Travel

Bouquets of Pheasants and Ruins of Mines – The Keld Loop and a Journey to Reeth, Yorkshire Dales, U.K.

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Rooms at the Herriot Guest House were quite small, but that was by far compensated for by their very good breakfast and homemade jams and marmalade. That provided enough to fortify us for a slightly easier – and hopefully drier – day 3 ahead.

The Mac’s Adventure itinerary called for us to be transported by taxi to Keld, which truly is a blip on the map. The taxi took us through the Buttertubs Pass – a location I was last in with my family in 1972 when we lived in England for my father’s sabbatical.

After an early arrival in Keld, we got on the road to walk to the Tan Hill Inn, famous for being the highest pub in England. About a 4.5 mile hike, over lots of moorland and gigantic ravines, where erosion peeled back the top layer of heather to reveal dark soil and rocks. For all of its age, just like the fossilized Jurassic coast in Dorset, this is an ever-changing landscape.

It was rewarding to see the inn suddenly appear in the distance, but the place itself was crowded with day trippers and there was nary a place to sit. Nonetheless, there were picnic tables outside, and we were able to make a nice lunch out of the Double Gloucester cheese and crackers that I had been carrying around since Manchester, alongside the middle aged men’s motorcycle group who were similarly shut out of the pub.

J and I chose to take the longer route back and crossed the valley, which was low and filled with green rushes, over to the next other ridge. The top flattened into a golden prairie-like meadow. We saw at least four or five “bouquets” of pheasants suddenly take off. On the ground they were perfectly camouflaged, soft brown speckles and beige. We would hear five short whistles and suddenly they would take off at top speed, looking for all the world like a group of feather dusters taking flight.

We could never capture a pheasant in flight, but at least I found some feathers!

Our path took us by the rather large farming establishment of of the so-called “Yorkshire Shepherdess” of TV fame (although I’d never heard of her). She’s apparently one of those “leave the city behind, become a farmer, and write about it and develop a TV series” people. We did see two men, one on an ATV, which seems to be the farm vehicle of choice here, herd a group of cows into a barn. We had to wait until they were in before we could pass.

I know these are sheep, not cows, but I didn’t have a pic of the cows!

We were almost back in Keld when we managed to make a critical navigation error and ended up going the wrong way toward the small hamlet of West Stonesdale. It’s a true farming community, with working sheep dogs sleeping in their cages, and big agricultural equipment everywhere. Fortunately, I soon realized I was looking at the famous GPS blue line backwards, and we were able to correct our course and make it back to Keld about 5, just as S and M were starting to question where we were.

View from the Keld Lodge

After an overnight at the Keld Lodge, the next day, Day 4, we were to trek to our next destination of Reeth. We had a choice between the “high” route, which would mostly be on the famous Coast to Coast trail, or the low route, which ran along the river. We fortunately chose the high route – and it did indeed provide some of the best summits and sights of the whole trip.

The first part was over moors, which were blanketed in blooming purple and sometimes white heather, waterfalls galore. There were lots of steep sections, including some fun scree fields to scramble through, and I was happy get to use some of my basic mountain skills. They are pretty common sense: always lean into the mountain and your uphill pole.

A steep descent into the valley, and we were in the midst of the ghostly ruins of lead mining works. Lead mining was very big in the Dales back in the 1830s. It’s now just a shadow land, and it’s hard to imagine the hundreds of men that would have lived and commuted to these now remote and desolate areas to work the mines.

It looked like some gravel quarrying still continued and we ascended back up the valley to a moonscape of rock and gravel.

Once we crossed the moonscape, we found a nice spot for lunch, where we chatted with a mother and daughter combo who we had seen in Keld that very morning. They must have been uber athletes based on their speeds up and down.

I bonded with this sheep. It was the cleanest one we saw!

After about 12 miles or so and a few more ascents and descents – and a lot of what we believe to be grouse – we made it to the pretty town of Reeth. As always that final last mile or so is the hardest.

We were staying at the Burgoyne Hotel, which seemed positively opulent after the Herriot Guest House. Nothing like a drink in a front garden after a hard day of hiking.

All Creatures Wet and Cold and An Encounter With a Bull – Grassington to Buckden to Hawes, Yorkshire, U.K.

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As foreshadowing, let me start by saying that I spent a lot of time on day 2 of our trek through the Yorkshire Dales thinking of synonyms for the word waterlogged. But I digress.

After a two night sojourn in Manchester spent catching up with family friends (by the way, we really liked Manchester and its bustling vibe…), J and I successfully navigated our way to Grassington. This started with two trains, which delivered us to the charming town of Skipton, which had one of the prettiest rail stations we’d seen.

From there we planned a bus ride to Grassington. Of course, the rail station and bus station were not contiguous, so this involved a ten minute jaunt, luggage in tow, but we were able to use our two hours of waiting time to visit the “Sound Bar.” An independently owned combination vinyl record store, coffee shop, and pub that also featured live music on the weekends. The walls were plastered with tickets, posters and other promotional materials for concerts and bands dating back 50 years – really fun spot and not what we expected to find!

Despite the fact that the driver operated the bus to Grassington as though he were auditioning for Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, he safely delivered us to just outside the Black Horse Hotel where we met up with pals and long time travel partners M and S. They’d arrived a day earlier, fortunately managing to take one of the only trains running on a day of “industrial action” (aka strike day) from London to the north. Unfortunately, the room reserved for J and me had electrical problems. After a couple of hours of waiting around in their very cozy bar, management gave up and sent us across the street to an equally nice inn, the Devonshire, which was graced with a mention somewhere in one of James Herriot’s books.

For those of you not aware, practically all of the Dales is Herriot country – there’s a Herriot Way walk, hotels name their rooms after the characters (both human and animal), and more memorabilia than you can imagine.

After a filling breakfast, the first day of the walk went smoothly. It was only about 11 miles – slightly shorter than the original itinerary because we were to stay in Buckden instead of Cray, which was a couple of miles further down the road. Of course, that did have implications for day 2, as I’m sure any discerning reader will have figured out.

There was a light, misty rain much of the time but it was really nothing more than what you experience with a mister at a Disney theme park. A few steep uphills at the beginning until we reached a ridge line. We then descended through what must have been a planted forest of tall conifers, stripped of their lower branches, and down to a river that was contained in its banks (foreshadowing again – unlike day 2).

We reached the village of Kettlewell where we stopped at the first spot we saw for lunch and an ale (after all, this was billed as an “Ales and Dales” trek). It turned out it was the owner’s first day open, and his manager had quit that very morning. We were happy to support the new endeavor and enjoyed hearing his take on English politics and who should or should not be King….

Much of the rest of the walk was on or near the river. It was edged with fantastic wild flowers, thistles, foxgloves, and bluebells. We crossed open fields, or sometimes were sandwiched on narrow paths running between stone walls, flowers and ripening berry brambles on each side.

We reached the tiny village of Buckden (chief feature, a village store that took cash only) in good time. Home for the night was the lovely Buck Inn.

We knew in advance that the repercussion of our shorter day was a longer one….so were prepared for at least 16.5 miles on day 2, and had ordered packed lunches the night before.

We knew things were not off to a propitious start when, as we were departing, a man in the lobby volunteered that he had just come from Askrigg, and everything on the way was flooded. He also cast some dubious looks at the four Floridians blithely heading off into the Yorkshire Dales….

It was indeed raining, and continued to do so for nearly the whole day, veering from light to stinging. We started with a long uphill slog, and learned the first rule of Mac’s Adventure trekking – NEVER veer from the blue GPS line on the app, NO MATTER WHAT. The sign posting (other than for the well-known, main trails) is awful, and that blue line becomes your Bible (or yellow brick road, whichever metaphor you prefer).

Our first issue really started as we descended into Cray, which was where the original itinerary had called for us to spend the night. We reached a roaring river, which we were apparently to cross with the assistance of stepping stones. But the stones were under the white water rapids of a flooded river, and we were not about to start day 2 with an encounter with the river gods. There was a bridge just a few feet away – but to access it we would have to go through private property that lined the river bank.

There was little choice. To the bemusement of the elderly men on the other side of the river who were eating sandwiches and drinking tea from flasks, and having a good time observing our adventure, we all managed to climb a stone wall, scale the wire at the top (avoiding barbed wire on the sides), and make our way to the bridge. (S had ventured along the river edge, clinging to the wall, to see if there was a way to less obviously trespass, but soon gave up the attempt to avoid lawlessness.)

I wish I had pictures, but we were somewhat preoccupied.

We trudged on some more, and reached a turn off that sent us above the fields into bleak and desolate moors, inhabited only by sheep. We did encounter a group of scouts with an older guide who made dire predictions about the water yet to come. More uphill, reached a stretch of paved road, only to find that portions of it were under up to a foot of water. That required another venture into the fields at the side, although by then we were so wet it hardly made a difference.

From the road we were back onto a bridle way running through the moors. As M pointed out – we were experiencing both swamp and summit simultaneously. Many impromptu waterfalls had formed, and it would have been spectacular without the rain, or the wind that had by then kicked up. The conditions defined the word bleak, and the moors were, to use M’s phrase, both desolate and disorienting.

The moor was interspersed by sheep fields every now and then – but my favorite was the pasture guarded by a very large bull with a ring at the end of his nose. I was first in our little parade, and memories of bull running and Pamplona caused me some anxiety as I considered the effect of my orange back pack. But I moved slowly, J edged in close so the back pack wasn’t as visible, and Senor Bull deigned to let us pass without exacting tribute. Nonetheless, once we’d exited his domain, he stood his ground by the gate, staring at us to make sure we really had left.

The rain lightened and we found ourselves on some country lanes, with a couple of houses that seemed to have been built at the edge of the world, so we pulled out our sandwiches and ate on the go. About mid-afternoon, we finally reached the charming village of Askrigg – home to pretty gardens and a 15th (or earlier) century church, St. Oswald’s.

Exiting Askrigg, we hiked through a lovely enchanted forest high above a rushing river. The path ran along the top bank, a stone wall on one side and trees and river below on the other. It was emerald and mossy green, and surely home to a pantheon of forest fairies.

Path finding through the muddy, sodden fields became more difficult and the wind picked up. Things were not helped by the hundreds (thousands?) of sheep we encountered and we spent a lot of time trying to avoid their leavings. Very occasionally we would go through a “clean field,” i.e., one without sheep!

I thought I could see our destination of Hawes in the distance, but couldn’t know for sure. We hiked and hiked through field after field, finally making a left and seeing a sign marked “Hawes Circular Walk.” It was getting late at that point, and I haven’t been so glad to see a town since J and I descended Stok Kangri in Indian in 2018!

We reached the Herriot Guest House in Hawes completely drenched. Both ourselves and our possessions, despite rain pants and back pack covers (turns out passports dry pretty well). To add insult to injury, somehow the luggage that was being transported from inn to inn had managed to get wet as well.

We changed quickly and went the The White Hart for an excellent (and well-deserved) Sunday Roast.

Sodden, waterlogged, drenched, soaking. I’m sure there are a few adjectives that I’m missing but you get the picture. However, you could equally apply: challenging, invigorating, exhausting, stimulating, and most of all – absorbing.

Transitions – Plentzia to Bilbao to Lyme Regis

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I’m actually writing this from the tiny hamlet of Keld in the Yorkshire Dales, but chronology (and geography) beckon so first I have to get us to the British Isles….

The remainder of our time in Basque Country consisted of a beach day followed by a Bilbao day.

Beach days are sort of the same wherever the beach. It was hot that day, and the beach was extremely crowded. Umbrellas everywhere; no one uses the portable rooms that are so popular on U.S. shores. That evening we splurged with a tasting menu at a fancy restaurant – highlights ranged from foie gras to octopus to some of the best steak I’ve had. The real treat, however, was at 10 p.m. (or later) seeing all the children run down the street following a person in a bull costume with some device that shot sparklers from his rear! A kid’s version of the running of the bulls.

We were supposed to follow our R&R day with a cultural day – the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Frank Gehry’s building itself is stunning. While constructed from metal it has a soft feeling, with undulating curves, and I kept wanting to touch it. But the inside is different – it’s intersected by angular catwalks and bridges that to me added an element of stress to the interior.

I also loved the live flower rendition of the West Highland white terrier. As I’m still in mourning for the loss of Malcolm and Duncan, what better tribute…It was supposed to be a temporary installation, but the good folks of Bilbao fell in love with their giant Westie.

We really should have started with the permanent collection on the top floor and worked our way down. Instead we started on the bottom floor with an installation of moving vertical lights that created the impression you were moving downward – I got so dizzy I had to hold J’s arm to exit. We followed that with the Richard Serra maze installation – a series of coppery/brown mazes that are supposed to invoke deep thoughts about time, but for daughter S and me invoke claustrophobia. But the modern art and other temporary installations were stunning, and for those of you from Orlando, you’ll know what I mean when I say it was interesting to see a real Basquiat.

Made from liquor bottle caps….

A and N had to wake up very early for their flight back, i.e. 4 a.m., which also woke up the rest of the household and made us very aware of the invasion of mosquitoes that had gradually been underway over the last few days. I spent much of the rest of the night with the sheets over my head trying to create a breathing hole. I am in the market to start an international screen company, so if anyone has interest let me know!

Plentzia beach from the air

Transitions to follow – J and I left about 8 or so to drive to Bilbao to return the rental car and hop on a plane to London. The drive was so beautiful we kept thinking Google Maps must have given us the wrong directions. To our delight no questions were asked about the dings on the car, which I know were there when we picked it up….I did notice that the parking places at the rental car return were extremely small and practically every car seemed to have an array of scratches large and small.

The next order of business was: (1) plane to Gatwick’s North Terminal; (2) shuttle to South Terminal; (3) extremely crowded train to Clapham Junction (where we picked up sandwiches – I am becoming a big fan of prepackaged egg mayo and watercress); (4) train to Axminster; (5) bus to Lyme Regis; (6) walk up very steep hill pulling our suitcases to the Nag’s Head Inn; and (7) walk up two flights of stairs to our room. Glad I have the backpack straps on my suitcase.

So the family part of the trip was now over – I wish it had been longer. But it was time now to explore Dorset’s Jurassic Coast and ever changing landscape. As John Fowles wrote, “People have been lost in it for hours, and cannot believe, when they see on the map where they have been lost, that their sense of isolation – and if the weather be bad, desolation – could have seemed so great.”

The NSB of Northern Spain – Plentzia, Basque Country

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Because daughter S had the strongest feelings about where we should stay in northern Spain, we left the AirBnb choice up to her. Hence, we ended up in Plentzia (Basque), Plencia (Spanish), a town that I can only describe as the New Smyrna Beach of northern Spain. Those of you from Florida will understand.

Actually, it’s an absolutely lovely small beach town about 30 minutes outside of Bilbao. And it did remind me of NSB – lots of family groups and grandparents escorting their small charges off for a day at the seaside. This was not a place for non-local tourists. We might have heard some French, but ours were practically the only U.S. accents we heard our whole time there.

Getting there was not without mishap. As there were six of us (actually, S took charge of this and ended up with really good fares), we rented two small cars. J, son in law N, and S went off to retrieve them from the airport in San Sebastián, while T, A, and I closed down the Airbnb and moved all our luggage down the three flights. All was going well – except for the fact that all the bridges in San Sebastián were shut for some unknown reason, necessitating many detours for the drivers of the rental cars as they attempted to pick up the rest of the party.

In any event, we were eventually all retrieved, and started the drive to Plentzia. On the way, we stopped at Gatevia, a nice beach town that houses the Balenciaga museum. We watched whole fish being grilled on large, flat, wood burning grills – an old seafaring tradition from when fish was grilled aboard the boats.

Ultimately, we made it to Plentzia where we had to decode Google maps to try to find what appeared to be a very unusual address. I was in the car with N and A – we somehow found ourselves making a hairpin turn down a steep narrow lane where the car got stuck on the high curb as we turned. Undaunted, we continued down the lane only to end up in someone’s front yard, where the very nice owner told us to calm down (“Tranquillo!”) and assured us his directions would take us to the correct location.

The AirBnb was of quirky “farmhouse shabby chic” design and would have been great but for the lack of screens and abundance of mosquitoes. If anyone would like to join me in starting a screen company for Spain, please let me know. I think we’d make a killing.

A nice walk down to the beach at night.

The next day, based on an inaccurate reading of weather reports, we decided should be the hiking and mountain day. We started, however, with N and me making a trip to a very local fish market in a neighboring town. The Turkish (?) fishmonger apparently found us so interesting that he threw multiple free sardines and anchovies into our order.

I was really struck by how different the small towns in Spain were from England. Many of the residences are all apartment buildings, as opposed to semi-detached or detached dwellings, even in the remote areas. I’m sure there’s some interesting social commentary there, but having walked 11 miles today in the Yorkshire Dales (we’re now on the walking portion of this trip) I’m not sure what it is right now!

We finally got on the road in the Citroen and Toyota for what turned out to be quite a long drive into the mountains, and the weather definitely turned for the worse. But it was just a drizzling misting rain. After a series of hairpin turns we reached the Urkiola Preserve, a location chosen by A, who knew her parents wouldn’t be happy unless they’d experienced some of the Basque Country mounting.

The park office was just closing as it was almost 2 p.m. and time for siesta. The park official nonetheless left it open to give us a map and explain where to walk. Given the weather, we opted for the shorter version of the hike. This was a beautiful walk through pollarded beech trees – meaning large limbs cut for ash leaving a somewhat peculiar three pronged shape.

There are three or four “hermitages” on the way up to the church at the top of the mountain, although they seemed more like pilgrimage spots rather than a place a hermit lived. The church was originally built in the 8th/9th century, but has had many incarnations – a main one was in the 1970s by a group of monks. The church has beautiful stained glass windows, themed around vibrantly colored organic flowers and was never fully finished.

From the church we walked to a panoramic overlook, with a spectacular view framed by three large crosses. A number of what might have been tombstones dotted the landscape.

This was an interesting mix of Christian and pagan. Mari, the Lady of a boat, is supposed to live in a cave, looking after Urquiola. She can shape shift from animal to plant to woman.

At the top of the mountain is a nice cafe where we re-joined the 21st century with a drink.

Drove the hour plus back into Plentzia, where we proceeded to create our own version of a Basque fish feast. The most marvelous thing was that we knew we still had several days ahead of us.

The Rain in Spain…and in Hastings

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Except fortunately, it didn’t, in Spain. At least, unless you count a few drizzly moments, which I refuse to do.

From Rye, in East Sussex, we took train and plane to Bilbao, in the Basque Country of Northern Spain. Along the way, we disembarked in Hastings, where it really did rain. To avoid a very long wait for our 7 pm flight from Gatwick we decided to check out Hastings, which turned out to be a singularly unsuccessful pit stop.

This is the only picture I have of Hastings.

We lugged ourselves and all our luggage into the Old Town; we could see the Castle up on the hill and thought about the Battle and 1066 and all that, but that’s about as close as we got to any sights. The beach/boardwalk runs along the front – there were loads of people, but let’s just say the glory was more than faded. It didn’t take us very long to decide to trudge back (in the rain) to the train station.

We finally took off from Gatwick for a short and uneventful flight to Bilbao – except for the part where J’s water bottle (which he had cleverly stowed in the outside pocket of his back pack and placed in the overhead bin) started to leak on everyone below.

We arrived in Bilbao after 10 – there’s an hour time difference for reasons that date back to Franco and WWII – only to find we’d missed the last shuttle to the Holiday Inn Express where we were staying for a night. In any event, a taxi safely delivered us, sans any further mishaps.

After a truly excellent “continental” breakfast – why are coffee machines so much better in Europe? – we managed to take the shuttle to the airport and figure out how to purchase bus tickets to San Sebastián. It turned out the ticket machine was broken, so as always, the answer was “download the app and buy online.” At least J was able to extract my credit card when when in a moment of desperation I pushed it into the only other slot available in the ticket machine – which turned out to be for bills only.

After a longish bus ride, we arrived for more lugging of luggage, and finally made contact with A and son in law N at the Deutsche Bank where we were getting euros. Travelers note – there are two Deutsche banks near the water in San Sebastián.

The major dining experience in this part of Spain is pintxos – basically the Basque word for tapas. A language note – Basque is considered a “language isolate”, not related to any other language. It likely dates back to the indigenous peoples of the area. “X” is pronounced “ch”, similar to the pronunciations you see in the Yucatán.

Pintxos take all forms – mushrooms in rich sauces, small sandwiches, scallops, oxtail, and ubiquitous fried potatoes, to name just a few.

After sampling several for lunch, we made our way to our Airbnb, where daughter S and boyfriend T arrived at almost exactly the same time. They’d been in Biarritz the night before and appeared to have had a more seamless journey than J and I.

The Airbnb was on one of the city’s many pedestrian streets. There are wonderful clothes shops and elegant, balconied apartment buildings edging the avenues, The beach is a long crescent of sand packed with bathers, cliffs on either side of the bay.

As fate would have it, we were in town at the same time as a college friend, C, and his two sons and son in law. They’d been in Pamplona for the running of the bulls (which sounds as gruesome as I had feared) and were staying in Bilbao. In fact, when we arrived in Bilbao we were greeted by numerous men and women all wearing white outfits with red bandanas in honor of the event (C himself had grown a Hemingway-like beard just for the occasion). We were able to rendezvous with him and his son, and enjoyed even more pintxos (by now I had a potato overload), gelato, and a beautiful walk along the beach to see the sunset.

The next day was rainy and dreary. We found a hole in the wall pintxos place that was just as good as the higher end one from the day before, and then ventured off to the Museum to try to learn a little more about Basque culture, although very few explanations were translated into English.

Basque hats – some of the women’s ultimately outlawed; you can speculate why….

We had an absolutely marvelous dinner at a restaurant across the street from the Airbnb – prawns served with heads fully attached, fried peppers, samples of hand pulled dry cider. The star was dessert – a French toast type thing that was stuffed with custard and caramel i Ed, and a Basque Cheesecake with a vanilla sorbet. And a cheeseboard with walnuts in their shells – which led to a walnut cracking competition among certain of our party.

The cracking of the walnuts

By the way, we found Spain unbelievably inexpensive, both for food and drink. A good bottle of wine could easily be found for under 4 euros.

We only had two nights in San Sebastián before our next move – to the beach town of Plentzia, about thirty minutes outside Bilbao. All of us left feeling we needed another night in San Sebastián- but perhaps not anymore patatas bravas!

All Roads Lead to Camber Castle, Rye, England

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We ended up in Rye because J googled “weekend getaways from London.” And thus we found ourselves on a Friday night along with an abundance of other middle aged merry-makers in the excruciatingly quaint town of Rye, a small town in East Sussex.

It’s only 60 miles or so from London, and easily reached by train, one change only, from St. Pancras. Incidentally, if you’ve reached your 60s, the BritRail pass with the senior discount is a beautiful thing. St. Pancras itself is something to behold. The old Victorian train station I remember as the start of our trips up to Sheffield/Rotherham remains in exteriors only. The ticket office is now a high end restaurant, and the entire station is occupied by shops and cafes – more like an airport than anything else.

We arrived in Rye too early to check in, so found a nice cafe – Jempson’s – where I had a “cheese lattice” and J a chicken and mushroom pie. It was only about his 5th small meal of the day.

The AirBnb was down a narrow alleyway close to Landsgate, a 1339 or so guard tower. It had two rooms, separated by very steep stairs and facing the Queens Head pub. Only downside was late night noise from revelers across the street, and a 5 a.m. wake-up call by screeching gulls that apparently save their party time for early morning.

Rye itself is near the English Channel. It used to be on the English Channel (the “Rye Camber”), but over the centuries, storms and reclamation of the bay have resulted in the water silting up, creating huge salt marshes. Seemed very apropos for the swamp part of this blog. There were a plethora of half-timbered buildings, quaint shops and pubs, and women on week-end breaks all wearing summer dresses and straw hats – and shopping.

J and I had a drink in a garden pub, and then went to the very funky Queens Head across the street. Food was cheap and excellent – ranging from roast chicken (me) to Korean kebabs (J). We waited around for the live music, a very over the top cover band that played everything from ZZTop to John Denver, and brought the mostly middle-aged crowd out onto the dance floor.

I was interested in the intellectually challenged young man who seemed to hang out at the pub on a regular basis. The manager let him help out with everything, and he was clearly a fixture (I saw him there the next morning also from our vantage point across the street). It was nice to see how he was an accepted part of the fabric of everyday life.

Our one full day in Rye was reserved for a hike to the Rye Nature Preserve, the, or one of the, largest coastal preserves in the U.K. After some difficulty finding the beginning point, we finally started the hike. Through narrow corridors lined with hedges, into marshy salt marshes – small islands outlined with rushes.

We made our way to the very new Discovery Center where we ate sandwiches. There was one strip of beautiful long sandy beach (Camber Sands) – that then turned into a shingle beach – what seemed like miles of rock beach, consisting of perfectly round stones that angled sharply into the water. It was like walking over stone sand dunes. It was hard going and we soon returned to the trail.

The skies darkened, grey against white, and we pulled out our rain gear just in time. The trail crossed the marshes and then blended into sheep pastures, with lots of stiles and gates. We were a little unsure of our location on our by then battered and wet brochure map….the Camber Castle, set apart atop a slight plateau, never seemed to get any further away.

But finally we ended up with the Brede River on our left and the Brede Locke straight ahead, the end of our 8 or so mile excursion in sight.

On the way back we stopped at the Waterworks Micropub. It’s been everything from waterworks to public toilets. I had a half pint of a local cider, Tenterden. Cider is a big deal here and I’ve never seen so many real, hand pulled ales.

After washing the grime off, we went to a Turkish restaurant on the High Street for dinner. We walked up to and around St. Mary’s, where we found an absolutely lovely pub, Ypres Castle, nestled in its lower walls. Met a very interesting fellow from Manchester who had been living in Rye but was about to move to Belgium. It was his last night in town, but he was nonetheless as welcoming to two tourists as could be.

Actually, everyone we encountered in Rye was remarkably friendly. It seemed to presage good things to come as we got ready for the next leg of our trip – to the Basque Country in Northern Spain.

And So It Begins – A Whirlwind of London

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I actually wrote this aboard a train from Rye (via Hastings) to Gatwick. But, as all good travel blogs must, I have to go several days back to start the Six Month Sabbatical Saga.

After packing some and packing more, J and I journeyed off to Orlando Airport’s Terminal C. It is so much better than A and B it doesn’t bear comparison. I can only liken it to the international vs. domestic terminals at the airport in Dubai. After a very nice preflight snack and drinks at Cask and Larder, we made our way onto our Norse Airlines plane – the new budget airline with flights hundreds of dollars less than their competitors.

The planes are lovely, but they have definitely crammed a lot of seats in them. The middle one on Row 38, which was to be my abode, would have been all right but for the fact that Row 38 had no windows at all. I could see a slight sliver of the sky from the window in front of us, but not sunrise over the Atlantic. Avoid Row 38!

Generously speaking, we might have had a couple of hours sleep.

Landed at Gatwick and took a train to Victoria, underground to Green Park, change to the Piccadilly Line, and on to Russell Square. There’s still a lift there, no escalators, to ascend to the surface. London, or at least parts thereof, is filling up with skyscrapers worthy of one of the Asian capitals of the world but still looking somewhat out of place in what I think of as a human scaled city. There are cranes everywhere. But the parts I remember well, namely Bloomsbury and around the British Museum, are still as I recall.

Every time I come to London I have this eerie sense of familiarity. Perhaps that’s natural given that I was born here – at University of London hospital and within the sound of Bow Bells – and spent my first year plus living in Brunswick Gardens near Kensington.

We checked into the Tavistock Hotel, where we were given a small front room with a view of the square. Despite the lack of sleep, we couldn’t let even a jet lagged day go to waste. After a brief rest, we made our way to the British Library. The old reading room at the British Museum – where my parents spent many hours working on their dissertations both before and after my arrival – is now located there. It’s free admission (as seem to be all the museums here) and well worth a visit. It houses the Magna Carta – there are actually two – a very damaged original one, and the actual charter from a couple of years later, which is in much better condition. There’s a Gutenberg Bible as well, but I was equally interested in the illuminated manuscripts and modern books. Lots of ideas for calligraphy projects to come. I still think I would have been quite happy as a monk whose mission in life was to copy and illustrate books!

An interesting walk back. We went past my mother’s old residence hall at University College (Campbell Hall) which she says still looked the same, and through Brunswick Gardens (the actual gardens, not the street in Kensington where I lived as a baby).

After a drink at the Woolf (as in Virginia) and Whistle Bar at our hotel – the Tavistock Hotel, on the site of a former Woolf residence – we had an Italian meal at the restaurant across the street and collapsed.

Next day – truly an exploration of my origins. We started with coffee and croissant that we ate at Tavistock Gardens (surrounded by pigeons attracted by crusts someone else had left – we felt we needed a sign saying “it wasn’t us” after 30 plus birds arrived). Incidentally, we are finding London very inexpensive compared to the U.S., which is a pleasant surprise. Inspected the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the center of the square and all the benches in memory of those dedicated to peace, socialism, and against nuclear bombs.

Our next stop was the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is where my mother started to go into labor with me in 1961. I’m not sure what that says about either me or her!

Child rearing techniques? No, Achilles and his mother

On our quest to find “Britain 1790-1900” we managed to see every bit of glass at the V&A, plus architectural designs, galleries full of Victorian casts of famous sculptures from around the world, thousands of pounds of Rodin, and ironworks. Finally we realized the staircases up went to different parts of the museum, found the correct one, and located Britain 1900. Starting with the Arts and Crafts movement, we wound our way back in time – an interesting way to view things.

After we were museumed out, we realized we had way too little time to walk to Portobello Market, as was our original plan, and instead wandered around South Kensington, window shopping at all the expensive shops.

After a quick dinner at a local pub we hopped on the underground again to Blackfriars, and crossed the river over the Millenium Bridge to reach the Globe Theatre – the recreation of the Shakespeare’s theater. We were last at these spots in 2000 – the Millenium bridge had just opened and was still bouncing! They had to close it immediately after for repairs. It’s quite sturdy now, and gives a good view of St. Paul’s.

We saw “A Midsummer’s Nights Dream” – interesting production, with nearly all the roles played by women. Best line – “from now on I want to be known as ‘Bo-toom’”. (For you English majors out there. Think Heather “Bou-Kay” in Keeping Up Appearances.) Also “pro-luge” and “epi-luge.”

Next day was a travel day. On to Rye!

St. Pancreas

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way Out of Town

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Does life ever seem as though it’s comprised of a neverending series of events designed to frustrate your ultimate purpose? Or, at the least, to insert various stumbling blocks along the way? And many times it’s the mechanical objects that take on the worst human qualities imaginable in an apparently intentional fashion to stymie whatever you’re trying to accomplish.

As we work our way through the checklist required for the upcoming six months of adventures, consider the following examples:

1. The new oven conspired with the outdoor lighting to malfunction. The oven issue involved a series of beeps at seemingly random times, possibly chirping displeasure over whatever was currently on television – except for the fact they also occurred in the depths of night. After a few hundred dollars and a new computer key pad (who knew ovens had such things) it appears to be somnolent. For the moment. At least the outdoor lighting was a silent malfunction, resulting from cut wires. Thanks, lawn service.

2. The bank that shall remain nameless who does not know how to receive a $10.43 cent payment. We are still battling that one. Who knew it would take over 30 days to release a lien for a home equity loan that hasn’t been in use for years?

3. The car that has decided to have a voice and buzzes out its grievances every time I go over one of our brick roads. This one is on going. I’m just trying to get used to it, and think of it as background percussion.

4. The pond project. A weeks long repair job to repair a leaking pond (that had already killed off our generations of tiny Lake Ivanhoe fish). Finally, a success story. After massive internet research, and several Ace Hardware trips, a product was found. Layers of scraping, vacuuming, epoxying, patching, stop, repeat, and finally we have a pond that appears to hold water. We’ll see. I’m not going out to catch fish in Lake Ivanhoe to transplant to it until the weather has become a bit more tolerable.

I’m sure I could add to the list. But right now my mind is on finishing up work – only 3 days left! Live-in house sitters assembled, S’s cat Boudin is ensconced in the addition as his summer residence, and Kira our own cat has been informed of the upcoming plans. First stop is London, followed by Rye, and then on to San Sebastián, Spain. But who knows what the next few days could hold – funny things always happen on the way out of town.

Marshes of Rhode Island

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As FromSwamptoSummit prepares for the next trip, coming up in July – three weeks in the U.K. with a weeks’ interlude in Northern Spain – how better to get ready than a weekend in coastal Rhode Island, otherwise known as the Farm Coast.

Daughter A and son-in-law N apparently decided to celebrate almost a year of marriage by treating both their aged parental units to a week-end in a lovely, classic New England shingled Airbnb, right at the edge of a salt water marsh. The weekend started, as such things frequently do, with a delayed flight. But at least we were on JetBlue, which is now ensconced in the Orlando airport’s new Terminal C. Somewhat antiseptic, with large soaring walls that could benefit from what at one point would have been called decoration – but this is made up for by the significantly improved food and drink choices over terminals A and B. So there was that, at least.

We arrived almost two hours late at the very pleasant Providence Airport. Small, and some of the best airport bathrooms I’ve experienced. Someday I’m writing a coffee table book called bathrooms around the world. In any event, N’s parents, K and S, picked us up and we hied our way on to the Westporter restaurant in, you guessed it, Westport, where we met up with A and N.

N is finally almost recovered from his horrendous February ski accident (I have spared my readers those details), and we were able to enjoy a long period of sitting on the deck before we could get a table. Delays were clearly the theme of the day. Highlight of the deck experience was when N managed to drop his phone at a completely vertical angle, causing it to make a grand exit between the deck planks onto the ground three feet below. Undeterred, K solved the problem by finding a break in the fencing below the deck and shimmying under to retrieve said phone.

Fortunately, the rest of the evening passed fairly uneventfully.

We awakened the next day to the promise of rain. We managed a short walk around the neighborhood, down to what they call a creek here and I would call a sound side marsh. Two brave souls were in waders fishing for striped bass, looking like something straight out of a movie about rural New England life.

Once the heavens opened, as promised, we were off to the Four Corners complex in Tiverton, a collection of home goods, garden, bakery and gourmet food shops. Our fun stop after that was to Sweet and Salty Farms, a local cheese maker. A and N had ordered cheese and it was sitting out waiting for us at the top of the driveway of their home in a cooler!

After lunch, how better to take advantage of a rainy afternoon in R.I. than to visit one of the “summer cottages,” in Newport. It was the opposite of our cheese pick-up. We selected Doris Duke’s Rough Point as our keyhole into the lives of the rich and famous. She lived there until 1993, and the house is a mixture of the unbelievably opulent and the well lived in. The solarium still has the sofas scarred with marks from her dogs and there’s a microwave in the kitchen. It’s like a time travel trip from the golden age to the jet age. Of particular note, her “quirky” bedroom which features mother of pearl furniture.

Dinner that night was at one of my favorite RI restaurants, The Red Dory, in Tiverton. Usually there’s a beautiful sunset over the ocean, but not so much last night. But the food was as good as ever.

Sunday dawned cloudy, but at least the skies had finished their tantrums. Our trip to South Beach inadvertently turned into a trip toward a bayside walk near Tiverton. It was a working fishing pier with a great stack of rusted iron anchors that looked like a piece of modern sculpture.

This part of RI is not called the Farm Coast for nothing. After miles of small farm after small farm, intersected by sturdy stone walls, we made it to South Beach. The signs all warned the beach was “under repair” and there was “no parking” on either side of the road, but that did nothing to daunt the large number of surfers obliviously leaving their vehicles behind to take advantage of the waves.

On our way to lunch at Evelyn’s Drive In (apparently featured at some point on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives), we drove past White Rock Farms, featuring locally raised beef. Outside of Albania, I can’t think of when we have bought meat at the same location where the animal was born and raised. It’s a seventh generation farm with solar panels and electric vehicles and a commitment to humane farming.

Evelyn’s was nothing less than a feast of fried seafood. A, N and K shared the “two pound seafood platter.” I had a “stuffie” – a Massachusetts/RI specialty that involves a quahog (clam) stuffed and baked with the clam meat, breading and seasonings. J had some of the best fish and chips we’ve had, and there were plenty of little neck clams and clam cakes for the table. Clam cakes must be New England’s answer to the hush puppy – they taste almost exactly the same but for the insertion of clams.

Not sure how we’re going to have any room for the steaks!

More Summits, More Swamps – Welcome 2023

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And welcome 2023! As we leave 2022 in our rear view mirror, the new year is already underway with a vengeance. And what a year this promises to be for FromSwamptoSummit and friends.

It needs to start with seriously getting back into shape – at least the sort of shape that will allow for some regular 15 mile hiking days. To that end, I’m trying to convince J, and our faithful training partners S and M to sign up for something called the Mammoth March.

It’s a serious of hikes held throughout the country – this one is 20 miles to be accomplished in 8 hours and takes place in the Charles H. Bronson State Forest here in Central Florida. We are already familiar with that location – you’ll recall we hiked there in 2020, as recounted in Lost in Florida – Staring Down Charles Bronson (a decent title if I do say so myself). While I think that speed and distance quite doable, it’s definitely going to take some practice. You can see from the below it’s not a straightforward path, and there are a fair amount of saw palmettos and other natural dangers to avoid.

J staring down Charles Bronson

Now, careful readers will have noted the teaser above and will be asking but why the need to train for 15 mile hikes. Well, because the latter half of this year will hold many opportunities for travel – J will be on sabbatical! To take this one step at a time, our plans for July have ranged from Egypt and Morocco to the Shetland Islands….and now we seem to have settled on Edinburgh, a hike through the Yorkshire Dales that includes portions of the Coast to Coast and the Pennine Way, followed by time in London, and then another hike that circumnavigates Guernsey, which is one of the Channel Islands.

The dales hike in particular has some long days, including two 15 milers. It’s time to resurrect the hiking poles and get out there. As I was running errands today I happened by what was once one of the premier malls in Orlando. It can’t even be described as being on death’s doorstep – it’s clearly crossed the threshold. Anchored now by a low end Macys, a Dillard close out store, and some sort of flooring or tile place. I don’t want to end up like that mall – it’s time for some adventure.

While not a mountaintop, I think that the dales can count as a summit and the island of Guernsey as a swamp! Of course, the below isn’t Guernsey; it’s a view of Lake George in New York, taken this past summer.