There’s a lot to absorb in a long trip to another country. After being on the move nearly every day for 6 weeks, I find the days start to blur into each other and I start having trouble remembering what castle or church or garden or walk we saw on what day.
So first, the pictures:
I probably goes without saying, but this entire area has just so much history. Every old abbey or church we saw was started in the 1200s or thereabouts. It’s also quite astounding what was built, by hand, with stone. Magnificent buildings, viaducts, bridges, endless stone walls.
The UK is a remarkably small place. By my quick search, it’s only slightly more than 25% the size of British Columbia (243610 km2 vs 944735 km2). Into that small space are packed about 62 million people (BC has about 4 million). So take twice the population of Canada and put them into an area ¼ the size of some of our larger ( and mostly empty) provinces.
Much of what is written about British cuisine is probably true. Indian curries have become the new “national ethnic cuisine”. Pub meals tend to the steak and ale pies, fish and chips, bangers and mash. A “tuna salad” we had once was basically a tin of tuna upended on some greens. Grocery stores stock an impressive selection of “ready meals” and “takeaway” shops are popular. Canned beans and canned peas seem to show up in surprising places.
Like most civilized places in the world, it is possible to buy wine for your meal in all grocery stores. We found quite nice reds for ₤3 to ₤4. In fact, I’d list wines as among the “good deals” in the UK. Other “good deals” would be chocolate milk (about ₤1 per litre), Boursin cheese (a French import) on special for ₤1 each (these cost about $5 or more in Canada) and bananas, for some reason.
Campgrounds all have showers and flush toilets but they don’t have picnic tables and very few have any kind of kitchen facilities (unlike New Zealand where campgrounds all had full kitchens with stoves, microwaves, kettles….). The weather was stellar almost the entire time we were there and so we managed to tent for about 32 nights.
Most of our gas (petrol) cost around ₤1.40 per litre. This works out to about C$2.30 per litre. Our rental car managed to deliver us between 45-50 miles per gallon, Imperial gallons, I assume. We managed to rack up over 4500 miles in 35 days of driving.
Speaking of units of measurement….the Brits are even more mired in a mixture of metric and “Imperial” units than us Canadians. Distances on the highway are still in miles. Fuel is sold in litres. Milk was available in pints and litres (pints???). Temperatures were given in both Celsius and Fahrenheit on local radio stations. I heard someone discussing their weight in stones.
Radio Stations…. In the USA, we almost NEVER listen to local stations because they all seem to have the worst programming imaginable, with a diet of fundamentalist religious nonsense, talk show crap and over-hyped rock. In the UK, on the other hand, there was always a Classical music station available and we began to enjoy some BBC Radio 2 and Radio 3 programs. As I write this I'm streaming a Radio 2 morning show with a quite amusing Scottish host.
Scotland was probably my favourite part of the UK, mostly because of the scenery, the remoteness and how uncrowded it was. The northern coast was truly wonderful. Wales was very refreshing after the crowds of Cornwall and Devon. It was also interesting to attempt pronouncing Welsh place names. Good luck with that! Abbey and castle ruins were everywhere and excellent estate gardens were in full bloom.
Travel. Gotta love it.
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