Great Britain
Day 2 - Friday, 9 May
1997
As we flew into dawn somewhere over Iceland or Greenland I awoke and looked down on a beautiful and awesome frozen landscape. Rocky mountains were covered in snow and ice. There were frozen rivers between. Glaciers reached across the expanse of space between peaks with some rock exposed, gradually giving way to water filled with icebergs, flowing out into the ocean speckled with more of the same. It was a really dramatic scene that kept me awake watching.
After a 9 hour 50 minute flight we landed at Heathrow at 11:42 a.m. We had a bit of a time figuring out where to catch the bus, but finally managed to stumble onto the right place. Of course it was raining.
The bus took us to Reading were we connected with a train. Hail fell while we were in the Reading train station. From there the train took us to Bath, where we took a taxi to the Elgin Villa B&B.
After our host, Richard Robinson, showed us to our room on the top floor we dropped our bags and headed into town on foot. May we remind you that we have now been up for over 24 hours? We found Sally Lunn's Tea Room, the home of the famous Sally Lunn's bread. I'll bet some of you cooks have some version of the recipe in one or more of your cookbooks. We had high tea there with some of the famous bread.
Our room in Elgin Villa had a lovely view of the city (above), and of the host's back yard where he keeps "homing doves." There was a shower and a sink in the room, but had to go down to the next landing for the loo (potty). We placed our breakfast order by 7 p.m. each evening and Richard would deliver our food to our room promptly at 8:30 a.m. - boiled egg, toast, canned grapefruit slices, juice and of course tea. Richard and his family were planning a trip to Corfu (Greece) the Tuesday after we left.
We had opportunity to talk with him quite a bit, and this was to prove the pattern at each of the places we stayed. Talking with our hosts gave us a much better insight into Great Britain than we'd ever have gotten in hotels. It also let us know how they look at Americans. Richard says Americans are the world's greatest consumer of toilet paper. He wonders what we do with it all.