Dublin to London – July 9th 2009

Trip of June 2009

Dublin to London – July 9^th 2009

We fly into London, Gatwick airport minus only a jar of jam, confiscated due to the high explosive powers of the strawberry. Everything else had already been confiscated between NY and Dublin. We are headed well north of London so we decide to spend four hours looking over the most cliché of the cliché London sights.... Westminister Abbey, The Tower, Big Ben, The Rosey Red Cheeks of the Little Children. It is a Thursday but the crowds are huge. I ask a vendor what gives, is it a holiday or something but he says he can't explain it either, it looks like a weekend to him. We catch a coach at 6pm toward Daventry. Our host has graciously offered to pick us up at the bus station. We go to a cozy owner designed and built house in a little town north of London. But it has more to it than a suburb because it is not on the train line therefore not a sleeper community of London but has it's own light industry and agricultural economy. It is nearby Coventry and the Spencer Estate where the late Princess Di's snotty snooty brother hoards her like the Elephant Man's bones. Joan follows that stuff a little, I don't care but for those who do here is what we learned. Supposedly she is not buried on that island in the middle of the estate lake/pond but it was known locally that the family crypt inside the family church (see photo above) was opened after her death, remained open until her funeral and then closed. You decide. And as regards Harry, most believe there was a rugby player in the fence row on that one, but they don't talk much about that. Our host has six guests while we are there including us. Two young men from France, traveling separately, an average middle-aged couple from Sweden with a passion for the MG car, and us. It was a good diverse crowd and we enjoyed it immensely. Since we are building our own designed house we had that much more in common with our hosts beside a love for travel. He's done a much better job than we have as he has finished. We got a concise but thorough primer on the types of housing in England. Council houses, Estate houses etc. Our host drove us around explaining the difference. In England government housing carries no stigma and are well maintained and well built. They are inhabited by members of all the socio-economic classifications. We also saw two Canal locks and a marina. Canal boats are very long (58') and narrow (6') steel frame boats, like a closed top barge, that are used as holiday boats mostly or as full time liveaboard boats. Another day we visited the above mentioned Spencer Estate but kudos to our host, he did not pay admission to the filthy rich Spencer family but drove around back where free access was provided to the Church and the supposedly real burial site of P.D. Plus a view of the estate could be seen as well. Our hosts were well versed in local knowledge, lore, flora, fauna and pubs so that the little town of Daventry and it's surrounds kept us busy and entertained the whole time we were there, which is pretty good for a place that most people from England haven't heard of (by virtue of the fact that I probably mentioned Daventry to 15 people from England that we met on our travels and only one knew of it). I need to mention in here somewhere that even a small convenience store in England carries more variety of beers than a beer specialty store in the USA. Our hosts were well traveled and we loved their stories. They had been in 1989 to the tribal region of Pakistan and brought back various items to sell to finance their trip. When I mentioned I loved those tribal region hats they said everything they brought back sold but those damned hats and gave us each one. When I travel I hate to add anything to my pack which I try to keep light but that hat went in there no question about it. It is a prize. It aint heavy it's my Pushtan. The last day Joan made a mixed meat gumbo for our hosts and one of the french lads, the last guest remaining. It was, I thought, one of her best gumbos. She hates to cook at other peoples houses but I purposely put her on the spot knowing it would be excellent and it was. It was now monday, time to catch our plane for Prague. Our hosts pulled our chestnuts out of the fire once again with a kindly ride to London-Lutin airport. Next Prague, the Czech Republic.