Three weeks ago, after years of talking about it, my partner and I finally went to the UK. Flew into Heathrow, rented a car, and headed directly for the countryside, confining our tour to the regions of the Cotswolds, Devon and Cornwall. We drove more than 1400 miles, slept in six different B&Bs, 3 pubs, or Ale Houses – some of them, as we discovered, provide lodging and breakfast – and one motel. Enjoyed the best home cooking I’ve had since I was a child. Met some wonderful people. And saw what has to be some of the most beautiful (and unspoiled by modern man) landscapes on the planet. Who knew this tiny country was so enormous?
The first part of our adventure, as you might imagine, was overcoming the mental challenge of driving on the opposite side of the road, from the opposite side of the car. Towards the end of our journey we’d nearly mastered it. With gentle reminders to ourselves – for example, a note taped to the steering wheel to remind us each morning as we set out which side of the road we needed to be on – we managed to avoid even a single incident. Though there were some near death experiences, and quite a bit of frantic shouting, as we negotiated the first several roundabouts.
The second thing we did was decide NOT to see London, tempting as it was. We felt one cannot do London justice on the fly – a guidebook I’d picked up advised at least five full days – and since I’ve dreamed about the English countryside since I was a child (The Secret Garden was my all-time favorite childhood book), it seemed we’d only make ourselves crazy trying to fit it all in. So our plan is to return in a couple of years and do London first and foremost.
Setting out from the Hertz rental stand at Heathrow in our little blue Corsa, we headed northwest in the general direction of the B&B we’d booked for our first two nights – the only B&B we’d pre-booked. All the other nights our rooming was arranged on the fly, which, for the most part, worked quite well for us. It kept us from having to stick to any sort of schedule or route. That first day, though, we were grateful to have a plan. I suffered a lot more than I’d imagined from jet lag – even though it was a night-time flight that got us into London at 8AM local time, I’d not slept as I’d thought I would on the plane. I remember very little about that first day except that, as beautiful and different as everything was, I kept nodding off. We finally pulled into the driveway of the Brookthorpe Lodge near Gloucester at 7PM, and were asleep by 7:30.
But the following morning, refreshed, we began our tour in earnest – starting with a home cooked Full English breakfast, my first ever. Don’t believe anything you’ve ever heard before about English food not being good, or, at best, being boring. I had not one single bad meal the whole time we were there. In fact, it’s difficult for me, a true foodie, to stop talking about all the good things we ate. Here’s a typical full English breakfast: First a selection of cereals and fruit. Then, eggs cooked to order, one or two, either fried, scrambled, coddled or boiled; bacon, which is nothing like American bacon, but more like very thinly sliced ham streaked with just enough fat to make it cook up crispy but tender; sausages, also nothing like our typical breakfast links, but also not delicious by my standards – a bit mushy and seasoned rather blandly – although on two occasions I did have some that were quite good; “baked” beans, which I finally began rejecting after the second or third attempt to like them because it seems all they do is warm the contents of a can of Heinz beans to which they add no additional seasoning – beans for breakfast have never turned me on, these turned me off; grilled tomatoes – yes, whole fresh tomatoes halved and grilled and quite tasty; grilled or sautéed mushrooms – much more delicious than I would have ever thought with breakfast; fried bread, which is exactly what it sounds like – a slice of white bread fried in oil, not delicious, but interesting; and toast of your choice, “white or dark” – you order it by the color, not the grain. In some places it was homemade, in others not. And of course coffee (French pressed, always) or tea.
Beginning each day with such a feast, we did not need to eat again until supper, for which we did not usually stop until after dark, cramming all the sightseeing we could into the daylight hours. Though we did stop a couple of times for Cream Tea, which like the breakfasts, is always the same: a pot of tea served with either one or two scones, fresh fruit preserves and clotted cream. Clotted cream is heavy cream that has been allowed to slowly warm until the whey has separated and settled to the bottom. The custardy cream on the top is skimmed off and this is what you pile onto your scone along with the preserves. Oh. My. God. I could not get enough of it. Yummy. Yummy. Yummy. Oh, and the tea was pretty good too. In the village of Winchcombe, we were pleasantly surprised when the proprietress of a tiny tea shop and her husband, who live upstairs, joined us as we gorged ourselves on homemade scones and delightful conversation. For an hour we chatted like old friends beneath the low, exposed-beam ceiling and beside an ancient hearth original to the house, which was, to the best they’d been able to determine, at least 400 years old. Amazing.
Basically our tour took us first into the Cotswolds, from Stroud to Warwick (where we spent a full four hours touring the amazing Warwick Castle – a must see), Gloucester, Bath (where we toured the ancient Roman baths, uncovered in the late 1800s by a crew laying sewers and subsequently excavated, and amazing in their “modern” technology and structure); to Leominster to see the ubiquitous “black and white” houses in charming villages such as Weobly and Pembridge; to Wells, and then Glastonbury, town of modern day mystics and healers who still worship the ancient Druids; then across the Exmoor Forest to Tintagel (home of the legendary King Arthur) and Boscastle and the numerous other unique and charming villages along the coast in Cornwall. My favorite of all was St. Just with its high and narrow, twisted streets and stone walls overlooking a tiny harbor where fishing boats bobbed on the incoming tide. Then we turned back towards London, heading across the Dartmoor, which was shrouded in such a thick gray mist that I half expected to see Sherlock himself materialize from the gloom, or perhaps the legendary hound of the Baskervilles; to Exeter, Shaftsbury, Salisbury; and then across the Salisbury plains to Stonehenge (awesome!), Old Sarum and Avebury, another henge (a henge is circular monument or ritural site) much like Stonehenge though on a wider scale, with the village of Avebury constructed right smack in the middle of the ancient circle of upright stones! We ended our last day there in Avebury with a delightful dinner at the Red Lion pub and then a comfortable night in an ancient tavern, now a B&B, called The New Inn.
We crammed a lot of sightseeing into our two weeks, but, oh, there is still so much more to see. I would advise anyone planning a trip to England to narrow your scope, as we did, and confine your visit to one or two regions so that you can enjoy those unique places on a personal level, so you can meet the people – who were always friendly and eager to offer directions and advice – so that you can get out and take walks and tours, drive the narrow hedge-lined roadways, and really begin to feel as if you know the place. And then, as we have already done, plan future jaunts to see all the rest of that amazing country. I can’t wait!
