Preamble
Well, after two Tours to Europe and bemoaning the long flight travel from NZ anyone would think we had enough for a while. However, by December 2011, 6 months after our Spanish tour, I already had itchy feet again!
I also really, really wanted to return to Assisi and hopefully spend more time there. I searched online for Assisi Tours and found that Globus was offering “Umbria’s treasures” 23 -30 September 2012. An eight day tour with 6 nights in Assisi! That was for me!! But all that travel for 8 days? We both thought that was stupid, so could we go somewhere before or after? I wanted the Assisi tour to be last – a spiritual ‘retreat’ if you will. A TT Best of France 11-23 September fitted in perfectly. Then, as we were so close could we not do a tour of Britain first then take the Eurostar to Paris to start our French journey?
We first chose the Britannia tour so we could have a week in London on our own. We contacted our Travel Agent with our plans in April 2012 and she confirmed that the Assisi and French tours were a definite ‘go’ but not the Britannia. Do we wait and trust? No, we decided to change to “Britain and Ireland Panorama” that was definite to proceed. It was a day more than the Britannia and started a day later, so we would have 4 days in London. But that was OK we thought, so we booked all three!! She also booked us a small (and it was small) Hotel for our London stay and I had to book our arrival night at the Park Plaza Riverbank because apparently, TT had used up their allocation. We wanted to book this Hotel as the Coach would be leaving at 8am so we didn’t want to book somewhere else and have to get a taxi to either the Hotel or the Trafalgar Centre early morning. As it happens, the cost for one night that we paid was less than that quoted in the TT brochure! So we just had to settle down and wait! Our previous two trips we booked only a month or two prior so four months was, for me, a long wait!! We were still looking for a suitable ‘new’ home, but property market for selling was stagnant so we were not searching in earnest, just a few Open Homes if the places looked a possibility. Gave me something else to fill in my time before our 22 August departure!
As before this Tour Tale has been transcribed from the Journal I wrote while we travelled with additional clarification where needed.
Britain & Ireland Panorama 23 August – 7 September 2012
Monday 20 August - at Home
Last day here – and most of our organisation is done! Going for 42 days means organising payments that will come due while we are away such as car insurances, Visa payment and power accounts. The only thing I’m now having problems with is the payment system for the Cat Feeder.(PayPal not playing ‘ball’).
Weather here is dull and overcast and rain is expected this afternoon. It is not cold though, 15°C which could be the temp. In Edinburgh?!
My suitcase is full and I’m not completely packed. Eddie hasn’t started yet. Hopefully there will be some room in his?! We leave here at 1:30pm tomorrow. Yay!!
21 Aug – Dubai Airport. 6:30am Local time
Temp. Is 30°C and sun is just coming up over the horizon. Interminable flight from Brisbane. I only slept on & off for a total of two hours! Emails on my tablet not working – didn’t at Brisbane either. Trust I can get it to work when we’re on Tour or what’s the point in bringing it?
Sky is a yellow haze as the sun rises. We are due to start boarding around 7am. Flight is 7.5hrs and we are expected to arrive at Heathrow around 12 noon.
22 Aug – Park Plaza Riverbank Hotel, LONDON
We have arrived after long and quite noisy plane flights. The leg from Dubai to London was in the A380 and was more comfortable – and also less hours! I took my first photo of the ‘artwork’ in our room – a ‘truffula’ tree that reminded me of Dr Seuss’ Lorax and the Barbaloots in their Barbaloot suits!!
We are on the banks of the River Thames and just down from here, across a bridge are the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben!
We are going to meet with a Trafalgar rep. downstairs soon, but I also rang the Centre to confirm our pickup from this Hotel. – It will be at 7:45am!! Need a good sleep tonight as I didn’t get much on the flights over.
Later: Now 7:10pm and we are bushed! Had a nice walk to Parliament buildings, Westminster Abbey and Big Ben. Took a photo as ‘he’ was chiming 5pm! Went to a corner pub, The Rose, that the TT Rep recommended and it was lovely. We were served by a young Somali man and a Russian girl. I had wild mushroom and spinach risotto and Eddie opted for a chicken & Avocado salad. We had a nice, crisp glass of Grigio with dinner and then shared a Lemon Tart – very tart(!) but good.
Now feel very tired. TV doesn’t go and I had trouble setting the wake-up call – trust I finally got it right??
23 Aug 9:30pm YORK
Very busy day! 47 people on the coach including 19 Aussies. Vicki our TD is a Kiwi! And Slavic(Slav), our driver, is Polish!!
First stop was Anne Hathaway’s cottage where we had a group photo taken and then it was back on the coach to Stratford-Upon-Avon. Very pretty town. On the way we saw thatch-roofed cottages. We were taken on a tour through Will Shakespeare’s family home. His father was a glove maker and his business was part of the property. A man dressed as of old was in the workshop displaying the gloves and the raw materials. Outside students(?) were performing scenes from Taming of the Shrew and we stayed to watch until the end of the act. Very entertaining. Then we were on our own for lunch. Eddie & I walked through the village area and had a nice lunch at “Quicklys”. Very English tearooms. Found a chemist who sold us some hand sanitiser and a bottle of water.
Trip to York was the longest bit. Vicki used the time discussing the optionals. I was very disappointed that she couldn’t offer Rosslyn Chapel as that was one place I have wanted to see for many a year. I have a book about it and read it again before we left home. What a bummer! But I was not going to dwell on it as it would spoil the rest of the trip! She offered a tour of The Royal Yacht Britannia instead but Eddie & I chose not to do that one – will shop for Scottish scarves instead! Have an ‘order’ from the friend, family name McKay, who would like her clan tartan scarf and I want a scarf I can wear when we go for walks on the beach in winter.
Just before 5pm we arrived at an English Pub on the outskirts of York and had a Welcome Drink. I had a very nice cider and had a chat with a couple from N.Carolina – were NYers – and she is Jewish and he is Irish Catholic! Then it was onto the Hotel where we had only 40 minutes to get ready & go down for dinner. Self-service. OK but nothing to write home about.
Countryside is a lot like home except for many wheat fields, and more groves of trees, and hedgerows bordering the roads. Talking of roads, as we were driving along the motorway I was noticing that the license plates on the back of the cars that were passing us, were yellow. Then I looked across at the South bound lane and noticed white plates. Odd I thought – perhaps they, or the yellow ones, are new? But then I realised that all the cars on our side had yellow and cars going south were white. Then the penny dropped – I quickly turned my head to look at the back plate of the South bound cars and they were yellow!! Front white, back yellow! What a system!!
Eddie’s out ‘cold’ – relative term as its quite hot, and, like last night, we have these white comforters and that’s all – too hot with them on but you get cold in the night if you sleep without it. Also air conditioning is not working, so I have the window open but it’s too noisy outside, so what to do? It started raining a bit when we left the pub and the skies are dark & grey. Tried to find a weather report on TV but the only channel I found only had English weather. The big UK map did not look like much cloud over it but can’t take that for gospel. Fingers crossed for the Tattoo.
24 August – Novotel York
5:35am!! Very hot, sticky night. Had to have the window open and people kept leaving the Hotel early hours of the morning and talking loudly outside! York races on this week. We saw several stretched limos and Hum Vees while waiting for our bus to pick us up from the pub last night.
Finally awake for good at 5am so decided to get up and shower. Got a major nose bleed! Seems to have stopped now.
I realised in the middle of the night I had forgotten to write up one of our stops! Very interesting & important visit to the twin Cathedrals of Coventry. The ruined one and the new, plus the third smaller one that had similar architecture to the large bombed one. St Michael’s tower still standing and still ringing out the quarter times. We also stopped and looked at Lady Godiva statue but I decided not to take a photo. Vicki is good but she doesn’t shepherd or ‘mother hen’ the group as Anna and Pedro did. She takes off and expects us to follow. She does however stop at a point and get all to come near her. No ‘radios’ so she just has to use her voice as best she can. 
I’m still feeling hot so I’ve left my hair to dry naturally so it will cool my head – and me??!
24 August Edinburgh, Scotland
Bit of a rainy start to the day but not too bad and our rainbird coats were very effective. We had a walking tour of the old part of York, through The Shambles that have been there since Norman times, and on to the Minster, a beautiful Gothic Church with another lovely bell tower.
We then went for a wander on our own back to the Shambles and the quaint old-fashioned shops. Got a York tea towel, a gollywog and, as we were going to pay we saw bracelets with children’s names on them and there was a Keira! (youngest grandchild) So, we had to buy that too! We also bought a pkt of Honey Cashews from M & S to snack on, then on the Hadrian’s wall.
We were held up on the motorway – accident- so were a bit late for our lunch at a nice country pub – The Swan – at Haddon-on-the Wall. We also went across the road to a beautiful old church – St Andrews. The original building was there in 680!! The grave stones were set around the church and I read one of a young man of 19 who died in 1530.
A piece of Hadrian’s Wall was just down the road – only a quick photo stop as we were running late, then onto a place called Jedburgh in Scotland where we stopped for coffee at a Scottish Woollen Co. Store. Outside was a man with hunting birds, falcon and eagle – and to my delight, two owls!! I got to pet the owls!! Fantastic.
Vicki allows coffee on the bus so we bought coffees and drank it on board as we went along.
Tonight we went to a Scottish Show at a dedicated venue – Preston Field, where we had a meal – quite nice – and some haggis, but after dessert so I couldn’t eat much of it. Quite spicy but nice. The singing and music was good in parts but I thought some of the dancing routines and the spangly costumes made it a bit tacky & false. There was a young male dancer (13?) who was fantastic, and the fiddler girl was excellent as well. There was an annoying group two tables away that talked through most of the acts, and at one stage, when the lead singer as performing a sad solo, they got quite loud & raucous – very very annoying. Some people really spoils it for all the others.
Slav turned our bus into a ‘party’ bus on the way back – must be something the drivers’ are told to do?! All in all, a good night & a nice day. Don’t have to pack up tomorrow morning so a bit cruisy – and then it’s the Tattoo tomorrow night. Fingers crossed the weather is not as bad as predicted.
25 August – Edinburgh
Rainy morning. Had a bus trip around the old town with Eddie the Scotsman & George the driver as its Slav’s day off. Eddie Scott was in full Scottish kit and was quite a joker especially against the English. Then he led us up to the Castle and we saw where we’d be seated tonight. Rain in earnest while walking around the castle. We saw the Scottish Royal jewels that were quite spectacular, especially the sword. Also saw the Stone of Scone. Went into a room where Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to James VI of Scotland who became James I of England when Elizabeth I died without a closer heir.
Most of the rest of the group were waiting to return to the bus to go to the Royal Yacht. We walked down the Royal Mile to find a scarf shop. In the first one the girl found us a photo of McKay tartan, but the cashmere scarves did not have that pattern. She directed us to a store further down the street. We found 2 cashmere blend scarves – one that was a close match to the McKay, and one for me (blues & Greys). We also found, in another shop where we were served by a Spanish girl, 2 Craig coasters that we bought for friends of that name.
Before we bought the scarves we went into a Scottish Souvenir shop to get 2 plastic ponchos to put over our legs at the Tattoo tonight if it was still raining, and we were served by a Sikh in his turban, with a Scottish accent!
We tried to find the cafe that Eddie the guide had pointed out from the bus where the fellow who wrote Jekyll & Hyde lived, but we couldn’t find it so we had wraps and cappuccini at another place that looked good as we walked down – very tasty.
The fringe festival is on in town – buskers, play actors etc everywhere. Saw a guy in ringlets (long dreads) playing a curved metal drum thing with dimples in it. He just used his fingers to tap out the rhythm and it made great music! I noted down his website www.hanginbalance.com. ( When we came back home I downloaded some of his music from website as I really enjoyed it and it brings back fond memories of Edinburgh)
We found our way back to the Hotel about 1:30pm. Eddie’s now having a snooze. I’m going to transfer pics to tablet, then go downstairs to use wifi – if/when my nose stops bleeding. 2nd time in two days – stress? Excitement??
Later: Lovely dinner in place that had view of the castle. Had to have dinner early so we could get to the Tattoo by 7:15pm for a 7:30pm start. Raining on and off but we were prepared with raincoats, ponchos over our legs and Hotel bathmats to sit on so our bums didn’t feel wet! (and it softened the seats). Rain didn’t get too heavy and finally stopped near the end, so we had a nice walk back to the Hotel. 8,500 people! It was a relatively orderly mass of people wending their way up to the castle gates – took longer to leave!
Performances were all amazing and my hand were quite sore at the end with clapping in time with the music or from applauses. Special segments were the Precision Drummers from Basel and the Precision Riflemen from Switzerland. The band and soldiers from Norway were very good too and the Aussies were ....Aussies! Very loud, brash and lots of fun!! My favourite was when the mass pipe and drums played and marched together – very stimulating, and the lone piper at the end was very special and moving. Worth coming just for that!
We couldn’t work out at first why there seemed to be a lot of extra people around when we were leaving so we asked one of them – there was going to be another performance! We didn’t finish until 9:45pm so when would they? Anyway, they got fine weather.
I’m supposed to be getting ready for bed but I feel all revved up now from the stirring bagpipes and drums. Just great!!
