Birdsong's Trip to the UK and Ireland

Bristol has several separate areas. We were in the harbor area where the old city is. Riding up the cliff in the tour bus over the “gorge” of the Avon, we entered a huge, flat cliff-top park like area with trees and grass. In WW2, the US military camped here and planned the Normandy invasion. They still fly the US flag on July 4 and D day. There is a second, modern city of huge office buildings and classy stores.

Bristol is home to the famous modern street artist, Banksey. Nobody knows who he really is. We saw his “Love Triangle” on the side of a brick building: An irate husband screaming at his cheating wife as the naked lover dangles by one arm from the windowsill outside. Our nephew Corey is a street artist in LA, so this had special meaning for us.

Cary Grant is from Bristol – original name, Archibald Leach. He quit school and joined a dance troupe that took him to New York.

Nearly every major restaurant we have been in the UK advertises, “Book now for Christmas dinner!” In October! Everyone in town who is not cooking at the restaurant or serving must go out.

The train to BATH followed the Avon the whole way. Hopped on the city tour bus right outside the train station. The city is famous for the Roman baths, but they were not re-discovered and excavated until mid-1800’s. Bath was a rich, Georgian party town for people who had houses else where, and just came here for the season. There were many beautiful neighborhoods of Georgian houses (1730—1780), which were block-long, 3 or 4 story buildings comprised of individual lavish homes, invariably with a large park in the center.

The Roman baths: the hot spring is STILL running, and has never stopped since before Roman times. The restoration placed the columns and statues upright, but now the baths are open-aired. In those days, the roof was huge block of stone whose pressure on other stones made a roof much like they made arches. The complex has several rooms and pools, and a temple. Its purpose was religious and for healing, dedicated to goddess Minerva. Bathers had to go through a cleansing process before entering the main bath. First, they were slathered with olive oil, and a slave scraped it off with a sharpened metal scraper that also served to remove hair. They had to sweat the oil off in a dry heated room, heated by slaves tending fires in a room below. Then to another pool. People sick with a variety of illnesses, including oozing wounds or sores shared the pool. Makes you wonder how many came away sicker… Those who were healthy were allowed to go into the main bath. Only the upper classes were allowed here, and women had a different day from the men. Not as democratic as Roman baths in Rome.

After the Roman baths were buried, the hot spring still bubbled up and became a healing place for the Church. (Wasn’t it a stop in Canterbury Tales?)

Jane Austin wrote several books while staying in Bath. Some of her descriptions of parks and woods are from there.

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Queen Victoria visited while still a young princess. One day the wind blew her long skirt, and a newspaperman wrote, “Thick ankles.” She was so incensed she never returned, and years later when her railroad car went through, she kept the shades down. Locals said of her, “She is like an elephant: thick ankles, and she never forgets.”

Winston Churchill visited, and drank too much at a party. A woman said, “You are drunk!” He replied, “And you are ugly. Tomorrow I shall be sober, but you will still be ugly.”

Oct. 10 - Penzance, Cornwall

Larry found a direct, no changes train – 4 ½ hours. Took a taxi (turns out 2 blocks) to our View Room at Hotel Penzance, where I find champagne and flowers from my sweetheart in front of a window overlooking rooftops and the whole beautiful Penzance Bay. We left our window open the first two nights to get the sea breezes. Then too chilly. The hotel’s interior is very modern, and exterior Georgian. It was two old homes made into the one hotel with 20 rooms and a small restaurant.

Finding our way around was frustrating with no street signs, and no signs on the buildings at the corners, as many English towns have.

Penzance is farthest west town in England. It saw little bombing in WW2, and many families sent their children there for safety until the war’s end.

First night’s dinner in the little hotel restaurant: I had lamb “rump” and Larry fish. Delicious! Next day discovered the Dolfin Pub at the end of the “quay” (pronounced “key”) and had several delicious fish meals there. Stopped at the Longboat Pub very near our place, and met a woman who worked for the “council” and knew about sister city, Nevada City. The girl bartender. Sara Duncan, wants to go to California in one year, taking two months to go from San Diego to Seattle. She wanted to learn to drive so she could drive Hwy 1! We discouraged her… gave her our card to contact us.

Took the bus to St. Ives, which by the map Larry said was five miles. The bus took 30 minutes as we went the coastal route and stopped at every little town. It was amazing to see how the driver maneuvered the big bus through narrow streets to tiny squares. I could have reached out the window and touched the buildings! St. Ives had a row of antique buildings, shops and restaurants, on two sides of the formed walled harbor, now silted in. I remembered reading an old poem to my kids:

 
	When I was going to St. Ives,
	I met a man with seven wives.
	Every wife had 7 sacks,
	Every sack had 7 cats.
	Kits, cats, sacks, wives..
	How many were going to St. Ives?”

The Cornwall accent sounds to me like Cockney. School kids are required to learn Cornish.

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