Weekly Dispatch #5In Which We Visit Leeds Castle; The Sisters Visit London In The Rain; We Welcome More Guests And All Visit London, Then Rent A Car And Defy Death
After our poorly planned attempt to visit Leeds Castle—billed as “The Loveliest Castle in the World” by Lord Conway who, apparently, knew lovely castles and the proper use of italics—we tried again the next day and were successful. The castle, which dates from 857 A.D., sits on two islands and seems to float on the lake that surrounds it. Adding to the fairy tale quality of the place are the exotic birds—including black swans—which populate the ponds and inhabit the aviary, a very well-constructed and confusing garden maze and 500 acres of woods and well-tended gardens and lawns. In addition, the grounds are also home to the world’s largest dog collar museum (I’m not sure where the second-largest dog collar museum can be found) and a nine-hole golf course. You can also, for $40, enjoy 15 minutes in a tethered helium balloon 400 feet in the air. We opted to stay on the ground and spent three hours or so wandering.

The castle itself is two buildings which were restored by Lady Baillie, the last private owner of the place. The first building houses historical artifacts and displays—many concerning Henry VIII, who owned the castle during his reign and visited it frequently—while the inner building, the castle keep, was the residence of Lady Baillie and is decorated in mid-20th century style. The castle is now kept by a trust and, in addition to be a very popular tourist site, is also a conference center. Meetings to finalize plans for the Camp David Accord in the 1970s were held there, as were meetings of Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political branch.

The castle is certainly worth a look, but, for us, the grounds were the real appeal, and we spent most of our time walking, which meant we were pretty pooped when we got on the train for the ride back to Canterbury and ready to snooze. Unfortunately, a school in one of the towns on the route had just let out for the day, and we were swarmed by rambunctious junior high students riding home, reminding me of the days when I used to ride the school bus. We did not, needless to say, get much napping done.

On Tuesday, Beth and her sister, Ginger, went into London in a driving rainstorm. Here’s Beth’s account of that soggy day:

The trip to London went of without a hitch. We’ve learned to read the scrolling signs on the trains that tell you when to get off, and we’d studied the map closely enough to have confidence that we knew what to do once we got off the train. Waterloo Station was our station of choice. It was a swirl of activity and commotion, but we managed to find our way to the subway—the Underground or the Tube—where we purchased “Oyster Cards,” the Underground’s equivalent of an I-Pass, a means of getting from point A to point B without having any human interaction. Simply “tap your card.” And all for half the price. (Having heard from my brother Doug later that he spent $8 on a ticket to travel five minute’s distance on the Underground, I guess we made the right choice.)

Because it was raining, Ginger and I decided to spend as much of the day inside as possible. Our first destination, St. Paul’s Cathedral, fit the bill perfectly. Because we had missed the first guided tour of the day and didn’t want to wait for the second, we opted for the audio-tour. A brilliant choice! There was enough information, guidance, interpretation, and stories to make the experience much better than a simple walk-through. I especially liked one of the opening comments on the tape that Sir Christopher Wren had accomplished something remarkable in this cathedral: he had actually made this enclosed space feel bigger than the space you had left outside the door. A very apt remark, and one I kept in mind during my walk through the whole cathedral.

We also saw the tombs of a remarkable list of historical and literary figures, including Wren himself, William Blake, Admiral Nelson, and Florence Nightingale.

From St. Paul’s, we headed via the Underground to the Tower of London. Because the rain had progressed to the point of downpour, we put up our hoods, ducked our heads, kept our eyes on the ground, and followed the crowd that seemed to know where it was going. We did, indeed, end up at the Tower of London where we saw the various towers in which the famous were imprisoned before their beheadings or murders—Sir Thomas More, Anne Boleyn, and the prince sons of Edward IV. (When given the chance to vote for who was responsible for their murders, I pushed the button for Richard III.) We wandered through the medieval palace and saw enough arms and instruments of torture and execution to serve me for a lifetime. Oh, we also saw a few baubles they like to call the “Crown Jewels.” This last display had a Disneyland-style exhibit which gives you videos to look at during the waits that can go on for hours during peak season. Ginger and I, however, walked right in. When the rain let up and we finally wandered out onto the walls surrounding the entire grounds, we saw the sights we had missed walking in with our heads ducked. There was the lovely Thames with the impressive Tower Bridge crossing it.

At the end of the day, we met Pat for dinner at the Raj Venue, an Indian restaurant in Canterbury. I decided to order a dish that our British expatriate friend Neil Edmondson had recommended to us: chicken vindaloo. This dish, for those who haven’t tried it, was described on the menu as hot/very hot. “I can handle it,” I thought. “If it were really hot it would have said just ‘very hot.’” Halfway through the dish, though, I realized I couldn’t handle it and gave up. I ate the plain nan (bread) that Ginger had ordered, instead. At the end of the meal, I asked the waiter if there was anything hotter on the menu. He seemed startled at my naïve question: of course not. To get something hotter, you have to special order it. I’m now looking suspiciously at the list of food that Neil has recommended. I’m wondering if he is personally exacting revenge for that event a couple centuries back called the American Revolution.
(The list of foods that Beth mentioned above includes a number of dishes I believe Neil made up, hoping that we would go into a restaurant and try to order “Coal Scrubber’s Pie” or “Beets and Leeks with Gravel.” More about food next week.)

Beth’s brother, Doug, and his daughter, Emily, arrived from Dubai on Thursday morning and spent the rest of that day with Beth and Ginger getting acquainted with Canterbury. While they did that, I met with my class again and am seeing increasing evidence that the students here are no different from my students at home. I received excuses for why a paper was not ready to be handed in, had emails explaining absences due to migraine headaches and eye infections—which may be legitimate, but the fact that these students were struck down the day something was due does make me wonder about the coincidence—and, during a rather lengthy and not-as-helpful-as-I’d-have-liked demonstration of the Blackboard e-learning site, I had to keep moving around the room to keep people on task.

That said, I feel more comfortable knowing that these students are not that much different from their American counterparts because I have a pretty good idea what to expect from them. And I do think we’re getting along pretty well. The week before last, a piece of notebook circulated around the room, started by the gregarious (and bright) Dougie, with the heading “The Pat Parks ‘What Is Your Age Game’ 2007.” This past class period, I gave the two closest guessers each a roll of Polos (British Lifesavers) and the student who made me the youngest a good-sized chocolate bar. No one guessed me older than my age, which is either a testament to my youthful appearance (this was the same day that I had had my hair cut and waxed) or to their student savvy. Either way, the sheet of paper with their guesses is a souvenir I will bring home with me.

Our third school-sponsored field trip took us to London on Friday where we spent part of the day on a walking tour of central London—from Whitehall to Picadilly Circus to Trafalgar Square—and part of the day in the Wartime Cabinet Rooms/Churchill Museum. Our guide for the walk was Alan Read, a professional Blue Badge guide, whose observations and anecdotes made the tour entertaining and informative. We saw Big Ben and Parliament and Westminster Abbey from a distance—we hope to go back to see more of those at a later date—and took the appropriate photos, but it was the less-well-known stops that Alan showed us that were more memorable. He showed us, for example, a number of gentlemen’s clubs, which are not like our gentlemen’s clubs (no noontime lingerie shows) and are now open to women, including the Reformers’ Club where Phineas Fogg made his famous claim that he could circumnavigate the world in eighty days. Another of the clubs was famous for its gambling, and Alan told us about the members who would sit at the front window in a rainstorm and bet which raindrop would reach the bottom of the window first, and about the time someone noticed a woman had collapsed in the entryway, and, rather than help her, members took bets as to whether or not she was dead or merely sleeping.

We also saw Lobb’s shoe shop, where, in the basement, are the lasts (personalized wooden models of feet) for more than 300 of their customers, many of them dead for years. At Lock’s, the hatter’s shop, we were told that the first bowler was made and was worn by servants who served as “beaters” on hunting trips because they often had their scalps cut or scratched by brambles as they chased pheasants. In addition, we stopped at the “factory gates” erected by Margaret Thatcher at the end of Downing Street to snap long-range, blurry photographs of No. 10 (later, at the back of the PM’s residence, we caught a glimpse of a man in shirtsleeves passing a window and convinced ourselves it was Gordon Brown), and we saw a changing of the horse guards outside of Whitehall.

The second part of the trip took us underground to the location where Winston Churchill and his cabinet met in relative safety during the London Blitz and beyond to plan Britain’s defense against the German army. The curators of the cabinet rooms have done a remarkable job preserving and restoring the rooms as they appeared during World War II, and the audio tour that takes you through the tunnels and rooms brings the place to life. Coupled with our earlier trip to the wartime tunnels in Dover—and punctuated by the shrapnel-pocked buildings we saw on our walk—I have come to a better understanding of just how frightening and tenuous life was on this island in the 1940s. The Churchill museum, which occupies a part of the subterranean complex, is an ultra-modern, interactive homage to Britain’s best-known Prime Minister opened in 2005. I did not budget enough time to see everything in the museum, but what I saw was impressive and what I did not see—judging from what Beth and others said they saw and did—was apparently more impressive still.

Then came the weekend…

In an email Doug sent us prior to his arrival, he mentioned that when he had lived in England—he taught in London during the late 1980s—he enjoyed renting a car and traveling around the countryside. Because that sounded like a good way to spend the day, and because I had already driven once—albeit it in a Dutch car with the steering wheel in its proper place—I was named designated driver.

When we called to reserve a car, my only request was that it be an automatic. Navigating on the “wrong” side of the road was going to prove challenging enough without having to learn how to shift left-handed. The young man at the rental place told us he would have a Ford Focus ready for us at 9 a.m. on Saturday, so Doug, Emily, and I, that morning, walked to the office and asked for our car. After checking the lot, the same young man who had taken our reservation over the phone informed us that the Ford had been rented the day before, unfortunately, and that the only car they had available with an automatic transmission was a Mercedes, which we could have for the same price. And not only a Mercedes, it turned out, but a brand new Mercedes, with only 69 miles on it. Doug and—especially—Emily were excited about touring the English countryside in luxury, but I was horrified.

In 2001, we traveled to Ireland and rented a car. As patriarch of the family (a title I seem to deserve only when no one else in the family wants to do something), I drove the entire time. Like England, Ireland is a “drive-on-the-left-side-of-the-road” country and, like England but more so, it has very narrow roads. As we tooled around on that trip, Beth was forever warning me that I was—in her words—“too close” to things on her side of the car. On at least one occasion, she was right, and I knocked the left-hand mirror off the car. I felt terrible about having done that—and did again when the insurance bill came due—but my shame was mitigated a bit when I saw that almost every other car on the road had a mirror dangling or missing.

It was this memory—the echoes of “You’re too close!” and the solid thwack of one mirror smacking another at 30 mph—that raced through my mind when I was told I would be driving a brand new, shiny black Mercedes on narrow, twisting, hedge-row-lined country lanes for the next four or five hours. Immediately, I had a shooting pain that went from my neck to my shoulders and my fingers curled into a white-knuckle grip I knew would be permanent. But, as patriarch—pater familias—it was my duty, and I accepted it.

Other than those times when we met other cars or—worse—trucks on our excursion and had to run the brand new shiny black Mercedes up into a hedgerow to save the mirror on my side, I did not mind driving. The car handled beautifully and was very comfortable for all of us, even during those moments when we were raked at a 45 degree angle, and I was practicing phrases uttered centuries ago by my Anglo-Saxon ancestors. The only damage I did—and it went unnoticed when we returned the car—was some scuffing of the front left tire caused by numerous collisions with the thankfully low curbs that edged every road not canopied and crowded by trees and hedges. (More on the roads next week.)

During our Saturday outing, we did not travel more than 10 miles from Canterbury, but we went through more diverse countryside than I’d have imagined. We went from hilly and wooded areas to open farmland to sea marsh. One of the most interesting stops along the way—which was closed for the season but still viewable from outside the fence—were the ruins of a Roman fort at Richborough, between Dover and Sandwich. The fort was built in 46 A.D. and was also the site where St. Augustine arrived in England in 597 A.D.

For lunch on Saturday, we stopped at the Half Moon and Seven Stars pub in Preston. Like most pubs, this one has a story, and the Half Moon’s story deals with smugglers who would offload contraband cargo at the nearby coast and stay the night before heading into Canterbury or on to London to sell their ill-gotten goods. (More about pubs next week.) We took another short break at a farm stand in the same village and stocked up on apples and pears—both of which are locally grown and delicious.

The most interesting and sort of dreamlike moment of the day came when we emerged from a tree-covered lane into a narrow valley. Spaced along the grassy floor of the valley were perhaps a dozen men with shotguns and hunting dogs, all facing us, watching. Whatever they had been doing had been suspended as a family walking in our direction passed through to safety, and they had to desist a bit longer as we drove past. With all of those guns potentially aimed in our direction, I did not want to spend much time gawking, but I did notice that the men were all dressed in similar fawn-colored coats, tweedy vests, and Wellingtons, and it reminded me of old black-and-white photographs of proper English gentlemen posing with a few hundred dead pigeons or ducks or quail. Whether this was a hunt—we saw dozens of pheasants that day—or a dog trial or shooting contest, I have no idea, but it was, as I said, such an odd scene to come upon that I thought—just for a moment, until I scraped the brand new shiny black Mercedes against a bush—that I was dreaming it all.

Having a Mercedes for a weekend means that it must be driven both days, so on Sunday, we first delivered Doug and Emily at the train station so that they could visit friends in London before flying back to Dubai, and then we headed to Whitstable on the North Sea. I was a little more relaxed driving this time but, again, meeting cars—even on the British equivalent of highways—caused a sharp intake of breath—a gasp, if you will—and the oft-heard rubbery squeak of tire meeting curb.

Whitstable is a beautiful town known for its seafood. In fact, Caesar was said to have preferred Whitstable’s oysters to all others in his empire and had them shipped to Rome. At a restaurant right on the shore, I tried the oysters—broiled because it’s been a while since I slurped them raw—while Beth and Ginger had fish and chips. This is such a charming place that Londoners are gobbling up the property, causing prices to skyrocket and turning the place into a British version of the Hamptons. It is still very much a tourist attraction as well, and we found ourselves sharing the day with a horde of holiday-makers who would, later, share the road with us in their deadly vehicles, grinning maniacally as they aimed at my mirror.

I am very relieved to report that the Mercedes survived the weekend intact. We returned it as early as we possibly could on Monday morning and happily walked home.

This week looks to be a quiet one—no guests until Saturday, no field trips—so I’m planning—as I noted above—to offer some more general observations on life in England in my next dispatch.

Cheerio!