In and beyond Liverpool a mystery tour with another local guide became a personal history tour as we went from city centre to Sefton park to Penny Lane, Smithdown Road to St Michaels ‘in the hamlet’, Otterspool, the Britannia pub on the old garden festival site that had been the centre of my world in many ways in distant (rather than dystopic) 1984. All places I’d lived, studied or hung out as an undergraduate student in the mid 1980s. How cities move on in 30 years and more! As the guide talked of scousers, plastic scousers, scallies and woollybacks I found myself thrown back to my late teens and early 20s, parts of me still living amongst the bricks and mortar, parks and green spaces. Distant memories of a young man, a fledgling adult, fending for myself for the first time. It’s where I learned to cook, out of necessity and budget, generally out of money. It’s where friendship for life were forged, even if the half life of those friendships decayed to Christmas card notes and Facebook comments. It’s where I met my wife and started adult life, again sadly with a degree of decay after parenthood stopped holding us together. Half life indeed from kick-off to the second half I now find myself living.
Then the history tour carried on as we ventured southwest to Warwickshire, sixteenth century Stratford, home of bard and wordsmith William Shakespeare, and then the smart and stylish Cheltenham in its Georgian robes, the source of so many happy memories as parent, academic, friend and small-time adventurer. I even managed to make time for coffee and a handshake with my best mate, Paul, with whom (and with whose dog) I’d spent many an hour and many a mile putting the world to rights as we trudged the Cotswold trails – two dogs, wagging tails.
Cardiff next, Welsh capital reminding me of language aspirations not met, friendships and family holidays not forgotten. Each childhood year I’d had a brief foray into learning Welsh, never with any real success, on our family holidays on North Wales’ Lleyn Peninsula. This being a city, and the Welsh capital, there’s a different grandeur about Cardiff than rural North Wales, and I’d come to know it fairly well as friends from my university teaching days had moved and lived there. Here are some magnificent public buildings and the grand Castle with its ‘animal wall’ encircling the grounds for the Victorian visitors.
The purposely flooded Cardiff Bay, with its cultural and industrial heritage side by side, held the interest of my by now rather road-weary companions. The evening brought a welcome invitation from some of these travellers to join them for dinner – an invitation I was delighted take up, with a chance to get to know a few of them beneath the surface rather than just as guide and guided. These such opportunities are frequently a delight, and a chance to relax, off duty, almost.
To add to the sense of serendipity I was starting to experience myself, our little group in the restaurant were approached by a couple fellow diners who had picked up on the stateside accents. “Where are you guys from?” As the couple drew up to the table, clearly wanting to connect. “Oh, Michigan, Ohio, and Manchester,England.” Came our response. Clearly from the US, this lovely lady engaged us in conversation, asking about what we were doing in Cardiff, her husband’s home town, and as we asked the same of her, it transpired they were passing through after a Finnish film festival. A film director of some repute, with Sex and the City and Desperately Seeking Susan to her credit, and a similar pedigree for her husband, they were just so humble, so human, so interested and interesting at the same time.
Coming soon after meeting Jeff Goldblum in a similarly humble setting, it reminded me that opening the door to connections with people from all walks of life are another of the benefits of travel at home and abroad. The next day, this same family turned a corner on a shopping street and nearly bumped into President Bill Clinton. You couldn’t make this up. Luck? You make your own luck, in my experience, having international horizons and travelling playing a big part.
After seeing Cardiff for an all-too short stay, we ran on to Bath on our grand tour. One night in a city is seldom enough, but such is the challenge of taking in highlights of our small but diverse island. Bath is in a class of its own, and this is recognised by UNESCO who designated the whole city World Heritage status, so that it is largely protected as an example of how English cities have developed from pre-Roman to post-modern and beyond.
The highlight in Bath of course is the very reason for the city’s fame – the naturally hot baths (or thermae) that give the city its name. The Roman ones were uncovered by the Victorians, who excavated and restyled it, in true Victorian way, as they felt it should look. Just as the Victorians made Edinburgh and Stirling Castles look more ‘castley’, the Roman Baths became more Roman than the Romans probably had them. This was nothing new, as when the Romans arrived, the steaming waters were already being venerated by the locals, and the visitors renamed the local god, Sulis, as Sulis-Minerva, surely to enhance the godliness of this place of reverence and awe. The Bath waters still pour in at an awefully steady 46oC (115oF), but without the nasty sulfurous spa water smell of Cheltenham’s spa water, across the Cotswolds. Periods of development are still preserved through medieval to Georgian and Victorian buildings, and the city has thriving student, artistic, literary and sporting communities. Surely worth spending a few nights, but alas the plug was pulled and we moved on to London, again all-too-soon.
International-Eyes.org 