April 22, 2005 – A Sojourn to Scotland 2003
Thursday August 7th, 2003, my wife IM and I are outbound SFO to JFK on the first leg of the trip to Scotland by way of London Heathrow. We're on American Airlines Flight 44 leaving SFO at 7:20 AM. The flight is delayed first by an air conditioning problem and then by a connector registering an error. The repairs were made and we take off about an hour behind our scheduled departure at 8:00 AM.
IM and I had two business class seats, 10H and 10J, on the starboard side of the Boeing 767 aircraft. In front of us was an oriental couple, both in jeans and shirt top. She had a fine figure, with a broad not strikingly attractive face, perhaps Korean or Chinese. Her male companion had close-cropped hair and a handsome face. He appeared younger than her, though I could not say why. And none of his facial features were memorable to me—likely owing to my inability to notice and record details. Our steward was a pleasant-faced man of 35 to 45 years of age. IM recalled him having salt-and-pepper hair and not being handsome.
At JFK waiting to board AA104 JFK to LHR, the wait was boring, tedious, and cold. We arrived just before the 6:00 PM JFK-LHR flight was about to board. Ours was to leave at 8:19 PM. A passenger leaves a bag unattended as most of those seated in the boarding area have made their way onto the plane. We notify first a lady janitor then when she does nothing, we notify the gate agent just as the old woman who owns the bags returns, claims her bag and boards the London flight. The disturbing aspect to the incident was the boarding area was completely empty except for the stragglers who continued to arrive at the gate from other parts of the terminal claiming boarding passes and streaming aboard the plane.
An Indian or Pakistani businessman arrives at the gate seeking to take this earlier flight instead of the flight we are on and is fortunate enough to get a seat. A broad-bodied Brit—apparently an American Airlines employee—chats up the gate agents as the early flight boards. He ends up on our plane—perhaps the purser for our flight.
We finally board our flight and find that we have two aisle seats in the 3-seat middle of business class section of the Boeing 777 jet, 12D and 12G. I have 12D on the port side of the plane and IM has 12G on the starboard side of the plane. Across the aisle from me is an attractive 30-something blond on the aisle and a 20-something dark-haired Italian with two-day stubble of beard at the window. He is with another woman, an attractive blond Italian woman seated in the center aisle seat three rows in front of us. The girlfriend is striking in appearance, noticeable busty, and the haughty look of a woman secure in her appearance and its affect on men around her. The Italian male tries to get his lady neighbor in the aisle seat to change with his girlfriend but she politely declines.
In front of me sits an attractive unaccompanied woman in jeans and a forgettable top. No one occupies the center seat and an unattached male in the aisle seat to her right and in front of IM. A German or Norwegian woman and her male companion sit in the aisle and window, respectively in the row ahead of the blond woman and Italian man. She is also in jeans and top (do I remember jeans or is that the default bottom for all men and women flying today?).
As with our flight from SFO to JFK, this one from JFK to LHR is also delayed. The ground crew mistakenly shuts power to the aircraft before the plane's engines are started effectively causing all the computers on board the 777 to shut down. Getting them all back up and running is an hour-long-plus process. By this time we have contented ourselves to being delayed and everyone begins reading papers or engaging in other activities to keep themselves busy. I read the New York Times account of the young Chechen woman who blew herself up at a public gathering in Russia. Her name was Zuda Khasukhanova. She was from the city of Kurchaloi, east of the capital city Grozny. Her aunt Aulikhan Yelikhad Zhiyera declared the young woman was not a terrorist, but rather a victim of her male cousin who abducted her and forced her into the suicide mission with another woman. Zuda set off her explosive first then as a crowd gathered about her, the companion detonated her explosives causing the greatest injury and loss of life.
We eventually do push back from the gate—computers refreshed after their unexpected nap and ready for their journey across the Atlantic by the Northern route. As we reach cruising altitude, IM and I discover the pleasure of Bose headsets, handed out to business class travelers on international flights. The nose reducing headsets almost eliminate all the loud white noise of the jet engines, the sounds of the air conditioning and the surrounding cabin noises. Music or entertainment played through the earphones is extremely clear and audible. Except for the hefty price tag, I would own a pair for my personal use.
Business class travel is slightly different from cabin class travel in that the stewards and stewardesses do fuss over you a bit more. I remember a time when cabin class travel had the same amenities—in the 1960s when air travel was competing with railroads and their then high level of service. The one advantage to today's business class over the earlier time was the lack of smoke that used to fill the cabins of all airplanes well into the 1970s.
The pampering begins with drinks offered to each passenger upon boarding—champagne (not their best grade), orange juice or water. After the plane reaches its cruising altitude and the captain has turned off the seat-belt sign with the admonition to keep the belt bucked when not walking about the cabin, the stewards and stewardesses come down the aisle with menus advertising a choice of main courses, the selection of wine, beer, and alcoholic beverages available, the appetizer and desert selections available. This is followed by the aperitif—with our serving staff offering alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages to get us all in the mode for dinner or lunch or breakfast depending on when the flight originates. We were heading into the night, thus we were being served dinner.
On the International flights, even the U.S. carriers serve a decent French Champagne. In the U.S. the airlines have begun cost cutting and have opted for the lower-cost sparkling wines from California and Washington State. I prefer the former, as the latter tends to be too sweet for my taste. Even the California varieties—typically Domaine Chandon, Piper Sonoma or similar brand are less sweet than a good French Champagne. This trip American Airlines was pouring Pommery Vintage. Within an hour of liftoff, meal service begins. In the good old days when airlines were making money hand-over-fist, they could afford to spend on gourmet food. Today, that reality has changed. Plastic cutlery has replaced silverware and all that remains of the chic food are the listing on the back of the menu of all the chefs the airline have on their cuisine advisory board: Dean Fearing of the Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas, Alice Waters of Chez Panisse—the woman who single-handedly ushered in California-Cuisine and taught the uncouth palettes of the San Francisco bay area the taste of locally grown fruits, vegetables and livestock. There were a couple of other Dallas-based chefs, as well as one from Florida, Chicago, and Wilmette, Illinois.
The blue-ribbon panel of chefs did seduce me into trying the one tricky disk to do in any kitchen, Osso Buco. I deserved to be disappointed for my stupidity. The pasta or the chicken dish would have been far more fulfilling because I would have harbored any allusions about either. Suffice it to say the veal was chewy and tasteless and not flaky and tender as a great Osso Buco should be. And the airline dish lacked the one great bonus of a good version of the recipe, the warm flavorful bone marrow. I was a fool, what can I say.
My steward—I had a steward and IM had a stewardess—was accident-prone. He spilled something on the blond lady passenger to my left, during the beverage service. Then the following morning during the breakfast service, he banged his hand trying to arrange the passenger’s tray table. On this flight the steward seemed completely out of sync with this lady traveler, almost as if a chemical marker inside of him reacted to the woman in such a way as to make him do the things he did.
Landing in London Heathrow the Friday October 8th, we disembarked, cleared customs, and headed for the rental car desk. The airline has divided their travelers into two groups the cabin class and the business and first class passengers. From the start of the trip, the treatment was different. At the ticket counter two different check-in locations—nothing new here. But at the security checkpoint, the cabin class went through one line—slower because of the larger number and the business and first went through another, faster since there were fewer of us. And we didn't have to take off our shoes as the cabin class travelers were. This turned out to be a discretionary as each checkpoint differed. At the London end of the trip, baggage was taken off the baggage carousel and placed in a collection point for the business and first class passengers to retrieve. Cabin class had to gather their bags from the moving carousel.
We finally found our bags—silly us we had tried to claim our bags from the carousel along with the cabin class and ended up leaving the baggage area well after most everyone from the flight had gone on their merry way. We managed to locate rental car desk and was told to proceed to the courtesy bus that would take us to the car lot. There we retrieved car and car phone—everyone needs a phone in the UK—a nation obsessed with staying in touch. Renting a car—hiring a car in the UK—is no different there than in the U.S., a line of weary travelers lining (queuing) up to wait for the next available agent. Agents work at the same slow pace the world over. There were two women being served and I was the only one waiting. Both transactions took the same long time to complete. The agent at the counter farthest from the head of the line won the race to complete the transaction beating out her fellow agent by at least five minutes. My transaction dragged on as she entered all the information from my driver's license and credit card—on the road the American Express Card is the only one to use for such negotiations. There is no having to call the credit card company to authorize the 500-pound charge the rental car company slaps on the card before the car leave the lot. I took the loss damage waiver. If I hadn't I'm sure they would have levied an even heavier deposit. I guess I can see their point. Foreigner comes in, crashes their car, dumps the car at the lot and gets on a plane back to the U.S. without taking care of his/her mess.
Car keys in hand I select the car of my choice from the group I've signed up for, a silver Vauxhall Astra, a roomy four-door touring car. I acclimate myself to the right hand side of the car, refresh my memory about driving 5-speed stick shift and manage to maneuver the vehicle out of the narrow confines of the parking lot—I might have been wise taking the loss damage waiver—into the exit lane and through the guard at the gate and left onto the access road in front of all the rental car lots at Heathrow. Driving along the Northern Perimeter Road that rings Heathrow Airport, we head for the first of two roundabouts on our way to the M25 Motorway. There is a trick to negotiating a roundabout. You must learn this trick otherwise you become a liability to yourself and all the drivers around you. The trick is that the left lane entering a roundabout is for making a left turn. The right lane is for going straight across or making a right turn. I had to proceed through both roundabouts and then look for the M25 onramp. For a yank—especially one with only three hours of sleep—used to intersections, the roundabout was the surest sign I was not in Kansas anymore.
After a mile or so of driving and successfully negotiating the two roundabouts, we found the Junction 14 onramp to the M25 motorway, also called the Orbital by the Brits. Accelerating to 70 MPH we were suddenly caught up in the stream of traffic circling London. Secure that we were on our way to the Lake District, neither IM nor I noticed after 15 to 20 minutes of driving that we had missed the exit for the M40 Motorway, our way off the orbital. Now we were hopelessly orbiting London like some moon circling its distant earth, trapped by the gravitational pull of the larger mass—in our case London.
Getting turned around took two attempts. During the first, we came upon a roundabout at the end of the exit ramp and took the outlet that deposited us back on the orbital going in the same direction we were heading before our exit. It took us another few minutes to realize we were not passing any exits that were familiar. Our second attempt met with success when we recognized the right outlet from the roundabout and soon we were heading back round the orbital in the direction we had come. Another 30 minutes or so of driving and we saw the exit signs pointing toward the M40 and Northern England.
Once on the M40, we make our way north toward Watford and Oxford. Once on the Motorway, the drive was like any other high-speed ride along any highway in the world: the constant drone of your own car engine straining to maintain the 70 to 80-MPH pace of the roadway and the Doppler distorted sounds of car engines passing you at speeds of 90 to 100 MPH. Then, there were the trucks; travel trailers being towed by cars straining under the load. The drive was uneventful until we neared Birmingham The pace of the road slowed to accommodate the increasing concentration of large long-haul trucks laden with loads destined for Birmingham and Liverpool and cities further north. The travel slowed too because of the pockets of construction that began to pepper the roadway, growing larger and more extensive the nearer the road round its way to Birmingham.
Once we arrived near the Birmingham metropolitan area, the M40 ended and we had to venture onto the M42 heading toward the M5 which originates far south and west at Exeter in Cornwall and reaches its end north of Birmingham where it joins the M6 bound for Carlisle on the border of England and Scotland and heads on to Glasgow, where our journey would take us in another day. The town that beckoned us is called Cumbernauld, a new town built in the decades after the war to accommodate the middle-class that wanted away from the industrial city with its heavy industry and the hard life it meted out to its citizens. But for this Friday, our destination was the Lake District, the haunt of poets, writers and artist for a couple of centuries at least if not longer.
Navigating the M42 and M5 Motorway around Birmingham, road construction narrowed three to five lanes of Motorway down to two lanes in some stretches slowing our progress considerably. Each time four or five lane roads narrowed into three to four lanes, the British driver confronted the great dilemma of queuing up. The British are singular in their sense of right and wrong about creating a perfect queue and not jumping the queue out of good manners and courtesy. The idea of driving mindless up to the end of a closed lane and finally jumping in line is the height of bad manners and discourteousness. In California as perhaps most other places in the world, the custom is to fill the closed lane and then merge at the point of closure. The great confusion in Britain is that road work crews typically provide a half to a quarter mile of warning about a lane closure with the result that drivers in the closing lane tend to merge when the first signs appear. American and European and some frustrated Brits end up breaking form by lingering much longer in the closing lane to the consternation of the good drivers who have obeyed the custom. Needless to say, I belonged to the latter group. My great trouble is that my wife is British—Scottish to be precise—and she constantly points out my shortcomings and discourteousness at flaunting the custom of proper queuing.
The other interesting difference in driving in Britain is the appearance of cameras and speed detectors along the road in construction areas. In the U.S. there are signs that inform drivers who flaunt the speed limits in construction areas that fines will be doubled if you're caught. With no heavy police presence, the likelihood of having to double down on your fine is pretty remote—hence the heady disregard for this warning. In Britain, the cameras give the impression that there is a police presence and if you are detected speeding you will be photographed and that rather steep fine will be visited upon the errant violator. Cameras have had a hard time in the U.S. because of this country's concept of privacy and legal safeguards that make cameras a tough sale in any jurisdiction that proposes to use them. San Francisco—that most liberal of cities in America—has decided to install the cameras at red lights to detect cars and drivers who run red lights. The city has a notorious reputation for drivers killing pedestrians at intersections at record levels. City residents tired of hearing of hit-and-run red-light runners have silenced any objections to the big-brother eyes.
The M42 terminated into the M5 just north of Bromsgrove. The M5 took us north three-quarters of the way between Birmingham to our east and Dudley to our west and Wolverhamton to our northwest. Along the way we pass through West Bromwich though we could not have detected when we had traversed it. Just as the M42 gave way to the M5, the M5 relinquished its identity to the M6 just north of West Bromwich. Completing with large trucks (lorries), vacation trailers (caravans) and recreational vehicles (what do the Brits called these things), we make slow progress along the M6 through Walsall and Cannock before the road finally begins moving at a good speed again. Next, we pass Stafford and carry on past Newcastle-under-Lyme east of us and make our way north to Manchester. The M6 actually runs the gauntlet halfway between Manchester to the east and Liverpool on the west, where the Mercy River runs headlong into the Atlantic. But, with the traffic along the road, you would never know that you are on the outskirts of two major industrial cities. The parade of commercial vehicles combined with the determined vacationer ensured a slow advance until we had cleared the corridor just past Wigan. Escaping the commercial traffic we were now among of crowd of Friday holiday seekers making their way to the Lake District and all points north.
In addition to the heavy traffic, England and Scotland was experiencing some of the hottest weather in decades with temperatures in the range of 35 Celsius, well into the 90s Fahrenheit. By the time we passed through Manchester it was mid-afternoon and the day was at its hottest. The Vauxhall Vectra had air conditioning and we were making good use of it.
Beyond Wigan was Preston immediately east of the M6 with Liverpool slightly north and east on the Atlantic coast, no doubt the destination for more than a few of the holiday seekers who we had passed or who had zoomed past us as we journeyed. North of Preston the traffic had thinned even further and we were once again driving at the limit—as fast as we could go, heading toward Lancaster, our immediate destination on the M6, the town of Kendal, growing ever nearer. We finally reached Kendal at around 4:00 PM (1600 hours (GMT) and we exited the Motorway onto an A road—defined as a single or dual carriageway with little or no shoulder, the A591. The hotel directions called for us to exit at junction 36 on the M6 and take the A591 to Windermere and Bowness, Reaching Windermere we were to take the A592 south to the Beech Hill Hotel. As per usual, we took the longer, more scenic route. From the A591, we got sidetracked at a roundabout onto the A590 heading toward Newby Bridge, which seemed relatively close to the hotel. Thinking it wiser to proceed on rather than backtrack, we found ourselves driving through some of the prettiest countryside imaginable. Hard to believe we had just come off a high-speed cluttered Motorway.
Though there was traffic and more than enough drivers anxious to get around us to be on their way to their final vacation spot, the drive was most scenic. However, IM and I both had been sleep deprived and cooped up in first an airplane and now the confines of a Vauxhall Vectra, albeit air conditioned and well below the temperature outside, we were both getting anxious to be at the Beech Hill. Finally arriving at Newby Bridge—newby it was in the 1700 or earlier, we finally found the A592 and the short few miles to the Beech Hill. We moved cautiously up the narrow two-lane road nearly missed the entrance to the hotel. We turned into a parking area at the edge of Lake Windermere only to realize as we drove into the unpaved lot that the hotel was the next driveway north of where we were. Back onto the road we turned left and left again into the unpaved parking lot of the hotel.
Along the narrow road leading up to the Beech Hill Hotel, I came the closest I've ever come to a head-on collision. About halfway between the Newby Bridge and the hotel, an Audi approaching us a bit too fast for the curve in the road we were both approaching from opposite directions overcorrected around the curve and drifted into my lane just as I began the turn. I tried to move left but had precious little room because of a rock wall imprisoning the road on that side. The other driver realized his mistake in just enough time to pull his car back into his lane and avoid the collision. I swore silently, cursing the driver for his incompetence and stupidity and cursing the British for building roads that were so unforgiving. But then that is the nature of Britain, a legacy of the 18th and 19th century when life was cheap and no one had the right to expect anything but hardship and suffering and by god any mistakes could result in the most severe of consequences—such was life.
After finding a parking space near the entrance of the uphill walk to the rear of the hotel, we left the luggage and trudge up the three steep flights of stairs, to the hotel’s back entrance, two more flights inside gave access to the lowest floor of rooms in the hotel all looking out onto the lake. A third stairway inside led to the main floor of the hotel with conference rooms on both the right and left side of the landing. Straight ahead a hall led to the hotel lobby with its large picture window room facing the lake and the registration desk near the front entrance on the wall opposite the window. I checked us in and we walk across the lobby with the picture window to our left and entrance to our right to a hallway on the wall directly opposite the front desk. Before entering the hallway and immediately to my left I spied the hotel bar with a handful of small tables filled with après teatime drinkers preparing for dinner. We proceeded through the doorway guarding the entrance to the hallway down four steps to another junction, left and down another flight of steps and we were at the first floor of the hotel. Along a hallway to our right were four rooms that completed the split-level main floor's northern-most extremity. Our room was first on the left.
I've not described the atmosphere of the hotel completely since I've left out the fact that it had to be a good 80 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit inside the building and precious little breeze doing any work cooling the place off. Even if it were blowing at gale force, it would have found few open windows to enter the hotel. To be fair, once we entered the short hallway in front of our room there were windows on the wall opposite the doors of the rooms on the floor, They were all open but since we were a good six feet below street level and the windows were about a foot away from the side of the hill the hotel was stuck on—we could look up and see the daylight above—the breeze was slight but it was moving the air. Opening the door to our room, we flung open the one window on the wall facing the lake that could be opened. The top half of the wall was nearly all window but most of it a picture window. At the far left was a section of the window that could be opened to allow air to flow. The bath was opposite and right of the entrance behind the closet—and about the same size. The foot of the twin beds, each just large enough to hold a single adult were both to the left of the entrance. A desk set in front of the picture window and to the right of the desk a small table with tea pot, kettle and coffee and tea paraphernalia—just what we both needed on a hot day.
The closet-sized bathroom was outfitted with a shower—no doubt a concession to the Best Western hotel chain that owned or managed the hotel. This earned points with both IM and me. The sink was the traditional independent hot and cold tap, which required you to fill the sink and wash your face in water made soapy during the cleaning process. This is yet another example of maintaining a custom began when indoor was first introduced and hot and cold running water made an appearance in the home. When I was a kid you filled a large basin with water from the well pumped from outside our rural Mississippi home outside Brooklyn Mississippi and warmed it with water heated on a wood-burning stove. This was in the late 1940s and early 1950s. When we moved into a rented house in Biloxi on the coast it had indoor plumbing with a sink and tub outfitted with separate hot and cold running water. Some few years into the 1950s, the plumbing in most new construction U.S. homes changes over to single spout with integrated hot and cold faucets that mixed the hot and cold water to allow you to wash your face and not have to use soapy water in the sink to rinse yourself with.
Tradition dies hard in Britain and most of Europe. The Brits and European also have this thing about washing yourself with your hands whereas in the U.S. we discovered a hand towel soaped up and used as a cleaning cloth does a better job of scouring the skin removing dirt, layers of useless peeling skin, and whatever else you has attached itself to your skin. My wife IM once commented that in the U.S. all she had to do was think of something that increased convenience and someone would have it on the market within a short time of her thinking about it: "I love this country," she gleefully explained. In Britain, the tendency is that people will make do with what they are provided and will not likely pay for convenience. I suspect that the belief is well founded. Being raised in a culture that teaches you the virtue of making the best of a bad situation, one is not likely to take quickly to conveniences that ameliorate bad situations.
To coax the breeze blowing lightly off the lake into the room, I kept the door open using a wooden coat hanger from the closet, thus allowing the air to blow from the lake through the room and out the windows on the opposite side of the wall. The hotel is seven stories tall with two floors below street level and on the incline down to the lake and the remain floors at street level and above—all with spectacular views of the lake. Our room was below street level but on a split-level halfway down from the hotel lobby with another floor below us but south of our small stretch of rooms.
The Beech Hill hotel clings tenaciously to the side of Beech Hill, which leads down to the shore of Lake Windermere, one of the largest and longest of the lakes in the Lake District of England at around 10 miles in length. The lake's Southern extreme—at Newby Bridge—is about 8 miles north of Morecambe Bay and the Flookburgh racecourse.
Exhausted from the long drive after the long airplane flight we were both wanting to sleep but felt we had to try to retire on the local time to get onto local time. We showered and then ventured out onto the small garden in front of our room. It gave an unobstructed view of the lake for miles. We took photos and marveled at how lovely the surroundings were. The sun was beginning to head for the horizon though it was still high enough to deliver a good amount of heat, which would have become uncomfortable except for the cooling breeze.
Too tired to make the effort to sit through dinner in the hotel's Gallery Restaurant—awarded two Rosettes for outstanding cuisine. We settled for room service—which turned out to be just as tasty as the restaurant proper. Ciabbata bread with different fillings. IM had a Ploughman's selection, a mix of pickles, cheese, and mixed greens. I chose a mix of goat cheese and greens and a couple of glasses of red wine—the house selection—a Spanish brand of Merlot or Pinot—I forget. IM and I both preferred my selection to hers though we share each half and half. After dinner, I carried the spent dishes up to the bar. By the time I returned, IM was asleep in her new change of cloths. I put the chain on the door and kept the door ajar using the hanger to allow the breeze to keep up its cooling duties. I then undressed and fell fast asleep. Some time during the night IM awoke changes into pajamas, removed the hanger from the door and went back to sleep—she was disconcerted by an open door that allowed anyone to look in and if they chose to more easily force their way in. I reasoned that this was England and you just didn't do that sort of thing in a pricey hotel in the Lake District—London but not here.
I slept the sleep of the exhausted. My weariness was compounded by the intense concentration driving on the left side of the road demanded, as well as the narrow roads requiring all my attention leaving precious little time to take in the beauty passing on either side of me as well as the beauty in the distance in front of me beyond the car we were trailing. The long flight had also exacted its toll: the disorientation in time. We were physically transported eight hours backward in time, though our bodies still sensed it was a time zone somewhere between Great Britain and California. Sleep felt great.
