Homeward bound, at least to my Perth home, where Becky had already arrived to join me for a while before we both flew stateside for the month of August. Mum was still hanging in there at her nursing home, and I was keen to drop in to check on her as I’d be back for a little under two weeks. So I arranged a bit of a road trip. Just Becky and me, to reconnect with old friends and give Becky a bit more of a flavour of the British countryside. As an island that could easily fit into each of 11 states in the USA, I wanted to demonstrate that we’re certainly not vanilla, or even Mountain-choc-chip, but we have more diversity than Benny and Jerry’s. House hunting, as I was looking to finally purchase a flat after moving out of the house in Crieff, previously called home, had spurred us on to look beyond the familiar. To the south of Edinburgh, coastal towns like Dunbar and Berwick; another of Scotland’s ancient capitals, Dunfermline; areas of Edinburgh, outskirts of Perth, and further into the Perthshire and borders countryside. Yet my life trajectories had variously passed me north and south along Britain’s spine, and I wanted to share a little of that spinous process with my new partner.
Cross country from Perthshire to Gloucestershire, the furthest reach of my southern stays, was a good day’s travel by car, and the Lake District, Cumbria, North Yorkshire have had significant parts to play as I moved around, made friends, spent vacations and work trips over the years. First stop the Lune valley and Kirkby Lonsdale – the church by the valley of the Lune river, as it was explained to us by our charming Bed-and-Breakfast host in the little village of Tunstall. Rose Cottage. It’s years since I’ve stayed in a proper B&B and this proved we can still do it, with humour and hospitality. I particularly liked the double-entendre of a picture of rowing skulls to subliminally warn you to mind your head going up the stairs (‘duck or grouse’ is commonly seen in pubs of a similar age to the cottage). Our host, Emma, was serene and welcoming, with something of the country lady about her, reminiscent in a delightful way of twentieth century period dramas. We felt like we knew her as soon as we arrived. Finding the cottage couldn’t be easier, apart from Becky’s somewhat confusing directions – turn right here, no left but right there where we just passed. Can we turn around? Can we take the car with us?
But we made it, welcomed like old friends, with tea and home-made cake in the garden, shown to our room, with the run of half the upper floor and family pictures everywhere. Even a meeting with the Pope – photo thereof, not a personal introduction. Proud school photos, holiday photos, books everywhere, tea bags and wifi. What more could we need? Dinner? Of course – a five minute walk from Rose Cottage, the Lunesdale Arms on a Saturday night. Great food, good beer to go with the Cumberland sausage and beef brisket roly poly (I kid you not), and a snooker table. Yet another cultural encounter for Becky, more familiar with the spots, stripes and simplicity of pool. An hour or so and… oh, at least fifty points between us, by the end of the game it was clear the world of the green beize will not be troubled professionally by this particular pairing.
Next morning we met the pair of young walkers who shared the B&B and the breakfast table. A Yorkshire Three Peaks hike the previous rainy day had become the ¾ peak of Pen-y-Ghent, yet they were returning home better for the experience. Rather a lot of hilltop name dropping at the table, I held back on trumping with Kilimanjaro, and we enjoyed hearing about Transylvania and the Carpathians, and the Romanian music scene from the young man’s partner at the table. Breakfast was splendid, everything home made, and we checked out as two happy travellers on to the next stop – though not before handing back the mug I’d used to catch three spiders before we turned out the light the night before.
On to Cheshire, via the glorious Shropshire Hills, to drop in on Mum before heading for the Three Choirs vineyard – yes, vineyard, not far from Gloucester and Cheltenham where I’d worked for many years at the university. Through there was a little of the spark and smile from a previous visit when I’d taken Jackson to see Mum just before his flight to New York, sadly Mum’s condition was still worsening and although we’d managed an hour together I resolved to try to and drop back in on the road north in a few days. And on we pushed to Newent for distraction and recreation, if not a good deal of rest.
The vineyard at Three Choirs seems to me to be something of a miracle. A vineyard started in the 1970s it now covers an area almost as far as you can see, and hosts vines from around the world in an effort, quite successfully, to produce good quality wines. It’s a haven for wildlife too, and turned into our haven for just one night – in a lodge amongst the vines, rabbits, toads and coots for company. A wine tasting proved just how successul and creative they’ve been, even if some of their experiments produced rather marmite (love it or not) results. Delightful sparking wine, champagne style, white and rose wines piqued our interest rather than the reds, and we may have chosen an interloper with dinner, but the experience and dining left us seriously impressed. Not least given that the waitress serving us at dinner quickly got the measure of me and I found myself given a taste of my own tour director medicine – witty retorts, sharp observations and cut-to-the quick comebacks. We may indeed come back. If we do, I look forward to checking out the menu to see if it still has the chicory dressed, and presumably identifying, as truffle (without judgement from anyone), and to enquire whether the sea bream is now fully cured from whatever was wrong with it.
Cheltenham-bound we set off on a tour of my old work haunts and colleagues, reconnecting a joy – in part thanks to those rare friendships that seem ignorant of the passage of time, in part a reminder that I chose the right time to leave and plough my own furrow. A particular highlight was dropping in on on my lifelong friend Keith (my office-wife) and his wife, Jane. It was as if I’d walked along from the house but a mile or so away, rather than several hundred miles and several stops to appear at their door.
Another highlight, though missing the four-legged element, was taking Becky out on the Cotswold hill I spent so much time with Bracken, my previous best friend and canine companion. There, Bracken and I had put the world to rights, consoled each other when times were tough, talked through life’s conundrums, even practiced our French and Spanish conversation skills. The day was one of those clear-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see days. To the Malvern Hills, to Tewkesbury, Overbury, almost the Forest of Dean, all paths traversed together over Bracken’s active 13 years until time took its toll and took away my red friend, the foxiest of fox red labradors you corals ever hope to meet. She may have had a little chameleon in her, adapting to the gold of Cotswold stone, the setting sun, the Scots pine, the drying moorland bracken, but in my mind she was, and always will be, majestic in her vixen coat, surveying the scenery for where she’d explore next.
After our Cheltenham engagements we pointed ourselves back northwards, braving the motorways M5, M6, M74, M80, M9, more than enough Ms and motorway service stations for one day, arriving back late in the day but after a remarkably smooth one. Meal stops and coffee stops occasionally provided some light relief on the side, like when I was asked did I want my coffee ‘to sit in?’ and the server was clearly unimpressed when I replied that ‘no, just to drink – I don’t suppose you’d have a big enough cup to sit in, anyway”. A drop in to see Mum, a couple of refreshment and recuperation stops and that was us. Back at the Perth flat with time to view one or two prospectives and engage a solicitor in the hopes the flat search wouldn’t prove fruitless.
And the evaluations, by then, were in from the last tour, raising my spirits in mote ways than one. Highest ‘score’ of the year, ‘An exceptional tour director’, ‘so helpful… very attentive’, ‘great’, ‘amazing’ and only ‘off-key sense of humour’. But perhaps it’s finest accolade is the one that said “it was such a blessing to have you … you are doing exactly what God wants for you in this season of life.” I must be doing something right.
Soon the two of us, Becky and I, would be rejoining Jackson back home in Philipsburg, flying first to Chicago, as I was becoming accustomed, and then on to State College. The ether had other ideas. The Chicago flight never flew, cancelled in the early hours of the morning, but the flu had arrived, or something akin to it, making this a god-send of sorts. Maybe someone is watching out after all. We stayed a little longer in Perth, time to feel a little better and more up to the trip. Not short of entertainment this trip through, including random conversations, absurd encounters with other travellers putting us right on the etiquette of standing in line, border control finding new and mundane reasons to put cabin baggage back through, and empirical proof if proof was needed that people really do still walk out of bathrooms with half a loo roll hanging from their pants. Then, some 20 hours after leaving the flat in Scotland we were reunited with the pack stateside.
International-Eyes.org 