UK Trip 2017

We arranged a group of friends to join us on a narrowboat canal trip in England/Wales.  This is something that I had always planned to do someday, but was sort of keeping it in the background until I got old.  I guess I have now achieved that dubious distinction.

The core of the trip was a week on the Llangollen Canal.  That trip is summarized here.   This page is the Long family stuff before and after that narrowboat trip.

Three sets of people: Three different itineraries

It was fun having these different schedules all meet up in the middle, and then go our separate ways and have different adventures. We figured we had some downtime in the middle of our vacation, so booked ourselves solid for the rest of the time.

London

2017-06-24 London Day 1

We flew all night (a short night), arriving in London mid-morning.  Gatwick is a pleasant, and much cheaper airport than Heathrow.  We were useless at figuring out which way to go to find the train, but once on board, all was good.  The ride was pleasant and we could finally relax. We arrived in London, all prepared for our 15 minute walk to the Z-Hotel on Fleet St.  We took at least an hour, carrying or dragging full suitcases across London.  Hot and sweaty, looking like tourists.  The Z-Hotel was tiny and clean and the location was excellent.  I visited Covent Gardens while Sandy and Keiran had a short lie down.  Then, while everyone was still groggy from lack of sleep, we went to see Kinky Boots at the Adelphi Theater.  Really enjoyed it, and it was good enough to keep us awake.  When we booked this show a few months ago, I had been worried about that.

2017-06-25 London Day 2

We expected to spend this day relaxing on the Hop-On / Hop-Off bus.  Hopping off to see a sight, then getting back on, over and over again.  Day was a rush job.  Even though we had pre-purchased our HopOn bus tickets, which included the Tower of London, it wasn’t until we were on the bus that we discovered that we had to exchange them for real tickets at the base of the London Eye.  We ended up circling London twice, ran out of time and didn’t even use our free River Thames Boat Ride.  That said, the day was good and we achieved much: Lots of walking, HopOnBus, Hard Rock Cafe for lunch, Green Park, Tower of London, dinner at Wagamama,  Jack the Ripper evening walking tour, and finally took the Tube home in the dark.

2017-06-26 London Day 3

A walking day.  Just like the others I guess.  We walked to and through Covent Garden, then on up to the British Museum.  Amazing and unbelievable.  Keiran investigated on his own for a couple of hours while Sandy and I tried to hit the top 25 things to see.  Good variety, and a reasonable route through many of the nooks and crannies of the museum.   And we then hit Five Guys for a very north American style burger.  Continuing through Covent Garden where Sandy and Keiran made purchases at the Hotel Chocolat, a very upscale chocolate shop.  We made it just in time to our Harry Potter walking tour with Strawberry Fields.  In reality, London doesn’t have that much to do with the movies, but it was fun and interesting to  listen to our very enthusiastic guide.  Afterwards, we returned to Cecil Court, yet another one of the many inspirations for Diagon Alley and this time Keiran bought a fancy print of some wartime Spitfires.  A brief pause at our hotel, and then another LONG walk, this time to Brick Lane for some curry.  Street hawkers were intense, but Sandy held her ground and we ended up in the Brick Lane Brasserie House of Spice, which Sandy rembered some very positive reviews for.  Since we had already explored this area during our Jack the Ripper walking tours, we revisited a few of the spots, then caught the Tube home.  Long day.

2017-06-27 London Day 4

Sandy was desperate to spend more time in London, so we figured we would wander around a bit for the morning, and delay our arrival in Wroughton.  This was to cost us later.  Keiran decided to sleep in, so Sandy and I walked through Covent Garden and then explored Picadilly Circus.  We finally got to experience London rain and use our umbrellas.  We bought a few things at Fortnum & Mason, “the royal grocer for more than 150 years”.  Pretty fancy place, but they just recently lost their precious status.

Back to the hotel, grab Keiran and our luggage and start the walk to the train station.  Having walked much of London, we now knew that there was a City Thameslink, a short 5 minute walk from our hotel.   Bought our train tickets, missed the first train, but there was another 8 minutes later.  At Gatwick, we stepped out the door, picked up rental car and tried to fit our luggage in.  Very tight.  I got the GPS set up, figured out which side had the steering wheel and practiced shifting gear with my left hand, and then we were off, onto the M4/M2, heading west to Wiltshire.  In heavy traffic.  In the driving rain.  Good times.

2017-06-27 to 2017-06-30 Wiltshire

We now had 3 days in Wiltshire, visiting where my father grew up, and where I had visited my grandparents many times.  Stepping back in my family’s history, a 100 years or so.  We stayed in the Whitehart Wroughton, where my grandfather was born and grew up.  That is my great grandmother, Lydia in the doorway. She and David Long ran the pub in 1910.

When we arrived, we dropped our luggage into our rooms (gorgeous) and drove up to Barbury Castle in the drizzle.  Then we had dinner in the pub and went for an evening walk around Wroughton, visiting my grandparents house, which was just around the corner from the pub from 1930 until almost the early 1990’s.  I (and my family as it evolved) stayed with them frequently from my age 5 until they passed away.

In addition to my family history, Wiltshire lots to offer, some of it very old.  Over the next few days, we visited.  All of these places are only about an hour’s drive from Wroughton.

Barbury Castle:  Settled 2500 years ago.  Now a hill with a big ditch around it , mostly interesting because of its history.

Avebury Circle:  Built 5000+ years ago.  Very similar to Stonehenge. Stones aren’t as well-shaped but the circle and ditch was bigger.  Stones were probably damaged and split by locals over the ages, and used to build dwellings.  You can walk around and touch everything.

Silbury Hill:  Built about 4500 years ago.  When I was young, we used to climb to the top.  Not allowed even near the hill anymore.  🙁

West Kennet Long Barrow:  Used from 5000 to 4000 years ago.  You can actually walk into this!

Roman Baths in Bath: Hot springs first worshiped by the Celts about 900 B.C.  In 60 A.D. the Romans started building some very fancy baths and buildings over this hot spring.  After the Romans left, the place silted up and was buried and forgotten.  In the 12th, 16th and 18th centuries, various powerful people built new baths etc. on top of the old.  Excavations and restorations make it now possible to view the original Roman structures.

Salisbury Cathedral:  Construction completed in 1258.  Tallest church spire in the UK.  We did the “Tower Tour”, as fascinating clamber through the inside of the roofs, up into the spire, and then out on to three of the four little balconies, each about a foot wide.  The fourth one had some nesting Peregrine falcon’s which were not to be disturbed.

Stonehenge: The icon for prehistoric monuments.  Again, when I was young, you could walk up and touch the stones.  Alas, no longer.  Closest we were allowed was about 15 meters.  Still impressive and a must see.

On the way back from Stonehenge, we passed by Devizes for dinner (Cantina Maya, wonderful) .  We took a quick look at the Caen Hill Locks, just so that we could see what we would be getting into.  We also noted that you could do tours of the Wadworth Brewery, so we vowed to come back tomorrow and do it.

The next morning, the staff at the Whitehart told us that we had overstayed our welcome by a day.  It turns out that we should have moved on and gone north to Whitchurch the day before.  Luckily, there had been room for us for an additional night.  It also meant that we had to now start driving hard, right now.  The tour of the Wadworth Brewery was not going to happen.  We loaded up the car and took off.  A few wrong turns meant that we had to skip Telford Bridge as we were running out of time.  In the end, we made it with a few minutes to spare.

2017-06-30 to 2017-07-07  Llangollen Canal

You can read about our Llangollen Canal trip here.

2017-07-07 Hadrian’s Wall

At 9:30, having finally finished shuttling everyone else to the train station, we now had 5 or 6 hours of driving ahead of us.  And Hadian’s Wall.  For Hadrian’s Wall, we elected to visit Housesteads, as it is supposedly the most complete.  Lots of time on the motorway, then the roads got really small near Housesteads.  Occasional drizzle while we were at Hadrian’s Wall.  Neat place.  Learned lots of things about the Romans.

Then back on the road.  Some heavy rain going through Northumberland Park, and then we pulled into Edinburgh via a rather grotty route.  Things didn’t start looking  better until we got a few blocks from our hotel.  We wandered off towards the docks and ate at the very nice Kezban Mediterranean Restaurant.  Lots of bars and other nightlife as we wandered back to our hotel in the late evening.

2017-07-08 Edinburgh

We had booked two items for the day: Edinburgh Castle and a “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” walking tour with Luca of Little Fish Tours.

We had about an hour walk to get to the castle, and ended walking a lot farther than we should have.  We blundered in the general direction, and made several bad choices.  But the weather was gorgeous.  One of the local shop owners commented to me: “Do you have any idea how lucky you are to be sweating in Edinburgh”.  Truer words were never spoken.

Edinburgh Castle:  Was good, but not great.  The fact that it was packed with tourists didn’t help.  We completed a short walking tour within the castle, saw a few more things, then left. We still had a few hours to kill.

J.K.Rowling: The Harry Potter books have been good for Edinburgh.  We visited Victoria St, yet another inspiration for Diagon Alley, with a stunning number of Harry Potter souvenir shops.  Stepped into the Elephant House, where J.K.Rowling supposedly wrote much of the first book.  Had a very good lunch at the Mariachi on Victoria St.  For some reason, we just felt like Mexican food, and this was just what we wanted.

Holyrood Park:  From the top of Edinburgh castle, we could see this wonderful cliff, with a steep trail and lots of people going up it. We had a couple of hours before our walking tour.  Keiran and I decided to leave Sandy and sprint ahead and make it to the top, since she had failed to bring reasonable hiking, or even walking footwear.  We made it, ran all the way back down to meet Sandy at the appointed time at the bottom of the hill.  Then a quick walk back up to the castle for the walking tour.

Little Fish Tours with Luca:  This was probably the best part of our Edinburgh visit.  We were the only ones to have signed up for the “Crime and Punishment Tour”.  And Luca said that this would probably be the last one.  🙂  Sad to see it go.  It was good to look at the darker, seedier side of Edinburgh.   Almost needless to say, “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” figured prominently in the stories.  We also learned a lot about the history of Edinburg and the Royal Mile.  Most excellent.  I got an extra kick out of seeing Fleshmarket Close, which I knew about from reading the Rebus series by Ian Rankin

The walking tour complete, we re-wandered Edinburgh, a bizarrely 3-dimensional city.  Had dinner at GreyFriars Bobby’s Bar, which we now knew a lot more about.  Crowded, pushed our way into a little corner and had a pair of good quality, cheese burgers.

2017-07-09 Driving to Gatwick

Monster driving day.  This map provides a good idea.  We even had to go around and past London.

Luckily I like driving, especially since no-one else was qualified for the job.  We left at 8 and arrived at 5:30, only stopping for gas and food services along the motorway.  I think Keiran had the worst of it, sharing the back seat with his luggage, in a tiny Hyundai i10.  At one of the gas stations, we met a motorcycle gang of Vespa’s.  I chatted them up only to discover that they were from France, barely able to speak English, and were touring England on these old, classic scooters.  Yes, we communicated in French.

Our hotel, the Maple Manor in Crawley was right at the end of the Gatwick runway.  Noisy outside, but remarkably quiet and pleasant inside. We were astonished at the quality and size of the room.  Pity to be here for only one night.  We did the 5 minute drive into Crawley itself for dinner at Lemongrass Fine Thai Cuisine.  Excellent.

2017-07-1o Flying Home

Easy wake up time, nice breakfast and 10 minutes to airport (had to drive around it to get to the entrance).  Flights this trip were perfect.  Coming and going. Leave Saskatoon late afternoon, arrive Gatwick next day, late morning.  Leave London noon-ish, arrive Saskatoon same day, late afternoon.