WRAP UP: Impressions, learnings, memories, next time

Post-trip

It's been almost two weeks since our return; I can feel the trip receding into the past. Here's a last reflection on our impressions, learnings, favorite memories.

Impressions of England/the UK

From our first trip, in 1999, I remember being impressed with how much (written) history England has, and also with how international London is, in terms of people, languages, and food. I also remember really liking the sandwiches in England, and being impressed with how many flavors of "crisps" (=potato chips) there were.

This time, I continued to be impressed with the history and with London's diversity and internationality (we heard foreign languages every single day). I wasn't as blown away by the sandwiches, but still find them superior to typical US sandwiches. The bread is generally better, they aren't overstuffed with meat, and sometimes they feature creative combinations. I didn't see quite as many odd flavors of crisps this time, but I did have a nice packet of rosemary thyme crisps in Threlkeld.

What additionally impressed us this time was:

• 
  Sheep: There really are a LOT of sheep in England. Everywhere. And stone fences everywhere. I don't usually buy much on a trip, in the way of souvenirs, but I couldn't resist a little sheep...
• Lots of small villages: As mentioned in the previous post, there aren't big expanses devoid of humans, as there can be in the US, at least not where we went. Instead, the countryside is dotted with a network of bucolic little country villages, lots of them. The pretty green pastoral landscape is criss-crossed with stone fences and hedges; there's always evidence of human activity.
• Diversity: London and Oxford were very diverse. The rest of the country seemed pretty White, not that many Black people or East Asians or Hispanics.
• Great public transport: There's even buses in the Lake District; we were able to catch one to go back from Threlkeld to Keswick. Bus service in Oxford was very frequent and easy.
• Narrower streets, roundabouts: Most streets are old enough that they weren't really built for cars; they're narrow compared to average US streets. It's nice in a way; makes for a more human scale. Doug says it took him several days to get used to the different scale when driving; he'd miss a street or intersection because it was so much smaller, less noticeable than expected. Having roundabouts felt less intrusive on the landscape than our big expressway interchanges.  
  
• Pedestrianized town centers: Bath, Oxford, Keswick, and York all had parts of their city that were pedestrian-only, at least for most of the day. We really liked having that freedom from traffic.
• Tidiness: Streets seemed cleaner (even in London) than most places of comparable size here. Also just a bit more orderly in general, e.g. fewer weeds or broken/discarded stuff.
  
• Clouds: There were more clouds, puffier, and more defined. Very pretty at times.
• Weather: There was never any heavy, unrelenting rain, and not even that much light rain. I always thought England was more grey and rainy. Is it climate change or was it a lucky fluke?
• Horse chestnut trees: We saw lots of pretty, flowering horse chestnut trees, especially in Oxford.
• History: In 1999, I was impressed with all the kings and queens history. This time we learned about older stuff—I hadn't realized much of Britain has a Roman and even a Vikings past.

Learnings (what went right, what to improve)

Doug and I each made lists of things that worked, things we would perhaps do differently next time. A lot of the items on our full lists are personal, depending on your travel style, and some are beyond your control. For instance, we'd packed for colder, rainier weather, and in retrospect some of that packing was unnecessary, but how could we have known? The typical weather pattern for May said precipitation about 50% of the time. 

I would say that the key factors that helped the trip's success were: 

• May turned out to be a great time to travel; also the longer daylight was an unexpected plus
• Doug had done careful advance planning, including booking train tickets
• We were prepared to do tap-to-pay
• We packed light
• We could use Google maps for navigation (it even knew what bus to take, what the stops were)
• I brought the COVID testing kits, and some cough drops

Overall we had a really good hit rate, in terms of liking what we did. In retrospect, Doug feels that the trip to the ocean wasn't worth it, but I still liked the experience—there was an interesting pay toilet there and one of the "chatty benches" was there. It was a significant detour time-wise, though. Here are a few of our other thoughts:

• Do a little more advance planning for the longer stays (Oxford, London)
• Book London lodging earlier, to have more options (we booked about 2 weeks before leaving, which was about 4 weeks before the time in London, but some options were gone already)
• Pack even lighter
• Plan a little more about health precautions, maybe bring thermometer. Here's an article I just read about precautions to take: Yahoo news article.  FYI, as of this Sunday, 6/12, the US no longer requires a negative COVID test for re-entry.
• Possibly try some bike and/or scooter rentals
• Possibly try apartment style lodging for longer stays

Favorite memories

We each made lists of our favorite memories, but there are far too many to include here. With the good weather we had, and things generally working out, there were many times that were fun, surprising, interesting, memorable. There were a few low points, but remarkably few: I got totally exhausted on the "three meadow" day in Oxford (it was the day with the highest step count), and we got very anxious when our rental car wasn't available on time in Bath. But even on the exhausting Three Meadow Day, at the end there was watching The Cows and Kite, one of my all-time favorite memories of the trip (video is 30 seconds).

I will mention three memorable things though, one specific moment and two general experiences. When we went to see the Rievaulx Abbey ruins, Doug had been booking it on the road, trying to get there before it closed. We got there right at closing, but they let us in for the half hour between the closing and actually shooing everyone out. When we left, one of the staff felt bad that we had had so little time there, and she gifted us with the guidebook to the Abbey, so that we can continue to learn more about it. It was a very generous and unexpected gesture, that we will long remember. 

The two more general positive experiences were: 1) Most of the places we went to had a river, or a lake; we very much enjoyed walking along the rivers. 2) The driving experience (indirect for me), was challenging but ultimately one of the most interesting parts of the trip. There was a difficult hairpin turn early on, but once Doug got more comfortable with the car and driving stick again, he enjoyed the challenge of it.

Just for fun, here are some photos of me in various places (mostly taken by Doug). Can you tell where I was? The main places we visited were: Bath - Oxford - Stonehenge/Avery - Lake District  - York - London

Where we would go on a return visit

We've already started thinking a little about what a return visit might be like. Although we enjoyed all the places we went this time and would enjoy seeing them again, given limited time/money, the top places we'd revisit would be Keswick and London. We'd be curious to explore Wales and Scotland, on a return visit, and to go somewhere along the coast. 

We'll have to see how our own lives go, how COVID goes, etc. The UK is an easy destination to contemplate because there isn't a language problem, and it's relatively more similar culturally, though different enough to be interesting. Its current COVID status is very good. But we may want to consider other possibilities, too, if COVID becomes less of an issue.

Until we meet again...

If you've enjoyed the blog, it would be lovely to hear a brief word or two from you. Many have already written or commented; those people don't need to do so again. In any case, thanks for following along; it was especially fun to get feedback from others who've been to England. 

Happy travels, one and all!

POST-TRIP3: Signs, Names, Accidents, COVID

Post-trip

Fun Signs

I loved noticing amusing signs in England. The first two bench signs were at Arnside (near the ocean) and York. What a great idea to explicitly mark a bench for chatting! The third bench sign was a pleasant surprise on the way to the Castlerigg stone circle near Keswick, and the last sign is a stern "Don't be a tosser" admonition, seen in York.

Signs along roads were fun, too.

Town Names

One of the things I enjoyed most about driving through the English countryside was getting to see all the crazy town names, which I first noticed on the road signs. Below is just a sampling of ones I spotted on the road, plus a few from a map. I had no idea there were quite so many interesting names! You can tell many of them were established long ago; it's almost like a foreign language because many word meanings and usages have changed. I also looked up populations, in part to see just how tiny some of these places are. The size categorization here is my own; officially I think there are other ways these are categorized.

BIGGER TOWNS (population >2000 up to ~5000)

Bourton-on-the-Water (3296)

Easingwold (4627)

Killinghall (4132)

Ludgershall (5247)

Moreton-in-Marsh (3493)

Thirsk (4998)

SMALL VILLAGES (population >600 to 2000)

Ampleforth  (1345)  Ampleforth means the ford where the sorrel grows.

Giggleswick (1270)

Hampsthwaite (1083)

TINY VILLAGES (population 200-600)

Beckwithshaw (425)

Horton-in-Ribblesdale (428)

Lower Slaughter (236) The term Slaughter here meant a slough or muddy place.

Monxton (530) 

Newton-on-Ouse (599)

Oswaldkirk (230)

Threlkeld (423)

Yealand Redmayne (326)

One of the things that was interesting about the countryside was that it felt very rural, and yet actually there were many tiny towns (with great names). I am used to there being long stretches of mostly empty space between some towns in the US, but in the UK you never go very far before you run into some tiny town or another, but they're all so small it still feels very rural.  It felt like much of England is either urban or rural/small town-y, without as much of the in-between suburban sprawl so commonplace in the US. I didn't really see enough of England though, to know if that's true.

Please Drive Carefully

When we were driving, as you approached a small town, almost all of them had a sign announcing the town's name but also exhorting you to "Please Drive Carefully". There were slight variations on the theme, it might be "Please Drive Carefully Through Our Town", or one sign said something like "We Welcome Careful Drivers". It was pretty ubiquitous, but I had a hard time catching a photo because the small towns would come up so quickly, and there's often not a good way to stop to take a photo. There were more attractive versions we saw, but here's two that I managed to capture, at any rate. We saw dozens.

Road Accident Rates

Writing about these signs, and experiencing the challenges of country road driving ourselves, made me curious to find out just what is the rate of road accidents in the UK. One of the reasons I like doing this blog is that it makes me think about things and look into things more—like for the post on Dinner Food, I looked up info about the various chains (Nando's, Giggling Squid, Tortilla). 

Looking at a variety of sources, the bottom line is that the UK is a relatively safe place to be, road-wise, compared with other countries. On one site, ranking countries by road fatalities, the US is 120th in the list (out of 183), with 11.1 fatalities per 100,000 population, while the UK is near the bottom, coming in at 173rd, with only 2.81 fatalities per 100,000. It comes in lower than many comparable European countries.

Other sources additionally mention that in the UK, while more accidents happen in urban areas, a higher percent of fatal accidents happen in rural areas, at speeds around 21-30mph—which I can understand now, having been on those roads. I found a good overall analysis of differences between the US and UK car/driving experience here, in the form of 23 slides comparing the two. It mentions that the US rate is higher in part because people drive more, and longer distances. Still, it seems clear that the UK is doing better than many other similar countries, as well as better than the US.

COVID

It's been depressing to come back to the US, with its higher rates of COVID transmission. I hear on the news that Alameda county reinstated a mask mandate, and here in San Mateo, many people are still wearing masks in indoor settings (about 1/3 of the people at our local Trader Joe's). I also checked the NYTimes COVID reports as of June 4th:

• The US COVID case rate is 31 per 100,000; the 14-day trend is that it's decreasing slightly (-6%).
• The UK COVID case rate is 6 per 100,000; the 14-day trend is that it's dropping rapidly (-64%).

We did mask more in London, both because it's so populous and because Doug had a sore throat. But in general, we felt fairly carefree in England, more so than we felt here, before we left, or now, after our return. It's one of the things I miss.

Next Post

The next post will be the final post, including favorite trip memories, thoughts on what went well or not, and some thoughts looking towards "next time". I had wanted to write more on some topics, but I feel the need to wrap up and move on. Monday will be one month from when we left!

POST-TRIP2B: FOOD in England - dinners

Post-trip

Dinners

Lunch was typically a bite grabbed on the run, or an unexpectedly pleasant museum café snack, but dinners were usually a nice sit down meal somewhere. The smaller towns (Chipping Campden, Keswick) had fewer options for cuisine, but Bath, Oxford, York, and London all offered lots of options, much as you find here in the Bay Area. And, as can be true here, for popular spots you needed to make a reservation in advance to be assured of a spot.

We did have the classic fish and chips once, in Oxford at a pub. The main difference from what we've had here as fish and chips is that there was a single, very large piece of fish! It had a nice, light batter and minted peas on the side; I enjoyed it and would've had it again but somehow we never did. 

We had other sorts of pub food a few times (think burgers, sandwiches, salads), but mostly our meals were quite varied: Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Arabian, Nepalese, Turkish, Italian. We normally eat vegetarian + seafood; it was not too hard to find vegetarian options on menus, although sometimes there weren't many options or they were somewhat lame options. In that respect, it felt similar to the situation in the US.

We once ate at Nando's, a popular chain of fast casual restaurants that originated in South Africa. That was one place where it was harder to find veggie options on the menu, as the speciality of Nando's is "peri-peri" chicken, a Portuguese-African style of chicken. I liked my veggie sandwich and salad ok, but Doug's veggie burger fell apart on him. Later I was curious and checked: there are Nando's outlets in the US, but currently only in the Washington DC and Chicago areas.

One thing admirable I noticed about the Nando's menu is that they are participating in a UK effort to make menus accessible to the visually impaired. There's an app you can get that will read the menu out loud for you, for participating restaurants. I thought that was pretty cool.

Another chain we ate at, one that only exists in the UK, was Giggling Squid. What kind of cuisine would you think that is? When Doug saw one in Bath he thought it was a pub. Well, it turns out it's Thai food! It was good Thai food, too. We ate Thai food three times I think; our favorites were Giggling Squid and the Mali Vegan Thai I mentioned in an earlier post.

Speaking of chains, another chain that we saw in more than one city was Tortilla. Their claim to fame is "Real California Burritos & Tacos". We opted to pass, as we figure we've already had the real thing. Apparently the UK-based chain is going strong, with outlets in the Middle East as well. It's nice to see chains other than US-based ones. (I saw some Taco Bells in the UK, but not a Chipotle; however I just checked online and there actually are seven Chipotles, all in London only, while there are 23 Tortilla outlets in London alone and 36 elsewhere in the UK. I think I know who's winning.)

In reflecting back on our eating, I realized that most of the time, for dinner, we were going to a specific restaurant that we'd at least checked out briefly online first, in terms of their reviews. Maybe that's why we were generally happy with our meals. The pub meals tended to be less exciting, but we had many good meals.  Below I mention some of our "best" meals in terms of originality and distinctive flavors, but a meal is more than just the food. For instance, I'll always remember happily slurping a bowl of noodles at Noodle Bath (the name cracked me up, but it was in Bath), eavesdropping on the conversations behind us.

Here are three of the best dinners we had, and they were all outside of London even. (I'm sure there's comparable dining in London as well, but it was nice that we found some outside London, too.)

• Oak, in Bath: a vegetarian place, according to its own chalkboard: "Best Vegetarian restaurant in the UK --The Times". It was in fact delicious and creative food. Some dishes from that meal were: a simple dish of grilled asparagus, but with a wonderful garlic/almond sauce on it, a blood orange fennel salad, and a potato pave, topped with mushrooms. The dessert we chose featured a star anise ice cream (shown in an earlier post).  

• Bantam, in Helmsley of all places: We were just stopping in Helmsley for one night, on the way to York, and I didn't expect much, but Doug found this restaurant which is listed in the Michelin Guide. They offered tasting dishes to share; we got four of them. The food was creative and interesting. The dishes shown below are chickpea pancakes with aubergine (eggplant), raisin, and pine nuts, and a salad  of brown crab, shaved fennel, rocket, chili, and pomelo.

• Sticks & Sushi, in Oxford (Allie's pick): we got two of their pre-arranged sushi/skewer sets, one which was vegetarian, one which did have fish and chicken. All the items shown below were from the vegetarian set; the skewers were sweet potato and oyster mushroom. It was memorable because of the creativity, variety, and quality of the sushi. Note: I just looked it up and Sticks & Sushi is a chain based in Copenhagen! 

Next Post

My cold is getting better (yay!) and I tested to make sure it's not COVID, but my awake/sleep patterns are still pretty weird. I'm not sure how long my blog momentum will last. It's fun to look back on the trip as a whole, but it's a little harder in some ways (e.g. i have to think about all the photos I took, not just the ones for one day). Anyway, I definitely will publish at least two more posts, possibly three. 

P.S. We realized today we never saw bagels on our trip. I'm sure there must be bagels somewhere in the UK, but we realized that we never ran into any, or were ever offered any at our B&Bs. 

POST-TRIP2A: FOOD in England - breakfasts

Post-trip

UPDATES: A friend sent me ice cream consumption statistics for 2020, and apparently the US still consumes more per capita than the UK, almost three times as much! The US was 2nd highest, the UK was tenth. And New Zealand was first! It still seemed like ice cream was very high profile in England, but also we were mostly in tourist areas, so that could be part of it.

I also have found out that the CDC currently ranks the UK as a level 3 travel advisory, and that internal air travel in the UK has been problematic (this heard via an NPR broadcast), more from Brexit issues than COVID. I increasingly feel we were very lucky in our travels, more so than I initially appreciated.

Also I have come down with Doug's cold, so am somewhat under the weather, which is the reason for delayed postings. 

English breakfast

In six out of the seven places we stayed, our lodging fee included breakfast, a full "English breakfast"— not just the pastry and coffee that you sometimes get at inexpensive US motels. The seventh place, our hotel in London, could include breakfast as an option, but Doug had declined it, which ended up working out well. We were busier in London, and there were plenty of options for grabbing an on-the-go breakfast.

So what is an English breakfast exactly? Each place varied somewhat, but I would say the core elements are: 

• Sausage and bacon (veggie sausages available as an alternative)
• Eggs
• Mushrooms
• Tomato (grilled)
• Toast (choice of white or brown bread)
• (sometimes) Baked beans
• (sometimes) Hash brown triangles
• (sometimes) Black pudding (a kind of blood sausage with grain...we didn't order any)

Breakfast in York, poached eggs weren't wrapped  up tightly as they were in other places, sausages  are veggie sausages per our request

Toast

I knew about the sausage, bacon, eggs, and toast, but I was a little surprised by the mushrooms and tomato. They were consistently present throughout though. Lighter options were available, too—things like yogurt, cereal, and limited pastries (typically only croissants). Our first place, in Bath, offered the widest range of breakfast options, including smoked haddock, pancakes, Scottish oats with whiskey. 

As time went on, we opted for yogurt and cereal a little more often, as we're not used to eating eggs every single day. Doug got his eggs hard-boiled, soft-boiled, scrambled, poached, etc. just to change things up.

Each place handled breakfast a little differently. Most places had a menu you would order from (example shown is from our Oxford place). The small place in Keswick had a more detailed checklist where you'd check off what you wanted the night before. The place in York defaulted to a full English breakfast for everyone but you could tell them what to leave out. On our last day in York, when Doug only got a single poached egg and toast, I think our hostess was shaking her head in wonderment that he could get by with so little food (he did have some cereal and yogurt, too). 

The best breakfasts were definitely at Duke's, the first place we stayed in, in Bath. It had the most options other than an English breakfast and it had a very nice fruit compote. In all cases though, despite our getting a little OD'd on eggs, sitting down to a cooked breakfast was a nice way to start the day.

London breakfasts

In London we were on our own for breakfasts, which gave us a lot of flexibility, and more variety. I loved that the nearby Pret a Manger (which means "Ready to Eat" in French) carried tubs of hot porridge. If they hadn't run out yet, you could also get seeds/nuts to put in the porridge, as well as honey. Another nice breakfast was when we stopped at a Leadenhall Market coffee shop. 

Next Post

In the next post, I'll continue talking about what kinds of food we had for dinner, and what were the best meals.

POST-TRIP1: Some differences in England

Post-trip 

Here are a few light-hearted differences that struck us when we were in England. It was fun to make a list of them, as a reminder of what the experience was like, being there.

Since these observations are based on casual impressions from this one trip, they may not be truly representative. I'm hoping those who have spent more time in England (I can think of at least two of you) will chime in on whether or not you think these observations jibe with your own experiences.  

Some things that were different about England

FOOD

Ice cream: The Brits really like ice cream. I mean, I think ice cream is popular in the US, but in England, ice cream was everywhere! There was always an ice cream truck, almost anywhere you went. I remember there was one at Stonehenge. The yellow truck below was at the Castlerigg Stone Circle, pretty much out in the middle of nowhere. We could get gelato in the theater, and were served a fruit pop on the plane!

Lemonade: I like lemonade, so I started ordering it and soon realized that lemonade is ubiquitous in England. (Note that in one of the ice cream photos, there's a lemonade stand in the background.) It seemed like it was always on every menu, plus it typically was a sparkling lemonade. Lemonade was available on the flight home (shown in photo); US flights typically just have orange juice or cranberry juice.

Tea: Doug was surprised that while tea was always available, there often weren't as many different kinds offered as in the US. In the US, sometimes they'll bring out a little box of tea selections for you. He decided it was because in England tea is more of a staple, like milk; whereas in the US it's a discretionary item.

Eggs: We had a lot of eggs in all our English breakfasts, and Doug noticed that the yolks were consistently very orange, oranger than in the US. Also the poached eggs were almost always wrapped very tightly by the white, in a way I hadn't seen before in the US. There was also a "Scotch egg" which we hadn't had before.

Vegetarian options/food allergy info: England is fairly conscientious about providing vegetarian/vegan options, and about requiring food allergy info be listed. In a special exhibit on food trends at the Natural History Museum in Oxford, they included this note on one of the exhibit signs: "In the UK, a quarter of evening meals are already vegan or vegetarian." I don't know if that's true; menus still seem to be meat-dominated, but there is a consciousness about providing vegetarian/vegan options at least. I would say it's similar to the US (California at least), not way better or worse. I think the UK is better with food allergy info though. Menus typically have detailed info on the presence of regulated food allergens.

HOTEL/INDOOR 

Heated Towel Racks: All but one of the places we stayed in had heated towel racks. They can be handy for drying laundry as well as for heating/drying towels. The place that didn't have one was the hotel in London, so it's hard to know how common it is in London. Our other b&b places all had them!

Switch-offable power outlets: All of the places we stayed had power outlets that could be switched on and off for energy conservation, which we first encountered in our trip to India. At our last lodging, which was more of a hotel, the power to the whole room was also controlled by having you insert your room key card in a slot by the door. When you leave, and take your key with you, automatically the power in the room is shut down. It would be hard to do that in the other, older places we stayed, as the room keys were actual keys in those places.

Fire Safety: There's a lot of attention to fire safety, perhaps because of past fires, perhaps because it can be hard to install sprinklers in a historical building. Each place we stayed in had visible fire extinguishers and placards about fire procedures.

MISCELLANOUS

Cars: Although cars were bigger in London than elsewhere in England, overall they're still smaller than in the US. We never saw a pickup truck or a minivan. I once saw a Hummer-like vehicle, and maybe occasionally a compact SUV. We did end up seeing maybe half a dozen Teslas, mostly in Oxford and London, and we did see electric vehicle charging stations.

Contactless payments: Contactless payments are everywhere, even for things like donations and pay toilets and buses and the Tube. I know Europe as a whole adopted the technology more rapidly than the US when it first came out, but I think COVID accelerated the push towards making that kind of payment universal. There were places where you could not use cash, like the gift shop at the Globe Theater. As I assume most of you know, if your debit/credit cards aren't tap-to-pay already (or even if they are), you can also register the cards in Google or Apple Pay, and do contactless payments with your phone.

Me tapping on at the Tube

Donation box at the Tate Modern with tap to pay option

Dog-friendly: England seems to be a dog-friendly and dog-loving country. Many hotels and restaurants/pubs explicitly welcome dogs, and dogs were welcome on trails in the Lake District. On our climb of Catbells, we ran into one guy who was resigned to carrying his resistant little dog up, so they could go up together. Some garbage cans specifically reminded you they're for dog poop, too.

Tidiness: Generally England seemed pretty tidy, certainly in the early tourist destinations we went to. In London, we saw more instances of litter, but overall things were pretty tidy. There are also hedges lining many of the country roads, that clearly are trimmed regularly. It boggles the mind thinking of all the miles and miles of hedge trimming going on! The hedges added greenery, but also made it hard to see around the bend on narrow country roads...

Punctuality: We only have one small instance here to go on. We were going on a 1:30pm tour of York Minister. We showed up at 1:28pm and clearly everyone else was there already. The guide impatiently checked her watch and decided that was it and started us all walking on the tour. I checked my phone and it was only 1:29 still. Too bad for anyone actually coming at 1:30. Maybe her watch was running fast...

Driving: There's all sorts of things one could say about how driving is different, and not just because the sides of the road are switched. I'll just mention one thing: it's often acceptable that cars park on the edge of the road in such a way that actually intrudes halfway into the driving lane. You're just supposed to go around them, watching out of course for oncoming traffic as you veer into their lane. In general, there seems to be a higher expectation that drivers need to be on their toes. 

The car on the left is in a legitimate parking space 
(indicated by the dashed lines) but there's not room
left for two cars on the road at the same time...

Next Post

The next post will be about the food we had in England, particularly English breakfasts. I'll also mention our favorite meals, and our very occasional foray into grocery shopping.