Here's a copy of my 1972 Lancaster University student card and a copy of the photo on my International Driver's License today.I made it home safely last night and it was a very good trip. Looking back the four weeks went very quickly and I can honestly say there wasn't one single negative person or event that took place--something that's unusual for an extended job overseas. From the time I arrived in Southampton to the very south with it's driving wind and rains until I left Edinburgh in the north four hours late because of driving wind and rains, I had amazingly beautiful weather in between.
Internet access was very expensive over there--as much as $20/hour so I didn't post as many photos as I'd hoped but I did get to see and do a lot. At Southampton I came across the oldest 
bowling green in Britain--dated 1299. They bowl small leather balls across beautifully manicured grass fields and I stepped inside and was quickly escorted out by security so I guess they don't like photos being taken (or maybe they don't like Yanks!). The memorials to the Mayflower and Titanic were impressive but I think I remember most the numerous memorials around the town dedicated to American soldiers who left here on D-Day. Later, at Weston, I would take a ride on one of the small craft that took part in that invasion and, believe me, it couldn't have been a pleasant ride. In Chelmsford, I talked with some WWII paratroopers who also took place in the D-Day Invasion but not by sea, rather by air when they parachuted into Holland.
bowling green in Britain--dated 1299. They bowl small leather balls across beautifully manicured grass fields and I stepped inside and was quickly escorted out by security so I guess they don't like photos being taken (or maybe they don't like Yanks!). The memorials to the Mayflower and Titanic were impressive but I think I remember most the numerous memorials around the town dedicated to American soldiers who left here on D-Day. Later, at Weston, I would take a ride on one of the small craft that took part in that invasion and, believe me, it couldn't have been a pleasant ride. In Chelmsford, I talked with some WWII paratroopers who also took place in the D-Day Invasion but not by sea, rather by air when they parachuted into Holland.But back in Southampton, they have a beautifully-preserved medieval wall and a pathway along it from the center of town to the sea and I walked along it several times despite the weather. I also visited the Maritime Museum with its tribute to the Titanic and stopped by the meeting hall where the pilgrims met and prayed before departing here in the Mayflower. They had to lay in again at Portsmith after departing and that city is often listed as the point of departure but Southampton is the true port from which our forefathers made that foolhardy trip.
Leaving Southampton, I was still getting used to the Volkswagen mini-bus and also to driving on the left-hand side of the road but I found my way up through Amesbury and to the Stonehenge site. Most people express disappointment with Stonehenge because it's well protected but not developed as a historical site. Frankly that's what I liked most about it.
Leaving Southampton, I was still getting used to the Volkswagen mini-bus and also to driving on the left-hand side of the road but I found my way up through Amesbury and to the Stonehenge site. Most people express disappointment with Stonehenge because it's well protected but not developed as a historical site. Frankly that's what I liked most about it.
From Stonehenge I drove east and caught the M-25 motorway (their version of Interstate) around London and then even further east to the old city of Chelmsford. I was beginning to get the hang of British roads and highway markers and found the hotel easily. It was an old hotel, but a very pleasant one. It had been built in the 1800s when Britain had a "closet tax" in which homes and hotels were taxed by the number of closets in the bedrooms ( guess their way of maintaining a population census count). As a result, hotels didn't have closets but used beautiful old wooden wardrobes, or "clothes cabinets." When the "closet tax" was abolished by Parliament most homes and hotels built in closets and that's why antique stores in America seem to have an abundance of old English wardrobes for sale.
Chelmsford was hosting the International Boy Scout Jamboree while I was there and there were literally thousands of Scouts from around the world roaming around town. I was surprised at some of the places they were from--China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan--places you wouldn't normally think would be open to Scouting. According to the BBC reports that week there were no boundaries within the campsite--camps blended into each other regardless of the nationalities and everybody was getting along fine. They also reported that Palestinian scouts couldn't afford to attend so the Israeli troops had included several of them in their contingents. Everywhere you went they were laughing, joking and taking pictures of each other. Kinda makes you wonder if they shouldn't be running the world instead of the current bunch of idiots.
Chelmsford was hosting the International Boy Scout Jamboree while I was there and there were literally thousands of Scouts from around the world roaming around town. I was surprised at some of the places they were from--China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan--places you wouldn't normally think would be open to Scouting. According to the BBC reports that week there were no boundaries within the campsite--camps blended into each other regardless of the nationalities and everybody was getting along fine. They also reported that Palestinian scouts couldn't afford to attend so the Israeli troops had included several of them in their contingents. Everywhere you went they were laughing, joking and taking pictures of each other. Kinda makes you wonder if they shouldn't be running the world instead of the current bunch of idiots.
It was also at Chelmsford that I had the very unusual experience with the military veterans. 
Each year they hold a memorial ceremony behind the local museum in the rose garden and I happened to be there this year. It was a brief ceremony and the number of attendees gets smaller each year. Afterwards I talked with them and they gave me a unit brochure and invited me inside the museum for their reception. These guys had parachuted into Holland in the midst of heavy anti-aircraft fire at a time when parachutes were still an experimental technology. As we talked, I started searching through the old photos on my digital camera and still had some from the British cemetery at the River Kwai in Thailand. It was really something to see them pass the camera around to each other looking at the photos and talking about someone they had known who hadn't returned from the Burma Campaign.
Each year they hold a memorial ceremony behind the local museum in the rose garden and I happened to be there this year. It was a brief ceremony and the number of attendees gets smaller each year. Afterwards I talked with them and they gave me a unit brochure and invited me inside the museum for their reception. These guys had parachuted into Holland in the midst of heavy anti-aircraft fire at a time when parachutes were still an experimental technology. As we talked, I started searching through the old photos on my digital camera and still had some from the British cemetery at the River Kwai in Thailand. It was really something to see them pass the camera around to each other looking at the photos and talking about someone they had known who hadn't returned from the Burma Campaign.The Chelmsford job was especially good, the weather beautiful, and I was a little sad to wrap it up but I made the trip back around London on the motorway and headed back west--as far 
west as you can go at that point past Bath and Bristol to Weston-super-Mare. At first I didn't like the place--too commercial, touristy, and expensive. But here, too, I had a great group in the training program and we began venturing away from the beachfront and found neat little villages--very, very old villages--and I began warming up to the area. One of those villages was Uphill Village south of Weston and we drove by the old church one day and I was fascinated.
west as you can go at that point past Bath and Bristol to Weston-super-Mare. At first I didn't like the place--too commercial, touristy, and expensive. But here, too, I had a great group in the training program and we began venturing away from the beachfront and found neat little villages--very, very old villages--and I began warming up to the area. One of those villages was Uphill Village south of Weston and we drove by the old church one day and I was fascinated.On Tuesday of that week two other instructors from my company who were training in Bristol 
drove over and we had supper. We drove back to Uphill and climbed the rock to visit the church there and then ate in one of the pubs below. I ended up going back there two more times by myself later that week. I've posted photos of the church and documented my search for Captain Morgan's grave, but the area above the village was so beautiful I've included one more. I remember one subsequent evening I climbed up there and walked through the grass and sheep to the bluff overlooking the ocean and sat for probably half an hour with the wind blowing. If I turned my head one way, the wind roared like a train engine across my ears but if I turned my head sideways to the wind it was almost complete silence. Reportedly over the years many a herdsman on the bogs and moors went crazy because of the incessant wind but for the half hour or so I was there it was a welcome relief from the rest of the world.
drove over and we had supper. We drove back to Uphill and climbed the rock to visit the church there and then ate in one of the pubs below. I ended up going back there two more times by myself later that week. I've posted photos of the church and documented my search for Captain Morgan's grave, but the area above the village was so beautiful I've included one more. I remember one subsequent evening I climbed up there and walked through the grass and sheep to the bluff overlooking the ocean and sat for probably half an hour with the wind blowing. If I turned my head one way, the wind roared like a train engine across my ears but if I turned my head sideways to the wind it was almost complete silence. Reportedly over the years many a herdsman on the bogs and moors went crazy because of the incessant wind but for the half hour or so I was there it was a welcome relief from the rest of the world. Unfortunately I wasn't able to visit Bath or Bristol and, like at Southampton and Chelmsford, I was a little sad to leave at the end of the week but I was also excited about the prospect of returning to the university campus where I had lived for a year in the early 70s. Unfortunately my blog entry seems to have given the impression the trip to Lancaster was extremely depressing and it wasn't--it just wasn't what I remembered. It was good to walk around the campus again but a little distressing to recall that when I was there, there were no laptop computers, cell phones, Internet or e-mails. Then I remembered that while I was there this trip I didn't have any of those either and guess what, I made it just fine.
Like I said earlier, I found my old graduate dissertation in the library--it was the original copy since I did it on a manual typewriter with three carbon copies (they didn't have photocopying machines back then either. It was kind of gratifying to find the library still had the copy on file after all these years but, looking in the card catalogue (computerized, which they didn't have back then) I noticed it wasn't exactly shelved beside Shakespeare or Bronte. Looking back though, it had a lot to do with my later desire to write.....
Like in the old days, I went into the "underground" below Alexandria Square and caught a double-decker bus into Lancaster. Since I was working for the national bus company this trip I had a free pass anywhere in Britain and this was the first time I used it. Lancaster is an old, historic city and for the first time, I walked up above the city and visited the cathedral. I do remember the Lancaster Canal--English cities for hundreds of years have relied on a series of small, narrow canals (usually lined with stone walls on the sides) in which small "punts" could
travel from village to village to trade goods. They've been preserved and today private charters can take you on them at various locations. I remember renting a punt years ago and "poleing" down to Heysham village through the farmlands. The Lancaster Canal runs along the cathedral and while I was there I could hear an extended tolling of the cathedral bells. They were beautiful but I noticed how long they were being played. I ended up taking a short video clip of the cathedral and the canal with the music in the background. It was beautiful......double-click on the triangle in the lower left corner to listen.
travel from village to village to trade goods. They've been preserved and today private charters can take you on them at various locations. I remember renting a punt years ago and "poleing" down to Heysham village through the farmlands. The Lancaster Canal runs along the cathedral and while I was there I could hear an extended tolling of the cathedral bells. They were beautiful but I noticed how long they were being played. I ended up taking a short video clip of the cathedral and the canal with the music in the background. It was beautiful......double-click on the triangle in the lower left corner to listen.
On a side note, I was told that when the Lancaster citizens complained about the Muslim community using loud speakers six times a day to call worship services, the response was that if the broadcasts to worship were banned the cathedral bells would also have to be silenced since they were also calls to worship. So I guess it's in litigation right now and the twelve giant bells might become illegal to ring. Personally, I think they should let the Boy Scouts sort it out--of course they'd probably blare rock music from the belfry six times a day. And I think they ought to let the old paratroopers enforce the rules--they'd probably tear those computer labs out of the university and put the pubs back in!!! How did the world get this messed up?
The bells kept ringing so long I finally walked over to an into the cathedral and noticed somebody going through a small stone doorway and up a spiral staircase. Since the door wasn't blocked, I went up it too and climbed a long time up a very narrow staircase to what ended up being the belfry of the cathedral. There, twelve people were pulling the ropes that rang the twelve giant bells and they were having a practice session which is why the ringing seemed to go on forever. Several other people were watching so I didn't feel out of place but the light was very low in the room and I didn't feel comfortable taking a flash photograph. Still, it was very interesting to watch twelve synchronized bells being rung.
Back in Lancaster I wandered around town looking for old landmarks but didn't find any and took a bus to the seashore town of Morecambe where we lived in a row house for three months in 1972 until the university had a vacancy in one of the colleges on campus. Morecambe has been a seaside resort for the British in mid-England for centuries but today the old multicolored brick promenade has been torn up and amusement parks built along the seawall. The old, old row houses where so many students lived in the 70s have mostly been torn down and more expensive tourist accommodations built. For some reason, and I really don't know why, I remembered the address where we lived and with a little effort I found it. That particular row house is still there and was one of the few old landmarks I could recall.
From Lancaster on Sunday morning I headed north to Glasgow and then over to Livingston, about 13 miles west of Edinburgh. It had started drizzling at Lancaster and continued into the
early week then the weather turned beautiful but very cold--even the Scots were complaining about the "early winter." Like Weston, Livingston was a basically uninteresting, boring "new" town developed after WWII. But here, too, I had a good group and we got out of town into the villages and countryside and if you haven't seen Scotland--it's everything the calendar pictures suggest it is. They kept telling me that this isn't "real" Scotland and that I needed to see the highlands but I was very impressed with the scenery here. One day we drove up north to the Firth of Forth bay with it's old historic bridge and quaint fishing villages. Another day we drove into Edinburgh and along the base of the rock outcrop on which the castle is built. We drove around the Scottish Parliament which had a yellow flag flying above it meaning a member of the Royal Family was there. On Friday we finished early and since I was leaving the next morning, I used my bus pass to go into Edinburgh and walked up the "Royal Mile"--a street of historic shops and buildings and leading into the castle.
The castle is really something....it's not a true "castle" in the classical sense of drawbridges, ramparts and towers...but more of a fortress on top of a really imposing rock bluff overlooking the city. Of course it's very, very old and much today is rebuilt but I spent nearly four hours prowling around the nooks and corners and winding narrow staircases. This place predates the Crusades and they aren't apologetic about it....statues of knights are everywhere. I'm particularly interested in ancient cannons and this place has a treasury of them so I spent a lot of time prowling around courtyards looking for them. There is also a beautiful War Memorial for Scottish soldiers who have fallen in battles over the centuries and the beautiful St. Margaret's Chapel--the oldest building in the castle complex and all of Edinburgh. Built around 1124 in Norman architectural style it is very small but impressive.
early week then the weather turned beautiful but very cold--even the Scots were complaining about the "early winter." Like Weston, Livingston was a basically uninteresting, boring "new" town developed after WWII. But here, too, I had a good group and we got out of town into the villages and countryside and if you haven't seen Scotland--it's everything the calendar pictures suggest it is. They kept telling me that this isn't "real" Scotland and that I needed to see the highlands but I was very impressed with the scenery here. One day we drove up north to the Firth of Forth bay with it's old historic bridge and quaint fishing villages. Another day we drove into Edinburgh and along the base of the rock outcrop on which the castle is built. We drove around the Scottish Parliament which had a yellow flag flying above it meaning a member of the Royal Family was there. On Friday we finished early and since I was leaving the next morning, I used my bus pass to go into Edinburgh and walked up the "Royal Mile"--a street of historic shops and buildings and leading into the castle.
The castle is really something....it's not a true "castle" in the classical sense of drawbridges, ramparts and towers...but more of a fortress on top of a really imposing rock bluff overlooking the city. Of course it's very, very old and much today is rebuilt but I spent nearly four hours prowling around the nooks and corners and winding narrow staircases. This place predates the Crusades and they aren't apologetic about it....statues of knights are everywhere. I'm particularly interested in ancient cannons and this place has a treasury of them so I spent a lot of time prowling around courtyards looking for them. There is also a beautiful War Memorial for Scottish soldiers who have fallen in battles over the centuries and the beautiful St. Margaret's Chapel--the oldest building in the castle complex and all of Edinburgh. Built around 1124 in Norman architectural style it is very small but impressive.Saturday morning I flew out four hours late because of the rain and wind...but made a later connection in Newark and arrived in Houston late Saturday night.
It was an excellent trip and adventure......
1 comment:
Well written article.
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