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Touring Southwestern England

LONDON, July 24, 2008 - "So you're about to regain your autonomy?" Joy, a lovely girl from Perth, Western Australia (right) said wistfully on Wed night, as the two of us sat on a curb at a Burger King parking lot near Stonehenge.  I know, even the very notion of a Burger King at Stonehenge is a dichotomy.

"Yes, thank God, I am," I said.  Since I could not get an earlier flight home, I had decided to end this crop circle slow motion tour one day early.  I ordered a rental car to be delivered at our hotel on Thursday morning. 

Some of the people with whom I have become close on this tour, such as Walter, my roommate, Joy, Julia from Quebec, Canada, and one or two others from Holland, were both happy for me and perhaps a little sad that our at times tortuously slow journey was about to come to an end.  Several of them came to say goodbye to me as I was putting my bags into my car while they were waiting for a (late  start, what else is new?) of yet another day of chasing the crop circles.

And then I was off...

I didn't have a particularly set plan, just a loosely defined idea of heading southwest to the sea, maybe toward Exeter, and then working my way up to London via the coastal areas (see the above map).  As I got to Bristol and was passing the area around its airport (middle two shots), I thought of a Dutch lady from our trip who fell and broke her arm yesterday in Salisbury.  She was supposed to have been driven this morning to Bristol, and then flown to Amsterdam, where she was scheduled to have a surgery to repair her fractured bones on Monday.  I did not know her very well, but we all said a prayer for her last night at Stonehenge.  And I sent her wishes for a speedy recovery as I was passing the airport this morning.  The leftmost shot was taken a bit farther down the M5 freeway.  It showed a typical picturesque English countryside of rolling hills and sleepy towns.

I eventually found my way into Exeter (which was not easy) and immediately got lost.  Well, not exactly lost.  I followed the signs to a parking for "Waterfront and Cathedral."  I found the waterfront immediately (above).  But do you think I could figure out where something as large as a cathedral was?  Eventually, I asked a local lady for directions.  She was as befuddled as I was. 

"That's strange," she said, looking up in the direction of where she thought the cathedral was.  "I can see it from my kitchen."  But evidently not from the riverfront.

"I'll walk with you," she offered.  "I am on my way to a hairdresser and the cathedral is not far from there."

The problem was that downtown Exeter is so hilly that even something as tall and grand as the Exeter cathedral (above) is hidden from view when you're down at the riverfront.  What's unique about it relative to other cathedrals I have seen so far in England is that it has two towers (two middle shots).

Its interior is also grand, though not quite as ornately decorated as the Salisbury cathedral.  Maybe that's because it is older?  A Roman garrison was established in Exeter in 55AD, for example.  The first evidence of Christian worship at this site dates back to the 4th century.  Construction of the Norman cathedral was begun here in 1114.  Gothic reconstruction was done circa 1270.  So as you can see, everything is relative when it comes to antiquities in a land that's been inhabited as long as England has been.

Leaving Exeter seemed to take as long as finding my way in.  So I decided to give up on my tentative idea to drive down to Exmouth.  Instead, I thought I'd drive eastward toward Bridport and south to Weymouth.  One of my oldest friends has that as his family name.  So I thought I'd surprise him with some pictures from the place of his roots.

The Crash...

Well, it was not to be.  Constant traffic slowdowns along the windy English roads have finally worn me down.  So just before Bridport (see the map), I took my eyes off the road ion stop-and-go traffic and hit the van ahead of me.  It was a typical "rear ender"... my front bumper and the hood were damaged as well as his rear end.  For some reason, I found it quite funny that the guy was a funeral director with a rented van.  Mine was also a car rental.  So we both joked and laughed about what had happened.

I called my car rental company.  He called his employer.  We started to exchange information.

Out of nowhere, a policeman materialized.  I motioned him to stop.  "We don't need him," the funeral director said.  Too late.  The cop had already done a U-ee and was approaching us.  He saw that we were both in a jovial mood, so he offered a half-hearted smile without really knowing why.  I told him I had taken my eyes off the road and that it was totally my fault.  Guess I must have sounded pretty self-effacing, so both the policeman and the funeral director were very sympathetic.

"That's alright," the cop said, trying to console me.  "Things like that happen.  No big deal."

"Was anybody injured?" he asked after examining the damage.

"No," I said.  The funeral director acquiesced.  Guess I was lucky there was no casket with a corpse in the van, I thought.  It might have claimed injury.  :-)  The bizarre thought caused me to crack a few funny one liners.  Both the funeral director and the cop laughed.

"Right," the policeman snapped out of it.  "I'd better be off.  Since there were no injuries, this really isn't police business."  But he gave us a form to fill out so we can more easily exchange the respective driver information.  And then he was off.

Meanwhile, my car rental company said they would swap out the car for me if I can drive it to Poole (see above map), where their nearest location is.  They gave me the address and promised to call later with directions on how to get there.

I looked at my watch.  I had no idea how long a drive I had remaining.  Everything seemed to be taking a long time on the twisty and congested British roads.  So I decided to scratch the Weymouth idea and head to the coast at the nearest town - Bridport.  I was glad I did.  Since it was a sunny and warm day (for England - mid 70s), the beach was full of families enjoying their brief summer.  And the views were pretty, too.

Locating the rental car office in Poole with minimal instructions that I had received was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.  I must have wasted half a dozen overseas calls (from my American cell phone) trying to get directions.  The Poole office phone was programmed not to receive any overseas  call. And the girl at the Swindon office, from which I had rented the car, was clueless.  Eventually, I had to ask around in Poole and was able to find the place thanks to directions from a motel front desk clerk. 

The car rental office was in a god-awful industrial complex.  And the people who worked there seem to fit the environment.  They were thoroughly unhelpful and slow as molasses even though the the girl from the Swindon office assured me that "everything was arranged."  Despite my please that I was in a hurry to get to London (I had a dinner date), it took me over an hour to get the cars swapped around.

When I finally hit the road, it was rush hour.  So I trudged my way seemingly forever through Bournemouth and Southampton suburbs before finally getting on the M3 (freeway).  I had loosely thought of maybe stopping at Winchester to visit that famous cathedral, but that was out of the question now.  It was 5:40PM and my date in St. Albans, north of London, was at 7:30PM.

The Traffic Jam...

The drive up to London on the M3 was pretty fast, but when I hit the M25, the circular ring road around London (see the map on the right), I cringed, "Oh, my God..." I involuntarily said out loud looking at the traffic ahead.  The M25 was one giant parking lot.  In both directions.  It took me 45 mins to travel just three miles, inching my way from the M3 junction toward Heathrow.  I had called ahead several times to my dinner date, a friend from the recent trip to Peru, to let her know I would be late and why.  She didn't seem surprised.  "The M25 is usually a large parking lot," she said matter-of-factly.  But I had no idea.  And I've driven through Los Angeles, New York, Chicago.  And even Tokyo, Beijing, Sydney or Moscow congestion is nothing like this monumental traffic jam.

North of Heathrow, the traffic moved a little faster (maybe 10 mph), before finally picking up by the time I had reached the M25's northwestern corner.  I was an hour late by the time I reached St. Albans.  Thank God my friend was gracious about it all and we had a nice dinner.

Touring St. Albans...

I had never been to St. Albans before.  It's a charming town (now a suburb) north of London, with expensive real estate and beautiful features.  In the morning (July 25), my friend took me on a walking tour of the town that has been her home for 23 years.

We started with a breakfast at a lovely coffee shop on St. Albans main drag (my friend's face has been intentionally blurred to protect her privacy).  A German store owner enjoyed our compliments on his coffee and pastries, and played a charming host to us.  We than walked into the town center.  Some old buildings, such as this pub now converted into a Thai restaurant, charmingly showed their age.  Can you believe the building still standing despite the support beams curved by age to look like a spine with scoliosis? :-)

Having heard that I had sought my solace from the crop circles tour in history trips and visits to old cathedral, my friend then took me to the St. Alban's cathedral (above).  It is another ancient structure.  As you can see from the story of the cathedral shown in the two right shots, it dates back to the 11th century.  And before that, there was another Roman city at this place - Verulamium - the third largest British city in the Roman empire at the start of the past millennium.  The photo on the right tells the story of St. Albans, a Christian martyr whom the Romans executed because of being a practicing Christian.

The cathedral itself is quite enchanting but its most beautiful feature is the breathtaking altar you can see in the left shot.  The stone carvings are simply exquisite as is the wooden ceiling above it (two middle shots). Of course, there are also plenty of colorful stained glass windows all around.

The cathedral is so large that it has three distinct sections, like three churches in one.  The above shots depict the section of the church at the very front of it that faces the main street of St. Albans.  This is where one can see the St. Albans crypt (right) as well as his icon that was evidently made in Russia (as the text is in old Cyrillic).

The lake and the park adjacent to the cathedral are as pretty as they were serene, especially on this sunny Friday morning.  Each of the above pictures could be made into an impressionist painting, like Monet's Givenchy gardens, for example.  But Givenchy doesn't have as much history.  The top  rightmost shot also shows a section of the original Roman wall that was a part of Verulamium.  So is the modern circular structure (right) that was built in at the exact spot where it had existed eralier in Roman times here.

Ever seen a duck like the one on the left?  A red-crested duck?   I haven't.  Hm... A freak of nature? The park-like setting around the hotel at the edge of the greenbelt (middle left) makes it ideal for weddings and receptions.  Not far from there, I took a picture of this lovely old St. Albans street.  If it weren't for the paved road, you could just see the ox carts and peasants taking their produce to market up at the main street.  Thought the light and shadows in that picture could also lend themselves to a painting.  But what I saw in it you may find, well... a bit unusual.  I saw in the sky above the street an outline of the map of Russia (superimposed in pink in the right shot).  Tricks your mind can play, huh? :-)

St. Albans is also home to allegedly England's oldest pub (above).  This was dates back to 793AD, as you can see from the above pictures.  Overall, walking through the St. Albans was a wonderfully relaxing way to start a day.  I highly recommend it to anyone, especially a weary traveler.

And that's all she wrote from this morning of Fri, July 25, in St. Albans, England.

Love  Light

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