Day 1 – Travel to London
Getting away for 10 days takes discipline and so by the time
our departure date arrived we were ready.
Trip planning is my weekend past time and so I had all the details
covered, planning just enough time for spontaneity. Yes, I see the irony in that. That’s how I roll, I like to have a plan with
hotels, flights, and tours booked in advance.
The focus of this trip wasn’t London, but rather a 7-day tour of France from Normandy to Paris. However, I wanted to try the daytime flight to Europe and London is the only European destination with a daytime flight and so I inserted a couple days in London into the itinerary.
We departed at 8:20AM DC time and flew economy on
United. I’m very careful about
allocating point redemptions so that we can fly business class overseas without
paying full freight, but that didn’t work out this time for this leg of the
journey and so we ended up in economy on the way over. Uncomfortable, but doable, and in my opinion
much better than flying overnight in economy.
I did catch myself complaining silently to myself about flying economy
but kept those thoughts (mostly) in my head, with maybe a mutter or two as the
meal was served. I’ll tell you, once you
fly business class, it’s very difficult to go back! Yes, this falls into the category of “not a
real problem.”
I sat next to a lovely lady probably in her 70s headed over
to Italy for a couple weeks with her husband.
When I mentioned we were going to France she gasped in horror, and
warned me to be very careful. Without
blinking I assured her we were experienced travelers and would remain alert and
on guard, particularly in the larger cities.
That seemed to ease her concern somewhat, though as soon as I said it, I
realized I was disturbed by both her genuine concern for my wellbeing in France,
and then how quickly I responded to assure her I would be very careful.
We landed on time and made it through immigration, onto the
super easy Heathrow Express, and were in our hotel by about 11PM. I chose to use some of my Hilton points and
booked us for our two nights in London in the Conrad, a beautiful hotel just a
few minutes from Westminster Abbey. Two
amazing Chicken Tikka Masala dinners via room service later and we were asleep
by 2AM.
Day 2 – London, the
Churchill War Rooms, and a visit to Roman ruins, Borough Market, and more
ToursbyLocals.com is one of my go-to sites for tours around
the world and I had arranged a half-day tour of London to see some sites we
hadn’t seen a couple years ago when we were last in the city. After a spot-on breakfast buffet, we met our
tour guide Denise in the lobby at 10AM sharp and we set for a few hours.
Our first stop was The Churchill War Rooms which are
underground bunkers built just prior to the start of WWII and used by the
Cabinet, the BBC and others to run the country during the war. http://www.iwm.org.uk/visits/churchill-war-rooms
After the war people literally got up from their desks, left the rooms, and
locked the doors. They remained
untouched for decades until a recent restoration. This is well worth a visit. Churchill was a larger than life figure and
you could almost smell the cigar smoke in the bunker. Visit, and I promise you’ll be transported
back to the Blitz and will leave with a new level of understanding of what
people went through. I left thinking, no
matter how bad we think the world is right now, WWII was clearly worse. It’s headline news when a terrorist kills 2
or 3 people as just happened in London a few days ago. 60 million people were killed during
WWII. 60 million, difficult to imagine
on that scale.
Next, we watched a few minutes of the changing of the guard
at Buckingham Palace and continued walking to see the ruins of a Roman
Amphitheatre under the Guildhall Art Gallery.
This was absolutely one of those places you’d never find without a guide
unless you were looking specifically for it.
It was a surprise to see this in the heart of London. https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/visit-the-city/attractions/guildhall-galleries/Pages/londons-roman-amphitheatre.aspx
Then we walked through Borough Market which was bustling
with weekend crowds and had every aspect you’d expect of a London outdoor
market in the spring, and then ended our tour in front of the recreation of Shakespeare’s
Globe Theatre along the river Thames. We
said goodbye and thank you and had lunch at Swann Café next to the
Theatre. It was a perfect day, in the lower
60s with strong spring sun and we were so pleased to be in London.
After lunch decided to check out the Theatre – it was
Shakespeare’s birthday weekend after all.
We bought tour tickets the highlight of which was the ability to sit in
on a rehearsal for that evening’s production of a modernized Romeo and
Juliet. The tour was only about an hour
and so that gave us time to head back to the hotel to rest for a few
minutes. We had 7:30 tickets to Beautiful:
The Carole King Musical.
We love musicals and go to many and so we didn’t feel too
bad about leaving at intermission because the show wasn’t interesting enough to
override our hunger. We had a little bit
of jet lag and our eating schedule was still way off and so we left and grabbed
a bite at an unmemorable restaurant nearby the theatre. We love the West End and could have chosen
better but we were too hungry to make a good decision. We decided to walk the 3 miles back to the
hotel which was a real treat. I love a
long walk through a city. It’s magical
to watch some neighborhoods close for the evening, and a few blocks later walk
through a neighborhood just coming to life.
It’s also so good for my soul to just be present with the vibe of the
city. I purposefully did not buy a data
package for my phone so I wasn’t even tempted to sneak a peek at my email or at
the latest news updates. It was just the
two of us, walking through London at near midnight, pretending to be locals in
one of the world’s greatest cities.
Day 3 – Travel, out
of London and then – surprise – back again!
Our flight was at noon from Stanstead Airport to Dinard,
France and so we hopped on the tube (subway) to the Liverpool Street Station to
catch the Stanstead Express train to the airport. 45 minutes to Stanstead instead of 15 to
Heathrow seemed much further than it should be, though like all trains in the
UK, it was efficient. We arrived to
check into our Ryanair flight with plenty of time to spare. Thus far everything was working beautifully,
and then we hit a serious snag. Ryanair
declined to check-in Christian because his passport was expiring just shy of 90
days. We quickly realized we made a
major rookie mistake and didn’t take care of that in DC. It wasn’t for lack of trying, he had been
trying to make an appointment for 3 months though the embassy in DC seems to be
following the lead of the chaos in the country and he wasn’t able to
renew. We forgot the press the issue
because we were busy getting a UK visa for him and forgot that France would
require something different. So back to
London to see if we could get any help from the Venezuelan Consulate – but not
until the next day since it was Sunday.
On the train, back to London the reality set in. It was unlikely the Venezuelan Consulate
would issue Christian a new passport same day and so all our tour of the French
countryside plan melted away. It was
very frustrating and I was annoyed at both myself for not thinking about this
and at Christian for not being more assertive in taking care of his
documents. Not knowing what was going to
happen we booked for one night in the Double Tree next near Westminster. We took a long nap and decided to make the
best of our unplanned evening in London and went to a well rated restaurant in
Mayfair called The Galvin at the Athenaeum.
It was classy and well done, by Michelin-starred chefs Chris and Jeff
Galvin. I love a great meal and this was
one and so my attitude of disappointment started to fade. We decided to walk back to the hotel along
the river Thames and enjoy the coolish evening.
Day 4 – a trip to
Venezuelan and Finding the Universe
9AM we were off to the Venezuelan Consulate which was only a
few tube stops from the hotel where we left our luggage in storage. The sign on the door said, “please knock, doorbell
doesn’t work” which seemed so apropos to both the situation and Venezuela
itself. The Consulate’s office looked
like a non-descript, stuffy government office you’d expect to see in, well,
Venezuela with a completely unhelpful, but pleasant receptionist who told us
the “system was down” and we should come back that afternoon and Yaitza
“Jaieetza” might be able to help. Oh,
but we should call first to make sure she’s in and maybe she can help us.
Within about 60 seconds it was clear Christian was not going
to get a same day passport from the Consulate and we would probably spend our
entire vacation working on it. So, we
punted and decided to completely rearrange the trip and stay in the UK the
entire time. I was stressed out thinking
about all the money we’d lose canceling the plans in France and all the time I
had spent creating the plan! Christian
found it humorous to watch my carefully laid out plan fade away. He had always not so secretly wanted us to
take a trip with very little planning and he was finally getting his wish! He was positive everything would work out, I
wasn’t so sure.
So back to the hotel and we started planning. While I was busy canceling what I could
cancel and changing our Paris to DC return flight to London DC Christian ran
across http://www.findingtheuniverse.com
which has several wonderful itineraries.
We landed on the One Week UK road trip itinerary http://www.findingtheuniverse.com/2016/03/UK-Itinerary-One-Week-Road-Trip.html
and really liked it. Our plan was to do
something similar in France and I had always wanted to tour the English
countryside and visit castles and cottages and so we both agreed to make that
happen. I rented a car one way from
Heathrow to Edinburgh for the following day, found us another night in London
at the Hilton Paddington (dingy, dark, smelled of moth balls, don’t recommend),
and we started to look at Bed and Breakfasts for the first two nights of the
trip.
My perfectly planned, down to the minute trip was no longer
and so we did as much planning as we thought we could/should and left the rest
to chance with the online itinerary as our general guide. I was honestly a little uncomfortable about
1) not having everything planned and 2) thinking about driving through England. Driving on the other side of the car on the
other side of the road intimidated me.
It’s about 800 miles from London to Edinburgh so we expected to have
plenty of windshield time in the next few days.
What we didn’t expect though, was just how much fun we were about to
have.
Day 5 – Travel to The
Howard Arms via Castle Combe
A train from Paddington Station to Heathrow to pick up our
car, and a quick check of the map and we were off. Driving on the other side of the car and the
road was indeed disorienting. It’s easy
to forget how much driving is unconscious and so when I had to pay a great deal
of attention to everything it was intense.
After a couple missed round-abouts, an angry Englishman honking at me
going down the wrong side, and an argument with Christian about needing to have
more patience with me as I learned the system and to turn off the damn radio in
the meantime, we were on our way to Stonehenge, our first stop. Admittedly I always thought it was Stonehedge
and so that was my first ah has. My
second was, we don’t know a lot about it.
The most interesting thing about it is, well, we don’t know much about
it. We seem to know a great deal about a
lot of very old things, but this it turns out is so old we’re not sure
exactly. Honestly, it was nice for a
quick picture and a “I was there moment” and that was about it.
Our next stop was Bath, England, which was very interesting
and beautiful. The Georgian architecture
was stunning. A bus load of Chinese
Tourists we had encountered at Stonehenge ended up parking and walking to the
exact area we were so we knew, for a tourist, we must be in the right
spot. Unfortunately, we didn’t have but
a few minutes to explore because we had started late so we parked for about 45
minutes, took a walk around some of the neighborhoods, noted in our minds that
this was a “must return” city, snapped a couple shots and kept going knowing we
had a pretty substantial drive to our B&B in the Cotswold’s.
The Cotswold’s is an area of England known for quintessential
English villages and it does not disappoint.
Our first stop in the Cotswold’s was, as it turns out, one of the best,
Castle Combe. It was, as the brochure
says, the “Pretties little village in England.”
Certainly, the prettiest we had ever seen. We arrived at dusk, just after a rain shower,
and so the village was very quiet and smelled of wood burning. The spring birds were singing brilliantly and
it felt like we stepped way back time.
We decided to eat dinner at the Castle Inn http://www.thecastleinn.co.uk and
enjoyed the sun set and a hearty English meal.
We still had an hour to drive so at about 8PM we were back in the car on
our way to our first stop, The Howard Arms Inn.
Day 6 – Cotswold’s to
the Peak District
The Howard Arms is in the village of Ilmington. Expertly done, full English charm, it
couldn’t have been a more perfect first night on the road for us. http://howardarms.com I found out later most of the villages have
“The [insert name] Arms” which are Pubs and sometimes Inns. We visited several throughout the week and
the food was always excellent, and the company warm and authentic. We had a good night’s sleep and a full
English breakfast and we were off to visit more villages across the Cotswold’s. Our next stop was the village of Bibury
(adorable), followed by Lower Slaughter (despite the name, ridiculously cute)
for coffee and a sandwich. Then we
headed north into the Peak District and stopped at Baddesley Clinton a 500-year-old
estate in heart of the Forest of Arden (middle of nowhere). It was pretty impressive, complete with a
moat. Much of it was untouched as it
somehow escaped war and plunder through the centuries. It didn’t seem like a “real castle” to me
because it was small(ish) though well worth the stop. https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/baddesley-clinton
We eventually made it to Callow Hall, a gorgeous small hotel
just outside town. http://www.callowhall.co.uk Denise checked us in and was simply
delightful, giving us an upgrade to a large room over-looking the fields. We had a very good dinner that night in the
Inn and made it to bed around 11PM.
Day 7 – Haddon Hall,
Chatsworth and the ménage a trois
From Callow Hall and the Peak District, it was time to visit
some proper castles and our first stop was Haddon Hall http://www.haddonhall.co.uk. I was so pleased to visit a real example of a
fortified medieval “manor house” that dates from the 12th
Century. Amazingly it was dormant for
over two hundred years from 1700-1920s when the 9th Duke and Duchess
of Rutland restored the house and gardens and live in it today. I found it so fascinating that something
could avoid fire, war and other issues, remain in the same family, be vacant
for a couple hundred years, and still be standing today. We walked through the property and could
easily imagine hundreds of years of lives and stories. So many people had lived and died calling
Haddon Hall home or work. It was a
humbling experience of history. If you
go, spend extra time in the kitchen, which is nearly untouched after all this
time.
Next stop, Chatsworth House, https://www.chatsworth.org. A gorgeous “home” to the Duke and Duchess of
Devonshire, that has passed down through 16 generations of the Cavendish
family. As we walked through Chatsworth
my thoughts were on how these grand estates have outlived so many people that
the purpose of the family often becomes keeping the estate alive and in the
family. The house transcends being a
home and turns into a place that represents tradition, patriotism, history, and
each owner through the centuries tries to put their special touch on the house
as a part of their legacy. Not everyone
did such a great job of legacy building.
I read about one owner who lived in the property in a ménage a trois. That was, apparently, the only noteworthy
historical reference for that Duke.
Imagine, if history’s only reference point for you was that you were in
a ménage a trois! That seemed so random to
note in an otherwise extremely “proper” place.
We had a 2.5-hour drive to our next stop for the evening,
Mallard Grange so we left at about 5pm and continued north.
Day 8 – Maggie at Mallard
Grange and our encounter with ghosts at Chillingham
If you’re anywhere near this place, you must stop for a
night with Maggie at the Mallard Grange, which is a working farm and has been
since the 16th century.
Maggie’s husband runs the farm and Maggie has set herself up with a
little 4-room bed and breakfast and is the most perfect English proprietor. http://www.mallardgrange.co.uk Mallard Grange wouldn’t be the same without
Maggie’s smile, English wit, stories about the animals on the farm over
breakfast or without the cow manure smell.
Normally I wouldn’t like that at all (the manure smell), though in this
case, it was as perfect and as appropriate as the English breakfast served at
Maggie’s dining room table. Our room was
very comfortable and seemed to have been recently renovated. I loved everything about Maggie’s Mallard
Grange, including the dinner she recommended at The Percy Arms in the nearby
town.
That morning we went and saw the Fountains Abbey, the ruins
of an old Abbey. Well worth the
stop. We didn’t spend too much time
there because we had a lot of driving to do to get to Northumbria. https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/fountains-abbey-and-studley-royal-water-garden
We arrived at our evening accommodations Chillingham Castle at
about 4:30, just in time to see the castle state rooms before they closed. I really wanted to stay in a “real” castle
and found Chillingham Castle online the night before. http://www.chillingham-castle.com. Chillingham has a sordid history. In brief, it was mostly used to torture and
kill people because of its proximity to the Scottish border in the disputes
between the English and the Scots over the years. It was left to ruins until Sir Humphrey
Wakefield bought the grounds around it and was given the castle in 1982 because
his wife is a distant relative of the family line and he had a vision for it
and the family agreed to the transaction.
Sir Humphrey has spent 30 years and I’m sure an enormous sum restoring
the castle to its Medieval form. What I
didn’t realize when I booked it, is that it’s also one of Europe’s most haunted
castles.
It’s raw, both the restoration, the building itself, and to
some extent the people who work there.
And Sir Humphrey appears to be quite an unusual character who has
collected all sorts of stuff, displayed around the castle, mostly covered in
dust. It looks like a lot of junk, but
upon closer inspection it’s all pretty interesting. The place is incredibly creepy and I had a
hard time imagining anyone living there.
We were the only overnight guests from what I could tell and we stayed
in the Grey Apartment. “It’s our most
popular!” Cindy said when she booked it for me a few days prior. What I didn’t realize is that is code for
“our most haunted.”
They had a ghost tour that evening in the castle from 9-11PM
and I convinced Christian we should go. He
wasn’t so sure, but I persisted. We went
on a Ghost Tour in Savannah Georgia some time ago and really liked it and well,
since we were here – why not. At that
point I still didn’t know the history of that place or it’s renowned
reputation, though I did find it odd that as the staff was closing for the
night they emphasized several times that we should not go into rooms with
closed doors. The place really emptied
out and by 8pm it appeared as if we were the only people in the castle. It was dark.
Very dark. Our “apartment” in the
castle was huge and full of old antiques and creepy photos. By 8:40PM I saw people were arriving for the
ghost tour and so by 9PM were went down into the courtyard to join them.
The first thing I noticed was “Paranormal Investigators” on
the t-shirts for our guides, Jill and Graham and Jill carrying some sort of
electronic equipment. We started
promptly at 9PM and Graham began by telling us some of the horrid history of the
castle and warned us to be careful and gave us tips should we be overtaken by
spirit or encounter one of the castle’s many ghosts. “Don’t run and if you’re about to throw up,
turn away.” was his clearest advice as he described many people on past tours
who handled encounters with the ghosts poorly.
There were about 20 of us in the group and we all sort of laughed
uncomfortably until it seemed he was quite serious.
Chillingham’s position next to the Scottish border meant there
were terrible atrocities throughout the middle ages. John the “Head Torturer” for a period of
years it seemed really enjoyed finding creative and unimaginable ways for
people to die. We started out by the “hanging
trees” which as the name would suggest were trees most conducive to hanging
people, particularly children. The trees
still stand today. From there we went
back to the castle through some of the rooms and into the torture chamber. There were several strange occurrences
throughout the tour including one instance in the torture chamber where
Christian and I were standing against one of the torture devices (called the iron maiden) on display and
it moved about a foot away from us and I felt it. It was a very large heavy wooden box and
after it happened I pushed it a little to see if I could make it move. No luck.
I guess it could have been staged though I’m not sure how in the room we
were in. It certainly seemed to move on its
own power. And then there were the cups
in the dining hall that fell, and a couple other things. Looking back on it now I suppose it could
have all been set-up though I didn’t get the feeling they were putting on a
show. Later as we were looking at our
pictures we did capture one picture with several orbs in it. Graham and Jill seemed very genuine.
After 2.5 hours on the ghost tour we were sufficiently
spooked, and everyone left and we went back up to our apartment. Alone.
This time however with a complete history of the terrible things that
had happened in the castle. To add to
the drama our bed faced a door that lead to a staircase where apparently at
some point two men were literally walled in and left to die.
I’m normally a great sleeper, but that night, I didn’t sleep
at all. While nothing happened to us in
the apartment we were completely freaked out and alone in the castle. Neither of us would leave the room alone, all
night.
Day 9 –
Northumberland to Edinburgh, and thank goodness, room service.
The next morning, after no sleep, we were up and ready to
leave but wanted to explore the grounds a bit more. The castle looked less spooky in the day
though still seemed haunted. We ran into
the owner Sir Humphrey Wakefield on the way out which was a pleasure. We had a brief chat and he asked how he
thought he would be treated when he was dead and a ghost in the castle. An unusual question on a normal day though at
Chillingham, it seemed like a perfectly appropriate one. I told him I thought he would be treated very
well because he was a good man and had restored the castle. He seemed pleased with that response, shook
our hands and disappeared around a corner.
Graham our ghost guide was there in the morning preparing for
an all-night “vigil” they were having that evening from 11PM-4AM to document
more paranormal activity. I had no doubt
they would encounter some, though we had had about enough. Scott toured us around the gardens pointing
out a few more deathly occurrences in a jovial sort of way. It was all quite interesting I will admit,
though we were very glad to leave Chillingham.
We took one last look, a couple more pictures and headed down the road.
Our next stop was Alniwick Castle which was a more
traditional tourist stop. Perfect for
kids, complete with activities like learning how to shoot bows and arrows and
fight like a knight. It was cute seeing
all the little kids running around in their little costumes. I couldn’t help but think how horrified their
parents would be if they knew the real history behind some of the occurrences
in the castles. Maybe they did, but
didn’t care. One night at Chillingham
would change their view – I thought. Alniwick,
while touristy, was very “castle like” and is worth the stop.
From there back in the car north to the coast to see
Bamburgh Castle, on the sea. It was
beautiful, set right next to the sea in a bed of grass dunes that blew in the
wind like a perfect picture. We walked
along the sea for a while, though it was cold so we didn’t linger, and then
went in to see the castle. By then I was
starting to get castled out and frankly tired.
We had stayed somewhere new every night for the last several days and we
had another hour to go to get to Edinburgh.
We pulled into our hotel just outside of Edinburgh around
7PM and I was never so glad to hear “yes we have 24-hour room service” and “the
concierge can help you with that”. We
were exhausted from the lack of sleep and constant travel and touring for a
week. It’s funny how tiring touring can
be. Hotels in the city were incredibly
expensive for some reason so we stayed at the Dalmahoy Hotel and Country Club
20 minutes outside the city and both of us were in bed and asleep by about
11PM.
Day 10 – Edinburgh
We had never been to Scotland so it was fun to be in
Edinburgh. The drive into the city from
our hotel was not impressive at all and we became concerned we wouldn’t like
the city. Our flight back to London was
at 7:30PM so we only had a few hours to explore. Luckily, as we approached the city center
things changed and we could see the charm of the city. Given we only had a few
hours we decided on a hop on hop off bus tour, followed by a snack, and a quick
breeze through the Edinburgh castle. We
were very disappointed by the castle probably because we had seen the best of
the best all week. We agreed we liked
the city and want to come back for further exploration someday.
Day 11 – final day,
travel home
After a night in the Heathrow Terminal 4 Hilton, it was time
to come home and we boarded our flight at noon to DC. I did manage the upgrade on the way back and
so we were in business class on the new Dreamliner and it was really quite a
perfect end to an amazing trip. We were
ready to get home and my mind and body was telling me I needed to get back to
my routine.
I love to travel to experience things completely outside my
daily routine and to learn first-hand about history and people. It gives me energy and reminds me how vastly
different and yet the same we are as humans.
If you made it to the end of this blog post, you too must love the
journey of the road and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about ours. I thought I’d end with my favorite moments
along the way.
- Big Ben at midnight, just as the streets around Parliament quiet down.
- Sticky Toffee Pudding, every restaurant has a slightly different take on it. I know, I had at least 6.
- Driving like it was the first time, this time on the left side of the road, and on the right side of the car.
- Local village pubs across the English countryside.
- Castle Combe village, just before sunset, at the bridge.
- Haddon Hall’s medieval kitchen, untouched and in nearly the original form.
- The hospitality of Maggie Mallard at the Mallard Grange.
- The ghosts of Chillingham Castle.
- A seaside walk along Bramburg Castle.
- Tossing the plan aside and living each day as it came!
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