Going Home

As departure time neared, there was a sharp increase in signs warning us about the many road closures for the morning of Sunday, August 14th, our departure date.  As I reported earlier, we had checked the road closure map and found that our "house" was completed surrounded by closed roads.  After researching what we could on-line, we sought out the police station at the near-by town of Kingston-upon-Thames, to see if they could tell us how to "escape" Sunday morning.  The woman we spoke to was very nice and sympathetic but said she didn't really have any information about the road closures other than the police would be manning them.  She said that we "should definitely NOT try to come through Kingston". 

Well, that was a little discouraging.  It appeared that we might need to spend Saturday night in a hotel in order to make it to the airport on Sunday morning.   The police had recommended that we check all the road closure times carefully and perhaps call the London Transport Office, who were in charge of the road management for the cycling event. We checked the times and called to confirm them and decided that we would simply try to leave the area before the roads closed.   Since the roads were scheduled to close at 6 am, that meant leaving the house around 5:45, which meant getting up at 5:00.  This, of course, worked, but made for an extraordinarily long day.  Our flight wasn't until 11:15.  We were all set at the airport more than 3 1/2 hours before that - I think that's a personal record.

The flight home was actually pretty good (except it was hard to get anything to drink - soda, water - so I got a little dehydrated (and alot grumpy)).  Aer Lingus has individual TVs in the seat backs with a nice selection of avialable, free current movies.  We both watched several movies of our own choosing.

We dove back from Boston to Cape Cod, reminding each other that we needed to stay on the RIGHT side of the road now.  It is funny how quickly driving on the left became an absolutely habit.  We are still working to break it every time we need to make a left or right turn.

It was wonderful to get reunited with our dogs who had stayed behind in Cape Cod .  We had lined up EJ, our dog sitter from last summer again, but unfortunately she was in a bad car accident about 4 or 5 days before we left.  We had NO back-up plan, but lucky for us, EJ's wonderful daughter, Donna, stepped right in and offered to keep them for us.  The dogs had a great time with Donna, her two boys, Ben and Sammy, and their dog Moisha.

What a wonderful trip we have had.  Now it is time to get back to life as usual, whatever that is...

Last Trip into London

As we got ready to end our wonderful 6 week vacation in Ireland and England, we made one last trip into London to see a few more things.

Larry went in ahead of me to visit the wonderful Tower Bridge (and climb up in it and walk across it).  My legs were hurting and I was afraid it would involve too much walking and climbing so I skipped this excursion, but he got some great pictures and really enjoyed the tour.

The draw bridge is still opened three times a day.

He especially enjoyed the tour of the engine room.  In between opening the draw bridge, they pump water up into the green tank you see on the right here.  To open the bridge, they use the weight of the water to provide the counter-balance to open the bridge.  Clever people, these Brits.

We met  up later at Covent Gardens for lunch.  Phew! It is SO expensive to eat in London.  Lunch out costs about $45 on average for nothing special.  We will not miss that part of the trip, but Covent Garden was hopping with lots of people, many street performers and a wonderful open air market.  We wandered and ate and enjoyed and then headed by tube to the Victoria and Albert Museum, the last museum on my list of places I wanted to visit.
The first thing that strikes you about the museum is the absolutely incredible building it is housed in (and the fact that it is free - very welcome after that expensive lunch).  

The building was built in the 1800's for the great London Exposition.  It was the only building kept from that and it was well worth keeping.  The museum is all about design, so it contains all sorts of interesting things, but the building is the real gem in it all.
One area that particularly caught our interest was the Plaster Cast rooms.  They had made plaster molds of many famous buildings, monuments and statutes and had them on display.  It was breathe taking to see them all together in a single room. 

A second room was under construction next door which had a replica of the David from Florence.  Outstanding!

The museum also contained an incredible jewelry display, a silver and gold metal works display, and so much more.  There was even a theater exhibit (they had moved the Theatre Museum from Covent Garden to here a few years ago) with costumes, posters, props, scripts, pictures...really neat stuff.

The building was constructed around a magnificent court yard and it contained a real up-scale (read "expensive") cafe in a set of rooms which previously were part of the ceramics part of the museum.

Cafe at the V & A

Seriously, this building was just incredible.

Finally, we bid farewell to London and headed back to our "home" in Richmond to start packing and cleaning (why did we exchange with a house that had 5 bathrooms?) 

Thames Tidal Barrier

Today we visited the very impressive tidal barriers in Woolwich.  We drove there rather than going by train because my left hip and knee have been making walking very painful and I feared that going by public transportation, while very possible, would involve too much walking. Fortunately, Larry was willing to humor me and drove.

The River Thames is very much a tidal river - rising and falling many feet each day.  It is subject to major flooding during storm surges from the Atlantic when weather conditions are unfavorable.  The barrier consist of multiple closeable gates strung in a line across the River Thames at Woolwich which is just east of Greenwich as you head out towards the Channel. 

It was built between 1978 and 1982 to provide a way of preventing London from getting flooded.  It is expected that they will be able to do that job through the current century.  The barrier is currently deployed about 30 times a year, including a monthly deployment just to check that it all works.

There is an interesting visitors center which describes the history of London, the history of the flooding and the construction of the barriers.

We wish we had known about the monthly testing - we would have gone on August 2nd when they deployed them.  Oh well.

Some additional technical details from Larry:

Between each of the stands you see in the picture, there is a 3,000 TON steel structure that sits on the bottom in normal conditions.  During periods of possible tide surges, (storms and certain sun/moon positions), these steel structures are raised to form a solid barrier to prevent the water flow into the River Thames.  The steel structures are much like a half cylinder laying in a concrete depression so that the flat side is up and parallel to the bottom, allowing ships to pass over.  When deployed, these half cylinders are “rolled up” 90 degrees by huge hydraulic pistons to be perpendicular to the water flow, thus forming a solid dam.  They had working models in the visitors center – very impressive !

The Olympics are Coming

The Olympics will be held in London next summer - 2012.  We saw evidence of this when we visited Greenwich as they were preparing some kind of large venue there which took most of the park.
We are being made further aware of this by all the signs posted now warning us of an important 'test event' being held this coming Sunday.  It is a bike race from London to Surrey and it will severely impact the major roads, the buses and the trains in our area.  People are being warned to "simply stay off the roads". 

That would be fine, EXCEPT - we have to get to the airport Sunday morning to fly back to Boston.

Here is the map of the closures in our area. I marked on here where our house is. You can see that we are pretty well totally TRAPPED!

We have studied the event map and the place we are living is completely surrounded by the bike route.  We assume, but are not sure that we will be able to CROSS the route (we know we can not drive on it), but even with that it is unclear how to escape our area, as the bridges over the River Thames to the north and to the south of us are both involved in the race.

We are actually planning to visit the local police station to ask their advice.  If we don't get some good answers I will lobby to spend Saturday night at a hotel out near Heathrow.  As it is we would need to leave the house at 7:30 but with road closures we would certainly need to leave earlier - EGAD.

To be continued.....

Attending The Globe Theatre

When we first arrived in London, we visited the Globe Theatre - the very precise reproduction of the theatre that Shakespeare's plays were originally performed in London.  The tour we took was wonderful and definitely piqued our interested to see a performance there - especially as a "groundling" standing in the pit.  Grounding tickets only cost 5 pounds but you are not allowed to sit, use folding chairs or anything of the sort.

Deb and Bob attempted to get tickets for all of us to go to a show but everything was sold out the entire week they were here.  They did, luckily, secure two tickets for us to go see "Anne Boleyn" this past Tuesday night.   It is not a Shakespeare play but fits right in as it has similar humor and is a fascinting historical drama about Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII who urged him to break with the Pope in Rome.   It was highly entertaining and highly interesting - really made history come alive.

The play was absolutely fantastic - superb acting.  We had great places to stand right near the "run way" which projected out from the stage.  The place was packed - even the restricted view seats were taken.

We barely noticed we were standing the entire time, although we did sit on the concrete floor during the intermisison.  Of course, the cast got a standing ovation from the groundlings :)

Riots in London

The past few days have been marked by "riots" in various parts of London and also in a number of other cities in England.  While the initial incident seemed to be related to a police shooting, many of the subsequent "riots" appeared to just be thugs looting and robbing - with no political aspect.

It seemed to be only on the other side of London, but then there was a report of the #65 bus being burned in Ealing.  This certainly caught our attention as this is the very same bus we take to get from our house to the Richmond train station to catch the tube to London.  Ealing is at the far end of the bus route, but we have actually been to Ealing and caught the bus from there.  Somehow it all seemed much closer.

We have been very cautious about our movements and it just so happened that we only went into London once during the four days.   The one time we did go in, we left our jewelry and wallets at home and just took some money and IDs.  There was no real evidence of anything going on. Tourists were still everywhere and things seemed very much as normal - at least in the part of London we visited that day.  When we returned to the Richmond train station, we saw "bobbies" posted about every 30 yards or so along the main shopping street in Richmond - keeping the peace, I am sure.  There have been no incidents in Richmond that we know of.

Parliament has been called back into session.  The police force are all put on the streets to quell the rioting.  By the fourth night things seemed to have calmed down although there were isolated incidents.

Boat Ride from Richmond to London

We had theatre tickets for Tuesday night in London so we decided to take the leisurely (2 hour) boat ride from Richmond into London.   It left the Richmond pier about 3:30.    It is only 10 miles to central London as the crow flies, but it is 19 miles on the river.  We sat up top for the best view.

We went under the Richmond bridge and were treated to a waterside view of the lovely place we had strolled a few nights ago with Deb and Bob and enjoyed dinner.

Since the River Thames is very much a tidal river, there are a number of locks on it - or else all of the water would run out of some areas.  The first lock is in Richmond.  It was interesting to go through it.  The water level was about 7 feet different on either side of the lock.  The tide was on its way out but certainly not at its lowest.

We proceeded down the river going under the 14 or so bridges plus a few railroad bridges...and a  Peace Pagoda (really?).

 It was unique way to approach London.  There were also many beautiful buildings along the way.  The closer we got to London the better the buildings were.

The interesting tan and green building in the bottom right of this pictures is the new Home Office.

Of course, as we neared the pier in Westminster where we got off, we had a wonderful view of Parliament.

Notice the goreous weather.  We have really been incredibly lucky this trip with getting really nice weather.

Stratford-upon-Avon

We arrived in Stratford-upon-Avon around 4:30 and checked into Woodstock B&B on the main road leading into town.  They have a car park and it was an easy walk to the center of town.   

Woodstock B&B

Most everything closes between 5 and 5:30 so we just took a nice walk down to the Avon river. (We had learned on our Bath tour that the word "avon" means "river" and that there are many, many Avon rivers in England.)

One of the nicest things about Stratford are all the lovely Tudor style houses that still exist there.

They are still lived in and nicely maintain, on the whole.  Gives a very charming effect.

We walked by the Royal Shakespeare Company theatre.  Unfortunately, there was no theatre that night, just a concert, so no chance for seeing anything.

Royal Shakespeare Company

The Avon river runs right through town and is loaded with boats and swans.

We took a nice quiet, calm boat ride up and down the river and saw a little pedestrian ferry which was powered by a man winding a winch.

We walked over to the other side and had a good meal at Le Bistro Pierre.  We both had lamb, which was very good, but the french baguette was probably the best part of the meal.  Despite the storm that appears to be gather in the picture below, we never got rained on.



The next morning, after a hearty English breakfast, we headed off to "do Shakespeare".  We wanted to see his birthplace and his grave site.  The birthplace was beautifully restored and has been a target for visitors since the 1700's!  They have guest books showing famous Americans like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson visiting when they were ambassadors to England and France.

Shakespeare was born and raised here.  he was one of eight children, although not all survived to adulthood.  His father was a glove maker.

I wasn't supposed to take pictures inside but there was no sign.  I had taken several before they told me not to.  They had docents throughout who were very interesting and told us a lot about the history of the house and the family.

After that, we walked through town towards the church were Shakespeare is buried.  Along the way we came upon another house that belonged to a member of shakespeares family.  Since our admission ticket was good there also, we went through it.  The best part was outside where they are actively excavating what is called "New Place" which is the home that Shakespeare lived in when he "retired" back to Stratford from London.  It has been taken down and built over but they are finding lots of interesting things in the site.  We saw them sifting through the dirt and finding various things.  Very interesting experience.

We finally reached the church where he is buried along with his wife, daughter and her husband. 

The graves are right in front of the altar.  There was a docent there, as well, who told us stories about Shakespeare in Strateford - how he came to be buried there (gave land to the church), how he became a "gentleman" and got a coat of arms for his family. 

He also told us the story of the alabaster bust of Shakespeare that was made for his wife by an unknown artist. It is kept nicely painted and thought to be a very good likeness of him.

We drove back to Richmond, stopping for lunch in another cotswold village (Moreton-on-the-Marsh), had tea in Woodstock (where the Blenheim Palace is located).  We considered going into the see the palace but we have seen so many palaces and it was very expensive (15 pounds each!) so we just headed for home.

All in all a lovely trip.

The Cotswolds

After a delicious breakfast of croissants and juice, we left our friends' house near Bath and headed off to drive through The Cotswold area.  This area was the primary wool producing area but was badly hurt by the rise of cotton and the Industrial Revolution.  The small villages are reknown for their loveliness.

We headed first for Bourton-on-the-water and had a lovely Sunday roast dinner (I love that tradition.)

We wandered around the tiny village admiring the river.  Larry visited a good model railroad museum while I wandered in and out of nice shops.  The town is very tourist oriented, to say the least, but very pleasant. (Thank you, Kara, for suggesting this particular town.)

Then we headed off to Chipping Campden (don't you just love those names?) another charming village stuck in the past.  These towns all have very large, wide main street areas because they used to bring the sheep into town (I presume to auction them or whatever).  Makes for easy parking these days.

The best thing we saw there, however, was a gorgeous thatched roof house.  It had perfectly trimmed hedges.  Just magnificent.  They are getting rarer and rarer.

The other thing we saw there was the first "suburban" subdivison that really reminded us of the states, with large lawns in front, no walls or fences - very unusual here in England.

We drove through a number of other lovely villages and eventually reached our target of Stratford-upon-Avon where we had booked a very nice B&B for the night.    The English countryside was magnificent (but I did a terrible job recording it on my camera!).  

 It was green rolling hills of farm land.  Just beautiful.  A welcome change to urban London and Richmond.

Visit to Bath and New Friends

Saturday we headed west, dropping Deb and Bob off at the airport for their return to Raleigh. We continued west to Bath and the home of a lovely family we had exchanged homes with last summer but had never actually met. We stayed in their home in Nice, France while they were in Cape Cod.   They had graciously invited us to come stay the night with them while we explored the lovely city of Bath.  Getting to meet them is most definitely the high point of our 3 weeks in England.

They live about 10 minutes outside of Bath in a lovely rural village with a magnificant view of the countryside.

Bath is a beautiful city.  I can not understand why Queen Victoria didn't like it.

Bath, England

It is quite different in appearance from other cities in that all of the buildings are built of what is called Bath stone – a pale yellowish limestone that is found in the area. It has even been decreed by Parliament that all buildings will be covered in Bath Stone.

We took the Hop-On-Hop-Off bus tour and visited The Circus, which is a round green surrounded by a complete circle of buildings built in the round. Nicholas Cage used to live in one of these townhouses.  

The Circue

We also went to the even posher Royal Crescent and visited a restored Georgian House. Bath was quite the social scene with a “season” that lasted from Sept to March every year.  It was here that we saw the chairs that they got carried around in.  We learned that the term "cheerio" originated here as a call for their chair - "chair ho", to indicate that they wanted to leave.

The Royal Crescent

The city of Bath was originally founded by the Romans back around 75 AD and is the home of an amazing set of roman baths. There is an active hot spring which still feeds the baths today, although they are no longer in use.

The water is green because now the baths are not covered and they turn green from algae, but the water is still very warm. 

The site has been mostly excavated and is extremely well presented with displays and a good audio guide. It was really interesting.

We took the train back out to where our friends lived, getting off in a tiny village named Freshford.

We walked up the road to The Inn at Freshford which is a really lovely pub – and across from a sheep field.

We had an excellent meal and a very fun evening with David, Ingrid, Ingrid’s sister Kara and Kara’s boyfriend, Paul. There were also 4 well behaved, beautiful children who were mostly not-seen and not-heard because the pub had a playground out back.   

A very memorable evening indeed.