by purchasing a snack and a diet Pepsi. I needed both. It was lovely to rest while watching the facade of St. Paul’s Church, which fronted the original Covent Garden Plaza. Its steps were used by the street performers as a backdrop for their show. The jugglers and magicians were almost hidden behind a half-circle of tourists. The same columns and steps were used in scenes of the musical “My Fair Lady”.
We all joined up together again and had a brisk walk thru Soho’s Chinatown to get to our fish ‘n’ chips restaurant for dinner. I saw bronzed-colored ducks hanging in butcher shop windows, Chinese signs on store fronts, apothecary jars filled with herbs and mysterious powders lined up on shelves on the back walls of little hole-in-the-wall businesses and many more cobblestones. This part of London called Soho was where all the “action” was for the G.I.s during World War II. Soho prided itself on never shutting down during the bombings. Hookers and bars were on every street during the darkest days. Now the many theatres featured shows from big musicals like “Guys and Dolls” to the little drama we would see tonight.
We had delicious fish ‘n’ chips, with mushy peas, at the restaurant. I must admit that it was better than the Friday Night Fish Fry at Evansville’s Night Owl Restaurant, our own “pub”. After enjoying the meal, we walked to Fortune Theatre on Russell Street.
We had time so I dropped into the Opera Tavern on Catherine Street. I talked to a middle-aged couple about progressive schooling in England. She had had it, he had not. Progressive schooling sounded a lot like what we do at Evansville High all the time.
At the Fortune Theatre, we saw a thriller called “Woman in Black”. The play had only three cast members and one never spoke, only screamed. It was a ghost story, with a haunted man, a dead baby, and a cursed future. The seats we had were in the upper balcony and very cramped. The kids from the Virginia group sat behind us and kept talking and crackling candy wrappers until Dan C. turned around and told them to be quiet. Later one of that same group said, “I don’t like that man. He yelled at us.” Dan was right to do so; they were disruptive. The first actor came out and read his lines hesitantly; I really thought it was because of the noise. Our kids had been to so many concerts, plays and musicals in the Evansville High School Performing Arts Center that they were well-mannered on etiquette involving a live performance.
During intermission, several of us got up to stretch our legs. Bill H. mentioned that he needed more leg room. I found a stool behind the section where we sat. When the usher asked me to vacate it, I asked if I could stand at the back rail for more comfort. The usher offered me a seat in one of the unused boxes next to the stage. I called over Bill and we both ended up sitting in regular chairs just over the stage left exit. My legs and knees got a good stretch and rub and it helped a lot. The only strange thing was that everyone in the audience watched as we entered the box.
When we got outside after the performance, I got a shock. It was pitch black outside. Because of the really long mid-summer nights while we were in the UK, I hadn’t seen a black night sky since before I had left Evansville. The lights from the advertising signs and traffic, plus the glow from the surrounding buildings, were rather disorienting. It was hard to adjust in telling time. The United Kingdom was much closer to the Artic Circle than Wisconsin. Each day it did not get dark until well after nine o’clock pm and the sun rose around four-thirty in the morning.
The ride back to the hotel was a special one, on a red double-decker London bus. Most of the kids sat on the top; I had ridden double-deckers in Chicago so I sat down in the regular seats. I spent a little time talking to Jamie G.’s’ daughter, Hannah. I asked her about college and told her that if she did more traveling, not to wait too long. This was something best done while you were young, say, before your knees gave out.

“…it is a rambling old place and takes a good deal of looking after.”
The Musgrave Ritual

On the morning of June 25th we left London and headed for Warwick Castle. Our coach driver was Dave. He did this full-time for his bus company. He was a nice middle-aged man with white hair. He had a very tolerant personality which was an asset with this group.
Warrick Castle was built and owned for centuries by the Dukes of Warrick. It had been first built as a motte and bailey fortification by William the Conqueror. Over time it was expanded and improved by several families of noblemen. One Duke, “Richard the Kingmaker”, married his daughters into the royal family and played an important role in the English monarchy.
It was now owned by Madame Tussaud, the famous waxworks company. The castle had been modified into “Britain’s Greatest Medieval Experience.” I called it a sort of “Six Flags over Camelot.” The rides weren’t roller coasters; they were a trip to the dungeons and a Ghost Tour. There were jousting, falconry and archery demonstrations, along with peacocks, roses, and, of course, waxworks.
Jim gave us info on schools, wages, and other information of the area. As we drove, I saw a vine-covered house – the Queen’s airport - small field edged by trees – wood slat fences, no barbed wire. Hills like western Wisconsin, similar to the area around La Crosse. There were stone and brick buildings – highways like ours in the US, with overpasses and a narrow grass median, but of course the cars were on the other side of the road. I saw wooden sheds for livestock – no rough land; all was cultivated – modern machinery, with hay bales wrapped in green plastic. I saw no silos, but lots of round bales of various sizes – sheep – steers- cows. Streets of homes lined on terraces up a tall hill – unusual wire fencing behind the wood fences. I saw swans on a little clear lake - skydivers and a windsock marking a little airfield – a tiny footbridge over a stream.
Dan C. gave me a large Sherlock Holmes postcard, “Consulting Detective”, from the Sherlock Holmes Museum. He had found it at an Internet Café in London.
Our coach was passed by travel trailers pulled behind Land Rovers. A twisty, shady lane led up to Warrick Castle. We parked in a car park, walked up the hill and into the entrance courtyard. There we found a restaurant, food stalls, a gift shop and singing minstrels playing lutes. Originally this had been the stables.
The castle was very impressive. I took several photos and later bought postcards. It had everything a castle should have: towers, parapets, crenellations, arrow slits, curtain walls of stone, stairs, a moat, a portcullis, a Tudor Village just down the hill, formal gardens, peacocks, roses, hedges, a huge inner courtyard and that was before I entered the buildings.
I had read the biography of Jennie Jerome, Winston Churchill’s mother, and since the scenes depicting a “Victorian Weekend in 1897” included her, Winston and people mentioned in her story, I walked thru that. Madame Tussaud figures ranging from the ladies’ maid to the Prince of Wales (Victoria’s son Edward VII) were set amidst the very furniture and paintings of the Dukes of Warrick. I enjoyed that display of the Victorian Weekend Rooms.
I went thru the State Rooms. These included the Great Room with suits of armor, mounted animal heads, swords, and coats of arms up on the walls and cases full of ancient daggers and things. One clear glass case held the saddle of Elizabeth I. It was of an embroidered green fabric and was my favorite exhibit.
Against one wall of the Great Room were the figures of “Richard the Kingmaker” and his favorite house, both decked out in full battle armor. They looked like characters out of “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”. In fact, it was a visit to Warrick Castle that began that adventure in the first chapter.
Another interesting feature was waxworks figures of Henry VIII and his six wives. The waxworks were dressed in the clothing of the period and ranged around one of the drawing rooms. None of the wives looked happy.
There were rooms like the larder, the pantry, the kitchen, other workrooms and the laundry room. I admired the dining room. I walked past some bedrooms and found myself checking out the fireplace grates. They were like none I had ever seen.
Two older gentlemen were just ahead of me and I asked them a question about the grates. Of course, my accent immediately labeled me as “curious American tourist; non-threatening”, and they were very courteous. I explained that I didn’t have a fireplace and “the only grates I knew about were from the Sherlock Holmes stories”. They both smiled and the second man said his name was Holmes. This was unexpected. I got excited and asked to shake his hand. I asked if people had ever asked him if he was a relative and he said that he had heard that question a couple of times.
We walked thru a couple more rooms and down a twisty staircase. I said good-bye to the two gentlemen and went outside and sat awhile in the courtyard admiring the medieval architecture.
I looked up the restaurant back in the stables. I was torn between the “jacket potato” and the “cream tea”. I had read of cream teas in Agatha Christie’s novels and in E. F. Benson stories. “And to eat one in a castle!” I thought. I took a seat in a modified box stall and feasted on Earl Grey tea and a fruit scone (a sort of thick sweet biscuit studded with raisins), split and topped with strawberry jam along with a thick, rich, clarified butter (the cream). Tasty! I felt that I was doing a very British, middle-aged lady-like thing.
The plastic cover on the little tub of clotted cream was clean, so I saved it for a souvenir.

Holmes walked slowly and thoughtfully among the flower-plots and along the path before we entered the porch.
The Devil’s Foot

Back on the bus, everyone had different stories to tell about their visit to the Castle. Some had gone to the Peacock Garden, some went on the Ghost Tour, some visited the Dungeons and others had gone down to the charming village of Warrick. I told about shaking the hand of Mr. Holmes. Dan C. grinned.
Our drive was taking us through a rolling countryside of tiny fields, lots of trees, red roofed farmhouses, and wee villages. In Shottery, we drove to Anne Hathaway’s house. Anne married William Shakespeare and had his children. The cottage she grew up in was set in lovely gardens that contained every plant ever mentioned in Shakespeare’s works. It was a one and one half story yeoman’s home with two brick chimneys, of half-timbered Tudor- style construction and with a thatched roof. Thatched roofs were rare in England now. They were expensive to keep up and had to be watched carefully for fire. The entire roof had a fine wire mesh covering it to keep the birds from pecking it apart.
Inside were low ceilings, barely over six feet high, with black ceiling beams, white-washed plaster walls and original flagstones in the old kitchen that were set down by Anne Hathaway’s grandfather. An antique sideboard buffet was a showpiece. Huge hearths equipped with spits and kettles were displayed, along with an old wooden settle that was pointed out as a piece of furniture that may have been used by Anne and William. The upstairs had sloping ceilings and very small rooms. Curtained four-poster beds sat next to old chests.
A member of the Hathaway family had lived in the cottage up until the 1960’s. Then the National Trust acquired the property. The non-profit Trust purchased historic landmarks to maintain them for the benefit of the public.
Outside the lovely gardens were in full bloom. By the front door was a mock orange tree in flower. We walked around the gardens and enjoyed the lovely weather. In one corner of the grounds was a bower made of living willows. Jamie G. sat within the bower, pressed a button and listened to dramatic readings of Shakespearian sonnets.
Stratford–upon–Avon was the next stop for our coach. William Shakespeare’s Birthplace was right in the center of town. The Bard of Avon had lived from 1564 to 1616 and the fact of his existence had taken over everything. Every shop on Henley Street was set up to connect with Shakespeare. When a town had such a famous tourist attraction, it was economically inevitable.
I was reminded of my visit to Hannibal, MO. The original downtown of author “Mark Twain”, Samuel L. Clemens, was devoted to him, his written works and his life. There was a childhood home and an adjoining museum filled with the author’s manuscripts and other artifacts. Becky Thatcher’s Original Home was open for tourists across the street and names of Twain’s characters seemed stuck to every local business.
We started at a brick building next to the Birthplace. It was a museum with displays of the life and politics of Shakespeare’s time. There was a First Folio containing a collection of all his writings. There was an explanation of his will. Paintings of his contemporaries were hung on the walls. An exhibit on how the buildings of Shakespeare’s time were constructed was displayed. Other panels told of Elizabeth I and the acting troupes Shakespeare wrote for and famous actors of the time. There were even examples of the styles of gloves his father made.
The Birthplace had small rooms with low ceilings supported by black beams and door jams so old the wood was like iron. The walls were hung with painted linen wall coverings. The wide floorboards creaked as you walked from room to room. Glove making equipment, old wooden farm utensils, clothes chests, hand-made chairs and four-poster beds complete with wool-stuffed mattresses and embroidered bed hangings were on exhibit. In the room in which Shakespeare was born more panels of information were hung on the white plastered walls.
A large medieval window frame filled with tiny hand-blown panes of glass was mounted on the gable wall of the room Shakespeare was born in. Each square of glass was covered in scratches of the names and initials of ordinary tourists and the famous ones, like Sir Walter Scott. After all, this building had been a shrine for centuries.
I looked out of another medieval window and saw some of the kids walking below on Henley Street. There was only a thin strip of grass and shrubs between the Birthplace and the street. To get to the gardens in the back required going down a narrow staircase. I took several pictures of the house, gardens, and the street.
A few doors down the street stood a Tudor-style public library given by the famous Scottish millionaire Andrew Carnegie. He had emigrated from Scotland as a young boy. He grew up to make a pile of money in the steel business. He spent the latter part of his life endowing libraries and eating breakfast to the sound of skirling bagpipes in a castle in Scotland.
Dan Cobb walked the eight blocks along the River Avon to Holy Trinity Church where Shakespeare was buried. He took some pictures of Shakespeare’s grave marker and of the fine stained glass windows of the church. I shopped, buying some sugarless truffles in a sweet shop, a t-shirt and a big UK atlas at a bookstore. .

“Come, Watson, come”, he cried. “The game is afoot.”
The Abbey Grange

It was now four o’clock and the locals started to disappear. It was time for the England vs. Ecuador soccer match. England was still in the early games of the World’s Cup. Football (soccer) was enormously important right now in the U.K. It had been in the papers, on the news, and was common debate on the street. The matches were played in different cities in Germany and televised all over the world.
The pubs all flew the English flag, the cross of St. George. The Union Jack was not generally displayed in the UK like the Stars and Stripes in America. The Queen had her own flag, flown over each residence as she currently occupied it, but the Union Jack appeared over only a few governmental offices. It was not flown before individual homes and businesses like our flag in the USA. But the English colors, the red cross of St. George on a white background, came out all over during the World’s Cup.
I walked around with Bill H. and Dan C. to find a pub in which to watch the game. Jim was rooting for the English, so the bus was not scheduled to leave until after the match.
Several pubs were near the public fountain. The Victorians had built it; a big, turreted, stone block edifice bristling with arches, clocks and weathervanes which made it a good landmark to use while keeping one’s bearings. The pubs were crowded and noisy; the TV volume turned up to its highest level and the rooms filled with people who had not waited until four o’clock to sample the pub offerings.
Finally, in The Thatched Tavern (it was thatched) we found Jim and Dave the coach driver front of a wide screen color TV. We got some chairs next to them and watched the game. It was a very exciting match played in front of a very excited pub audience. Beckham scored the only goal and the pub exploded with ear-shattering cheering and clapping. England won by that goal and was set up to go on to the next round of the competition.
I knew very little about soccer so I finally compared the action to a basketball game. (Ball handed off between teammates moving toward the net or goal at the end of the rectangular field while the other team tries to steal it and move it back to score in the other net.) That helped me understand the action.
When I told that to Jim, he was horrified. Basketball was little-understood in England and football (soccer) was practically sacred. I felt a little hurt. Sure, I didn’t understand the finer points of the sport, but gosh, one didn’t have to understand cricket to get a cup of tea in the marquee.
We came out of the Thatched Pub and got back on the coach with the others and headed to the Mansion Hotel in Riddick. It was a large brick house that with additions made a sizable hotel. There was a small elevator to take you up and a wonderful curved staircase to bring you back down. In the sunroom off the bar, I watched an energetic magpie (a black and white crow-type bird) in the garden.
Dinner was notable for the dessert, “meringue ‘n’ sponge with raspberry sauce” (like a sponge cake layered with whipped cream and drizzled over with raspberry syrup). I sat with some of the Virginia group. One boy had traveled in China last year for three weeks. He found he couldn’t eat unfamiliar food. He lasted out the three weeks on baked chicken and plain rice. He couldn’t even eat the meringue ‘n’ sponge.
In my room’s bathroom was an unusually deep tub. It was very inviting for a hot soak but proved difficult in maneuvering in and out. I took my life and my dignity in my hands and got my hot soak. Clearly the issue of proper installation of grab bars had not yet been addressed in English hotels.

“You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed with their beauty.” The Copper Beeches

The next morning, June 26th, I overslept and got to the dining room with only twenty minutes to spare. I hadn’t unpacked much so I made the bus in time. I had now taken to consuming Tylenol and rubbing Icy Hot in my knees along with the sunscreen.
Cobblestones were one of the major features of English towns, followed closely by flagstones and crazy paving. With all the stone churches, granite castles, brick houses, slate roofs and dry-stone walls that filled the landscape, the United Kingdom so far had displayed much more texture than I expected.
Our coach headed northwest to the city of Chester in Cheshire. The trip took several hours and showed us some of the countryside. My impressions on the way - roads lined with trees – wild flowers – BP stations – walls of brick or wood around each house – houses of red brick or white-painted pebble-dash – red hip roofs – hedges in front of brick houses – iron fences with spikes and scrolling decorations along the tops – wooden slat fencing next to the highway – high rolling hills.
I saw small fields lined with trees that marked the borders – large long hay bales – farm houses neat and sturdy, but worn & grey in color – if a large barn it was brick or stone linked to other buildings by brick or stone walls – Power lines mounted on high towers – trees shielding the highway from the landscape. Every house seemed to have a fireplace, judging by the chimneys – brown wooden panels acted as sound barriers along the road.
Going around Birmingham we saw – factories – warehouses – scrap yards – fewer trees – building construction – stripping down and renovating old large buildings – houses all scruffy with old paint.
The city was being fixed up – high-class department stores opening – Cadbury Chocolates started here – music and the arts were getting stronger now – the motorway had multiple overpasses like Chicago near McCormack Place – graffiti on warehouses – the Industrial Revolution started here.
Dan C. talked to Jim the tour director about English rock stars living the high life in Los Angeles. Jim said one particular rock star did not sell out – had a modest house in L.A. I got the impression that English people seem to like their talented people making money and bringing fame and attention to the UK, but they didn’t like it at all if people over-consume, have a lot of possessions, foul the environment and strut about. I didn’t dare ask Jim what he thought about Elton John.
Jim’s father owned a car but neither he or his brothers and sisters owned one. I remembered that Jim lived in London with its’ excellent public transit system. He disapproved of teenagers having their own cars or cell phones and having their parents give them credit cards when the kids traveled. He said that if his nephew was ever given a credit card he would next be found in Hawaii. At this the bus grew very quiet.
Britain does have a public campaign to conserve its resources. In all of the land we covered, I never saw a paper towel in a public restroom. Twice there were roller towels, but otherwise it was always automatic hot air machines. There was a good supply of toilet paper, but the toilets didn’t always flush. This aroused cries of “Broken!” from our group. I watched this phenomenon for a couple of days and decided that the toilets were set to flush when there was a large enough “load” of paper, etc.
This may seem an odd topic, but toilets were the one constant we all saw in each area. They did not call them restrooms or bathrooms; they called them toilets or “loos”. This name comes from the cry “Guarde’- lou”, a French phrase which was shouted as medieval residents threw the contents of their chamber pots out of the windows each morning and night at regulated times.
Thankfully, it rained a lot and the contents supposedly washed away along the streets. Charles Dickens’ creation, “Jo, the street sweeper”, in “Bleak House” was a necessary member of the community. Also, Jo had to contend with the horses. Efficient sanitary sewer systems did not exist in the UK until the Victorian era.
More impressions – police cars in England checkered all over with contrasting colors – the hood, roof, sides, and trunk. Little brick two-arched bridge over a stream – red-brick church with tower next to red-brick village next to field of cows. Cattle grazed in fields of five to ten acres. Single arched pedestrian bridge over the six-land highway. No yellow traffic lines – tractor tire lines thru fields of grain - black and white cows walked over the highway on the pedestrian bridge overpass – tanks on milk trucks tilted up by the cab and down by the back, to drain by gravity. I saw metal out- buildings with patched tin roofs next to red-brick farmhouses.
We traveled thru Staffordshire near Stock-on-Trent. This area is a ceramic center, famous for its pottery and bone china manufacturing. Its goods are exported all over the world and are highly prized.
We drove thru Nantwich – pub named The Leopard with interesting sign – a brick semi-detached with a round gravel bed in front and a three-tiered fountain centered in it. There were little plots of ground in front of every house, protected by brick walls – some buildings were three stories tall (flats?).
Our coach passed the Red Lion Hotel – country churches with square towers – a canal. Travel by water on an extensive canal system that ran throughout the country moved most goods before the railroad and highway systems were developed.
Brick farmhouse with brick outbuildings – tree plantings along the roadside to hide the banks – no red stop signs, they use other methods I couldn’t decipher – and plenty of roundabouts, in the country and the towns.
Brick garden walls with brick arches set over the green-painted wooden gates – houses built very close to the road – stone walls next to roadways – garden sheds behind homes in carefully tended gardens – Light and dark green shrubs made a multi-colored hedge.
Small stone church with two towers and a crowded graveyard set right next to the road – new headstones and old, some Celtic crosses in stone – Trees arched over the two-lane road – beef cattle – walls bordering the road with gates leading into front yards filled with flowers.

“He’s our leading squire around here…and a very decent fellow, too.”
The Reigate Squires

The medieval town of Chester was first on the agenda for today. This was where a bit of my ancestry came into play. Chester was the major market town of the county of Chester. Twelve miles southeast of Chester lay the tiny town of Tilston, where the maternal side of my family got their last name after the Norman Invasion.
William the Conqueror gave land to faithful soldiers. Some went to my ancestor whose son married one of King Henry I’s granddaughters. An estate was established and a gatehouse still remains. There was a coat of arms and everything. After three hundred years the de Tilstons ran thru the money and the land and one branch moved to Yorkshire.
After nearly three hundred years or so one John Tillotson (the name had been changed in Yorkshire, apparently the locals couldn’t pronounce de Tilston) immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in New England in 1630. One of his cousins was John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury during Queen Anne’s reign. My maternal grandmother was a direct descendant of John Tillotson the emigrant. She was a schoolteacher and would have approved of my trip.
The coach drove thru an arched gate in the medieval wall of Chester. We disembarked right on the main street near City Hall, now turned into a museum and art gallery. Chester had many, many half-timbered Elizabethan buildings and very old stone churches. Chester Cathedral was just off the main drag.
I found St. Peter’s Church, founded in 907. Repairs were underway on the flagstones just beneath the windows. I watched as two workmen using only hammers and chisels removed slabs of stone just outside the church steps. I thought that this church was old enough that my ancestors might have visited it on market days.
It was dark and cool inside. Half the nave had chairs set up for services and the other half was divided into sections filled by stands holding brochures and jumble items for sale. This did not detract from the stained glass windows that dated from the 1860’s and commemorated the life of Prince Albert. I liked the large glass jug chained to a pillar with a sign asking for donations for the church’s upkeep. I dropped a pound coin in it and bought a couple of booklets about Chester’s history and its churches. The nice Ladies’ Aid-type woman that sold them to me told me the history of St. Peter’s and a little about the town.
It began as a Catholic Church, as did all old churches in England. Henry VIII changed that when he broke with the Catholic Church and established the Church of England with himself as the head in the 1600’s. Then every church in the land had to become Church of England.
There were thirteen churches in Chester and by modern times St. Peter’s had become St. Peter’s Ecumenical Christian Centre at the Cross, Chester. It acted as an information clearing house for all the churches of Chester, besides holding its own services.
It was situated at the crossing of the four main streets of Chester, Eastgate, Northgate, Watergate and Bridge Streets. The structure was built on old Roman headquarters. The “gate” of the street names harked back to when the Vikings dropped in regularly in the first centuries after Christ’s birth. The sea was only a mile away.
The bell ropes hung down from the bell tower and the pulls were striped in red and white. In the 1820’s one of those bells was used to call out the Fire Brigade.
I told the lady about my ancestors coming from Tilston and immigrating to America. She looked up “Tilston” in the phone book and actually found one William Tilston still in Cheshire. I was delighted. I told this to Dan C. and Bill H. later and they asked, “Did you call him?”
I was surprised. The thought had never occurred to me. I said, “We left Cheshire six hundred years ago. Why would I call him now? He would think I was nuts!”
“Family is family,” replied Dan.
“That family connection is pretty thin,” I replied. “I’m just glad there’s someone still around here with the family name.”
I walked around and took some pictures of the amazing old buildings. Chester had more half-timbered Tutor-style buildings per square block than nearly any other place in England. It was a living city, too. The shopping was famous. The inhabitants were adaptable. There was a beautiful half-timbered building on one street with a McDonald’s installed on the ground floor.
Jim had recommended pasties, a kind of pie filled with meat, potatoes and turnips which was held in the hand and eaten, throwing the thick crust edge away. It was developed as a portable lunch for coal miners. I chickened out. I had a prawn and crispy bacon sandwich while sitting on a bench in the town square in front of the Shropshire Arms Pub. There were lots of references to the English soccer team hung about, flags and signs like “C’mon, England”. I fed my bread crumbs to the pigeons.
I wrote and mailed postcards to my sister Lore, my daughter Gayla and my friend Joanne. I used a red postal box like in all the PBS mystery stories.

My friend was an enthusiastic musician, being himself not only a very capable performer but a composer of no ordinary merit.
The Red Headed League

We left Chester after lunch on route to Liverpool north of here. Impressions – passed a nuclear power plant – Jim told of Liverpool – River Dee ran into the River Mersey – Liverpool was the second largest city in UK – famous for the comedians and musicians that came from there – Great import–export city – shipping was big industry – from Liverpool 9,000,000 people emigrated between 1830 to 1930 to U.S., Australia, and points east. It handled nearly all the Irish traffic to the US – a working class city, always had been. The dock area was now undergoing a great renovation, converting old buildings into ritzy apartments.
We got a good look at the Mersey River and drove down by the Albert Docks. That was where the Beatles Experience Museum was located. We were left off with time of our own. The choices were many; the Beatles museum, the nearby Tate Britain museum, a maritime museum with info on the English slave trade, and shopping.
I went into the Beatle Experience. It told the complete story of the rise and dissolution of the Fab Four, starting with the boys learning their instruments and John Lennon in the Quarrymen. The panels on the walls and the audio tour told of how John, Paul, and George played in Germany with Stuart, who died. Just before they became famous they changed their drummer from Pete Best to Ringo Starr. He had to win some prize for being the luckiest man in show business.
Their later careers were told in great detail. I heard “My Bonnie” which was their first big hit. I had never heard it before. Their music played throughout the museum, accompanying the pictures, text, photos, actual mikes, instruments, costumes, re-creation of the Cavern nightclub, etc.
The last rooms were about the boys’ later lives. A pair of John Lennon’s granny glasses sat alone in a Plexiglas case. Pictures of Paul McCarthy’s Institute of Music that he founded in his old grammar school building were shown. I remembered when I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. I really liked this museum.
I walked around Albert Docks in back of the Beatles Experience. I found the small Tate Gallery, a branch of the big one in London. It was modern art in a refurbished warehouse. The first floor gallery had a multi-arched ceiling, grey aluminum A/C ducts, white plaster walls and a gray flagstone floor. Very stark. Paintings of colored stripes were mounted on the walls.
There was more modern art upstairs. A mannequin torso filled with old shaving brushes stood on a plinth. Simple lithographs of pizza and coffee cups hung on the walls. There was a plastic case which held a three-foot long black hot dog bun with a narrow black steel hot dog laid within.
Modern art is really not my style. I enjoy Impressionists, Post-impressionism, and Van Gogh. I stopped in the gift shop and talked to two teenage female clerks about the Art Institute of Chicago. They wanted to talk about the movie “The Blues Brothers”, made in Chicago, with the big scenes of all the police cars crashing.
I walked into a quiet teashop and bought a chocolate muffin for the bus. I talked to a South African lady who was standing in front of the Docks with a crowd of her own children and nephews and nieces. The kids were climbing all over an enormous anchor cemented into the plaza and I took a picture of them. So cute. Heather F. and her friends had gone shopping. She got a very attractive English scarf with a lion and St. George flag on it. It cost 8 pounds.
Liverpool was the scene of a mystery in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories. In “The Cardboard Box” the murderer met, married, murdered and mutilated the victim and her boyfriend in Liverpool and nearby New Brighton. Holmes investigated the case when a cardboard box filled with salt and containing two human ears was mailed to a respectable lady living near London. She was a relative of the unfortunate victim.
Jim took a group shot of us standing in front of the Beatles sign for the EFTours web site and we went off to Carlisle and the hotel and dinner.
Going up to the Lancaster area of the UK took us to the Lakes District, the great beauty spot of Britain. Impressions included dry- stone walls set up centuries ago around small fields that sloped up the hills – stone churches with stone bell towers with grey stone villages below – clumps of large trees and brush - fields climbed up hills edged with hedgerows – grey hills ahead – sheep and cattle in the same field- rounded hills topped with small forests. It started to look like a more populated Smokey Mountains.
Wind farms, graceful white modern blades revolving and generating electricity. Large rounded hills with no trees - old stone–walled fields at foot. Stone houses – stone barns – stone outbuildings – stone walls, all grey – green fields, dark green trees – black and white cows – white sheep – tiny stone bridge over a twisty creek – masses of white flowers on banks of roadway with wood slat fences and trees above. I saw that the landscape really was laid out like a patchwork quilt, like Robert Lewis Stevenson’s poem, “Land of Counterpane” that I read years ago in the book “A Child’s Garden of Verses”.
We arrived at the County Hotel in Carlisle, the capital of Cumbria. It was famous for its military history and the castle that once imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots. We got a brief chance for photos of the castle the next morning.
A word now on hotel rooms. It worked out in our group that at each hotel I had a single room. That was unexpected and very nice. In London, my Norfolk Plaza room was cozy, with two twin beds, a tiny shower with a single door on tracks right next to the sink. That meant I had to squeeze into it each time, but there was lots of hot water. I got water on the floor after every use but there were lovely little shampoos. Reddick had the deep tub but also lots of hot water. My Carlisle room was on the third floor. There was a tiny elevator for bags. I squeezed in with Eppie S. and our bags to go up. Narrow twisty halls I had come to expect. My room had sloping ceilings, one double bed, chairs tucked away under the eaves. The bathroom was notable for only tepid water. The room had an unused fireplace and a tiny closet.
Each room had a television set and an electric kettle with coffee and tea fixings. In London I watched some Coronation Street. The commercial for “Head-on, apply directly to the forehead!” was just as annoying in the UK as in Wisconsin. At Carlisle I watched a sketch comedy show. One scene involved a nanny from “the North” who was unintelligible to her new London employers. In every room I watched BBC Morning. The anchor people did quiet joking, much less frenzied than that of the NBC Today Show. The big news on TV was the kidnapping of two British soldiers in Palestine, the World’s Cup news, Aaron Spelling’s death, the heat, and preparations for Wimbledon’s tennis matches. Aaron Spelling produced the TV show “Dallas” which was very popular in the U.K. during the 1980’s.

“Wordsworth Road,” said my companion.
The Sign of Four

Breakfast was notable for the hot meal we were served. Along with the expected dry cereals, fruit, milk, muffins, toast, croissants, honey, jams, juices, coffee and tea, we found sliced meat, sausages, baked beans and scrambled eggs.
The buffet table was a-glitter with silver-plated chafing dishes with aromatic steam escaping from under the domed lids.
I had a vision of P. G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster loading up the old chinaware while fending off Aunt Agatha’s demand that he distribute the end-of-year prizes at the local grammar school.
I was particularly impressed with the scrambled eggs. They were nearly all gone and the bottom of the chafing dish was covered in a thin layer of water. The utensil used in serving the eggs was a small mesh scoop on a long silver handle. Any scrambled eggs I had ever seen were much dryer than those. They weren’t my mother’s scrambled eggs. Plus there was no ketchup. I took some extra sausages instead.
We boarded the coach to leave Carlisle. On the way out of town the coach passed a building whose second story windows were decorated with silhouettes of Sherlock Holmes and a sign advertising Holmesearch, a real estate agency. It was June 27th, a Monday.
Leigh S. and I also caught a quick glimpse of a small isolated shop with the intriguing sign “The Tardis” on it. So that’s what happened to Dr. Who!
We were on our way to Rydal Mount, William Wordsworth’s home. He was a famous Romantic poet. My favorite poem of his was “Lochinvar”.
Our cycle of wonderful weather cracked a little. This morning it was overcast and showery. It wasn’t the best weather to view lovely landscapes with mountains one thousand to three thousand feet high. We put on our jackets and kept our umbrellas handy.
Impressions – hills topped with trees – cultivated fields with trees or bushes bordering them – fields not big – ten or fifteen acres each – passed by a Royal Mail truck, bright red with the emblem of the Crown on the side in gold paint, carrying letters about the UK – some larger fields, some more cows, dry-stone fences – stone barns next to stone or brick farmhouses with brick walls all around. Farms were neat and prosperous – still some tin roofs on sheds – milk cows - some recently sheared sheep.
The sun came out!
There was an arched stone bridge that ran from the road’s verge into a field – land like a checkerboard – I was reminded of Lewis Carroll’s book “Alice through the Looking-glass” - wood slat fences – hills gradually getting bigger. I spied a sign for Penrith.
Jim gave out info on the area. Part of the Lake District was a National Park. A tarn was a large pond, a fell was a mountain. This area had the deepest lakes and valleys of England. Jim talked about the volcano history of the area. The Lakes District was the wettest part of England. Fog and rain were normal at least one-half of the time here, with frequent mists on the mountains. In the wintertime the tops and sides of the mountains were capped by snow. The first industry was stone axes made by Paleolithic people. The area was known for mining coal, graphite and slate, and for textiles and tourists. The early energy bar, a Kendall mint cake, was developed and made famous here.
My impressions – meandering dry-stone walls for fences – stakes and wire mesh protected dry-stone fences from the animals inside – tiny stone huts served as shelter for the sheep in pastures – dangerous cliffs and gorges sheep could fall over and into – the mountains increased – more sheep –“Far from the Maddening Crowd” country – went thru villages with twisty streets, narrow stone walls along roads topped with sharp stones set on edge – many bed-and-breakfasts places - cattle guards (or sheep guards) at field gates – chimney pots shaped like terra-cotta four-square crowns – ferns on the hillsides.
We pulled off the road at a lay-by for a photo opportunity at Lake Thirlmere and our daily group shot was taken there too. Each daily group shot went up on the EFTours Website so our friends and family back home could track us. Thirlmere was only one of the hundreds of lakes and tarns that were scattered throughout the Lakes District. It even had a little fenced-in path that led to an outlook available for better photo taking.
Roadsides had the steep gradients of the Wisconsin Dells, filled with trees and big ferns. This area was similar to the land around Chula Vista Resort in the Lake Delton area, with its trees and curving roads. The road builders had cut thru hard brown rock, leaving exposed faces. A little stream ran along the roadside like I had seen in the Smokey Mountains. The stream bed was full of rocks, the water gently shimmering in the sunlight. Thin waterfalls dropped from on high over ancient rocks.
The village of Grasemere was located just before William Wordsworth’s first home, Dove Cottage, and near Rydal Mount, his home after he married. Wordsworth lived from 1770 to 1850. In Dove Cottage, he lived with his sister Dorothy and wrote what some thought were his finest poems. After he married Mary and began a family, he and Dorothy and Mary moved to his new home, Rydal Mount. It was well named. There was a body of water named Rydal nearby and I swear this home was built on the top of a mountain.
Of course it wasn’t, but the walk up the hill to Wordsworth’s home was steep! It was paved in loose gravel and lined on the right side by a tall stone wall. There was a lower stone wall on the other side, both pierced by gates and driveways to private homes. The walls were spotted with lichen, moss and miniature ferns.
The Wordsworth house was owned by the original Wordsworth family. They frequently came down and stayed during weekends, so this was not a museum. Not all the contents were owned by William Wordsworth. Part of it was closed to the public.
Again there were nice gardens and a little gift shop. The old original part of the home was a yeoman’s cottage. Wordsworth had added to and improved the original property. It was all blended into a smooth whole. Each room had something to show of Wordsworth’s life. The dining room had embroidered chair seats worked by Mary, Dorothy Wordsworth and Wordsworth’s daughter Dora. The sitting room had a statue called “The Curious Child” about which Wordsworth had written a poem.
The library had a lovely bookcase filled with his books. I noticed knobs on panels next to the windows of the dining room. I pulled on a knob and unfolded a panel that would half-cover the adjacent window. I asked the guide what it was. She explained it was a shutter. I had never seen a shutter quite like this before. I suddenly realized that these shutters were quite likely similar to the ones mentioned in the poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas”. After the poet “heard such a clatter”, he “opened the shutters and threw up the sash” to discover St. Nicholas and his “eight tiny reindeer.”
Clement Moore wrote that poem for his children but I had never understood the “shutter” reference before.
Upstairs were the small bedrooms of Wordsworth and his wife and of Dorothy, his sister, who lived with them the balance of her life. She was a great support to her brother. There was an original manuscript written in his hand lying in a glass-topped case in his bedroom.
In the gift shop I didn’t notice a step and nearly ran into another visitor. No one was hurt, although I noticed that tourist moved silently but quickly away. The walk down the hill to our coach was much easier. A couple of homeowners stood in their gardens and watched as we tourists walked by. I noticed an old stone village church located next to the road by our coach.
It was lunch time. Ambleside was a nice little town nearby, built within the folds of the mountainside. A few of the kids and I ended up at the Ambleside Fellclimber Café. Some of the kids ordered fish and chips while I ordered a jacket potato with cheese on top and a glass of milk. I talked to a nice middle-aged lady about the area. While paying my check at the cash register, I bought a treat, a filled pastry called an Eccles cake, for later. It was like a large, filled cookie. The filling tasted like fig paste. I liked it, but it was a little crumbly.
The name “Eccles” kept nagging at my memory. Where had I seen it before? Then I remembered John Scott Eccles, the man who brought the problem of “Wisteria Lodge” to the attention of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
I walked around the corner after lunch and found a sweet shop housed in a former bank. I bought some shortbread and some marzipan. I looked into the local library and picked up a folder on joining the Cumberland Constabulary. In a small shop filled with incised slabs of flint I learned that many of the buildings in Ambleside were constructed of flint rock, the slabs piled up and held together by mortar. The flint souvenirs in the little shop were designed to be used as coasters or paper weights. There were quarries nearby that had been worked for centuries. Many of the houses in neighboring towns were also made of flint or of the local stone.

Her sharp, steel prow cut through the still river-water and sent two rolling waves to right and left of us.
The Sign of Four

We boarded a motor launch at Lake Windermere for our ride. The launch was similar to one of the tour boats on Lake Geneva, WI’s, Geneva Lake. Lake Geneva, an hour north of Chicago, and forty minutes east of Evansville, became a vacation spot for wealthy Chicagoans after the Civil War. Tycoon families like the Wrigleys and the Armours built lavish summer houses along the lakeside and sent their families up by rail to spend the warm months away from the heat of the Windy City. Over the years tour boats with running commentary on the local sights developed.
Lake Geneva also features the famous mail boat route each summer. A troop of mail carriers, usually comely college students, deliver the U.S. mail to boxes on the piers from a moving boat. Tourists ride along to see if the route can be completed without a carrier left behind or, worst yet, left swimming in the lake from a miscalculated grab at the departing boat.
All the rich people who built their summer houses here also planted tall pines to hide them from the tourists. Our launch featured no running commentary or mail deliveries. There were a couple of people in row boats fishing and many ducks and swans. I took pictures.
During our ride, I talked to a lady sitting behind me. I learned that this was a favorite area of Agatha Christie. When she “disappeared”, just before she divorced her first husband, she was found at a nearby hotel. The Lake Windermere area was also the home of Beatrix Potter who wrote and illustrated the Peter Rabbit stories.
In the middle of our ride to our destination, Burness–on–Windermere, I heard a low rumble. I looked up and there were two British jet planes blasting down the valley toward us. The noise was terrific! I was stunned. We watched the planes roar overhead and disappear back toward the direction of Ambleside. A few questions established that there was a military base near Carlisle and that the area over Lake Windermere was used for practice flying. This was not mentioned in the tourist brochures.
The boat stopped at Bowness–on–Windermere. A promenade, shops, and hotels were built up the slope from the lake’s edge. There were piers where rowboats could be rented. Also there were a quantity of ducks and swans preening for the tourists.
I walked on the pebbled shingle (beach) and took photos of the swans. I rested on a wooden bench along the promenade and talked to some middle-aged people who were from Glasgow.
The two couples had traveled to San Francisco, Las Vegas and New York. Next year they were going to Florida.
When I walked up the promenade I passed a blackboard with a great message on it. It read, “Our chef recommends a Lakeland Cream tea. A pot of tea for one served with a fruit scone filled with jam and lashings of cream.” I didn’t think anyone actually said “lashings of cream” outside of an E. F. Benson novel.
Sitting beside the sign were more Glasgow day-trippers. I snapped the sign and stopped to chat.
Glasgow was the city where Oscar Slater was accused and convicted of the murder of an elderly spinster. He appealed to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who investigated his case. Conan Doyle thought Slater was innocent. After Slater was released, he tried to contact Conan Doyle to thank him for trying to help him. The author thought Slater, with his muddy past and low associates, was unsavory and refused to meet him.
I discovered later that when Grenada Studios shot the Sherlock Holmes TV series with Jeremy Brett they used the Lake District for some Swiss mountain scenes in “The Adventure of Lady Francis Carfax”.
The launch took us back to Ambleside and we boarded the bus. Impressions – a monkey puzzle tree, complete with twisted branches and long seed pods, grew in front of a house in Ambleside, very Agatha Christie – a local landmark, the tiniest house in England - one room stacked another – maybe 10’ x 10’ – 20’ - made of slate and perched on a tiny arched bridge of slate over a stream in town – now used as an information center for the National Trust – was a probable inspiration for the children’s poem “There was an old lady who lived in a shoe.” Ambleside and Grasemere streets were very twisty and narrow, lined with stone walls protecting the gardens of homes built right up to the roadsides.
The towns’ streets were lined with shops and the streets went up and down, up and around. Between Ambleside and Grasemere were more trees and sheep, with beautiful and craggy mountains.
Grasemere had St. Oswald’s, the church where Wordsworth and his family were buried. It was a smallish stone church with a square bell tower, an enclosed family pew next to the pulpit, a baptismal font with a cover shaped like a pierced metal candle snuffer, and family memorials on the walls. It was established in the 900s by King Odo in honor of St. Oswald.
There was a quiet graveyard planted with old trees and spotted with ancient large, slab gravestones splotched with lichen and moss so the names and dates couldn’t easily be read. I saw a few Celtic crosses on square plinths.
Wordsworth’s family plot and the graves it contained were grouped together behind an iron railing next to an old yew tree reputedly planted by Wordsworth himself. A great lover of nature, as reflected in his poetry, Wordsworth had landscaped some of the graveyard and surrounding area himself. Wordsworth was laid to rest with his wife Mary on one side and his beloved sister Dorothy on the other. Behind him were his son and other family members.
Regaining the coach after this, I found William Wordsworth’s “daffodil” poem on a gift shop bag. The kids allowed me to read it aloud. It got a good response, with some murmurs of, “Mrs. Puhl knows how to read poetry.” I was gratified.
It was a three-hour drive to Edinburgh. Impressions – a slate farmhouse on a hill with ivy growing up its walls. Slate barns connected to each other by stone walls around the farmyard. The country flattening out - wire fences with wood slats put together – some hedges – smaller trees – skies full of clumpy, fluffy, huge clouds that revealed only thin streaks of blue sky. Grey and white masses piled up against each other overhead. It was 5 pm.
Inside the bus it was very quiet. Some people were trying to sleep. The buzz of iPods filled the air. I stretched out my legs and took off my shoes, but my feet and knees still hurt. I couldn’t get to sleep. Since that baked potato, I’d had only Skittles and some shortbread. I always carried bottled water.
We were going down a six-lane highway – a sign said “The North” – I drew the red curtains to block the setting sun – tall, long exposed slate roadsides showed how work crews carved though rocky hills to create the roads. The stony walls alternated with forests of pine mixed with wood slat fences. Lots of pine forests now, covering the hills.
At 6pm we stopped at a convenience store/gas station. I noticed that on the candy rack were bags of Jelly Babies, the favorite candy of the Beatles. I looked closely at them. When the Beatles had arrived in the USA back in the 1960s, they complained that the jelly beans the audiences threw at them were too hard. I now saw that Jelly Babies were like Gummy Bears, not like hard-shelled jelly beans at all.
Jamie G. stumbled off the curb as she was returning to the bus. She fell badly and injured her right ankle. Jim called for an ice pack and the local emergency people came. We continued onward in the coach but she was in pain and had to see a doctor. I always thought I would be the one to crash.
We entered Scotland. There were little cottages right next to the road. Far in the distance were tiny little churches with tiny little graveyards all made of tiny grey stones. Passing though a hamlet we passed the Gordon Arms Hotel – stone–girt fields were larger – clumps of trees – sheep – big rock formation – seedlings planted in rows told of the reforesting of hills – very sunny – hilly countryside – vine-covered houses – a wide valley dotted with buildings, farms, villages, a big city coming up.
Edging around Edinburgh, we crossed the Firth of Forth at South Queensferry on a long motor bridge. The unusual-looking bridge next to us was the first steel-built bridge in the world. Its cantilevered length carried trains and was opened in 1890.
Our destination, the Gantwhyean Hotel, was made of great stone blocks, located in the Scottish countryside and expanded from an old farmhouse. It was decorated with blue plaid carpets in the public areas and had several nice fireplaces.
Our supper had been ordered a couple of days before and we were given the choice of beef or fish. The beef turned out to be beef chunks in gravy with added mixed vegetables and small boiled potatoes, all topped with a separate baked puff pastry. It was very unfamiliar. Some of us had creative ways of handling the pastry. Some crumbled it over the entire dish, while one person picked it up and buttered it. I ate it all with a fork, deciding that the puff pastry was the “lid” of the dish. I should have ordered the fish. It was a lovely baked salmon.
My room was double-bedded with the nicest shower yet, but there was no A/C. or remote for my T.V. The hotel had two ghosts, a farmhand kicked to death in the stables and a daughter of the family. I didn’t hear her story, but there was a picture of her hanging by the dining room. She looked like she was about six years old.

From the central block rose the twin towers, ancient, crenellated, and pierced with many loopholes.
The Hound of the Baskervilles

The next morning was Wednesday, June 28th. Our hotel was near the town of Powmill. The TV news reported that German police had arrested unruly English soccer fans. That morning’s continental breakfast featured chocolate croissants, our first of this trip. None remained behind when we boarded the coach for Edinburgh.
More hills – trees - larger fields - sheep and cows - a quarry - motor overpasses over the highway, some with arched bridges next to them for use by the animals. Houses in new subdivisions in the U.K. were much of the same pattern – rectangle semi-detached homes made of red brick or white–painted pebble-dash with red hip roofs – grey roofs on farm buildings.
Masses of trees everywhere – outside of Edinburgh many houses had front yards that had been covered with brick or gravel – the brick easy to sweep clean – the gravel to provide parking. All yards were surrounded by walls. A car couldn’t be parked on the side of the road because the road was so narrow. I don’t understand how people could walk along the streets without being hit.
Next door, the front yard might be a grassy plot with two tiny flowerbeds planted in the center with blue blossoms. The hotels I saw appeared small, even the Edinburgh Holiday Inn. It looked to be as wide as the Grange Store on Main Street in Evansville, nearly half a long block, but stood several stories taller. The adjoining parking lot was also undersized.
The coach drove into Charlotte Square. It was a block-long park, called a garden, in the New Town part of Edinburgh. New Town was one of the first planned communities built in Edinburgh and was created in the years following 1767 when rich merchants built on the clean, airy plain north of Edinburgh’s Old Town. Edinburgh at the time was known as “Auld Reekie”, referring to the haze of coal smoke that hung over its chimney pots.
There was lots of Georgian architecture, very nice. Stone steps led up to doors with tall glass panels on either side and fanlights above, drawing rooms on the second floor, kitchens in the basement behind iron railings protecting steps down into clean-swept areas.
Each house in Charlotte Square, like Norfolk Square in London, boasted iron railings, scrubbed steps, and a key to the private garden in the center. The garden was large and decorated with statuary and many trees, shrubs and flower beds.
We met Roddy Robertson, our Edinburgh guide. He was about sixty, wore a tweed jacket and the full Scots regalia. That included a tweed jacket with epaulettes, a kilt in the Robertson plaid with a sporran, white knee socks with a special dagger, and brogan shoes. Robby also had a full head of snow-white hair and a fetching white beard and mustache. Of course, he had the Scottish brogue.
He was very funny, full of jokes about Americans. He had guided many Americans and claimed he could always spot them by their outstanding white, even teeth.
We stopped at the Charlotte Square home of the Scotland Prime Minister. It looked just like the other houses and there were no gates or guards. Robby said once he sent a girl from one of his tours out to knock on the door and the Prime Minister answered the knock himself. We saw some people in dark suits carrying briefcases standing on the steps.
We also stopped by Robert Lewis Stevenson’s home. I took a picture. It had a red painted door. Across the street in Charlotte Square was the tree on a tiny island in the garden’s pond that inspired the map of Treasure Island. Stevenson drew the map first and then wrote the book. His stepson had requested an adventure story “with no girls!” The sidewalks were paved with flagstones.
On the streets, we passed the Greyfriars Bobby Pub and a statue of the faithful little dog that stayed by its owner’s grave for twelve years. Disney made a movie about it.
The streets in Old Town were curvy and narrow as we ascended the old volcano that Edinburgh was built upon. We passed buildings constructed from medieval times to the past century, some with pizza parlors or clothing shops in the ground floors.
A steep narrow street bought us up to Edinburgh Castle. It stood on the top of a maze of streets which ran from the Castle on top of the extinct volcano down to Holyroodhouse at the other end of the volcanic ridge.
Robby told us an odd tale about Edinburgh. Since it was built originally as a fortress upon the extinct volcano, it was not surprising that the nearest water source was found far away down on the plain below. Steps were cut into volcanic rock to reach the water. Edinburgh had little room to expand because of the necessity to use the heights for defense. Consequently, wooden buildings occupied by the local population were built upwards as tall as twenty stories.
Water had to be carried by hand up all those hundreds of steps. The most desirable apartments became those of the lowest stories, because of the labor involved in water-hauling. The poorest lived on the penthouse floors, where the rents were the cheapest.
The bus stopped in the Esplanade, a wide open space, before the castle. The Esplanade was filled around the edges with temporary steel scaffolding and bleacher seats. In two days would be a Tattoo, a military show by the Scottish divisions of the British Army. It would be all swirling kilts, skirling bagpipes and marching around in formations. The Queen was expected to attend.
We started at the Castle’s arched entrance and climbed an inclined spiral up to the top. The entire atmosphere was stone, stone, stone. The walls were made of stone, the battlements and parapets were made of stone, and the Castle was built on an enormous stone. The spiral road was made of cobblestones, sized to the shape of large bricks, laid down on the sloping surface to the top. Where there were not cobblestones there were flints laid down to walk on. The rough surface was there to afford traction for the military mounts of the soldiers as they clattered up and down the way.
The barracks were made of stone. The Governor’s house was made of stone. The military prison was made of stone. The mess hall was made of stone. St. Margaret’s Chapel was built in the 12th century by King David and it was made of stone except for the stained glass windows.
The Scottish War Memorial for the dead of WWI was made of stone.
I went in and saw the lovely stained glass windows depicting the wounded and the dead. Red velvet-covered books with the names of the dead in them were ranged around the ledges of the first room. Beyond that was an apse lined with graphic brown friezes of representative figures of WWI soldiers. I saw the figure of a nurse in a cap and long dress and a man dressed in a fur-collared parka, carrying snow-shoes. Above them soared more windows filled with tiny bits of color. Over it all, hanging from the high domed ceiling, was a chandelier.
I left the War Memorial and crossed the square to the Palace. The Scottish Crown Jewels were on display in a large glass case in one room. They were very beautiful and consisted of a large silver-trimmed sword and scabbard, a golden scepter and a red-velvet and ermine-lined gold crown topped with a cross of pearls. There was also the Stone of Destiny, captured by the English and just returned after 700 years of captivity under the Coronation Throne in Westminster Cathedral. The walls of the room were hung with the many coats of arms of Scottish Kings and Queens.
Farther into the Palace was the room where Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to James the VI of Scotland, who became James I of England after both his mother and Queen Elizabeth I died. They all lived in the 1600s. It was large, paneled in wood painted green and with a little room off behind the fireplace where the Queen could speak privately with others without the servants listening in.
Down the passageway was a reception hall with an enormous white marble fireplace. Over the mantelpiece was a huge British coat of arms showing the three English lions, the Irish harp and the Scottish lion quartered in with the fleur d’lys of France. That showed how old it was. The English hadn’t claimed the throne of France for centuries. The room was being prepared as a reception room for the current Queen Elizabeth’s visit.

“I have one or two things which I would wish to do now that I am in town.”
The Speckled Band

I took a quick trip to the gift shop and we were back on the bus. Dave the driver drove us around the streets as Jim pointed out points of interest like “The Hub,” a church that had the city’s highest spire. We saw the Scott Memorial, a shrine to Sir Walter Scott. It showed a statue of Sir Walter with one of his dogs. It was made of dark stone with an elaborately pierced spire.
The coach parked near the new Scotland Parliament building. It was large, designed in the postmodern style, studded with yellow decorative pipes representing a Scottish hut, a winner of several architectural awards, and its roof collapsed last year.
It was right across the street from Holyroodhouse, the Edinburgh palace where Mary Queen of Scots and many other Scottish monarchs lived. Now Queen Elizabeth I stayed there when she was in town. She was expected that weekend for the Tattoo so it was closed to tourists.
Instead we went into the Holyroodhouse gift shop, which the Queen owned. The items bore the Queen’s copyright. You couldn’t get this stuff anywhere else. I got pens for my grandchildren and a tin of cookies for myself. I really bought it for the tin design.
We drove past Edinburgh University. Of course, that was the Sherlock Holmes connection.
Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh. His birthplace had been torn down, but a statue of Sherlock Holmes had been erected in the city to honor the author and his creation. Believe me, there were not many statues honoring Englishmen, real or imagined, in the Scottish capital.
Conan Doyle attended Edinburgh University Medical School where he met Dr. Joseph Bell, a great inspiration for Holmes. After he got his degree and studied in Germany Doyle went down to Portsmouth and set up a practice. Few came for treatment and he started to write fiction to earn some money. The rest is literary history.
We were left on Princes Street where all the good shopping was located. For lunch, I got a plate of vegetable soup and a crusty roll from a nearby pub on a side street.
Sitting behind me in the outdoor area of tables and chairs was a loud, rude man who talked continuously on his cell phone. He seemed to be arguing and laughing with his caller. The call lasted longer than it took me to finish my lunch. Believe me; the novelty of his accent wore off pretty quickly.
I hit the stores.
In a large wool store on Princes Street, I bought a Scottish wool wrap in the Ferguson plaid. That was a mixture of lavenders with a pink stripe. Back in Stratford–upon– Avon I had discovered that my Grandpa King, married to the former Ada Tillotson, had been of the clan McGregor. I couldn’t find anything to wear I could afford in McGregor, but I did get a refrigerator magnet in the McGregor plaid and showing the lion’s crest.
I bought two Scottish wool scarves in Royal Stuart plaid for myself and my sister. At the British department store, Marks and Spenser, I bought my son-in-law a striped blue tie. It came in a cardboard sleeve with instructions on how to tie three different knots. I got a Union Jack key ring for my friend Joanne, who loaned me her camera.
I found the Scottish National Gallery of Art. Outside there were several decorated fiberglass cows like the “Cows on Parade” display that Madison, WI had this summer. The cows were colorfully and fancifully painted and were to be sold to raise money for several children’s charities.
Inside the National Gallery of Art were many collections of paintings, sculpture and old furniture. I liked them, especially the paintings about Napoleon and the ones depicting Roman scenes. I particularly noted a Gainsborough, a Monet, a large John Singer Sargent, and a Degas. Also, there were plenty of places to sit. I saw Bill H. and Dan C. walking around and admiring everything.
After I finished with my tour of the Gallery, I walked back up Princes Street toward our meeting place. The north side of Princes Street was all shops and stores. The south side bordered a large park called Princes Street Gardens. It had lovely flower beds, walks, and even an outdoor stage where Shakespeare plays were performed during the summer. An iron railing ran along it on the street side and along the fence were arranged a series of long wooden benches with plaques dedicated to many people who had passed away, or to the Edinburgh public. One was even dedicated to Ludwig Von Beethoven by a modern admirer. Many people were sitting on them so I did too. They were very comfortable.
It was good to have the benches there, because the nearby bus stops were useless for resting. Each narrow bench inside the plastic boxes in the U.K. was topped with a smooth wooden board that sloped downward, providing a most uncomfortable seat. Sitting on a bench and watching the people in the bus stop shelter was part of the fun of the day. I also saw a number of school kids walking in groups, wearing their uniforms of white shirts, blue ties and blue pants for the boys and shirts, ties, and blue plaid skirts with a large safety pin for the girls. I wondered that they were still in school (although on a day trip to Edinburgh) at the end of June. I found out later that British schools didn’t let out until well into July.
All of us gathered at the end of the Gardens with the Castle looming overhead to the south. It was 5:45 pm and time for dinner. We walked to a Chinese restaurant. I ate very good sweet-and-sour chicken and delicious banana fritters. I love Chinese food.
Then we trudged to the top of the Royal Mile to the entrance of the Esplanade. Cobblestones were everywhere and my feet and knees were voicing their own opinions about this trip. The Evansville boys, as they had done innumerable times in the last few days, passed the time with a now well-worn and slightly flattened hacky-sack.
A police guard was there turning away tourists. She did let in a couple of men in chauffeured cars. I think it had something to do with the visit of the Queen on Friday.
Here we were met by a young man dressed in nineteenth century costume for our Witchery Tour. His assistant, a hooded, robed figure, went amongst us handing out small books full of tales of Edinburgh ghosts and witches. His character was introduced as a fire victim of one of Edinburgh’s many tragic fires. He then disappeared.
Our witchery tour guide was called Alexander Clapperton. Played by another actor, he was a deceased member of the criminal class who met his fate upon the scaffold. He was very funny. He led us thru courtyards and closes (very narrow alleyways) to tell tales of the murders, tortures, witches, and ugly deaths by plague in Edinburgh’s history.
Molly R. had red hair so he used her to illustrate his tales of extracting confessions from accused witches. I had never seen a real thumbscrew before. We were encouraged to cry “Witch! Witch!” as the old inhabitants did, crying for her death. She was really an American, so he let her go.
His assistant discarded his fire victim disguise (I spotted a black gym bag) and reappeared at intervals as a collector of plague victims’ bodies, an accused female witch, and a fierce Scottish warrior. He was very funny too, and had a hilarious way of saying “Thank Yeeewwww!” that had us in stitches.
Clapperton told about Edinburgh scandals, like the 18th century Deacon Brodie and his double life as a respectable craftsman by day and a burglar of rich homes by night. He told of the murderers Burke and Hare, who in the 1820’s smothered the old and weak and sold their fresh corpses to Dr. Knox, a professor of the University Medical School, for use as autopsy subjects. Back then a good cadaver was hard to find. The two actors made lots of jokes about Glasgow. After the tour, they posed for photos with the kids.
The Virginia group didn’t go on the tour. Instead, they went to the Edinburgh Hard Rock Café and came back with full stomachs and shopping bags loaded with t-shirts and souvenirs. If it wasn’t pizza or burgers it wasn’t food for some people.
We all climbed on the bus and it was back over the Firth of Forth Bridge to the hotel.
Jamie G. used a wheelchair to navigate Edinburgh Castle and later Jim the tour director took her to a doctors’ office. She came back with an Ace bandage on her ankle and good reports of Britain’s National Health System.
“In and out in an hour”, she said.

As we left the room, we heard his pen traveling shrilly over the foolscap.
The Six Napoleons

Today was Thursday, June 29th. We had chocolate croissants for breakfast again, along with the orange juice, toast, jams, honey, corn flakes, fruit, coffee and tea. We loaded the coach with our luggage and headed out to Abbotsford House, the home of Sir Walter Scott. He lived from 1771 to 1832. He wrote “Ivanhoe” and “Rob Roy” and many other novels based on Scottish legends and historical figures and filled with castles, knights, lovely ladies and chivalry. His books were so famous that he helped restore Scottish pride in the country’s heritage. He was a literary rock star. He even had his own monument in Edinburgh.
Impressions – more low-rolling hills – more red-roofed little towns – power line towers – clumps of trees and ferns on the roadside banks – larger fields with both cows and sheep in them – sheep grazing in pastures with tiny streams running thru them - multi-arched stone bridge arching away from the road into a field over a stream running parallel to the road – a grey-roofed one and one-half story farmhouse with grey stone walls with windows and corners trimmed in brown stone, called quoins, at the corners of that farmhouse – hill on one side – valley on the other with sheep, stone buildings, trees and walls – the fields sloping up and dotted with cows.
The roads, only two-laned, were very curvy and narrow. I was glad I was not driving. I didn’t even sit that close to the driver. We were on the wrong side of the road! If I had really looked, I would have been scared to death. I couldn’t see around the corners, what with all the foliage and the stone walls. Bus driver Dave did a fine job.
More impressions – vine-covered two-story stone house- trees edge road right up to vehicles – lots of use of quoins on buildings here – pebble-and-dash finish on buildings was grey, sometimes painted white – now in the Border Country just north of Yorkshire – house trim colors were muted greens and reds – I saw roads, sidewalks, walls bordering roads, houses, all stone with no greenery.
Gothic limestone Victorian village churches complete with buttresses, towers, spires, and tall pointed windows were everywhere.
We approached Abbotsford House, the home of Sir Walter Scott. He was born in Edinburgh, contracted polio when he was very young and sent to his grandparents’ home, here in the border country, to recover. This area is famous as the scene of many battles between England and Scotland centuries ago. Scott became a famous writer, world-renowned, writing about the battles and the people who waged them. In later life he took on the debts of his publisher when the publishing house crashed. He spent the rest of his life writing his way out of debt. He paid off the last ones just before he died. An admirable man.
Stone arches atop a brick wall led us up to his home. Scott had taken the royalties from his historical romances and built himself a miniature castle. It was filled with paneled rooms, coats of armor, mounted antlers, antique furniture, coats of arms of Scottish heroes, paintings of his friends and one of himself with his dogs. There were glass cases full of historical artifacts, including Rob Roy’s dagger, Mary Queen of Scots’ mother-of pearl crucifix she carried when she was beheaded and all sorts of swords and claymores. The ceiling of the Great Room was a replica of the one at Rosslyn Chapel (“Da Vinci Code” alert!) There was also a Catholic chapel.
We were ushered into a 2-tiered study with its own little room off to the side like the one I saw at Edinburgh Castle in Mary Queen of Scot’s apartment. Next was the library, both rooms stocked to the ceilings with bookshelves loaded with Sir Walter’s personal collection.
Many of the treasures of Abbotsford House were gifts from his friends and admirers. Everything was kept just as Scott left it after he died. One strange-looking animal skull on the wall was an upside-down head of a walrus. It will never be hung correctly because that is the way Sir Walter put it up.
Outside I could see the crenellated towers, stone walls with quoins at the windows and corners, sloping roofs and a gravel walk on the edge of the lawn that overlooked the River Tweed flowing pass the green lawn. There was even a ruined tower foundation where I found a seat and took some pictures.
The Sherlock Holmes connection was again with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Sir Walter Scott became famous and rich by writing historical novels harking back to knights and the age of chivalry. Sir Arthur was famous and rich from writing about Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger, the discoverer of “The Lost World”. But Sir Walter’s books were resounding successes and filled a great need of his time. Sir Arthur wrote historical novels like “Sir Nigel” and “The White Company” that he felt were his greatest works. But the world had grown more modern, and most other people didn’t agree. His historical novels flopped as the reading public clamored for more Sherlock Holmes adventures. It was a sad contrast for both men were industrious, creative, patriotic, best-selling authors.
In a village down the road from Abbotsford House I saw a lovely lacy stone church. We traveled several miles to Jedburgh Abbey, a ruin of an Augustine Abbey that was built on Roman foundations. It was a favorite spot of Sir Walter’s. After we took our own photos, another group shot was taken for the web site.
We drove past another hillside of trees, fields, fences and mountain. It was called “Scott’s View” and was such a favorite hiking spot of Sir Walter’s that his funeral procession paused here on the way to the graveyard.

“It is so old that nobody could fix its date.”
Shoscombe Old Place

We stopped next at the border of Scotland and England. There were two huge stones set up on either side of the road with Scotland painted in large letters on one side and England on the other. Lines of fluttering English flags decorated the area. A bagpiper in full clan costume stood by one of the stones and played. Jim the tour director called it a beauty spot, but I think he was referring to the sides of the stones that read England.
Impressions as we entered Northumberland and headed for Hadrian’s Wall - thousands of tall pine trees – a wide valley – low hills – lots of green. There was an abundance of green throughout the entire trip.
Hillsides full of sheep - stone walls around much larger fields – pasture land as seen through much of England and Scotland – clumps and rows of trees – small towns with red roofs dotted down the valley next to a little river – low stone walls running along the roadside – my first glimpse of a stile, looking like a wooden folding ladder set across a stone fence.
Hadrian’s Wall was built by Roman soldiers about the time of the first century. The Romans discovered that they couldn’t conquer the people who were known later as the Scots. They retreated south a few miles and built a stone Wall across the entire island at its narrowest spot. Forts were set up every few miles. That worked for about three centuries until Rome had enough troubles of its own and abandoned Britain.
Gradually the Wall and the forts fell into disrepair. People looted the sites for stones with which to build their own homes and farm buildings. About one hundred and fifty years ago educated men began a campaign to stop the dismantling of the forts and Wall and began to excavate and examine the ruins.
Now the statues of Mars and Venus and other gods the Romans soldiers worshipped are in museums and the Wall is mapped out and available for walking tours.
The section of Hadrian’s Wall we saw ran in broken strips across the fields. Some of it was covered with a layer of dirt and grass. In other places the stones were exposed, grey and weathered.
Housestead Fort was situated on the top a ridge and connected to the Wall at two places. The coach parked in a lot down by the road. We trudged up a steep, steep hill on a winding gravel path. It was a public walk on private land so we stuck to the path. Also, there were dozens of sheep that lived in the private pastures and that was another good reason to stay on the path. I think some of these sheep got a stipend from the National Trust. I swear I saw some of them posing for the tourists. I got an unusual souvenir by picking up clumps of raw wool caught on thistles near the path.
Half-way up the hill was a dry-stone wall and a wooden gate. I took a picture of it because that was the closest I had been to a dry-stone fence the entire trip.
Near the top of the hill was a stone-built farmstead. The barn housed farm equipment of the National Trust. The farmhouse was converted to a Wall museum and gift shop. The other gift shop and parking lot for cars and buses down at the bottom of the hill had been camouflaged with trees so that from the crest of the hill the vista for miles around looked as it did when the Romans were there.
I checked out the museum. Inside were information panels, shards of pottery and large standing idols evacuated from the old fort. A small scale model of the original fort was set out on a table.
Finally I made it to Housestead on the hilltop. Housestead Fort was a ruin of stones made by a wall encircling five acres in a rectangular shape with rounded corners. The corners are rounded because those were where some of the old towers were located. The fort also contained barracks, baths, latrines, kitchens, mess halls, granaries, the commander’s headquarters and other offices. Left and right down the Wall were smaller watchtowers. There was a water source along the Wall a short distance east from the fort.
Many of the people from our tour were visible walking among the ruins. They took pictures. A row of kids walked along the top stones of one edge. Strangers from the cars parked below also climbed among the ruins. Some of us were already starting down the hill.
After that very tough climb up to Housestead Fort, I sat on the edge of the fort on a pile of stones in the cheerful sunshine. The land was spread out before me and all I could hear was the soft bleating of sheep. I saw low rolling hills covered with yellow-green pastureland. I thought about the Roman soldiers left there by the Roman Empire with no orders to return south. They would have had to have stayed here and made new lives for themselves and their families, surrounded by nothing but rocks and sheep. Perfidious sheep that would pose for tourists. I knew it was time to head back to the bus.
I got there in good time. Everyone else was aboard except our own chaperones, Bill H. and Dan C. Jim signaled Dave the coach driver to fake pulling out when he saw those two headed for the bus. We did stop and picked them up. A good laugh was enjoyed by all.
Impressions – headed south thru Durham and Richmond – still many sheep but the land was flatter and one could see for miles – Durham has a valley with a river down the middle – houses on the hillsides – we drove over an auto bridge.
It was 6:30 pm. The bus was very quiet. Tomorrow was our last day of sightseeing. Then we would fly home on Saturday. I was so glad I wrote all this down. It was totally inadequate in describing our trip, but at least I tried and it would help me remember. Gosh, I had enjoyed this, even with all the walking and climbing steps and my poor knees and feet. I was so glad I did this. I shall have something to talk about in the nursing home, with photos to prove my tales.
Onward to the city of Wakefield and our hotel. Very large fields now, bordered with trees and hedges. The wire fences that protected the dry-stone walls were back. Gradually the stone fences disappeared. I began to see row crops (barley? wheat?). It was very flat, trees and more trees and more trees being planted.
Our hotel, the Chasley, was in Wakefield. The city was not much like the book (“Vicar of Wakefield”). Someone on the bus compared it to Janesville, WI (pop. 60,000) but with all the homes made of brick. The hotel was downtown and had such a tiny parking lot that Dave was forced to unload the bus and park it somewhere else. The boys were pressed into baggage handling.

A light streamed down the stairs, and an instant later the man who bore it was framed in the Gothic archway.
Shoscombe Old Place

The hotel had its good points, like an excellent continental breakfast of orange juice, corn flakes, chocolate muffins, croissants with honey and tea and in my room a remote for my TV set.
However there were some down points. The building was undergoing renovations and it showed. The elevator was stripped down to its essentials, gliding up and down with scraped walls and a bare spot where a mirror once hung. It held six people or six suitcases or a combination of both. It was the slowest elevator in captivity, but I was consoled by the “Otis” sign it carried in steel on the threshold. That meant its origins were American. Otis invented the modern elevator in New York City back in the 19th century.
Fortunately, I liked a hard bed and the window sills were plenty wide enough to hold my suitcases. There was lots of hot water in the tub/shower too, even if it dripped. That was fixed the next day.
Most of the complaints I heard about next morning concerned the loud party in the bar (birthday? wedding? England in the finals?) and the sound of church bells and garbage trucks beneath our windows that kept interrupting everyone’s sleep. There was so much noise I never even noticed the night club entrance beneath my window until the next day. Personally, I liked the church bells.
When I inquired later, I was told that the bar party was an awards night for the local insurance salesmen. Ah, those wild and crazy English guys!
The morning sun rose on Friday the 29th. On BBC Morning, the lead stories were the two solders kidnapped in Palestine and the heat. We on the tour had enjoyed perfect weather, except for the bits of rain, with temperatures of 76 to 78, but apparently England and Scotland was sweltering in the midst of a heat wave. That schoolgirl on the London tube had mentioned the heat. I had talked to coach driver Dave about global warming, which he believed in. TV reports of Wimbledon tennis match preparation talked of the steamy grounds and how the athletes had to practice indoors so they didn’t collapse of heat stroke. London was at about 83 degrees.
After breakfast, we boarded the coach for York. York was one of the oldest cities in Britain, founded by Vikings. After the Vikings were the Romans, then the Vikings came back, then the Normans showed up. Talk about a little something for everyone! We were promised a tour of York Minster, the oldest medieval church in Europe, a walking tour of the center of town, a trip to the York Castle Museum and free time to shop. I heard murmurs about the Hard Rock Café behind me, but I ignored them.
Our coach pulled up in front of the York Minster and we were met by a specialized guide. The ancient Gothic cathedral was huge, much larger than St. Paul’s in London, and most impressive. The building was constructed of buff-colored stone and decorated with many pointed arches, pinnacles, and much stone tracery, with statues of kings and saints mounted in outside niches, and finished off with carved wooden doors fourteen feet tall at the entrances.
Inside we stood in the middle of a vast nave. 4000 worshippers could fit inside this building. Marble columns the size of young sequoias supported the vaulted and groined ceilings that arched overhead. They stretched down the nave and across the transept, and continued into the chancel beyond. The entire place was longer than the length of the Evansville High School building.
Side chapels were guarded by iron screens and lit by votive candles. Elaborate stained glass windows let in the morning light, augmented by hanging globes arranged into chandeliers. The floors glowed with reflected light that bounced off the tiles and flagstones.
A stone screen covered with carved figures of kings and angels stood beneath the bell tower. A wooden hand-crafted fifty-six hundred pipe organ case was placed on the stone screen. The inside of the screen held the Quire with its enclosed pews and hand-carved wooden decorations. They gleamed with polish.
In the chancel at the far end was a large altar draped in a pale blue cloth embroidered with a golden sunburst. Behind it, hung on the wall beneath the huge ancient stained glass window was a reredo of hand-carved figures under a filigreed canopy of wood. The window above covered an acre in size and held some of the oldest medieval glass in existence.
Rows after rows of wooden chairs were set out for congregational use. They were cleverly designed to link together at the chair backs in a jig-saw manner.
Memorials and monuments lined the walls. Following the guide beside the wooden Quire, I glimpsed standing against the wall a large marble monument to a man with the last name of Musgrave. Of course, that was the Sherlock Holmes connection. In “The Musgrave Ritual”, Holmes spoke of the “the northern Musgraves” from which a cadet branch settled in western Sussex and whose descendant was at college with Holmes.
No written description could ever do the Minster justice. We spent time in the Chapterhouse, a large and beautiful circular room off the main portion of the church. It was used by the Dean and other clerics for meetings about the management of the Minster.
Soaring stained glass windows let in light. Under the windows were carved stone canopies over the ring of stone stalls, each marked with an official’s name. The stone canopies were notable for the many little faces and figures, happy or angry, scary or sad, humans or devils, angels and animals, which were carved on their down-jutting points. The faces were put there to scare away evil influences. The guide pointed out a tiny figure of the Madonna and Child overlooked by Oliver Cromwell’s troops when they came to “purify” the church of all “popish” signs in the 17th century.
Beneath our feet was an elaborate tile floor while over our heads was a magnificent domed ceiling featuring carved bosses set into the stonework.
The guide said, “Someone once asked why the priests would sit around the edge of the Chapterhouse on the stone seats, so far away from each other? Why couldn’t a large table be placed in the center and they sit around it to conduct Minster business?”
“So it was tried, but the large table and its chairs were soon taken away. It was discovered that seated around the table, not one could hear another. The acoustics wouldn’t allow it. The clerics went back to the ways of their wiser predecessors.”
Suddenly, Jim the tour director interrupted the special guide to speak sharply to some of the Virginia group who had been talking in the back.
He said that this tour was very educational and it had been paid for by them. If they were going to just keep talking about hamburgers and pizza at a time like this he invited them to leave now and rejoin the group at 6:30 pm. He was angry. Nobody left.
The Minster guide continued, telling us more about the history of York Minster. It was built on the ruins of the York Roman headquarters. It was added to and built bigger each century. Therefore it contained many different styles of architecture. A crazy person tried to burn it down in the early 1800s by piling all the hymnbooks together inside the wooden Quire and setting it on fire.
A passing boy saw the smoke and raised the alarm. The arsonist was clearly mad as a hatter and was swiftly sent to an insane asylum. Considering the accepted treatments for the insane at that time, it may have been kinder to have sent him to prison.
She told us how they excavated the foundations of the great tower of the Minster after extensive cracking of its walls. The workmen discovered that hundreds of years ago, the tower had been built on three columns of the original Roman headquarters.
But, the fourth corner of the tower rested on dirt. No wonder it was about to fall down! They installed a strong complete foundation and put one of the Roman columns on display in a little area across the street.
The guide pointed out more carved and painted bosses on another part of the Minister’s ceiling. These were more modern and had been designed by children. One was an astronaut!

“Ring for our boots, and tell them to order a cab.”
The Cardboard Box

After the Minster tour, we walked to a nearby authentic medieval street. Large show windows of many tiny panes bulged out of the ground floor walls next to low wooden doorways. Overhead, the second and third stories, made of timber bracing and plaster, were built out over the street until they nearly met the corresponding walls of the houses on the opposite side. It was called the Shambles and was where butchers of the Middle Ages killed and prepared meat for sale. The meat was then laid out on benches next to the shops’ front doors. People had to walk thru the blood and gore to pick out their families’ dinners. Rain was very welcomed in York.
Certain buildings in the ancient streets still had carved figures over the doors and at the corners of the half-timbered buildings. They were early shop signs, created when most people couldn’t read. Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, leaning on a pile of books designated a bookstore. We took a group picture of us for the website under a carving of a red devil that announced a print shop.
Printers’ devils were boys who helped apply the inks to the presses that produced books and newspapers. The black inks smeared easily and turned the boys “as black as the devil”. Hence the nickname.
We had one and one-half hours for lunch. I bought three T-shirts and used up all my cash. I found an ATM and got 30 pounds, about $60.00. I found the York outdoor market and looked around. It sold everything from old books and toys to fresh fish and vegetables. There were a lot of clothing booths. I found an outdoor diner with tables and ordered a “chicken burger with salad.” That was a lightly breaded chicken breast with mayo on a bun with lettuce and tomato.
I asked a middle-aged woman if I could share her table. She agreed and told me her name was Pam. She said it softly but it sounded harsh in my Midwestern accent. She was in for the day from Leeds. Bill H., his lunch in hand, found me and I introduced him to Pam. We ate together and talked of all the places our tour had taken us.
We met up with Jim the tour director after lunch. We walked around the old city wall that partly encircled the Minster. From the old City gates some of us walked to the York Castle Museum, a unique place constructed out of two discontinued prisons across the street from the ruined Clifford’s Tower. Clifford’s Tower was a fortification first authorized by William the Conqueror. On the way I saw a pub sign for the Hansom Cab pub. On the sign, a man in an Inverness coat and a deerstalker cap was hailing a hansom cab. I got a quick photo.
The Victorian Rooms within the Museum were laid out as reconstructed typical 19th century streets. They connected to the old York debtor’s prison next door, former residence of the infamous highwayman, Dick Turpin, of the 17th century.
It reminded me of the Streets of Yesterday at the House on the Rock attraction near Spring Green, WI, but this was twenty times better. Everything was authentic, everything was organized and everything was presented in a clear and informative manner. The displays covered items from Victoria’s time, the 1830s, to the 1950s.
Cobblestones covered the street where a hansom cab, complete with horse, waited for passengers. Fully equipped shops lined the street and exhibit cases in other rooms displayed baby layettes, Victorian fashions and old-fashioned coffins. Another cobblestone street was occupied by the full rig of a Victorian horse-drawn glass-walled hearse. One case displayed popular toys and another showed off nearly one hundred years’ worth of bathing suits.
Every aspect of life was covered. I became fascinated with a display of cooking utensils and stoves.
It started with the spits and kettles of the old enormous fireplaces, like the ones I saw at Anne Hathaway’s cottage. Gradually improved iron implements were introduced for better cooking. One was a metal oven, shaped like a giant wall sconce, open in the front, which fit inside a small fireplace. A rectangular pan below held the Yorkshire pudding dough. A clockwork vertical spit held the roast in a downward direction and slowly turned it so the juices dripped into the Yorkshire pudding pan as the meat roasted over the coal heat below.
Later more features like hot water heaters and ovens were incorporated into large units that fit into the old huge fireplaces. Now boiling, baking, heating and roasting all happened at once during meal preparation.
The exhibit continued until a modern kitchen of the 1950s with a stove, sink and refrigerator stood in an exhibit, complete with built–in cabinets and a white painted dinette set laid for tea.
I walked thru the entire museum including the close confines of the debtors’ prison. Whitewashed cells with barred windows and narrow corridors made me think of Charles Dickens’ book, “Little Dorrit”.
Outside in the sunny weather, I bought an ice cream cone from a 1930’s ice cream truck. After resting and eating the cone, I walked back toward the market place.

“My Biblical knowledge is a trifle rusty, I fear…”
The Crooked Man

I didn’t know Woolworth’s stores still existed, so I went into the first one I found. I bought several items, including a lot of chocolate for my daughter and her kids and a paperback copy of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, printed by the Bloomsbury Publishing House. I picked up the edition marked Adult and saw there was a thinner volume next to it marked Children. I didn’t realize there were two different editions of the same story like that. Later I regretted not buying the child’s version.
My TV Guide bag had been falling apart for the second half of the trip. The seams had given way and the zipper broke. I had to put a belt around it leaving the last hotel.
Now, in Woolworth’s, I found a blue and red sport bag with England printed on one side and St. George’s cross printed on the end. It was the only one in stock and I bought it for 6 pounds. My other purchases fit inside and I carried it back to the open-air market.
I looked thru the booths again and talked to a young man dressed as a Roman soldier. He told me of the Roman history of York. I took his picture.
I also bought some raspberries and ate them sitting on a park bench. After that, I walked back to our meeting place. Jim was going to Evensong at York Minister and had invited any who wished to join him to meet together out front.
I sat on a bench across from the Minster and spoke to some people from New Zealand going home via Los Angeles. I also talked to an English former schoolteacher and his family who were in York for the celebration of his son’s graduation from Durham University. We made jokes about how with a PhD. in Latin and Greek he had a brilliant job future before him.
We also talked about British education, Columbine and 9/11. I told the father that not one of us had changed our minds about the trip after the Underground bombings in London last year.
Our tour group gathered and we went into York Minster for the Evensong service, which was regularly sung there beginning at 5:30 pm every day.
We sat inside the enclosed pews of the Quire. Carved wooden stalls edged all sides of this open room within the Minster. Each pew had a little door that led into it and sloping wooden ledges inside that held the Bibles, hymnbooks and orders of service ready for use. Down by the solid walls that supported the ledges were fat red plush footstools used as kneelers. The woodwork was dark and polished.
We were seated near the Church of England priests that conducted the service. They wore black cassocks and white clerical collars that hung down in front in two long white tabs. Each of the priests wore either a broad black or red sash around their middles. During the service they wore white surplices with lawn sleeves.
A mixed choir of men and girls from Norway sang several psalms. The small congregation sang a couple of hymns. The service lasted about forty-five minutes and was very solemn and very impressive. I was glad I saw it.
After that, our coach headed back to Wakefield to our hotel. Tomorrow we must be packed and ready to go to breakfast at 6:30 am. At 7:30 am the coach will leave for the city of Manchester where our groups will divide and fly home. The Oklahoma group and our group will go back to Chicago. The Virginia group will go on to Wales for three more days. How do you say “Hard Rock Café” in Welsh?
The weather had been balmy the entire trip with just a little rain and we could not have asked for better. Everyone we met had been friendly, kind, helpful and welcoming to us in their country. Except that one guy with the cell phone.

“We can talk it over more comfortably at home,” said he.
The Yellow Face

Saturday was July 1st. I repacked everything the night before so I was ready to go. Every one of my hotel rooms had had the same funny little wastebasket. It was about sixteen inches high, circular, with a lid connected to a tiny lever operated by foot. It never worked. In five different hotels, the lever never worked. I got to looking for it at each stop.
I stuffed this last one full with the cardboards and plastic wrappings of the new T-shirts I had bought in York. The new sport bag did hold more than the TV Guide bag, so I left the old bag on the bathroom floor next to the tiny trash can.
That first full morning in London, a few of us had been late for the tour bus. Now at the end of the tour everyone was on the coach fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. We had discovered Coach Lombardi time. We cheerfully left the Wakefield Chasley Hotel with all its renovations.
The sun was out and the air was cool. Last impressions of England – steps leading up the roadside bank to the top of the hill from the major highway – brick houses with chimneys at both ends next to others with one chimney in the middle of the roof - subdivisions with semi- detached houses all of the same pattern – (brick rectangles with hip roofs, two stories high with white trim around doors and windows) – radio and cell phone towers – how stone and brick weathered so attractively – slate roofs on some old houses – roadside banks of exposed rock and grass with set backs cut in lines parallel to traffic so they look like paths next to the highway – the blocky, cubist-like cut rocks of the roadsides near Manchester – dry-stone walls overhung with white flower bushes – vast rolling low brown hills called “The Downs” – “Wuthering Heights” country – crossed with foot paths – the Bronte sisters lived near here.
There were more sheep and cattle pastures - not a tree in sight – old Victorian factories with brick smokestacks and tall pointed windows like those of a Gothic Church – using wood to shelter animals, brick to shelter people and stone to build churches and castles – flint and slate uses – during our entire trip we never saw a wooden American-style home used to shelter people – multi-arched brick railway bridges going over the roadway – wild magpies with their black and white plumage – half-timbered buildings in York with storage or apartments upstairs – commercial buildings made of metal and glass looking out of place unless they had tall brick ground floors – odd looking little cars – trucks smaller than those in the U.S. with fabric side panels tied down.
Convenience stores where we bought cheap tabloids to read – they had racks back in the corners loaded with “girly” magazines – finding signs like “Slippery When Wet” and “Men” and “Women” toilet signs with the little figures on them were universal – saying “toilet” all the time instead of “bathroom” – the money (I brought examples home) – old factories made into shopping centers – cars that displayed “England” flags like we displayed “Green Bay Packers”, on staffs attached to the rear windows – long white or yellow license plates with big black letters – assigned to a driver for life – no vanity plates, so if a fortunate combination occurred the plate owner could sell it for big bucks – traffic support people and road workmen who wore bright yellow vests with grey reflective strips – cute little taxis with ads painted on them.
By now I had devised some travel tips of my own. Days before your trip begins choose everything you plan to pack. Either there will be no chance to do laundry on your trip, or you will have much better things to do. Decide if you want to wash certain items while gone. Rinse them out in your bathroom sink, squeeze them dry and hang them up. If the items don’t dry in ten hours, don’t pack them. Or at least don’t try to rinse them.
Take multiple cotton bandanas to use as washcloths, towels for the public loos, and to mop your brow. Wear your crew socks twice. Keep them dry.
Pack fewer shirts than you think you will need, and wear the souvenir shirts you will buy. Do the same for other items of clothing. Take two pairs of walking shoes and never wear flip-flops or sandals for sightseeing. You can sleep in shorts and a t-shirt.
Bring a bottle of something like Febreze and don’t be afraid to use it. Coach drivers like smaller suitcases because they are easier to tuck into places under the coach.
Manchester airport!
The British TV shows of Sherlock Holmes, starring Jeremy Brett, were shot at the Quay Street Studios of Granada Studios in Manchester. The elaborate set of Baker Street, complete with Georgian houses, fanlights, and cobblestones, was kept up for several years and served as a tourist attraction. It had been torn down only a few years ago.
We, seasoned travelers that we were, rushed through the International Terminal as fast as the lines would let us. We went through Security’s x-ray slick as a whistle with no mention of removing shoes. Our group boarded a big Airbus plane, flight BD705 and again I had an aisle seat.
Bill H. was seated beside me and some of the kids were near. Takeoff was old hat and we were soon served a dinner of chewy beef tips with mushy peas and boiled potatoes. What, no strange pasty lid? The salad was too bitter to eat but the chocolate ice cream was delicious. Again I turned down the alcohol.
Again the flight was at least six hours and I couldn’t get to sleep. Duty-free expensive watches and bottles of whisky were offered for sale by the plane’s crew. Bottles of water were handed out and toward the end of the flight a meal of fruit, a muffin, milk, tea or coffee, a bacon sandwich and a Kit-Kat bar was served.
I watched the little animated plane again as we crossed the Atlantic Ocean and part of Canada. I looked down as we circled O’Hare Field. As I looked down at the little suburbs by O’Hare Field, I suddenly I realized that I had not seen one bulbous-shaped municipal water tower in all of the UK.
We landed safely and disembarked down a long carpeted ramp into the International Terminal. It was July 1st. Our luggage appeared, except for Mariah H.’s. She was upset, but the bags appeared on her porch a few days later.
The Oklahoma group got on another plane to make the rest of their way home.
We found our Van Galder bus waiting for us outside the window of the area we slept in the first night when our flight was cancelled.
Bill H. promised to work to get some money back from BMI Airlines for our lost day.

“But come in. You must be weary, for you have had a long day.”
The Man with the Twisted Lip

On the bus I ate my bacon sandwich. Weekend traffic out of Chicago sent us on the “scenic route” home. That involved going thru Algonquin, Crystal Lake and Harvard, IL up to Walworth, Janesville and home. We planned to arrive back in Evansville about eleven o’clock pm English time. That would be five o’clock pm Wisconsin time.
It was a wonderful trip, but it was good to be home. Just when my feet stopped hurting, the trip ended!
I saw a wide open USA landscape very different than that of the United Kingdom. Before us spread fields of corn, lawns with no stone walls to hide them, red and white pennants at a Dodge car dealership, all different than what we had grown used to. It was all American.
Our drive home took us thru Harvard, IL, my birthplace. From Evansville to Cheshire back to Harvard, I really felt that I had completed some kind of mystic ancestral circle voyage.
I called out “I was born here!” as we went thru Harvard. Dan C. was looking out of the bus window at the shopping center and the convenience stores.
“You were born in a gas station?” he asked.
I pointed out the fiberglass cow on a plinth at the Five Corners and told Dan C. about Harvard’s Milk Day Celebration. Harvard calls itself “The Milk Capital of the World” and throws a heck of a party the first weekend of every June.
I saw miles of corn fields. I saw wooden red-painted barns with grey concrete silos next to white farmhouses. And I saw road construction. Yes, we were home. I saw the large brown wooden sign shaped like the state of Wisconsin with the legend “Wisconsin Welcomes You,” that was placed at the state line. We drove on to Walworth and Janesville.
I realized after seeing the wooden farmhouses here that in the American Mid-West there is a generosity, an expansive feel to these homes that was not as evident in the UK. Our added rooms, porches, decks and attached garages all speak of a need to grow, to improve, to build up a property, not to be constrained by the dry-stone walls set up by our ancestors hundreds of years ago. We like the vastness, the size, the sheer elbow room America gives us. We don’t want our vistas shortened or restricted, no matter how quaint or beautiful it makes the landscape appear. Britain is old and full of history, but the United States is young and full of promise. England was a nice place to visit but I didn’t want to live there.
Judy Garland in the “Wizard of Oz” movie was right: There is no place like home.
We reached the Evansville High School at 5:30 pm. It was the 4th of July weekend and my daughter Gayla, an Emergency Medical Technician, and her oldest son, Andrew, active in festivities in the park, knew they would be too busy to wait and greet me. They left my car in visitors’ parking by the school so I wouldn’t have to walk home. But I was so exhausted that I didn’t even recognize it. I got a hug and some good words from Bill H. and a ride home from Mindy R. Andrew brought my car home later.
I checked the mail and the plant, talked briefly to Gayla and my friend Joanne, and then I dropped, exhausted, into bed and didn’t get up for eleven hours. It would take me days to straighten out my sleep cycle.
I had to get my photos developed, write up my notes, and arrange my souvenirs into an easy-to-understand pack to show my family and friends.
I was glad to be home, but I wouldn’t have missed this trip for anything.

The End