Missives from the 6th Floor

Carlisle, and Scotland for Dinner

After consulting our map, we decided on Caerphilly Castle, another castle smack-in-the-middle of a city. Seriously, you'd think they could find better places for these things. Haven't they seen the movies? Castles are supposed to be out in the middle of no-where. Not surrounded by thriving towns.

In an effort to find a more suitable castle, we detoured to Beeston Castle, off a tiny road past a town, up on a craggy hill. Almost exactly what a castle is supposed to look like.

We made it to our B&B in time for the proprietress to send us back out, rushing to a hotel "just up the road" that would be the last place we'd be able to find dinner. that late at night (creeping up on 9pm).

We hadn't realized just how close we were to Scotland until we saw the "Scotland Welcomes You" sign on our way to dinner. We had another encounter with mediocre pub food, and went back to England to sleep.

Hadrians Wall - Romani ite domum

The next morning, after a full English breakfast, we set out for Carlisle Castle and explored it before heading to Birdoswald, a fort near the western end of Hadrian's Wall and Lanercost Priory.

Birdoswald was a great example of many of the things we saw, and places we explored. At a glance it was easy to miss the significance of the place, or the thing you were seeing. It wasn't until you thought about it for a moment - really let the thing get into your head...

Awesome really is the right word. Like so many things we saw on the trip, the remains of the wall, built to keep the "barbarians" out of the Roman empire in the first century AD, were awesome.

Edinburgh

We had set out that morning with the intent of heading to Glasgow that night, but at the last minute we decided to turn east and make Edinburgh our next destination. We found a hotel, punched in it's postcode, and crossed the border into Scotland once more.

We arrived at the hotel, checked in, and made the mistake of taking the car into town on a Friday night. After circling for what seemed like forever looking for parking, we finally found a spot to ditch the car while we found dinner. We wandered the town, though most things were closed or closing, and sketched out the next day.

Saturday was spent exploring the Edinburgh downtown; the market, Edinburgh Castle (another castle in the middle of a city - sheesh), the Royal Mile... We concluded the day with another another mostly disappointing meal in a pub (but good beer, always good beer) and made it back to the hotel and slipped off to sleep.

The morning would see us turning to the South, on an indirect route back to London.

South to Buckinham

Not wanting to repeat the driving marathon from Cardiff to Carlisle, we left Edinburgh in the morning, managed to end up in a small farmers market on the drive down through Scotland, where we procured various tarts and pies for breakfast, and made it to Lancaster Castle by mid-day.

We didn't initially realize that the castle is a working prison, so the sign at the front gate saying that the visitor center would re-open in a few months almost got us back in the car, but we decided to walk the perimeter at least, which led us to the entrance we were looking for.

Unfortunately, while the tour was excellent and the site both beautiful and fascinating, the use of the building as a working prison and court precluded photography inside.

We made it to our hotel fairly early, given our history, but town was still shut down. We decided to eat in the hotel for the first time on the trip based on the menu, and we weren't disappointed. The food was great, and the company turned out to be as well.

We ended up sitting at a table next to two guys who had ridden in on their motorcycles and were headed to a track day in the morning. They'd each had several pints (and a few more in the pub before dinner) and were quite pleasant to chat with. I learned a bit about what it takes to get a motorcycle endorsement in the UK (hint - it's significantly more expensive and exhaustive than in the states).

Bletchley

The next morning we made the short drive to Bletchley Park, which I expected to take a couple hours. I was keen to see the Enigma, and a reconstructed Bombe and Collossus, as well as see how the Brits memorialized Turing. I didn't think Dawnise would find the place particularly interesting.

My interest was largely, but not completely, professional. Computing, in a very real sense, was born at Bletchley - and that story has only really been told in the last 30 years. The cryptography is also interesting to me. And I wanted to go walk that ground, to get a sense of the place, where desperate times drove so many people to do extraordinary things.

As it turned out, it was a good thing we only planned to make Dover that night - about 3 hours away. We managed to get out of Bletchly in time to find a guest house in Dover on the drive, and Dawnise even managed to find us a launderette. We stopped at a market, bought some laundry soap, and washed everything that needed washing. The dryers gave you about 5 minutes of heat for .20p, so after running out of correct change, we dragged damp clothes back to the B&B, turning the whole room into a drying line.

The couple that owned the guest house made a couple recommendations of local spots to eat - and we took the one he characterized as "more of a restaurant." So of course it was another mediocre pub meal. Edible, but hardly notable.

The White Cliffs of Dover

Another full English Breakfast got us off to a good (meaty) start in the morning, we said farewell to our hosts and headed to Dover Castle.

Neither Dawnise nor I had really set out to make the trip about World War II, but when looking across the Channel towards the beaches of France, and realizing Hitler had guns that could shell the spot you're standing makes it hard not to think about.

Our timing also conspired against us a bit - there was a big VE Day parade (which we just missed seeing) while we were in Edinburgh, so the war, and it's end, was just sort of in the air.

Dover Castle played a significant role during the war, and we felt we couldn't be there and not see the the then-secret Tunnels in the cliffs, another tour which prohibited photography.

Driving In London

We left Dover in the mid afternoon, and told the GPS to take us to our last planned stop before returning the car - Abney Park Cemetery. We ended up arriving during peak traffic and waving off after finding no good place to ditch the car in what turned out to be a very busy London suburb.

Having told the GPS to avoid toll roads, we instructed it to take us to Heathrow, which it did, skirting the charge zone the whole way (we hope).

As we dropped off the car we took stock - over 1400 miles, three-ish tanks of petrol (at £1.20/litre), and only one wrong-way-on-a-one way. I had learned a lot (and quickly) about driving in the UK, and come to some interesting realizations.

Drivers in the UK seemed generally to be far more competent and capable than drivers in the US. To my surprise, my initial disdain for traffic cameras melted away over a few days - the speed limits seemed sensible, drivers understood how to stay left unless passing overtaking. Some choose to speed, but I just couldn't really find a reason that getting "caught on camera" was somehow less valid than being "caught on radar" by an officer. (More on the surveillance culture later.)

We saw previous few "smart cars" or hybrids. The average car was small, compared to those in America, and got much better fuel economy (as an example, our rental was averaging 45mpg, with a reasonable mix of city urban and highway extra-urban driving - a manual would have gotten even better mileage).

After dropping off the car, we caught their shuttle back to the terminal, and back to the Tube into central London for the last leg of the trip...

To Be Continued...