I arrived at Luton Airport Tuesday 7 July 2015.
I hadn't used that airport before, and I was a little surprised.
I mean, this airport is more fragmented than Gatwick and Stansted.
Europcar, however, chose to upgrade me to this fine Vauxhall Mokka,
as soon as I payed for the Premium Insurance ;-).
Thus well-equipped, I hurled myself into the British round-
about-traffic. It's quite a challenge..!
But after a lot of twists and turns I arrived at Blechley park,
situated just South of the town Milton Keynes
In this mansion, and in the many huts erected nearby, the
British Secret Service worked to crack the different Enigma
and Tunny codes the Nazis used throughout the 2nd WW.
(Actually this code technology was used by the Stasi/East
Germany another 15-20 years after the war)
To me the mix between this old Italian style mansion and the
groundbreaking engineering work of the Secret Service made
some rooms look like Theatre / decoration for a weird play.
Looking at the picture below, it seems, even math geaks and
geniouses like professsor Alan Turing have humour:
Although the British Government had to keep all the code-
breaking work a secret after the war, and later chose to accept
the conviction (gross indecency) of Alan Turing due to his
sexual orientation, I still feel grateful for the leadership of
Winston Churchill
From Blechley Park I drove on to my first B&B in
Cambridge.
What a charming place! A town neither too small nor too big.
It has plenty of open space, as in beautiful parks, canals and
town squares. It felt almost Venizian to me at times.
I also found the beautiful court yards and vast gardens of the
town's many colleges to be open and welcoming to tourists.
With this selfie snapped outside the Aromi Gelateria &
Café in the center of Cambridge (a great rendezvous-
point), I got back in the car and continued my roadtrip
North-East to York:
York is also a beautiful town.
It is home to an impressive cathedral, which is seconded only to
Canterbury Cathedral in greatness and importance; and seconded
only to the cathedral in Cologne when it comes to being the best
example of Gothic Church Architecture in Europe.
York also possesses the most frequently visited street in
Europe, The Shambles, where I stopped for a British lunch
(baked meat and ale :-)), and where I met the city guide and
good actor behind the Ghost Hunt Tour in the old streets of York.
I could have gone to the Viking Museum Jorvic, but being
a Dane myself, I found it more interesting to visit a place
more British to my mind, The National Railway Museum:
From the huge halls and the massive yet beautiful trains at that museum,
I went further up north to the small town of Hawick (pronounced 'Hoik'),
situated just across the Scottish border.
Hawick used to be - and to a large degree it still is - the center of the
Scottish wool-industry (though Lanark and Edinburgh also want to play along).
Think anything made of knitting and weaving.
People come to Hawick from all over Britain to buy their favourite
kashmir-, merino- and lambswool-clothes. The town museum and the daily
tours on one of the modern woolmill-factories give you good insight into
the past, present and the future of wool in GB.
Being the victim of a youth spent on a small local golf course, I had to
get a scotsblue and a burgundy sweater made of 100 percent kashmir
wool. It feels like wearing cat fur - except I'm the one purring when it
touches my skin :-).
From this little Scottish town, I went up to Scotland's cultural capitol,
Edinburgh
This very musical and young-hearted capitol of Scotland is built around
a huge castle placed upon a steep hill.
Walking around this stony and green town you need to loose yourself
in its many winding and maze-like streets and paths.
I loved the parks...
..and the Royal Botanical Garden, e.g. the Asian pond
..and the National Museum of Scotland..
..where you can dress like an old British gentleman..
..and have some of the good locally brewed ale
Coming from Denmark, where we've experienced a huge
growth in microbreweries during the last 15 years, I wasn't
particularly impressed with "the state of the beer" in Great
Britain. In supermarkets you can find good beer, but in
the pubs I visited along the way, all they could offer was a
single tab with excellent stuff from the Brewdog brewery.
The rest of the ales seemed rather weak and watery to my
Danish palate, I'm sorry to say.
I do, however, love the social atmosphere and the comfy dark leather
furniture in the British pubs. I was sitting in such a place watching
a tennis match when I noticed a teaser/commercial spot reminding
us all that The Open was being played this July on the old course
of the famous Royal and Ancient St. Andrews Golf Club.
So off I went around 6 o'clock in the morning on the first day,
Thursday 16 July. That way I could get ahead of the queue - of all
the other golf fans flocking to this small town on the Eastern coast
some 70 miles North of Edinburgh.
Ever since I began playing this Scottish "greastest game there will
ever be" at the age of ten, it's been a dream to visit the place
considered to be the home of golf.
Like any child mad with sports I looked for a hero among the world's
top players. Being a great lover of stability and gentlemanship
I picked the German player Bernhard Langer - and of course he was
still going strong at the 144th Open that I was very happy to visit
Just like The Open, my next destination came as a great surprise
for me. Up until then I didn't know anything about the town of Stirling,
placed in between and a little to the North of Edinburgh and Glasgow.
As it turned out I ended up in a newly built studio apartment at the
University of Stirling Campus. What a great place..! Within a radius of
500 meters this campus offered every type of sport that I could ever wish
for: golf, tennis, swimming, rowing, paths for biking and running and
training in the gym.
I don't know why, but it makes me happy to know that I've actually
played tennis on an indoor tennis court, where Andy Murray has
been practising until he became good enough to win The Wimbledon -
as the first Briton to do that in half a century.
Of course the local pay & play golf course was overlooked by a
castle, I mean, it's Scotland.
I practically ran from one type of sport to the other during the
two days I spend at The University of Stirling. I hope I will be
back for more of that great place in the future.
After this intermezzo of sports I started the descend from the
North and back down towards England again. My first stop was a
B&B in the town of Keswick, in The Lake District, where I guess
dogs were in fashion
The Lake District is a spectacular mountain-clad landscape in
North-West England. Although it was raining pretty bad when
I was there, it was amazing to drive through this district. To no
surprise this lush mountain area had a great influence upon the
English romantic poets, especially William Wordsworth, his sister
Dorothy and his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Being a teacher
of language and literature I had to visit Wordsworth's cottage
and garden
In the small shelter in the back of the garden there lay a guestbook,
meant for visitors who felt like writing a poem to this inspirational
place. A good idea!
From Keswick I began the drive further South to my next destination,
Kington, situated by the Southern Welsh border. On the way I stopped
for a meeting in the big city of Manchester, where I had set up a "blind
cultural exchange-date" with Joe Penketh. He was kind enough to give
me notes on my skills in written English, and he told me about the
cultural and historical development of this city - famous for its two great
football teams.
When I finally arrived at Kington later in the evening, I had been driving
for a total of six hours that day - and I was exhausted.
Luckily the B&B in Kington, Oxford Arms, turned out to be an old
crooked and charming inn with good hosts and a lovely atmosphere.
Actually Kington was just a one-day pitstop on my way to the
nearby Welsh town of books, Hay-on-Wye. So after another Full
English breakfast (with tea made from the British chlorine flavoured
tab-water :-/) ...
..I drove on to that place which is all about bookshops and bookcafées.
The thing I love about places that have a healthy book culture
is the mixture of waiting room, café, theatre and culture. Good
libraries and bookcafées know this. Those are arenas with a
perfect work-life balance; places where you can feel at home
while at the same time be reading books which connect you with
other humans through languages of knowledge and entertainment.
We all have our own individual taste in literature, so you can
picture your own favourite books lying there on the table before
you.
Later that day I went on to the town, which everybody seem
to agree is the most beautiful in Great Britain, namely Bath...
..so called because the only hot spring in England
was found in this place by the Romans many years
ago. As these pictures show, The Roman Bath Museum
erases the gap between the days of the Roman Empire
and the now. A must see, if you go there.
Bath is indeed a magical place. Everything from
the towns' architecture to its parks and canals and
accommodations were amazing. The ideal place
for a Summer holiday - when it isn't pouring down,
as it was on the day of my visit. But even in the dreary
atmosphere of rain and a grey sky all day, I only have
fond memories of that town.
In Bath I stayed at The Kennard Hotel which is hereby
recommended. A little expensive maybe, but worth
every penny if you're searching for a charming home
away from home, located in walking distance from the
town center.
The next stop on my three-week roadtrip was Oxford.
Well, in fact it was North West London, where my
friend, Elena, was hosting another inspirational workshop
that Saturday, from 2 o'clock pm.
So off I went with a 70 mile drive to the B&B in an
Oxfordian suburb, followed by a quick checkin, and
on to a busfair to the central station, where I had 15
minutes to catch my train to London Paddington.
But wow, was it worth it. The theme of this drama-based
workshop was "Moving from the I to the we"...
Consequently we finished this great three hour session, not with
a selfie but with a "wefie"
After this great social event, I took the train back to Oxford.
Before I went to sleep I prayed that I would wake up to one
Sunday without rain.
Alas - the British rain gods are cruel!
The dark grey shadow from the clouds were literally covering
this famous university town, turning daylight into a limbo of
marsh-like moisture. How appropriate that this fine piece of
architecture is called The Bridge of Sighs
When you're walking through the old streets of Oxford in bad
weather,
..you can always admire the design of British-style cars
Motor Corporation Ltd. (Austin & Morris)..
product of that longing. Just like the novel behind the movie
"The remains of the day" - featuring Anthony Hopkins and Emily
Thompson working as servants of the British upper class - a novel
by the Japanese writer and producer Kazuo Ishiguro. And off course
there were a lot of Japanese and Chinese tourists in Oxford, even
on a rainy Sunday.
My last stop, after returning the rented car at Luton Airport, was
London. I went to visit my friends living on Abbey Road in Stratford,
and on my final day, I had to revisit The Globe Theatre on The South Bank.
Standing at the finishing line of a fantastic roadtrip between the 7th
of July to the 28th of July 2015, two famous quotes come to mind:
"The world's a stage" by Shakespeare - a statement which hasn't
lost meaning in this age of Facebook and blogging, where we stage
ourselves in new ways. The other quote is: "To travel is to live" by
Hans Christian Andersen. It speaks for itself.
I guess this is what a funny look and quite a bit
of nostalgia looks like - as this roadtrip turns into
memories.
Thanks for your time!
