Basics and Maps of Great Britain

The British Isles are Great Britain and Ireland.

Great Britain is England, Scotland, and Wales. The reigning king/queen's first son (i.e., the current Prince Charles) is always called the Prince of Wales.

The United Kingdom (UK) is actually the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The flag is a combination of the flags of England, Scotland and St Patrick's Cross for Ireland  — if you layer the two red crosses over Scotland's blue background, you get the Union Jack flag of the United Kingdom:

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Northern Ireland is part of the UK, with the Queen on their coins, but Southern Ireland ("Ireland") is its own separate country.

Bristol

Nicky lives in Bristol, a city in southwest England. The River Severn cuts up into it and separates it from Wales on the other side of the river:

Cary Grant was born in Bristol J

On the plane trip over, I watched the Bridget Jones sequel, and was surprised by how heavily the movie was promoted here. Every other bus zoomed by with Renée Zellweger on it, and the ends-of-aisles at WH Smith (a stationery/bookstore chain) presented a DVD to every passer-by.

Nicky had arranged for her friends Dave and Helen to give me a ride to Poppit Sands, and also another friend of hers named Penny, who would be my roommate at the hostel. Dave and/or Helen had to finish some work the day we were leaving, so they didn’t want to get going until 3 pm. Nicky and Alex and the kids wanted to go up earlier and leave around 11:00. I went out while they were packing to spend a couple of loose hours in the city. Among other things, I wanted to find a T-Mobile store and find out why my phone wasn’t roaming.

The City Museum & Art Gallery (free!) is situated in an Edwardian Baroque building in Queen's Road, next to the Wills University building. Nicky’s written notes said that the stop I wanted would be right after I passed Blackwell’s Books on the left, so as I soon as I saw it, I dinged the button and the bus stopped right across the street from the museum. How could you miss this building? I figured I could suss it out; but part of me wanted to pin Nicky’s note to my lapel like a lost child (Please take care of this bear) and hope for the kindness of strangers (and bus drivers).

The museum was having an exhibition of “Ordinary Things” – at least, the topics depicted were ordinary, although some of the paintings were not; i.e., Van Gogh’s chair.

Not everything was a painting: there was something entitled “bin bag” which looked like a trash bag full of lumpy items. It was purportedly of painted bronze, but since you weren’t allowed to touch it, it’s possible it really was a trash bag:

Reminded me of the Mylar Bunny at the BMA J

There were other notable paintings in their regular collections: Sisley, Pissarro, Renoir. There was an authentic gypsy caravan (much larger wheelbase than you might imagine), Egyptian cat-headed people around the corner from the replicas of the Rosetta Stone, and a room full of gems, jades, and geodes. The usual sissified Jesus paintings and bad lighting on the large canvases, so that no matter where you positioned yourself, the glare reflecting back from the painting kept you from seeing the whole thing at one time.

Then back out to the bus stop in front of Borders. While I waited, snapped a photo of Sweaty Betty across the street:

The tricky thing of city buses is that they’re for people who already know where they’re going, a stop ahead of their stop. Even if you knew what all the stops were supposed to be (and you wouldn’t, because there isn’t a posted map inside the bus), the bus is only going to stop if someone presses the button to get off at the *next* stop. So you really have to know where you’re going, or you will be forever passing things, ringing a bell, and walking back. I knew that the Broadmead stop I wanted would be in front of Marks & Spencer (http://www.marksandspencer.com), so I watched for the store to come into view. On the other side of M&S is a Galleria with a multi-level mall, including T-Mobile, TK Maxx (like our TJ Maxx, even the logo is similar):

and, inevitably, Boots the Chemist (http://www.boots.co.uk).

No trip to the UK is ever accomplished without at least one trip to Boots the Chemist – I forgot to bring a hairbrush this time. HUGE Boots the Chemist at the Gallery in Bristol – every type of drugstore item imaginable, on two floors, a shrine of sundries, of plastic, toiletries, and necessities.

Could not resolve the T-Mobile problem in the store, so I went to a Carphones Warehouse and bought a cheapo Nokia phone with a prepaid SIM chip in it. Unlike in the USA where you have to commit to a service plan with a phone, you can just buy a phone (about US$40) preloaded with a SIM card with a set amount of usable time on it. It comes with a card (the size of a credit card with a magnetic stripe) keyed to the SIM that you can “top up” when you run down the clock. Also went to the post office and bought an international phone card just to cover all my bases.

Then back through M&S so I could catch the bus back to the house in time to meet up with my ride to Wales. The days of hot cross buns being 1-a-penny, 2-a-penny are long gone:

I told the bus driver I wanted the stop after St. George Park (a conversation that I would not have had enough vocabulary to accomplish in say, Paris — I am grateful that we both speak "English"), and made it back in time to download my email before disconnecting from the electronic teat for the weekend. (Tech requirements for this: a plug adaptor for the laptop, although you don’t need a converter for most electronics because it is built into the power supply; an adaptor to go between my modem cable and the (different!) phone jack in the wall, (buy both of these items from www.teleadapt.com); and an ipass account (http://www.roaminternational.com/) for a local access number.)

The downside to coming back to an empty house in England: nobody there to say, Shall I put the kettle on? L which somebody always says when you return from any outing.

Dave and Helen showed up after 3:00. Penny was already with them – I recognized her before the introductions from Nicky’s description of her magenta hair, and liked her on sight. She had lived as a teenager in the very area we were visiting in Wales, and had maps and back stories for the entire trip, which led straight into the bowels of Middle Earth.

Wales

The right lane on English roads is the “fast” lane and people poke around in the far left lane. There’s some blending of miles and kilometers along the way, which Dave said was not unusual, that lumber was sold in sheets of say, 4”x16”, but the width would be measured in millimeters.

We passed a lot of Easter-egg pastel houses, especially favoring a certain mint green, as if the countryside had been overrun by some DIY leprechauns. Passed a large sign on an even larger rock on the side of the road: Jesus Saves. (Okay…but where does he bank??)

Penny knew enough Welsh to tell us that mynydd = mountain and cym = valley, and that the word “cym” was pronounced like our “kim.” I'll bet the Welsh would be cracking at a game like Wheel of Fortune; they'd never have to waste their money buying a vowel to figure out a phrase.

Welsh sign watch:

Goresinon
Llandeilo
Gwansanaethau
Gwledig
Caerfyrdden
Canol y dret
Bronwydh
Bwlch
Cwm Gwaun
Mynydd Castlebythe
Moylgrove
Trewyddel
Cilymaenllwyd
Llandovery
Taflen y Dwyrain
Tystysarif brawf

Sometimes there would be an English translation:

Gogledd Sir Benfro = North Pembrokeshire
Araf = Slow
Diwedd = End

The youth hostel in Wales for Nicky's 40th birthday was at the end of an estuary, looking out on Cardigan Island (and I didn’t get a close up look at it, but I’m assuming that it is fuzzy and buttons up the front):
www.yha.org.uk/hostel/hostelpages/133.html

The youth hostel was a typically earthy greeny recycling type of place, with solar panels providing some of the juice for the water heater, a coin-operated washing machine and a room to let things drip dry, and motion-detecting lighting on the path outside and in the restrooms.  It was self-catering, which meant everyone brought their (vegetarian) fare to cook there. As more and more people showed up (about 16 adults and about 8 kids total), it took on the feel of a Murder Mystery Weekend. As the foreigner, I would have to be Hercule Poirot, while we tried to figure out which of us was “the nutter” who would end up committing the crime. (I was kind of hoping to be the nutter myself, but that’s the way it goes J )

Poppit Sands:

Path from parking area; solar stats, Robin on the path, Aisha and Pearl in a room:

A walk up the hill to the hostel, alongside the coast:

Window views from the kitchen, the common area, and one of the rooms:

Interior views of the kitchen and common rooms — most of the bedrooms had bunk beds. Penny and I shared a room with two bunk beds in it, so we each got double the bedding, which was great after 11 pm when the heat was timed to switch off for the night:

Tea was served almost from the moment we arrived, but from that point onward into the evening, wine bottles were uncorked and distributed, and the dead soldiers turned into candlesticks. We hardly saw the kids — they discovered the automatic hand dryer in the loo and got more shrieking glee out of it than any store-bought toy could hope for. We put on the first of several Desert Island Disks people had brought, and the party party weekend started from there.

Nicky had asked each guest to bring a CD with their 10 favorite songs of all time on it, for the background music. This is what I love about Nicky: when we were talking about the songs that *didn’t* make the cut, I said I had considered an old, semi-obscure song from Don McLean’s American Pie LP, called “Empty Chairs” and before I even finished the thought, she immediately sang the words from the chorus back at me (and I wonder if you knew…that I never understood…that although you said you’d go…until you did…I never thought you would).

The next day, Penny wanted to go into town and see how much had changed since she lived there, and I went with her.

The streets were filled with modern day hobbits going about their Saturday errands (we did actually have some mead ourselves the next day – not as bad as it sounds) and buying Guinevere clothes (bodice-intense panne velvet and graduated, pointy sleeves). We had a list of things other party guests had requested on our way out the door when they found out we were going into town — of course one or two items forced the inevitable trip to Boots the Chemist. We stopped into a shop selling things for the New Age mystic: watercolor greeting cards, Ye Olde Englische style jewelry, incense, and the like. I bought some Celtic knot earrings to take home and Penny contemplated getting a nose ring at the tattoo parlor next door. Of course I encouraged her to do it J 

We found a shop named, appropriately, Penny Pinchers (although she didn’t steal anything) and bought balloons and streamers for the party. Stopped into a bakery to buy two dozen Welsh cakes for the next morning. They are a kind of scone/pancake/crumpet sized thing with currants and raisins and taste like a buttermilk biscuit. We won’t go into “biscuit” here – the Brits think it’s a cookie, and they have no word at all for what we call a biscuit. Penny and I stopped at a pub for a cheeseburger (me) and a Carling lager. We passed a pink washing machine in an alley – for sale, not abandoned. Pink. Yes. I wish I had taken a picture, but you get to the point where you just want to experience something in the actual moment and not behind a handheld metal viewfinder.

Dim ysmygu = No smoking. Dims Magoo? Wasn’t Mr. Magoo pretty dim?

A bus ride and a very long walk up a *very* steep hill brought us back to the wonderful world of ShallIPutTheKettleOn?

That evening was The Party. There were several cakes, about 6” or 7” in diameter (unlike our 8- and 9-inch pans – which can’t be accommodated in some ovens in the UK). And much later, all three guitars came out and the singing started.

The party:

Bangers and Mash – by chance, I have a version of Nicky and Dave doing this same Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren impersonation at a folk club comedy night last year as an MP3 — give us a bash of the bangers and mash me mother used to make:
http://www.page-designs.com/photos/uk/bangersandmash.mp3

There were other songs I didn’t know – they would be introduced as “to the tune of Knees Up Mother Brown” (leaving me to wonder what could THOSE lyrics possibly be???), and a couple named Chris and Liz did some a capella Irish and Scots folk songs, but I did know “Hey Jude” and Elvis’s “(I Can’t Help) Falling in Love With You” and Bruce Springsteen’s “The River” and a couple of Johnny Cash songs. Nicky did “All the Diamonds” for me (a Bruce Cockburn song) and a song she had written about her and I, from a fourth of July we spent in New York City (“New York Sky”) – “my” song J. It was late when we shut down the festivities, and by then several new recruits had joined the candlestick brigade.

Incidentally, I discovered that many songs we take for granted have a different slant over there – for instance, when Stu was playing his guitar for the kids, they did the “hokey-cokey” (what is that? bad cocaine?) when they turned themselves about (that's what it's all about).

The following day, some people went for hikes to the cliffs and down to the beach:

The surrounding cliffs:

The beach:

Gorgeous scenery, great people, and a spectacular trip all around. Went very well with lyrics from Bruce Cockburn's song, "Don't Have To Tell You Why" —

Don't want to go to no parties
full of fair-weather friends
don't want to be in no "in" crowd
chasing after every trend
just want to stand on some hillside in Wales with you
and fly — don't have to tell you why.

Penblwydd llawen — happy birthday Nicky J