OK, I'm back home. I got in at 9:30 PM last night, that's 3:30 AM to you folks. I tried unsuccessfully to lose ID one more time (Customs agent stuck my driver's license into my temporary passport when she handed it back to me, and I didn't realize it at the time), but all turned out OK. It did take about 45 minutes to clear Chicago traffic and then another 4 hours home.
I had a great time. I have to call it an "adventure", because it all came out OK despite the setbacks. Let's see--
1. Smoking plane brakes meant that we had to stop on the tarmac away from the terminal and be bused to the building. Hour delay.
2. Asked by the station agent "Are you moving house?" Between the three of us we had 10 bags, including 3 that weighted 40+ lbs.
3. Lost my passport. Train folks never found it, or as far as I can tell, even looked. Oh well, my fault.
4. My daughter had reserved a room in Raglan (the town) via Airbnb. The owner was not there when we finally located the place and wasn't going to be back until Tuesday because of bank holiday, so we had to make other arrangements (which turned out cheaper but were not usually in walking distance of the castle). My daughter is getting a refund.
5. Ah yes, the roads. More later.
6. "How did you guys ever travel before GPS [i.e. satnav]?" "We stayed home." That, my friends, is a direct quote from an English person.
7. No train ticket ever worked to open the turnstile when leaving or entering a train platform. Fortunately, that was only necessary 3 times.
8. Beer good. Pies good. Fish good. Salad bad. Three out of four? Good enough for me. I did have Indian food. My opinion? You need decent Mexican food, and you need it right away.
9. The cheese was better than the beer. You can't live only on cheese, but I was willing to try for a couple of days.
The castle was fantastic. Except for the parking lot out front, you had to look hard to see anything modern from the top of the towers. The landscape was out of a painting--everything seemed much closer than it does in the flatness of Illinois. Even the clouds were closer--mostly low level strato-cumulus with tantalizing holes of sunshine, rather than mid-level stratus and giant thunderstorms that you get here. The weather changed about every 20 minutes, but mostly was dry enough for us. Saturday night we laid down on our backs on the grass in the fountain courtyard and watched shooting stars and satellites while telling stories. There were several Aussies there and they're much bigger bullshitters than anybody else.
OK, let's talk about roads.
1. You've shaved all the shoulders off of all your roads and built roundabouts with them. Don't try to deny it.
2. Somewhere you have big mowers mounted on trucks that drive along country roads and mow the hedges back and the underside of the trees up in order to form green tunnels. I kept wanting to see one of these, but never did.
3. Speaking of hedges and shoulders, WTF? I drove 8 miles on a country road in the wrong direction one time (following a native, mind you) before I could find a space wide enough to pull over and figure out where the hell we were, and then turn around. Why are there hedges planted right up to the damn road? What do you have to hide?
4. If you ride a bicycle in the countryside, you are taking your life in your hands.
5. How about some directional signs like "A40 North" or "B4293 East" for a change? There are too many clouds to navigate off of the sun, and no place to pull over and figure it out.
6. The "Tank Crossing" signs down on the road to Stonehenge are very cool, even though I didn't see any tanks.
7. I have a Scottish friend on Facebook who bitches whenever Formula 1 is pre-empted on TV. I'm going to tell him to rent a car and go driving on 4-digit B roads in Wales. He'll have all the F1 he can stomach.
8. Farm trucks drive faster in towns than they do in the country. Especially loaded.
OK, that's enough on traffic. You know all those things anyway. I will say that the surface traffic in Newport is significantly more confusing and dangerous than the surface traffic in the Chicago suburbs at rush our.
Anyway, I'll post some pics when I can get them off of my camera. I
think Photobucket will be able to host them.
Kirk
still tired...
- Rob
