Weekly Dispatch #7:In Which We Travel The 500 Miles From Canterbury to Edinburgh & Back Again With Great Success & Few Travails & Take A Trip to Dickens World

Edinburgh

In every one of our escapades this fall, there has been a moment when Beth and I will suddenly realize that the path not taken, the roundabout sign misread, or the taxi pulling away signals yet another mistake on the part of one of us—usually the other—and that we are again are not going where we wanted to go. What we have come to realize (or, at least, what we have come to tell ourselves) is that each wrong turn leads to some different, better adventure. And so it was, too, when we went to Edinburgh, Scotland, for our first overnight excursion since arriving in Canterbury.

As I noted in the last dispatch, we have not felt a great need to travel far afield while we’ve been here. Part of the reason, again as I mentioned last week, is that we wanted to feel like we were putting down roots—albeit shallow ones—and becoming a part of the place. Another equally important part of our decision not to roam is our obligation to the students we are accompanying. Though we are not technically chaperones, we do have a responsibility—both by agreement with the consortium that sent us here and our own natures—to make sure that the students are doing well, are not feeling lost or overwhelmed and, if they need it, have a home away from home and parent-aged people to talk to. Because our group is made up of 13 very independent and resourceful young adults and because we all have cell phones and because we agreed with our Missouri counterpart Bret to look after his charges for a weekend if he’d look after ours, we decided we could take off for a few days and not be so guilt-ridden that we couldn’t enjoy the trip. And after the students raved about their time in Edinburgh, we chose that city as our destination.

Our journey began on Saturday morning. Toting only a couple of small bags and backpacks, we struck out on foot to Canterbury East railroad station for a 10:20 a.m. departure. Our friend, Tina, who was leaving for her home in the Netherlands later that day, stood in the doorway and gave us a Dutch goodbye, which means standing and waving until the people you are seeing off are out of sight. After repeatedly running through the list of things we needed to have—BritRail passes, cards for the London underground, passports (just in case), money, guidebooks, timetables—we arrived at Canterbury East and were told that the train we wanted was not running that morning. Work on the tracks, which is a common weekend impediment to travel, meant we would have to take a later train and cover part of the route to London via bus. Our other option was to leave from Canterbury West. Seeing that we had about 15 minutes to make the train from there, we hopped in a taxi and sped across town. The driver told us that he made the run from one station to the other—depending upon the lines under construction—with great regularity on Saturdays and Sundays, and he told us, too, that there was a phone number we could have called to find out ahead of time about any delays. We’ll know better next time.

We made the train, rode it into London’s Charing Cross Station and zipped under the city on the Tube to King’s Cross Station, where we caught the Flying Scotsman and headed north. By accident, the car where we settled was the quiet car which meant, according to the signs posted at either end of the car, that we were not to use our mobile phones, play iPods too loudly or talk in anything other than low voices. The car also, it turned out, had a self-appointed enforcer of the rules: a large and muscular bald-headed man who first scolded a young man whose phone rang before we even left the station—“Hey, mate, read the big signs!”—and a female passenger whose phone rang en route—“It’s a quiet car, you ignorant woman!” Needless to say, we whispered as the train zipped along.

The only problem with this idyllic, nearly perfect, situation is that we were, according to the timetable Beth had copied from the railroad website, not the right train. The train she had chosen—but which did not appear on the big, lighted schedule of departures at King’s Cross—was, again according to her timetable, the fastest train to Edinburgh. Expediency is a quality Beth possesses and admires, so it was not surprising to me when, as we pulled into York, that she looked from her watch to her transcribed timetable listings and announced, “We can catch the 2:34 to Edinburgh from here,” and leapt up, gathering her books and packing her backpack.

It is at this point that I need to interrupt this account to again repeat that we detrained in York because of an erroneous timetable, not human error. I say this now because it was in York, right after we asked a railway clerk about the next train to Edinburgh, that we experienced the moment of realization alluded to at the outset of this dispatch. And it was at that moment when Beth, who has been known to claim an almost papal-like infallibility in certain situations, cut off any attempt on my part to lay blame at her feet—which I would never do—by stating, “I wrote it down correctly. The timetable was wrong.” There was just enough gritting of teeth and enough of a glare accompanying that pronouncement that I thought better of saying anything and, instead, looked longingly after the Flying Scotsman, already missing the bald man who liked the cozy comfort of the quiet car as much as I did.

The information we received from the railway clerk that prompted our moment of realization was that the train we were going to board was not, in fact, the fastest train. The one we were going to board would take us as far as Newcastle, where we would have to wait for an hour before catching the train that would take us into Edinburgh. And, instead of arriving at 6:30, which is what we would have done had we stayed on the Flying Scotsman, we would be pulling into Waverly Station at 8:41 p.m., instead.

Have I mentioned how comfortable the Flying Scotsman’s quiet car was? The train we climbed on in Newcastle had no quiet car. Indeed, it had no quiet at all. In addition to MP3 players and overly loud conversations, we also had, across the aisle from us, little Nathan, whose bottle of Virgin Cola (we were on a Virgin train, which, apparently, sold only products with its brand name) was at first an oft-launching rocket (“3-2-1 BLAST OFF!! 3-2-1 BLAST OFF!! 3-2-1 BLAST OFF!!”) and then fuel for his window-rattling belches.

On our taxi ride from the station to our hotel, it was difficult to see much of the city because of the dark and a little drizzle. It was not hard to see, however, the large, illuminated castle that loomed over us as we drove past. After dropping off our bags at the hotel—the Herald House, a two-star accommodation, which means clean and tidy but a little worn—we walked to the McKirdy Restaurant and had our first Scottish meal. Beth had salmon, which is traditional, and I had McChiggis, which is not. McChiggis is a chicken breast stuffed with haggis. And haggis, you may or may not know, is a lot of chopped-up meat-stuff cooked inside a sheep’s stomach. As unappealing as that may seem, I liked the dish a lot. Haggis—sans stomach, anyway—is really a mild, somewhat dry sausage and very tasty.

We had read about Edinburgh on our way up on the train, but nothing really prepared us for the city that we encountered the next morning. When we first left the hotel and started toward the city centre, all looked typically urban: modern, undistinguished buildings. But when we turned the corner and caught sight of the castle that we had only glimpsed the night before, it was clear that we were in for a real treat.

Edinburgh Castle sits on a fist of black volcanic rock and appears to have emerged from the stone rather than having been built atop it. When we reached the base of the nearly sheer rock face and looked up, we were easily 100 feet or so below the bottom of the castle walls. It’s obvious why its builders chose this location; it looks virtually impenetrable. We made our way up to the courtyard in front of the main entrance and looked south toward another extinct volcano called Arthur’s Seat, north toward Calton Hill, where replicas of Greek buildings explain, in part, how the city became known as “The Athens of the North.” To the east, down the hill toward Holyrood Palace, is the Royal Mile. That’s the direction we headed.

This part of Edinburgh is known as “Old Town” and is characterized by tall, narrow buildings known as “lands.” Behind each building, accessible through a passageway called a “close,” is a courtyard surrounded by equally tall and narrow buildings. In the “front land,” business was conducted; in the “back land,” the merchants, their families and other tenants lived. Much of stone and brick used to build these tenements—as well as most every other edifice in the city—is soot-blackened, which gives the city an oddly gloomy appearance, but as we walked down the hill past these dark buildings, there was still the sense that the city was vibrant and thriving. That feeling can be traced, to some degree, to the fact that most of the businesses along the Royal Mile cater to tourists, hundreds of whom shared the street with us that morning. There were, of course, the usual souvenir shops and the stores offering 50% off on all Scottish wool sweaters and scarves and lap blankets, along with pubs and restaurants. Happily, though, tucked in among these places were a number of little museums and churches. The thing we enjoyed most was slipping through the passageways—each of which had a name: Mary King’s Close, Wireworks Close, Lady Stair’s Close—and investigating the back lands.

At the bottom of the hill, across a busy road from the Holyrood Palace is the ultra-modern Scottish Parliament building. It was designed by a Spanish architect, Enric Miralles, and made to look as if it came out of the landscape. Not as gaudy as Gaudi’s sculpted cathedral in Barcelona, there is something similarly whimsical about the building and grounds. It was open to the public, so we went in to take a look around. As we approached the metal detector and guards, I realized that I was carrying my pocket knife with me. I showed it to one of the guards and asked if I could leave it with her while we were inside. When she opened it and saw that it was a lock blade knife, she informed me that if she took it, she would have to call the police because it was, despite the fact that the blade is only an inch-and-a-half long, considered a weapon and is illegal in Great Britain. Rather than risk arrest, we thanked her and—fighting the urge to run for our lives—left the building.

The Parliament Building sits near Holyrood Park, which is home to the volcanic peak known as Arthur’s Seat. Arcing around one side of the Seat is a curving cliff known as the Salisbury Crags. A steep path, Radical Road, climbs past the crags and on up to the top. Another path takes a more leisurely route. We knew we were not going to get all the way up that afternoon, so we opted to head up the slightly less vertical path and climbed to the ruins of St. Anthony’s Chapel, where we perched on a clump of black basalt, snapped pictures of the city and witnessed a wiccan ceremony of some sort, complete with robes and gnarled sticks and other witchy accoutrements. All of the participants were young women, except for one young man who apparently thought this was a good way to meet girls. As we made our way back down the hill, we could hear wailing and howling from the group and were sorry we hadn’t stuck around.

After a pub lunch, we walked north and climbed up Calton Hill which, like Arthur’s Seat, afforded us wonderful views of the city and, farther north, the Firth of Forth, Edinburgh’s route to the North Sea. This is home to an odd assortment of buildings, including a section of columns that resemble the ruins of some grand building, a copy of the Acropolis, an observatory, a monument honoring Admiral Nelson, and a cemetery where philosopher David Hume is buried—right next to a statue of Abraham Lincoln. By this time, the sun was starting to set, so we walked back to the neighborhood where our hotel is located and decided to take in a movie, our first since coming to Britain. We saw a great film, Atonement, which, with its scenes of Dover and the evacuation of Dunkirk, was especially appropriate, and we learned that while the Scottish may be masters of making haggis and whiskey, they have not a clue as to how to make popcorn.

The next morning we spent visiting the little museums that had all been closed on Sunday. We started at the bottom of the Royal Mile at the Queen’s Gallery, where we saw an impressive collection of Flemish paintings by masters including Brueghel, Van Dyke and Reubens. We followed that stop with a quick, unarmed look at the inside of the Parliament Building. From there, we went up the hill and stopped in at the Edinburgh City Museum, which had great models of the city that helped us see how the “Old Town” had been built straddling the long hill that made up the Royal Mile and an exhibit detailing the role of the Scottish and English in the slave trade. They were among the first countries to abolish and condemn slavery but not until after decades of involvement—both implicit and explicit—in human trafficking. After that, we went to the Museum of Childhood, five floors of toys and dolls and games from the 19th and 20th centuries, and then to the Writers’ Museum, where exhibits honored Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns, and Robert Louis Stevenson.

For lunch that day, we went to a Mexican restaurant. Though it was not a total disappointment, I have to say that this cuisine—like movie popcorn—is not the country’s forte.

To the north of “Old Town” and to the west of Calton Hill is “New Town,” a 1790s development built because the city was growing rapidly and could not get any taller. When we walked past the last tenement and crossed the bridge to New Town, we got the feeling that we had entered a completely different city. As open and orderly as Old Town is crowded and jumbled, New Town features some of the best examples of Georgian architecture found anywhere in Europe. On Charlotte Square, The Georgian House at Number 7 is open to the public and provides a fascinating look at life in the late 18th-early 19th centuries. While none of the furniture is original to the house, it is all authentic to the period, and the docents who greet visitors in each of the rooms are friendly and knowledgeable and clearly enjoy their work.

By the time we finished touring the house, it was dark, so we went back to the hotel, dropped off our backpacks and went to a nearby restaurant/bar for dinner. We were the only customers in the place for the first twenty minutes or so, but then a crowd of people came pouring in. It became clear very quickly that this was an office party of some sort, and we spent the better part of another hour seated in their midst, unacknowledged and, apparently, unnoticed, trying to figure out relationships—personal and professional—and deciding whose fortunes were on the rise and who was not going to be around the office much longer. With help from our waitress, who was just as amused and interested by these folk as we were, we learned that a young trainee had paid for all of the snacks and that the silver-haired man with whom each celebrant sought an audience was the boss and did not have to buy a drink all night long. We asked our co-conspirator if she thought we might be able to slip our dinner bill in on their tab, but she said that, unfortunately, they were all paying at the bar. So we gave up our feeble attempt at criminal behavior and went back to get some rest because we had to catch an early train home.

On our shorter, more uneventful trip back to Canterbury, Beth and I agreed that the weekend had been better than we had hoped. We also agreed that any attempts to describe the city—even this noble effort—would fall short. There is a magical quality to the city, from its dark tall spires to its narrow, winding streets and endless stairways, that really does need to be experienced to be understood.

Dickens World
In last week’s report, I mentioned that I was excited about visiting Dickens World: “a thrilling, chilling, fun packed journey around Dickensian England.” I have always had an affinity for the tacky and the kitschy, and the brochure touting it as “thrilling and chilling” promised that kind of experience. Sadly, it was not to be. While the place had a Disney-esque town square and an impressive array of electronic gizmos—from animatronic figures to holographic images—there was no clear sense of purpose or vision. Because its creators did not seem able to decide whether this should be a place for entertainment or education, they went for both and fell short. For example, the Britannia Theatre, which one of our students said looked like it came from Branson, Missouri, presented a quick look at Charles Dickens’ life and work by combining an animatronic version of the author and a couple characters from his novels with holographic images of Dickens’ real father and two more fictional characters. Throughout the show, we all exchanged looks of bewilderment trying to figure out what it was that we were watching and why. Similarly, a haunted house peopled by holographic ghosts gave us a two-minute condensed version of The Christmas Carol—all of it taking place in Scrooge’s bedroom—along with a snippet from Nicholas Nickleby, a series of character sketches drawn from several novels, and a talking chair. Again, bewilderment reigned. There was also a schoolroom where you could play a games of Chutes and Ladders by answering trivia questions about Dickens and his works, a 3-D theatre that only a few of us even found and, most inexplicably, the Great Expectations Boat Ride. On this journey, the boat started out on the Thames and meandered through Victorian London, but then it somehow rode a waterwheel up to the roofs of the city where a robot crow nodded as the boat passed and a clothesline hung with laundry lifted to let us pass. Then, the boat crashed into a wall, spun ninety degrees and plunged backwards down a short flume and splashed back into the river. How this had anything to do with Charles Dickens is beyond comprehension. But as disappointed as I was by the whole excursion—and curious as to why this was a college-sponsored outing—I came away with a dream of my own: Theodore DreiserLand.

Till next week…