Nancy's Travels: September 2007

TO ALL

This trip involved another last minute change of destination. Although this destination change (as well as the last one) was definitely a good decision in retrospect, I kind of hope such changes don’t become a habit – they are emotionally and physically exhausting!

We started out thinking that we were going to Scotland over Labor Day weekend, then talked about some islands in the North Sea and finally settled on an island in Denmark that Rick Steves calls the “Ship in a Bottle Island.” Some friends were going with us and we made lodging reservations and a ferry reservation. Twenty-four hours before launch time the weather forecast was ominous – four straight days of rain – possibly just drizzle, but rain nonetheless. Our friends decided that wasn’t for them (she is pregnant!). We probably would have gone anyway had I not happened unto some really cheap plane tickets to London out of an airport just north of Dusseldorf, Germany (3+ hours from our house instead of the usual 2 hours to Frankfurt- Hahn). The forecast for England included some clouds but NO rain, which is no small miracle for England! Mike and I both got home from work around 7:30 on Thursday evening. We bought the plane tickets on line, reserved a rent car, packed, posted a blog, and were out the door for Dusseldorf by 10:30. We got to the Dusseldorf-Weeze airport about 2:00AM, slept a few hours in the back of the van and were on a plane at 7:05AM Friday morning. By noon we were on the road to Avebury, having checked into our room at Fairford RAF and successfully resisted the temptation to go back to bed!

Fairford RAF (Royal Air Force) was a real find. We stayed there for 3 nights and paid a whopping total of 100 US dollars. That would be a good deal in the US – it’s a steal in the UK where it takes two US dollars to buy one British pound and lodging is generally high to exorbitant. Fairford RAF is about 2 hours west of London. It is probably not the best place to stay if one’s goal is to see London (although that’s not out of the question), but we’ve seen London (more or less) and there are at least a dozen other high priority sights within an hour and a half of Fairford in various directions. We managed to take in 5 of them in 4 days. I’d love to go back for another 4 day weekend and check off a few more. Here are the ones we did:

(1) Avebury is a town with a stone circle around it similar to that of Stonehenge but several times larger and not surrounded by an impenetrable fence. You can walk wherever you want and even mingle with the sheep if that suites your fancy. Avebury is slightly closer to Fairford than Stonehenge. If we go back to this area again I’d like to do Stonehenge but for this trip we decided to be renegades and go for the less well-known. I’m not sure what makes the experts so sure that these stone circles were built for religious purposes. It seemed to us that they could just as likely be defensive. The one at Avebury had a sizeable ditch running parallel to it. The stones were like a town wall and the ditch like a moat.

(2) Bath is the site of some hot springs and hence was the town to which the Romans went to take a bath. We did not go there to take a bath and, in fact, we didn’t even tour the baths (something else to go back to!). We went because someone (Jeff Walden maybe?) told us early on when we arrived in Europe (or maybe even before we left the States?) that Bath was a neat city architecturally. I’ve had that stored away in my brain ever since and finally got a chance to check it out. We were not disappointed. Having said that, I’m going to resist the temptation to try to explain what was neat about the architecture and tell you instead about a European phenomenon that showed up in Bath and reminded us of other places where we’ve seen this same thing. Europeans like to have chairs available in strategic places for whoever might happen to come along and want to sit and rest, or enjoy the view, or soak in the sun, or people watch, or whatever. Sometimes these chairs are just cheap plastic (see below). Other times they take the form of a park bench along a walking trail or in a garden (not too unlike one might find in the US, albeit less frequently than in Europe). And sometimes they are really nice, colorful lawn chairs. What amazes me is that they are rarely bolted down and are often made out of materials that could easily be (and, in the US, would be) vandalized. Somehow I suspect that this whole phenomenon isn’t just a fluke but that it says something about the difference between Europeans and Americans and what they value in life. Anyway, here are some places where we’ve found chairs of various kinds:

A busy intersection
in Budapest

A walking trail above Gimmelwald, Switzerland

A bike path along the Rhein in Germany

A ski restaurant at the top of the Zugspitz in Germany

The Keukenhof Gardens in the Netherlands

A footpath in
the Cotswolds

A city park in Bath

(3) The Cotswolds are another of those “frozen in time” areas of Europe (like Rothenburg, Germany and Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic). As always, the “freeze” is a consequence of economic disaster. Areas hit by economic disaster tend not to “modernize” or enter the next era. If modernization is delayed long enough the town or area becomes historic and next thing you know – voila – the tourists arrive. Once the tourists arrive, modernization would equal loss of income and therefore it is no longer an option. In the case of the Cotswold villages, wool made them wealthy. The arrival of cotton ruined the wool industry and caused the economy to go south.

Houses and buildings in the Cotswolds are all made out of a rather drab color of sandstone. There is nothing special about the building materials -- at least in my opinion. What makes them so pleasing to the eye is the uniformity of color and the fact that they are delightfully designed, meticulously maintained and well landscaped and just . . . . well, cute. In other words, the buildings are old but not rundown. Occasionally one comes across a messy overgrown house but that just adds to the charm. If they were all allowed to get that way, the charm would be gone overnight. The landscaping includes lots of flowers and the drab nature of the sandstone seems to set off the flowers and makes them all the more beautiful.

Some of the buildings have thatched roofs but not all that many. The doorways are typically low and gabled.

There are also these things called straddle stones that look like stone mushrooms. Apparently the houses used to set on these stones to keep the rodents out.

Now the stones are simply used as decorations.

There are often public footpaths from one village to another and they don’t just follow the road. Usually they lead over or through fences and through fields where sheep and/or cattle are grazing. They make walking a true delight (at least to this city girl!) Apparently the “right to free passage” is a big deal in this area. Any landowner who dares to block a public footpath is in big trouble. There are various interesting ways of allowing people (but not animals) to get over or through a fence. The first one pictured below is called a “kissing gate.” To get through, you walk into the “v” and then swing the gate past you and walk out the other side. Two people walking together would have to stand really close to swing the gate past them, providing a good opportunity for kissing.

As in the rest of Europe, every little village has a church, which gives Mike lots of opportunity to preach.

I must say that the sheep in the Cotswold are much more photogenic that those in the Ireland. Only occasionally do they have paint splotches on them for identification, and even then the splotches are smaller and much more discrete. There were a number of varieties of sheep. Of particular note were some with black underbellies and long bushy tails like one would expect to see on a cat.

Mike’s boss and his wife went to the Cotswolds a couple of weeks before we did and we have a debate going among the four of us. Perhaps some of you would like to weigh in on it. Initially the two sides divided along gender lines, but my dad has weighed in and blurred things slightly. The debate has to do with highway maintenance. A lot of the two lane country roads in the Cotswolds are lined with bushes and trees. The roads are exactly two lanes wide and the hedges come right up to the white line marking the edge of the road. Sometimes the bushes are trees and they actually cover the road, so it's like you're drive through a green foliage tunnel. The foliage "appears" to be trimmed so that the sides and the top form a 90 degree angle. The question is --- (1) do they intentionally trim the hedges that way or (2) are the branches broken off by the trucks using the road. Mike and his boss think that it would take an absurd amount of time and equipment for the highway department to trim all those hedges and trees and therefore they must be simply broken off by the trucks and other vehicles. Also the individual branches look broken off rather than sawed off. We women think that the cutting is too uniform for it to be done accidentally or randomly. Also there are signs occasionally that say something like "Foliage height 13 meters." Why would trucks have to be warned about that, if it's part of their "job" to keep things trimmed? I’ve scrounged around on line and discovered that property owners in England are responsible for maintaining the hedges on their property including those that border the roads. There are all kinds of regulations about how to do it and how often. My dad says he once saw a mowing machine with some kind of a vertical blade cutting hedges in New Zealand (sounds like he’s weighing in on the female side!). But Mike doesn’t think that answers the question about the square corner at the top (some people are sooooo stubborn!). I have an uncle who spent his life doing highway maintenance, but he isn’t responding to my cries for help. What do you all think? Come on now, be courageous and take a stand!

One last note about roads in the Cotswolds: they are very narrow! Mike thinks this travelogue should have been named “smALL Roads Lead to the Cotswolds” as a take off on “Some Roads Lead to Rome” (a previous travelogue), but somehow that doesn't quite make it for me. Of course for Mike, narrow roads are not a problem at all. In fact roads are optional.

(4) Chepstow Castle (pronounced CHEP-stoh not CHEEP-stoh) is in Wales – but just barely. Supposedly the really scenic parts of Wales are in the north which is somewhat beyond the reach of a daytrip from Fairford (hummmmm . . . . . smells like another whole trip!) However Chepstow Castle (southern Wales) was within our reach. It is a ruin, rather large, and perched on top of a cliff overlooking the Wye River (pronounced why). It is another of those wonderful “pay an admission fee and then wander around on your own” castles.

(5) Tintern Abbey in also in southern Wales. It is a huge ruin, along the order of the other European cathedrals in size, mostly intact except for the windows, the roof and the pews and . . . . grass growing in the aisles! It’s probably the largest ruin I’ve seen anywhere -- other than the Colosseum in Rome. Really spectacular and fun to wander through.

Between Chepstow Castle and Tintern Abbey we stopped along the road and took a little walk through the forest to a view point. On the way back we suddenly started hearing a really raucous noise in the distance. I thought it was some hikers coming up the path playing a radio and I was duly annoyed. It turned out to be a herd of excited sheep! The owner came driving through a nearby field and they thought they were going to get fed – or something. What a racket! (This racket and the fact that the owner left the gate open were the impetus for Mike’s off-road excursion pictured above.)

There’s not much new in the way of family news, so I will wrap this up very quickly. Those of you that regularly skip to the end . . . . tough luck! Alan is back in Zurich, Amy is back in Bellingham. Deanna is back in Cedarville. I have no clue where Mike is most of the time. Oh wait . . . . he’s in his office. I guess someone has to work to pay for all this traveling!!!!

Mike and I and Alan and Rose are headed for Greece this Tuesday evening. We have a little role reversal going on here: Alan and Rose want to relax and lay on the beach all week. Mike and I want to be energetic and see Greece (or rather I want to be energetic and see Greece and Mike is willing to go along!) The compromise plan is that we are going to spend a day in Athens and the rest of the week on the island of Kos, which is a stone's throw from Turkey. From Kos, Mike and I can hop to Patmos or Rhodes or a couple of other lesser known but interesting islands and maybe to Turkey. Alan and Rose can lounge around. It’s a plan. We’ll let you know how it works!

Nancy

P.S. This last trip seems to have yielded a bunch of animal pictures. I’m not a professional photographer, but I can’t resist showing off a few of them. Having a camera with quite a bit of optical zoom is nice – especially if you can find something on which to steady the camera.

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