DAY FORTY-FIVE: TIME GO TO HOME

Today I woke up and got on Twitter and saw that someone I knew had posted something about how “all Americans should be required to travel internationally,” preferably to non-Western locales.  Putting aside the implicit classicism, I figure the idea is that by traveling the world, Americans would be jarred out of their smug, self-satisfied and limited worldview which, I’ve got to be honest, is pretty much the same thing I mean when I say that all San Franciscans should be required to drive cross-country once a year.  We are all guilty, different only by specifics and degrees.

So I rolled my eyes and moved onto the next tweet, which was (thankfully) about how Steph Curry has decided to fund the first six years of a reborn golf team at Howard University.  But then later I went back to the first tweet and thought, “Maybe the idea here doesn’t have to be that we need to travel the world as eye-opening punishment for our geopolitical sins.  Maybe, assuming we ever get the chance, which is a big “if” and not anything I’ve ever counted on, we should get out there just to see all of the awesome stuff that’s going on.  I mean, I’m a major fan of telling people we’ve got awesome stuff going on where we live — if I were to include the number of times I’ve told people in the past 45 days that I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than Orcas Island, that number would be at least 10 — but why not see as much awesome stuff as you can?  Which is pretty much what we’ve been doing here in England, Scotland and Ireland since we landed on July 9.

And now today, six-and-a-half weeks later, we go home.

On August 23, 1987, I pulled into a spot in front of my high school friend The Irrepressible Dr. Bando, in Seattle, Washington, my car full of my stuff, a week after loading up, waving good-bye to my undoubtedly relieved parents (I’d been couch-surfing at their new condo since the previous November) and eventually landing in a flophouse downtown apartment with a job in a bar.  It wasn’t much, but it was at least the clear beginning of the part of my life other people might call adulthood.   Now, 32 years later to the day, I’m sitting here in the United lounge looking across at a girl I met a few years after that and am fortunate to call my wife, life partner, whatever you want to call it but also the person who convinces me to go see more stuff.  If I make to 80, I hope she’s still sitting there, maybe eating a nice plate of fruit and scrambled eggs like she is right now, but definitely urging me to get out and go.  If that means I have to buy some of those carbon fiber walking sticks and several pairs of zip-off REI pants, so be it. 

We’re waiting for our flight back to San Francisco and I’m feeling equal parts relieved (not as relieved as my parents were back in 1987) and wistful, like half of me can’t wait to get home and the other half could keep doing this forever, as long as someone periodically mails me a bag of Casa Sanchez tortilla chips (thick) to keep me tethered to my normal self.  Kudos to Windsor for sweeping out all of the tourists last night and giving us one more transcendent experience, a simple dinner and walk home that shot just enough juice into us to make going home today a matter of choice, not need. 

I’m not sure I could impress any of my “Americans should be forced to travel to Istanbul” friends with tales of drunken Scots, pottery shops and Stonehenge, but I wish you could’ve been there to hear how the Scots said my name (LAH-D-D-D-IE) and I wish I could convince you that, mobs of tourists or no, Stonehenge is totally worth the trip, even if yours doesn’t include nine intimate hours with Phoenix, Sena and the Southworths.  

I’m going to keep this short, because our plane will be here soon and frankly, I’m sure that by now you’ve had your fill of me.  It’s not like a trip to England, Scotland and Ireland is something that’s supposed to change your life, not dramatically, but 45 days on the road is pretty epic, and I’d be lying if I said there weren’t a few things I saw, heard or talked about that didn’t give me a little pit of pause, a little perspective and a few ideas about how I’d like to approach things after we get home.  

If we hadn’t come on this trip, we’d never know what a broch is, never have heard of the Pects.  We’d never have seen Hadrian’s Wall or the remains of a Roman village.  We’d never have sat on the side of a hill, looking out over the Isle of Skye or heard all of the stories about Bonnie Prince Charlie, never have tasted a haloumi burger or heard the beautiful harmonies of Drops of Green, never have almost fallen off the Cliffs of Moher or seen elderly sisters dancing with each other after midnight.

We would’ve missed the Michelin star dinner at Martin Wishaw (SP), the first bite of sticky toffee pudding in Lerwick, the gin and tonic revolution in Durham and the scones.  All of those scones.  We never would’ve seen the crown jewels (even though they were sort of a disappointment), the kids playing music in Inverness that sounded like Astral Weeks without the vocals, the cool neighborhood in Liverpool, a bar called “The Blob Shop.”  We would have no idea that sometimes certain English retailers won’t accept Scottish pound notes (just because they’re snobs that way) and would’ve missed out on the peace and serenity you can find in Chipping-Camden.  I’d still wonder what it was like to fly in a prop plane, and we never would’ve learned about athleisure wear from Peter O’Toole.  

I never would’ve had 45 days in a row with Sandra Bullock, not until/unless we’re fortunate enough to make it to retirement.

I am just a passenger in this life, one lucky enough to ride shotgun on some pretty awesome trips.  Thanks to Sandra Bullock, who makes this all possible.  Whatever the cross-meanings of her intentions, thanks to the author of the scolding tweet I mentioned at the beginning of this last post, because you are correct.  It’s better to get out there and see stuff, though I’d argue that a night in Kingman, Arizona is worth just as much as one in Tehran.  But in the end, it all counts.  After all, if we’d never taken this trip, how would I know that I like butter better than clotted cream?

Here are you wrap-up numbers:

45 — days spent on the road

20 — stops.  In order: London, Durham, Aberdeen, Lerwick, Edinburgh, Inverness, Portree, Inverness (again), Galway, Doolin, Dingle, Kenmare, Cork, Kilkenny, Dublin, Liverpool, Keswick, Chipping-Campden, Bath, Windsor. (excludes day trips)  And speaking of those day trips…

7 — scheduled day-trip major tours: Shetlands, Hadrian’s Wall, St. Andrews, Isle of Skye and the Highlands, Ring of Kerry, 10 Lakes Spectacular, Stonehenge

2 — distillery tours:  Dingle and Ballykeefe.  One brewery tour, in Lerwick.

3 — palace tours, mostly done under mild protest by me but what sort of monster would deny the joy me otherwise pragmatic wife feels when in the virtual presence of the Royal Family?

4 — major, all-day hikes, requiring the wearing of hiking shoes and dumb pants.  The longest of these covered 15 miles (I think) and almost cost me my life.

37 (estimated) — plates of chips consumed.  We tailed off a bit toward the end.

4 — tubes of toothpaste used.

2 — times Sandra Bullock made a guided tour stop so she could take a picture of an animal native to the region.  First time was a highlands cow; second was one of those Herdwicke sheep.

45 — consecutive days where something we ate had red onions in it.  Ease up on the red onions, England, Ireland and Scotland.

30 — days, out of 45, that I wore the same pair of Levis.

That’s it, everyone.  Thanks for coming along, but now it's time for Sandra Bullock to get back to ruling the world and for me to get back to that other sabbatical (the one where, sadly, I don’t actually write every day), my life.  After 45 days, we leave with no regrets except one: I still don’t know how to pronounce Vauxhall.  

DAY FORTY-FOUR: WINDSOR

A few days ago, or maybe it was four years ago, I was sitting on a 16-seat Mercedes bus pulling out of Grasmere -- Wordsworth country.  It was a blustery and cloudy sort of day, the kind that usually waits for October to show up, but here it was in August.  We'd just finished lunch and loaded back up into the bus and I was looking out the window, watching the tiny village flash by, when I was hit by one of those weird nostalgia/melancholy/deja vu/longing feelings.

You may think that the only things I love in this world are Sandra Bullock, our jawa, Shack, the Golden State Warriors and my sisters, but I also love the feeling you get when it's blustery and a little bit gloomy, and you're walking down the street in late afternoon kicking leaves out of the way, not wishing it was sunny and warm at all and knowing that soon you'll be inside and warm and maybe hanging out with a bunch of people you really like.  It's a feeling that's rare where we live, even rarer where I grew up, but available in bulk in the mountains, in the Northwest, definitely in Pennsylvania when you go there to visit your son in college in November.  That's the fleeting feeling I had sitting in the bus, pulling away from Wordsworth turf, and it wasn't earned but it was pretty strong, enough that it almost started to feel like a separate person sitting there with me.  It reminded me of so many things that I miss, some of which don't even actually exist.

That was the moment I decided it was time to go home.

Bath: the antidote for vacation fatigue.

I figured at that point I'd be counting down the last few days, waiting for that sweet moment when our plane touched down at SFO and we could again get on with the business of living our normal lives.  But then something weird happened; we got back in that infernal Volvo and began driving, and by the time we got to Chipping-Campden, I'd found my second wind.  So much so that this morning, while we searched the gorgeous streets of Bath in vain for one more scone (we finally found it in a place directly across the street from our hotel after an hour of sort of searching, sort of wandering), I started to feel a little panic that this grand adventure, this 45-day epic, was coming to an end before I was ready.

Fortunately, an overnight stop in Windsor, chosen by me months ago for its proximity to Heathrow Airport -- I was trying to recreate the awesome bonus days we got during two earl trips by choosing for our last night strange, airport adjacent small towns outside of Munich and Milan, little mini vacations-within-a-vacation that left us feeling complete and satisfied as we boarded our return flights -- has provided balance, leaving us both with a sense that, while we could foresee this trip continuing on into perpetuity, we feel just as strongly that it's time to get home.

Back to Rick Steve's mode:

Windsor is famous for one reason: it's the site of Windsor Palace, "the Queen's official residence," per an excited Sandra Bullock.  She pre-booked our palace tickets before we even left Bath.  Windsor Palace is "the only thing to do in Bath," says Rick Steves, which dissuaded 100,000 people in a big hurry to get themselves in front of me while getting off the train this afternoon not one iota.  

They came by train, they came by bus, they came by car.  They came carrying children, backpacks and soft serve ice cream cones, all for one thing: to see the palace.

And they did  They saw the palace apartments, which are admittedly pretty cool and left me wondering if the Royal Family still actually uses rooms like the very ornate one where people are supposed to hang out while waiting to see the queen, or if any of the King's

"What ride do you want to go on first?"

chambers are used, since there's (technically?) no King of England right now.  If you told me that William and Kate took one look at this stuff and said, "Uh, no thanks, we look at this stuff and can't figure out where on earth we'd lounge around and watch 'Big Little Lies.'" I would believe you completely.

They came to climb the tower, which cost an extra nine pounds and probably affords incredible views from the top.  We'll never know, because we're almost out of cash and didn't want to take out a card just to climb up some stairs.  

They came for the entire thing -- a massive complex of buildings, including the chapel where Harry and Meghan got married.  You can literally walk in their footsteps, down the aisle where they paraded past global dignitaries before (reportedly) heading off to Africa for their honeymoon.  It's vast and breathtaking, too much so for a commoner like me, who'd probably opt for something a little more manageable should he someday return as Royalty.  If my sister someday fulfills her destiny and is reclaimed by the Kennedys, who obviously left her on my parents' doorstop in a bassinet one morning in 1962, why can't I still have a shot at someday becoming Royalty?  Time to do my 23 and Me, I guess.

In 2018, 1.44 million people visited Windsor Palace.  Each of them paid somewhere

Official Royal Family corgi mask.

between 16 and 22 pounds to enter, depending on age, and another nine if they wanted to take the tower tour.  That works out to around 40 million pounds earned by the palace just for being there, plus whatever it can make selling 16 pound corgi socks and other merchandise.  It seems like a ton of money, enough to float whole parts of England's economy all by itself, until you consider that Harry and Meghan's wedding cost 43 million pounds all by itself.  Call it a wash.

In Sandra Bullock's perfect world, she'd still be at the castle, not sitting on the bed trying in vain to "find a place for dinner that won't be crawling with tourists."  She'd have done the audio tour and would be there, speaker pressed to her ear, soaking up Royals information, and maybe riding a jet ski or kayaking, just for good measure.  Unfortunately, her poor sport of a husband, still stinging from what he thought was about a half-hour too much time spent at the Roman baths, enforced a strict no-audio tour rule, which might have been fine if he could shake the nagging feeling that Windsor Palace was the most Disneyland-esque historic site he'd ever seen.  So uncanny was the resemblance that even Sandra Bullock, diehard Royal Family enthusiast, didn't even try to deny it, actually laughing when that same husband, upon entering the grounds accompanied by a phalanx of tourists, cracked, "So which ride do you want to go on first?"

Sandra Bullock just announced that she's "so over finding a place for dinner," which means my indulgent writing time has come to an end.  She's still got to do some re-packing before tomorrow's flight, too.  Something about "re-arranging (her) pottery."

Here are today's Royal numbers:

3 -- separate trains required to get from Bath to Windsor: a very relaxing first-class ride to Reading, followed by 15 minutes to Slough, where you "shouldn't ever leave the station," according to the station agent in Bath, and six more to Windsor where you may find, to your horror, that you have left serene England and are now basically in a suburb of London.

2 -- other passengers in the first class car from Bath to Reading.  Their combined age: 164 (est).

0.007 -- diameter, in inches, of the frites we ended up having this afternoon after learning that the George Inn kitchen was closed between 3 and 6, leaving us at a French place with a great location along the Thames but no proper chips.

54 -- suits of armor randomly placed throughout Windsor Castle.  I could be overestimating.  It seemed like they were everywhere.

5 -- little rental boats spotted floating down the Thames while eating vary narrow frites this afternoon, some driven by little kids.  Looked like a fun outing.

10 -- rating I'd give the MacDonald Hotel Windsor so far.  A real gem.  

My favorite part of the palace tour: finding out that Chaucer, in addition to being England's premier poet, was also essentially the King's general contractor in 1390.  He helped out with the building of the chapel.  Smart thinking, Geoff; always good for a writer to have a solid day job.   

We wrap this up tomorrow.  45 days later.  Are you ready?  Are we?

DAY FORTY-THREE: STONEHENGE!

Just back from the Greek restaurant, where they threw plates on the floor and served us a white whine called "Magic Mountain."  No joke on either of these, though I didn't actually see the plates.  I heard them though, and the guy at the next table, who had a clear shot at seeing the plates, confirmed.  Per Sandra Bullock, a large party was "doing something like the hora" when the dishware abuse took place.

But it's not just as a survivor of plate genocide that I come to you today.  Do I sound different today?  Is it because I've been to Stonehenge?  Is it because I visited a room called "The Dungeon" in England's oldest pub?  Is it because I know exactly why the second-century Romans suddenly decided that men and women bathing together was verboten?  Or is it because, while today my treatment of plates was admirable, my treatment of bees was downright sadistic?

All of this happened today.  I am here to tell you about it.  Rick Steves, if you're still reading because yesterday's post demonstrated a fresh new voice in travel writing, please peel off here and check back tomorrow.

Here's how it went down:

You never know what you're going to get on these tours you buy.  You can get a 16-passenger Mercedes bus with no air conditioning.  You can get Grant, the Shetlands lifer who writes sci-fi in his spare time.  You can get two days with George.  You can get a high-speed, stomach-churning pass through the Ring of Kerry.

Today we got a very casual, very personal run to Stonehenge, led by a guy whose nickname, Phoenix, happened when his boarding school classmates in India decided his nose resembled the cover of their favorite Grand Funk Railroad album, "Phoenix."  He was nine years old at the time.

We also got a co-pilot named Sena (definitely misspelling this) and a family of four from Boston.  Everyone started talking to each other immediately.  The day ended at the Oldest Pub in England (TM), where we drank beer and went deep on education, faith and bubonic plague.  It was that kind of day.  Sometimes you get them.

Seriously.

But first, Stonehenge.  If you are in England, near England, thinking about England, or wondering what aliens were doing on Earth in 3000 B.C., go to Stonehenge.  Go early like we did so the crowds are manageable.  Sit down at a picnic table with your guide, if your guide is Phoenix, and discuss at great length the possible sources of Stonehenge.  Wonder how people with only rudimentary tools dragged two-ton rocks 132 miles.  Consider their advanced knowledge of geometry and wonder why you can draw a straight line from Stonehenge to the pyramids of Giza when Stonehenge was built 1500 years prior.  Ask yourself who was project managing this task (Phoenix did).  If you're brave, raise the possibility that maybe Stonehenge was built by an advanced civilization that eventually disappeared without a trace, then start sweating a little bit when you realize that this could be possible.  

We did all of this and then took a bus to "the stones."  I'm still working on a line about how I'm only one of many friends to witness ancient stones from England this week.

Yes, there were crowds.  Yes, it's annoying to watch people make coy faces and kick up one let while taking a selfie with a selfie stick, as if the point of the photo isn't Stonehenge but "look at how cute I am (in front of Stonehenge)!"  

None of that matters.  What matters is the freaking rocks.  How did they get there?  Who engineered them so they fit snugly on top of each other?  Who shaped them with notches like Legos?

And then consider the peaceful, spiritual elements of Stonehenge, because they're happening, despite the tourists.  Stand there and look really hard at the rocks.  Consider for a moment that someone built this thing in the middle of a field where nothing can grow.  Also note that there's a small highway running alongside Stonehenge, which means that a certain percentage of the population in England passes FREAKING STONEHENGE on their way to work every day.

Then, when you've had your fill, walk back to the visitors' center instead of taking the bus, because you might not be done walking through fields with cows and the sky might be partially filled with billowy, non-rain-threatening (for once) clouds, and you might be in the middle of a bunch of beautiful rolling fields that have weird burial mounds embedded in them every few hundred feet.  It's better than the bus and a good way to ensure you'll hit your 10,000 steps even while spending most of the day in a bus.

And then, if you've got the energy, you can sit with Phoenix and Sena (sp) and discuss the challenges and realities of calling yourself a man of faith, which will definitely help you work up enough of an appetite to enjoy lunch alfresco at the Talbot Inn in Mells, which is definitely not a tourist destination nor located in a town named after the diner Alice worked in but is instead the only restaurant in a tiny town still mostly owned by the Asquith family, which counts at least one former English Prime Minister among its progeny and has a decaying mansion that you can see from the graveyard next to the church. 

We did all of this.  We had a relaxing outdoor lunch with Phoenix, Sena and the Southwith family, and a bunch of bees, one of which met a terrible death when trapped him with a napkin after he flew into my beer.  That's the kind of sadist I am, apparently.

It was so great, after 43 days, when our tour led us into an off-the-beaten-path place like Mells, which had the Talbot Inn, a post office, the old medieval church that doubled as the burial place of a World War I-era English poet who Mr. Southwith had heard of and Phoenix quoted and a garden where we came later to have tea, offering me a chance a redemption when a second bee flew into my Coke.  I released him.

De la Mare's folly.

After Mells, we visited the very random Nunney Castle, built by Sir John De la Mare, who went to war in the mid-14th century and returned with a bag of cash and, clearly, an ego big enough to build himself his own McCastle.  "There's no reason why he built this moat," an obviously disgusted Phoenix explained, but there it was: an actual moat.  In 1645, some cannonballs took out De la Mare's folly.  Only a shell remains, impressive enough, at least, for a group of English teenagers also visiting to remark, "Can you imagine the parties they must've had here?"  Me, I was too busy imagining De la Mare's unimpressed 14th-century neighbors:  "Did you see what that idiot is doing now?  He's building a moat!"

The tour wrapped up in the aforementioned George's Inn, "serving beer continuously since 1397."  From there, Phoenix dropped us all at the Hilton.  The Southwith's walked back to their superior lodgings at the MacDonald Spa and Hotel and we went to explore Bath's Roman, well, baths.  

Dating back to 76 A.D., the baths were the hot spot (pun intended) for semi-ex-pat Romans

I'm assuming the water wasn't this
green in Roman times. 

(those living very far from Rome but still well within the boundaries of the empire) to meet, socialize, do some worshipping of various gods, make business deals and, as suggested by Bill Bryson, whose occasional commentary really livened up the headphone guide, "get into some business in the various nooks and niches" all around the baths.  We saw some columns, some brackish looking water, some impressive draining systems (engineering marvels being the calling card of today), a few examples of the petty curses Romans used to lob at each other (mostly because someone stole their cloak) and learned perhaps more about the every day life of a citizen of the city called "Aquae Sulis" by the Romans that I really had planned to learn today, like the reason why they separated the sexes in the second century: Emperor Hadrian (he of the wall) decided it wasn't cool to have naked Roman men and women cavorting together and getting fragrant oils rubbed on them in public.

What a day.  And then, plates smashed on the ground, three different kinds of Greek cheeses and a bottle of wine named after a second-tier Southern California theme park.  Than you, Phoenix, thank you Sema (I apologize for repeatedly misspelling your name), thank you Southworths and most of all, thank you, Bath, Stonehenge, Mells, Nunney and the town of Norton St. Philip for giving Sandra Bullock and I a final second (third? fourth?) wind to take us to sabbatical finish line.

Here are today's enigmatic numbers:

1 -- bee killed in sadistic fashion by me.  Sorry, bee.  At least you got to die drunk.

3 -- advanced degrees earned by Mr. Southworth, who once lived in San Francisco while directing a production of a Eugene O'Neill play at the A.C.T. and also was somehow involved in the production of the Christopher Walken film, "King of New York."

15,104 -- steps.  How we got that many is anyone's guess.

7 -- number of times I insisted loudly that aliens were responsible for creating Stonehenge.  Each time, Phoenix said, "That's no more outlandish than any of the other theories."

2 -- glasses of prosecco included in our Roman Baths admission, which led to a nice moment where I got to stand next to ancient Roman baths, looking up at a medieval skyline, with my arm around the girl of my dreams, which is not bad after 43 days.

9 -- years to the day since our boy had his bar mitzvah.  Happy bar mitzvah anniversary, Mr. Jawa.

Well, that's almost a wrap.  Tomorrow we take the train to Windsor, where we'll tour the palace, hopefully find a pub for dinner where we can finally eat jacketed potatoes and one more sticky toffee pudding, pack our stuff and set our alarms.  Re-entry looms.

DAY FORTY-TWO: THE COTSWALDS, BATH

With just three days remaining in this project, I've decided it needs to be "travel blog," like I'm Andrew McCarthy embarking on a second career years after my one-note performance in "St. Elmo's Fire."

Today we visited three Cotswald villages and ended up in one city.  Here are my impressions of each.  Rick Steves, if you're reading and have secretly been searching for the new blood your brand desperately needs, you can contact me through the comments section of this blog.  

August 20, 2019  (I seriously just had to check my phone to see what the date is)

VILLAGE #1: Chipping-Campden

Loyal readers -- all 12 of you -- already know how I feel about Chipping-Campden.  I'm enchanted, like, I'll assume, all of the wealthy Londoners who make the two-hour drive for a weekend in the country, according to Sandra Bullock's boss, who lived in London for "something like five years" and was once the recipient of the exclusive Lafayette College Pepper Award.  Chipping-Campden is the embodiment of England as a Disney production, to such a degree that visitors can be forgiven for glancing skyward every few minutes and expecting to see Peter Pan perched atop one of the villages whimsical cottages.  Gloriously tourist-free, Chipping-Campden overcomes its admittedly twee handle (it helps that it's far from the only Costwald village sporting a twee handle) by delivering vintage charm, boasting a handful of solid restaurants, Carmel-level home and gift boutiques and not one but two of those little grocery stores with all of the cheese and the wine that always made me think, 'Oh, we should go in there and get sandwiches."

Chipping-Campden gets extra points for its homey pubs, all with their maximum interior ceiling height of seven feet, which would make visiting Chipping-Campden a big challenge for NBA great Shaquille O'Neal but not supermodel Kate Moss, who Sandra Bullock r

Early cricket arrival at the Lygon Arms. 

eminded me yesterday also reportedly has a summer home nearby.  It's also not too low for the cricket team staying at the Lygon Arms who were supposed to show up any minute while we were eating but were barely trickling in by the time we left.  "They're here from Sunday to Sunday, our waitress told us before recommending Stratford-on-Avon for us because of "all the great shopping."  Actually, she wasn't our waitress.  Soibhan was.  But it was Soibhan's first night and she was obviously overwhelmed.  And this was before the cricket team showed up.  I can only assume that this was not a rowdy cricket team, because if they were rowdy, they would've gone to the Volunteer Inn.  That's where rowdy people go in Chipping-Campden, because they don't even have food there. 

If you're Sandra Bullock, weary from six weeks of traveling, Chipping-Campden is notable because it's "peaceful," and has a place that sells really cute tea towels.  More than one, in fact.  

HIGH POINT:  For only being there 18 hours, we had many memorable moments in Chipping-Campden.  If I had to single out one, I'd say the second half of our walk to Broad Campden, when we walked through the sheep field and got a close-up glimpse of the big church and nearby ruins.  Or maybe it was the wheat field.  Or walking through town this morning in 60 degrees and a light breeze.  Or standing in the circa-1627 marketplace, arguing about how many stalls could fit.  For the record, it's 20.

LOW POINT:  None.  The creepy hallway leading to our room at the Noel Arms, maybe.  Even our parking space was first-rate.

SHOULD I GO?  Get on a plane, deal with the roads, book an AirBnB (the hotels are tired).  We're already planning to return. 

VILLAGE #2: Bourton-on-the-Water

As we are complete Cotswald rubes (so naive that we thought we'd find, in cheese shops, a variety called "Cotswald," which turned out to be double Gloucester with chives and onions),

Bourton-on-the-Water's in known for
two things: a water feature and crowds.

we spent the end of last night in our hotel room, furiously Googling (me) and poring over the Rick Steves book (S. Bullock).  Partly because of my skepticism that we'd find anything more enchanting than Chipping-Campden, and limited by my complete inability to agree on the contents of a "meandering" drive because some of it might interfere with my goal of getting myself out from behind the wheel of our Volvo ASAP, we decided to stop in Bourton-on-the-Water not because it stands out from any of the other whimsical Cotswald villages but precisely because it's "on-the-water."  "It's the only one," Bullock commented.  It was also easily reachable from Chipping-Campden and sort of on the way to Bath.

Bourton-on-the-Water, unfortunately, is the yin to Chipping-Campden's yang, a popular tourist spot with all of the attendant hassles of a popular tourist spot.  It's much larger than Chipping-Campden and offers no High Street parking kismet -- instead you drive around for awhile, getting unreasonably agitated until you see a large car park.  So pleased are you at finding this car park that you just pull in, regardless of whether you've entered through the exit, inadvertently saving yourself several minutes of waiting in line as other cars enter through the proper channels.  Then you pay(!) at the machine, put the ticket on your dashboard and follow the conveniently assembled hoard heading toward the center of town.

Bourton-on-the-Water (often called "Bourbon and Water" by insufficiently clever wags who won't let it drop) has twice the charming buildings of Chipping-Campden.  It has an automotive museum, several nice restaurants, lots of gift shops and, running through the middle of town, the "water" upon which it's staked its reputation, or at least its identity.  

It's not quite a river.  More like a creek, or a backyard water feature.  It's about nine inches deep, shallow enough that one road simply disappears under it, then reappears on the other bank.  It's a much easier cross than the washed out field leading to the Chinese Bridge, but it's enough to give the sun-starved English a place to stroll on that rare August day when El Sol makes an appearance between the clouds.

If you're guessing that Bourton-on-the-Water isn't my particular vibe, you are correct.  If you are also guessing that someone spent the hour we were there asking questions like, "Do you think there's any place this obscure and yet this touristy in the U.S.?" to his long-suffering wife, you would also be correct.  Maybe we should've gone to Stratford-on-Avon after all.  I hear it has great shopping.  

HIGH POINTS: The Cotswald Automotive Museum looked pretty cool, but unfortunately I left my glasses in the car and wasn't going to stumble around in there looking like Ray Charles with my prescription sunglasses on (the 90s ones; the other ones never reappeared).  The little stone bridges that cross the water feature are nice.  If you have a dog and couldn't get a hotel room in Keswick, Bourton-on-the-Water is here for you.

LOW POINTS:  Crowds. People speaking really loud.  Difficult parking.  Too many ice cream shops for any of them to be any good.  People stopping every few feet and taking pictures.  Buses.  

SHOULD I GO?  Absolutely, if it's November and it's raining.  Maybe the water feature will overflow.  

VILLAGE #3: Cirencester

We made it all the way through Cirencester, the largest of the Cotswald villages, without even knowing how to pronounce Cirencester.  It wasn't until much later, as Sandra Bullock Googled stuff while I filled up the tank of the Volvo, that we learned it's pronounced Sae-ren SIS-ter.  "Like Siren Sisters?" I asked.

"Close."

Circencester: just a place -- with a cool cathedral

We only spent one hour and four minutes in Cirencester, enough time to walk it's fascinating downtown, take some pictures of a huge church, get lost on its pedestrian streets, check the menus of several restaurants and finally decide on Made By Bob, a "modern, eclectic bistro" (we're getting tired of pubs), but not long enough to get ticketed for spending 64 minutes in an one-hour parking spot.  We had to park there because the central car park, WHICH IS ENORMOUS, was not only completely full but had no fewer than a half-dozen cars circling it slowly, waiting for spots.

Cirencester has a population just short of 20,000 but it plays as a much larger city, probably because the only place larger is Bath, which is an hour to the west, a good 90 minutes from most of the Costwald's precious, adorable villages.  You go there at lunchtime and the narrow streets are teeming with people, mostly looking for lunch, or shopping.  It's got street performers who are actually pretty good, though the guy doing saxophone karaoke I could do without, and just when you think you've exhausted its downtown you turn a corner and -- shazam! -- there's a whole new street of storefronts, bustling with people.

Despite not being able to say the town's name out loud correctly until much later, our hour in Cirencester was a good antidote for our mobs of tourists Bourton-on-the-Water hangover.  It was perfect light jacket weather, there was a nice breeze, nobody except us was taking pictures.  If Made By Bob hadn't run out of regular Coke before I got there, the experience in Cirencester would've been flawless.

HIGH POINTS:  Excellent downtown area with lots of shopping and minimal Edinburgh Woolen stores.  Record stores.  Young guys playing guitars who are not doing covers.  Really good, if a bit oniony, salads at Made By Bob.  An impressive cathedral that we probably would've stopped and seen, had we not been limited by wondering if they just give tickets here, or do they actually tow?

LOW POINTS:  The aforementioned lack of an available Coke at Made By Bob.  The millionaire shortbread we got there couldn't hold a candle to the one we had in Dublin a few days ago.  Parking anxiety.

SHOULD I GO? Yes, but only if you're worried that charming little villages won't offer all of the stuff you need to complete a successful vacation.  I mean, I liked Cirencester, but that was mostly because it was tourist-free and had some cool streets to walk down.  

VILLAGE #3: Bath

Village #3, of course, is a city with a population approaching 90,000.  We pulled in at around three, navigated the busy (and, of course, narrow) streets until we found the Hertz place and dropped off the Volvo.  "Everything looks great!" the rental agent said, as I mentally

Move to Bath; invite me to visit.

committed to never driving a vehicle in Europe again, no matter how wimpy that makes me.  That I returned the Volvo without a scratch may count as one of the great accomplishments of my life, which says a bit too much about the extant accomplishments of my life. 

We had no idea what to expect from Bath.  Other than hearing the effusive praise of everyone we know who's been here, to us it was just another way station, the last stop before dragging our two weary bodies to Heathrow-adjacent Windsor and then home.  We just got back to the room after a long and casual walk and I've got to say: sign me up.  This place is fantastic, a small and historic city, compact but sophisticated, that takes all of that cool slate 17th- and 18th-century architecture and puts it in the enlargement machine.  Sandra Bullock and I strolled its streets with only a loose game plan.  We saw the impressive Royal Crescent building and the serene Royal Victoria Park, the not-at-all-confusing train station and the historic Pulteney Bridge, which crosses the equally historic Avon River.  This is a place you could live, or at least visit for way longer than two days.

HIGH POINTS:  The whole thing, and we haven't even had dinner yet.

LOW POINTS:  The guy who was yelling at some kids at the park.  "CAN YOU JUST KEEP QUIET?  ALL I WANT TO DO IS RELAX AND HAVE A QUIET CIGARETTE!"  Legit, but you don't yell at kids who are playing in the park.  It's a park.  Which is basically the response from the kids' father, who said, "You don't own it, man."

The angry guy's response:  "Of course I don't own it!  The Queen owns it!"

Come to think of it, that might be a high point.

SHOULD I GO:  Yes.  In fact, you should move there and then invite us to come visit, and then pick us up at the Bristol airport.

Here are today's numbers:

1 -- ideal number of navs needed to drive through a foreign country.  Don't use more than one, because eventually they'll start arguing.  Driving on the wrong side on narrow roads is confusing enough without your navs sounding like the P.A. at LAX during the opening scenes of "Airplane."

70 -- vehicles at the Cotswald Automotive Museum, which wasn't enough to entice me inside in my 1990s sunglasses.

25 -- Cricket club members staying at the Lygon Arms.  We only saw one, a huge guy who came in early, ordered a white wine and started working on his laptop.  Color me slightly disappointed.

60 -- speed limit on two-lane the A242, which is 11 feet wide.

5 -- length, in days, of a popular "Costwalds Walking Tour" vacation offered by foottrails.uk, which sounds very, very enticing, especially if it can end at Bath.

I've taken far too much of your time with this, but let me leave you with this one thing: tomorrow, with two days remaining on this adventure, we finally do it: Stonehenge.

DAY FORTY-ONE: KESWICK TO CHIPPING CAMPDEN

What is Chipping-Campden?  Is it the surname of a particularly twee and entitled Member of Parliament?  Is it a way to prepare beef inexpensively, slopped onto a plate by a hard-looking middle-aged woman in a hair net as inmates shuffle past?  Is it a medical condition named after the two researchers who discovered that it was not merely a collection of symptoms but in fact an actual condition?

No, no and no.

Doesn't get more charming than this. 

Chipping-Campden is a place... and maybe also a state of being?  We've only been here a few hours, so it's too early to tell, but it could be.  What we can tell so far is that Chipping-Campden (the third P is silent) is without argument the most charming English village we've seen so for on our trip.  

Forget English; it's the most charming village we've seen, bar none, since arriving in the U.K. 41 days ago.  Competition has been fierce -- nice effort, Dingle; good work, Lerwick; solid contribution Grasmere -- but Chipping-Campden, despite its vaguely squirmy name, stands out.

This is maximum Disney England -- the 17th-century village center, the thatched roofs, the ancient graveyard, the rolling hills, the wheat fields (no kidding: wheat fields.  "I don't think I've ever walked through a wheat field," Sandra Bullock said an hour ago, WHILE WE WERE WALKING THROUGH A FREAKING WHEATFIELD)  If Walt made Main Street to resemble the Kansas of his youth, he made Fantasyland, on purpose or not, to resemble Chipping-Campden.  Frankly, it's hard to describe and the pictures I took, which I will sprinkle liberally throughout this short post ("Keep it short," -- S. Bullock) lose almost everything in translation.

I

Not kidding: super charming. 

t doesn't hurt that Chipping-Campden was largely unpopulated today, or that it's 62 degrees, partly cloudy and sunny: perfect fall weather in the middle of August.  Tomorrow our plan is to "do the Cotswalds" -- my wife, like my grandparents, doesn't visit places; she "does" them -- on our way to Bath, but I'm having a hard time imagining that any part of the Cotswalds is more enchanting than the place we're sitting in right now.

Which is fortunate, because getting to Chipping-Campden can be a chore, especially when your voyage begins in Keswick, 240 miles (again with the miles; what's that kilometers, England?) away.  

I'm exaggerating.  Today's drive wasn't bad, save for the first five minutes when I couldn't find my sunglasses, accused Sandra Bullock of losing them and then, after pulling off of the 1.5 lane road out of Keswick, turned out to be sitting on them.  It was just long.  Grueling.  45 minutes of charming Lake District towns we saw yesterday, a comical misstep in one that led to me carefully piloting our unimported in the U.S. Volvo V40 down a street with I swear six inches of clearance on either side.  If you're visiting England (or Ireland) and renting a car, buy the full coverage.  It's a rip-off, sure, but the piece of mind you'll feel while counting the millimeters between your side mirrors and Mrs. MacDonald's flower boxes is worth it.

Of course we'd planned to stop somewhere for lunch.  I chose a place called Stone, population 12,000.  Pop quiz:

Q)  How many cities named Stone are there in England?
A)   According to the Volvo V40's nav, six.

Today's lunch is my shame. 

The ten minutes I spent in the car, idling, trying to figure out which Stone I meant while Sandra Bullock checked out of our Keswick hotel, convinced me that lunch today would be whatever they had in the hot shelf at a gas station minimart, though I didn't share this information with my co-pilot until we were well on our way to Chipping-Campden, zooming down the M6, shuddering in vague panic every time we saw the signs warning us of "serious delays" ahead.  

Somehow we avoided all of the "serious delays" but none of the violent rain squalls.  They came fast and furious, dropping buckets of water on us every 15 minutes or so, then disappearing, the sky glowing with brilliant sunlight (sunglasses on).  15 minutes later, they returned (sunglasses off, wipers on high).  Rinse, repeat.

We left the highway with about 20 miles remaining on the trip and drove though what was, well, the sort of scenery I really love when I see it in Pennsylvania:  hills, farms, fields, small towns with weathered brick row houses.  "I feel like we're in Easton, driving to the Hampton Inn," remarked an unimpressed Sandra Bullock.  "I mean, this is nice, but I sure hope it's better than this."

Rest easy, dear reader; it is.

The challenge of five white knuckle hours behind the wheel is trifling when the reward is

Had enough yet?  I haven't.  

Chipping-Campden, no kidding.  The stiff neck one might acquire by gripping the wheel way too tightly is also worth it, and in this case Chipping-Campden offers a few spa options as well.  Chipping-Campden has these things, you see, because Chipping-Campden is the Carmel of England, max Disney version.  If Carmel was a place where Geppetto felt his life could only be complete if he built himself a son out of wood, except here he might built Pinocchio out of gold.  There are mansions.  Country homes.  In fact, legend (and Rick Steves) says that celebrities like Madonna and Elizabeth Hurley have summer homes here, probably with names so pretentious that they'll melt your eardrums if said out loud, but no matter.  Good judgement, Madge and Liz.  

See, all the houses have names, from the mansions all the way down to the little limestone row houses in the village center, names like "Abbotsbury," "Four Rick Row" and "Molly's Cottage."  As if they weren't cute enough without names.  Chipping-Campden is relentless.  

Sandra Bullock ponders a sheep.

We have only 18 hours to enjoy/lose ourselves in Chipping-Campden, and even though time stands still here that's not a lot of minutes.  So we got here, dropped our stuff in our (eccentric) hotel room and began walking up High Street with a purpose: to do a quick hike to Broad Campden.  In Chipping-Campden, though, plans have a way of dissolving.  They get overwhelmed by charm.  Five minutes of hiking through the village and my wife and I were in a daze, wandering dumbstruck as block after block of fairy tale come to life eased past.

When we finally did break free of town, our little walk to Broad Campden became five miles long and included walking through rolling hills, getting up-close and personal with some sheep, visiting an ancient graveyard and church, seeing an old quaker meeting house and a part in the middle of a wheat field (which Sandra Bullock is now telling me was probably not wheat but was in fact something else) where I  just stopped walking, letting my intrepid wife walk on until I said, "Hey, wait a second.  I don't want to move yet."  I'm pretty close to beautiful scenery overload but today showed me there's always room for a little more. 

Here are today's numbers, and enjoy the pictures.  Imagine that the reality is 100 times more intense:

26 -- number of rain squalls recorded between 10 AM and 2 PM while driving on the M6 today, including two that made visibility impossible.

104 -- number of times I put on and took off my sunglasses during the same time period.

42,000 -- miles on the 1978 MGB roadster with the for sale sign on it, parked on High Street in Chipping-Campden, that made me break my stride.

13,272 -- steps, which is pretty good when you consider that we had about 2,000 when we got out of the car, three hours ago.

17 -- length, in hours, of the flight from Perth, Australia, to whatever airport is nearest to here, per the woman who told us that her sister had just made the flight with her three-year-old and her four-month-old, both of whom behaved fabulously.

600 -- claimed estimated age of the Noel Arms Inn, our lodging for the evening, which may or may not be true, since the hallway outside our room was obviously remodeled in 1754.

It's hard-core countdown time.  Three more full days and then we fly out.  Tomorrow:  we try (in vain, I predict) to find somewhere in the Cotswalds that is more enchanting than Chipping-Campden.  Then we drive to Bath.  

DAY 40: TEN LAKES!

When we were young, "tour" was a dirty word.  It conjured images of luxury buses crammed full of elderly retirees wearing matching windbreakers.  "Tour" took its place on our personal wall of shame, alongside "cruises" and wine tasting," and then, as we aged, one by one those taboos, these scarlet "Things Other People Do" became more palatable.

Wine tasting was the first to go.  It's actually kind of a nice way to spend an afternoon.  Please don't get in a time machine and go back to 1988 to tell the 23-year-old me I said that.  If you do, he'll certainly wrestle control of that time machine from you, come to the present and shoot me.  Or at least make fun of me in a very cutting and personal way.

Tours came next, that wall cascading down in 2013 with little resistance.  Two weeks into our first sabbatical, already tired, confused and on edge, we booked a tour of the Duomo in Florence to free ourselves from responsibility.  

It was great, the second battlefield conversion of my life. (The first happened on August 3, 1997, at the Swedish Medical Center birthing wing.)  Since then, whenever we travel internationally which, I will be the first to admit, happens way more often than I'd ever imagined it would, we book a few tours.  We go to viator.com, which is this website aggregator thing, and find something -- a day tour, the dreaded and misleading "skip the line" tour (which should be called "skip A line," not "skip THE line."  There are always more lines.), the ambitious and oh, so easy all-day tour (like the one we just got back from) and the king of all tours, the multi-day tour with George.  Just kidding.  They're not all with George.  Ours was.

The multi-day tour with George was an anomaly.  We'd never done it before this trip and we're still sorting out all of the extra tour considerations it introduced (Do you buy lunch for your guide?  Do you go out for beers with him at night?  Are you supposed to stay in the same hotel?).

Beautiful vistas: promised, and delivered.

In all we booked seven tours for this trip.  As of today, after completing the "10 Lakes Spectacular!" we have completed six.  That's a lot of tours.  Maybe too much.  We were getting pretty tour-heavy there for a couple of weeks, so we backed off.  Today's was the first one since the semi-tour we did with Peter O'Toole and Princess Grace, where our driver Michael impersonated the legendary Scottish formula one driver Jackie Stewart on the Ring of Kerry, pausing occasionally to answer our questions about the blurry scenery outside our windows.  We have one left and it's the grandaddy of all tours: Stonehenge.  

Today's tour was billed as a comprehensive tour of the Lake District, the incredibly lush and green home of Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge and ancient mariner Christian Fletcher (from the same tiny village as Wordsworth) and favorite holiday destination for English families with dogs.  (further evidence suggests that Keswick may not be England's most dog-friendly holiday location, but instead part of a district-wide policy of welcoming dogs everywhere, including onto ferry boats)  The Mountain Goat Tours website promised beautiful vistas, visits to charming villages, a ferry boat ride and finally, a visit to the peaceful and mysterious Castle Rigg stone circle, one of 60 (?  I may be making this number up) stone circles in the Lake District.  

Peter lays it down. 

Our guide was Peter, he of the ramrod straight posture, the aversion to political commentary even while making political commentary and the complete dedication to his wife, who he described to us periodically as "the love of (his) life" and "the prettiest girl in the world."  I give Peter a solid B+, which puts him well above Michael but of course below George, who is the gold standard for U.K. guides.  He got us home 10 minutes ahead of schedule, which allowed us time to get a beer before coming back to the room and peel off our wet socks (our second pair of the day, purchased at one of the outdoor stores in Wordsworth's hometown of Grasmere after poor choices -- like putting on our waterproof Keens in them morning and saying, "Hmm... these are still a little damp.  I think I'll wear my regular tennis shoes" even though it's going to be pouring for the first half of the tour).

Rain was our companion for most of today.  Barbara and George Ford were not.  They didn't show up until lunch, which I normally would say is odd for an all-day tour but today's was riddled with attrition.  There was the girl traveling solo in the front seat, who came in hot, chatting up Peter as if they were old friends, only to suddenly jump ship at 4 PM, disappearing into a rural B & B without explanation.  "She has to catch a train," Sandra Bullock, whose eavesdropping skills are usually pretty shoddy, confided.

"In the middle of nowhere?"  Shoulder shrug.

The women sitting in front of us didn't disappear but they may as well have.  For much of the second half of the tour they simply stayed on the bus, choosing to sit there and play Pokemon Go instead of joining the rest of us in our futile efforts at capturing the staggering natural beauty of the Lake District.  

Mark Weir's dream ended here. 

We made several stops, beginning at the Bridge of Ashness, England's second-most photographed bridge, which is where it started raining.  Hard.  Enough to destroy my tennis shoes, permanently clammy feet being my punishment for short-sightedness.  The rain continued as we visited Honister, England's last slate mine, where you can buy really heavy coasters and climb a miniature Half Dome, even if it's pouring, and hear the sad story of mine owner Mark Weir, who perished while flying his beloved helicopter.  "I am sad to say that Mark Weir is no more," Peter said with an understatedness that would continue right up until he told us that he likes to have barbecues with his friends at the stone circle except during the summer, when "you get an awful lot of hippie people who just come along and be daft."

By now I was obsessed with the fact that the guy sitting behind us sounded exactly like J.K. Simmons.  It was uncanny.  He looked nothing like J.K., never made the bemused, disgusted J.K. Simmons face that my son and I so love making to each other, but he did sound exactly. Like. J.K. Simmons.  I couldn't stop listening, waiting for him to make a convincing argument for switching to Farmer's Insurance, which never happened. 

Sandra Bullock, at work with the iPhone.

By lunchtime, which we spent in Wordsworth's hometown of Grasmere, I was beginning to feel guilty about not knowing anything about Wordsworth.  I tried to feign interest in his grave but was more focused on getting new socks before my feet developed jungle rot.  From there it was on to a very relaxing and scenic ferry ride on Windermere...water?  Lake?  Yesterday I called a body of water "Derwentwater Lake," but it might be called "Derment Water."  Peter gave us a long monologue about the various titles for bodies of water in the Lake District.  Only one, he told us, was actually a "lake," which seems odd, since the entire place is the "lake" district.  I don't want to be inaccurate, but I'm also too lazy to actually Google it.  Also, I'm down to 14 percent power on my laptop.  I encourage all readers to research this pressing and important issue.

After the lake, the scenery came hot and heavy.  We tore through a few prominent lake towns and congratulated ourselves for staying in Keswick and avoiding the hordes of tourists who'd set up camp in these more popular villages.  Later Sandra Bullock made Peter stop the bus so she could jump out and take a picture of a black Herdwicke sheep (don't worry; they change back to white by the time they're adults.  No mention of the trauma of having every single Herdwicke sheep go through its childhood as a literal black sheep).  "Watch," I told the rapt busload as they watched my unsinkable wife sprint across the street.  "She'll hop the fence to get closer."

She did not, to all of our great disappointment. 

At 4:15, after the mysterious front seat woman debused, it stopped raining.  We were all standing on the shores of the beautiful Ullswater when it happened.  J.K. Simmons and his wife and other friend celebrated by smoking their seventh butt of the day.  The Malaysian family took selfies.  Sandra Bullock climbed too close to the lake to get the perfect picture.  Graham Spencer, traveling along and unfortunately bearing the same name as Peter's best friend from childhood that he hasn't seen in 50 years, continued to say nothing.  

Accomplishing the impossible: a photo of the stone
circle sans selfie-taking tourists.

Finally, after a brief but hectic attempt by every single person in the bus, including Peter, to take a picture of a rainbow that suddenly appeared while we were driving, we reached the stone circle.  I was excited, expecting a transcendently peaceful experience like I'd had at the much smaller stone circle in Kenmare.  As we looked for parking, Peter raised questions:  "We don't know who put this here, or what it was for?  When you get out there, I want you to just stand there and imagine, and wonder who did this, and why?"  Let me at 'em, Pete.  I'm game.

Unfortunately, by the time we reached the circle so had dozens of other people, not exactly acting daft, more like acting like people act at mysterious tourist sites:  climbing on the rocks, taking selfies, talking loudly.  One guy had perfected the art of getting in everyone's photos, so I finally just took a picture of him.  

Congratulations, pal; you're finally the actual
subject of someone's photo.

I stood in the center of the circle, eyes closed, looking for peace.  None to be found.  Maybe, though, the peace was in the surrounding mountains, the valley in the distance so beautiful that even Sandra Bullock, whose faith in her iPhone camera is usually unquestioned, admitted, "There's no way a picture's going to capture this."

So we stood for awhile, backs turned to the jokers at the stone circle, and then finally went back to the bus.  Peter drove us the rest of the way into Keswick, cracking jokes about Americans that, while gentle, reminded us that to the English, we'll always be those loud-mouthed upstarts who just don't get how things work.

Here are today's tour numbers:  

2 -- number of climate control settings in Peter's Mercedes bus: stifling and icicle.

4 -- mountain passes traversed during today's tour.  Two were so subtle that "you won't even know it's a pass."

7 -- cigarette breaks for J.K. Simmons and his crew in 8.5 hours.

17 -- times on a mountain road Peter had to bring the bus to a complete stop to allow oncoming traffic to inch past.   

3 -- comments made by Peter questioning the competence of drivers of cars in oncoming traffic.

1 -- person speculating loudly that Leonard Nimoy would probably think the Castle Rigg stone circle is  the work of aliens.  That person: me.

Back on the road tomorrow, this time with no guide.  Just me, Sandra Bullock and our Volvo, covering the 237 miles between Keswick and Chipping-Campden, in the heart of the Cotswalds.  I hope they have cheese.