Getting wet in Great Britain
Trip Start
Sep 15, 2006
1
33
80
Trip End
??? ??, 2007
West Beam,
United Kingdom
Thursday, January 18, 2007
I suppose that I should mention we've had our first item stolen from us. I think we're extremely lucky that it didn't happen until Tunisia. Cierra put her purse down next to her bag for just a few seconds while we snapped a picture with our hosts at the airport. It took her a few more minutes to realize that it was gone when we reached the airport counter. Fortunately, the only things inside were a pen, about 15 dollars in cash, a color copy of Cierra's driver's license that we've been giving as ID, and a mostly empty wallet. The most valuable things that were lost were the laminated pictures of Cierra's family and our dogs that we'd been showing to our hosts all this time. And the other sad thing was that it disrupted the nice goodbye moment we were having with Syrine and Selma after a wonderful visit. But it's caused us to realize that rule number one is, don't put your stuff down and get distracted. Because it doesn't take longer than a few seconds. Thank goodness we didn't have to lose much to have that point made.
On Saturday, Mike drove us around the coastal towns near West Beam. Castle ruins and ancient churches appeared and disappeared into the raining mist, all to Mike's knowledgeable running commentary and gradual increasing cursing about the weather. Winchelsea and Rye were both hilltop coastal towns, once islands at high tide, but now landlocked. Winchelsea is an unfinished hamlet, with all the streets laid out, but many empty plots, as development stopped and the money ran out, presumably as the dikes were built and the coastal nature of the town changed. Rye turns out to be a superbly quaint little English town, where we were half sure we were actually on a movie set and Hugh Grant was going to come walking around the corner any second. Henry James' house was right there, and we walked through town in a drizzle to get a little feel for the atmosphere. We also stopped at a greengrocer's for some good English leeks. Leeks might be a good choice if you wanted to bludgeon someone with a vegetable. They're a thick onion-like plant nearly as long as my arm, which cooks down for a delicious soup with potatoes. We also drove through the town of Battle, where William of Normandy conquered England in 1066. Battle Abey was then built there so that the altar was placed on the spot where Henry was slain. The battlefield itself has been kept as open space, but the tourism board has planted an ugly hedge around it so they can charge admission for it.
Mike had a splitting headache on Sunday, so Jill drove us around to Lewes and we met their daughter Martha and two of her kids, Elsie and Charlie. Charlie was a real charmer, looking exactly like Harry Potter, and the most polite 9 year old that you'd ever hope to meet. Martha and Charlie walked around Lewes with us, up to the town's old castle ruins, and then we sat through a great slide show about the town's history. The problem was that at some point, someone dropped about half the slides on the floor, then put them back in the wrong order. A Monty Python-like effect occurs, as the recorded voice talks about a person, but a picture of a dinosaur comes up... and on and on. We were giggling like mad. When we got back to the house, we all sat around and talked about my great-grandmother Louise, mother to both Mike and my grandmother Anne, as well as Jack. Anne and Jack were by one husband, who she then left, moved to England with another man, and had Mike. She hadn't spent much time with Anne or Jack, and so not much about her had come down to me. It was really great to talk about her with Jill, who'd known her for 15 years, and could share a lot more from personal experience.
We'd also discovered that the good old Brits have gone a bit mad when it comes to their train fares, and the just over an hour trip to London would cost us over 40 dollars each. So we got tickets on the bus, and the next morning Jill saw us off with a big bag of food she'd gotten together. Mike works and lives in London during the week, so we just shook hands with him and said we'd see him soon...
