|
|
We woke up late again (9:30) and were plenty stiff and plenty sore from two full days of walking around London. We packed quick, hauled everything down to the van and bid the Heathrow Marriott 'Cheers'. It was Monday morning, so we finally got to have a free breakfast snack in the conceirge lounge (oh-boy!). We prepped the laptop and set the GPS and headed north from the far west side of London. No time or energy left for another pass thru the city and, besides, it was now Monday and the traffic would surely be a nightmare. We followed the London outer loop motorway around to the north side, then set off due north toward the city of Cambridge. It was typical beautiful countryside, mile after mile and hour after hour of it.
We next stopped in Grantham, a little town that, unknown to us, was famous as Isaac Newton's birthplace. We took pictures of his statue in the city square, the 'appletown mall', and juxtaposition of a blue 'Blockbuster video' store awning in among English row houses. We tried to get dinner at a pub (it was now around 5), but were turned down by two of them because of the kid. We had well learned the lesson to stop for dinner at dinner time, not when we got hungry around 9 o'clock, as everything is closed by then. We had also learned by now that if a place didn't want to serve us because of our underaged accomplice, we didn't want to eat there either. Unfortunately, we ended up leaving town unfed after wasting 30+ minutes figuring out we weren't going to get supper. We drove on toward Lincoln, and stopped in the next town, Balderton. There we found a pub that was just about to close its kitchen, but they cheerfully agreed to cook one more batch of fish and chips for us. More 'fizzy orange', another 'pint' of 'coke' for Dad and a basket of greasy chips to share.
On the way to Lincoln, we passed by a "Damon's for Ribs" and just about did a 4 wheel skid to take a picture. Damon's is our favorite rib place in Florida, and I've eaten at more than my share of them as I travel on business around the Eastern U.S. I had no idea they had one in the U.K. (actually, two according to their web page) and we all got a kick out of the coincidence. No, by the way, there was no temptation whatsoever to actually eat there, just take pictures and move on. The Courtyard by Marriot was quite ordinary, for which we are constantly thankful. "Predictable" is the highest compliment we could pay a hotel on a trip like this, and we were relieved. One of the desk attendants was dour, almost surly by American standards. She was young and processed our check-in mechanically and answered our myriad of questions perfunctually in near single syllables. But the other desk person, a young man with a contagious grin and very outgoing personality engaged us by lively answering and then following up on our various questions. I mentioned our love of English soccer (sorry, I mean football) and our anticipation of visiting Nottingham Forest the next day. I explained how we were US fans of Forest since our Detroit club had borrowed Trevor Frances during summers back in the 1970's. He was aghast! He was no fan of Forest himself, as the Lincoln side represented his town. It turns out that Lincoln City had just been promoted from third division to second that very season and everybody was excited about seeing new teams come to town to play come fall. He told us about Lincoln city, give us a map, advised us where to drive that night to orient ourselves for morning and what to see tomorrow. What a delightful gent and I regret that we did not take his picture or get his name.
Unfortuately, I had gotten us lost several times, we were all pretty much carsick, and the local traffic was being particularly impatient with poor driving. We made several right turns onto sidestreets (across traffic, like a left turn in the US) and many cars backed up behind us each time. One bloke had had quite enough of us foreigners clogging up the streets of his town and proceeded to beep his quite teeny-weeny Euro-horn and flash his quite teeny-weeny Euro-lights at our humongus van that I was having trouble navigating through his narrow side streets. He took it upon himself to pass us recklessly in the middle of traffic and flash what must have been a UK hand gesture of disrespect (although I am not certain on this point). I honked my horn, too, as he passed on my right cutting directly in front of my planned turn and that was quite enough for him. He pulled off his car (on the narrow street, putting one tire on the sidewalk) and jumped out so we might square off. I did what I always do when such circumstances present themselves to me, and drove off. I finished my cross traffic turn and eventually wound our way (after getting lost two more times) back to the Courtyard. When I mentioned it to the delightful lad at the desk, he just confirmed that 'road rage' was sweeping the UK, too, just like in the states, but told us to pay it no mind. I said we wouldn't (and we didn't) and we retired quite peacefully.
|
|||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
Copyright, 1999, all rights reserved |
|||||||||
|
|
||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
Originally Written November 1999 |
|||||||||
We
arrived in Cambridge and drove around to take it all in.
Unfortunately, traffic was snarled and it took 30 minutes to traverse
just 7 blocks of downtown (we didn't make THAT mistake twice). Saw a
little of the campus and a little of the town and took a few
pictures. We never found the famous 'bridge' over the river 'Cam',
although for all I know we might have stood right on top of it. We
found a city park abutting a small creek that was filled with people
walking and sunning and playing and accompanied by a flock of 
geese
and swans. We stopped and stretched our legs, talked with a couple
of the locals (very nice experience), and shot a bunch of pictures.
Unfortunately, after the better part of an hour at rest, it was back
into the van for more driving north.
After
dinner we drove onto our planned destination: the city
of Lincoln and the Marriott Courtyard located there. Although it was
nearly 7pm, the English midlands in July showed no hint of dusk in
the sky. English summer sunshine is so deceptive and you must
constantly remind yourself that if you are seeing streetlights it
must be well near 10 o'clock and you should have already been in bed.
We
hauled our stuff to the room, then headed back down to
the van to orient to the city before dark. We quickly found the mall
and the shopping district (both closed as it was well after 9pm). We
also circled up to the famous catheral and castle (the reason for our
stop), to find and mark its exact location for morning. We were glad
we did. It is, of course, beautiful and somewhat world famous. It is
also located on a spectacular hilltop directly in the middle of town.
This geographic feature required tricky, narrow, switchback
sidestreets which were, of course, poorly marked. Also, parking was
obviously going to be tricky come morning, so we marked all the spots
on the GPS, made notes on the nice map from the bloke at the hotel,
then took one last spin around the city. We parked at the base of the
cathedral just as the giant bell towers tolled 10pm. The sound was
spectacular, as was the view, as was everything that night, right
down to the sounds of the crickets and smells of the flowers. It was
great to have no traffic to fight and no parking rules enforced so we
could be all set for morning.
