This transcript was generated automatically from the episode audio, so expect the odd misheard word. Click any timestamp to play from that moment; times marked ≈ are estimated to within a minute or so.
Welcome to the Anglotopia podcast. This is the second one. We're back after the premiere last week. Thank you to everybody who listened and gave us feedback. It was very useful, and we're excited about continuing to do this podcast. Our goal is to do them weekly.
We'll have one next week, probably a Christmassy theme, and then we'll probably be off for the week of Christmas and then resume in the new year.
Yeah, and then our goal is to kind of make it the blog in audio form for people who want to listen to it while they're driving to work or working out or just want to sit and relax with a cup of tea. And as we develop this further, we hope to have guests on.
We hope to maybe have some read off some long form articles that might interest listeners. And also we want to be a little topical and talk about things that are happening in Britain and and how they affect Americans who travel there and anybody who want to travel there. So, like, for example, once the Brexit thing starts to have resolution, we will probably talk about that from an unbiased perspective of travelers, how it will affect them. So, but for now, we need to finish talking about our trip, Anglotopia's Grand Adventure, where we drove from Land's End to John O'Groats. When last we left you, we had just picked up our rental car in Bristol, and we figured we would continue the journey from there. And hopefully in an hour, we can get all the way to the end. If not, we'll continue this in a third podcast.
Yeah. We'll see how this goes. But if you have any questions about how we packed, how we went about planning, that sort of thing, I recommend definitely give the first episode a listen or a watch, however you prefer to do this. and just so our listeners know you can watch our podcasts as well on youtube so just follow the link um and there's all kind there's a link to the show notes um you can also find any of our show notes on our website as well yeah we'll post everything in the podcast section on the website
and we're working on getting the podcast on all the different networks but it takes time to get them submitted and whatnot so soon but until then it's on Anglotopia it's on soundcloud and um this week i'm going to put it in the Anglotopia app which you can download for apple and android um
yeah we're while the podcast is an audio little green one so yeah with our emblem on it so just
We are recording the video for the people who want to watch us talk about this because we will have visual things. But the focus is for it to be listened to. So while you can load the video, you can open another tab and do something else. You don't have to watch us.
Yeah, this isn't a vlog. This is just kind of an additional thing because I've seen other podcasters. They record the whole podcast. And then, you know, it's just, it allows us to put it on YouTube so people can listen to it there as well because YouTube has a huge audience.
So why don't we dive right in? So like I said, we kind of left off talking about planning the car. And really, why don't we go from, yeah, pretty much picking up the car at the Bristol airport, which we talked about. And so this was what, like day five or day six?
Yeah, this was the first day that we were kind of on our own. We were actually driving. We didn't drive from Cornwall. Our friends drove from Cornwall.
Yeah. And it was nice to sit and enjoy the view on the way back from Cornwall. So, yeah, we picked up the car at Bristol Airport, which was a fun experience. If by fun you mean an interesting experience.
The signage in the airport is very confusing. By the time we got the car, we still had to turn around a couple times to get out of the airport. So, you know, when you're not familiar with it, it's daunting. You know, if we had to pick a car up there, we know the routine now. But yeah, so we the plan for the night was to end in Castle Combe Wiltshire. And I'll get to why in a second. But first, we have the joy of what happened after we picked up the car. And a good example of why I need to be prepared and just go with the flow is as soon as I picked up the car and follow the GPS navigation to Castle Combe, we proceeded to sit in traffic for an hour.
Very slow moving traffic in a big giant vehicle that we were unfamiliar with. So that was fun.
Yeah, that was, we did, we called it like the roundabout and stoplight tour of the Bristol suburbs. Yeah. It wasn't really particularly the nice parts of Bristol. Yeah, GPS took us a weird way.
Yeah. So, but eventually we arrived at Castle Combe. So why Castle Combe? Castle Combe is probably in the top 10 of most beautiful English places, beautiful vistas, villages, you name it. I mean, I would bump it in with like Gold Hill and Shaftsbury or Steep Hill and Lincoln or Clovelly and Devon. It's one of those places that's like iconic English and it's in the heart of the Cotswolds. So it is a beautiful place.
And I stayed there for the first time last summer when I went over to do my week along course in Oxford. And I just fell in love with the place. The thing I love about it the most is how quiet it is. Like, it's just silent there. Castle Combe kind of sits in a little valley and it's surrounded by hills. And so there's no motorway noise, no train noise. It's just literally silence. And in a very noisy world, and where we live here in La Porte, we live fairly close to a major freeway. So we always kind of hear it. So we never have silence. And so to have silence is a magical thing. And it's just so quiet. I love it. so i would just go there for the quiet you know the loudest noise you'll hear is uh is a van going through the street occasionally or the clip-clop of horses going by i mean it's it's beautiful there um and so we stayed at the castle hotel which is the the main pub slash hotel in castle coom castle coom is very small it's like two streets and there's a manor house hotel which is a much which is like a five-star hotel. We didn't stay there. We stayed at the Castle Hotel, which is more of a pub, stagecoaching-in type hotel. It's still very nice, but it's not like the Manor Hotel, which is a luxury hotel. But you park in the same car park because they own both. There's not really anything to see or do in Castle Combe other than the fact that it's beautiful.
There's not really any shops. The people who come, come to see how beautiful it is, and then they leave. There's a pub. There's a couple pubs. There's not really any shops. The church is beautiful.
Continuous working clocks in Britain is housed there. It was, yeah, it's definitely, take a stroll through, be respectful as you go, remembering that it's still a used house of worship.
Yeah, and it's one of the Cotswold Wool Cathedrals. I mean, it's a huge church for such a tiny village, essentially. And you can usually pick up a brochure about the history of the place. I love it when I pick these brochures up because of the long arc of British history. They always start back in the pre-Roman era and chart the history of the village all the way back from recorded time to now. And it's just interesting that there's always that they can do that. So, yeah, so we stayed at the Castle Hotel. We had a nice room, which is above the pub, but you don't hear the pub, which is nice.
Yeah, that was really surprising. Although I think maybe partly because it is such a small village, like it's not a big rowdy pub. We actually had dinner that night and kind of got a great send-off from the friends in Cornwall. We met back up with them for dinner.
Yeah, one of their children lived nearby, so we all had dinner together. It was a nice dinner.
The food is really good there. So even if you don't stay in the hotel, we highly recommend the restaurant because the food's good. Yeah, and then we were exhausted. I mean, we'd gone from Cornwall to Castle Combe and probably spent five or six hours in the car. So we were done.
Yeah, and I – so you really have your choice of where to stay when you go to Britain. You can stay in something very modern. You can stay in a chain, hotel. You know, you've got your pick, really. But one of the things that I think we definitely recommend is that even if it costs a little more, make a point to stay at least one night in a historic property. It's one of the things that makes Britain Britain. And the room we stayed in, we rented just a regular room, but it had this glorious antique four-poster bed in it that, you know, looked like, it looked like, you know, back in the day, people used to travel with their bed. It looked like, you know, I can just imagine the production of traveling with a massive bed like that. or, you know, just, it was a beautiful room, just a beautiful room with the curved walls and the curved glass windows. Definitely take the time, do a little bit of research, and find a nice period property to stay in.
Yeah, I echo that thought. You know, when we travel, we want to experience Britain and Britain's history and its culture. And so we try to find special places to stay, which usually costs a little more. I mean, for example, the Castle Hotel, I think it was like 129 pounds for the night, which is about $150. It's a lot for one night in a hotel. I mean, if we were booking the tour, we could have booked premier inns for 30 pounds a night the whole trip. But, you know, that's we're not really seeing or experiencing the country the way the way we intend to. We just stay in an identikit hotel at every stop. So, you know, when we started planning this, we budgeted for this and tried to find character, unique hotels that that would work. And like I said, I stayed in the castle and last year by myself, and it's probably one of the most romantic places I've ever stayed. so it sucked being there by myself without Jackie. So when we were planning this trip, I was like, we have to go to Castle Combe, and we have to stay there together because it's so romantic, and the hotel is very characterful, and Castle Combe is simply beautiful.
Yeah, and the Internet was blazing fast. For the first time at that point, we had broadband-quality Internet speeds.
Yeah, I will say that for as beautiful as Cornwall was, We really struggled with internet connectivity in Cornwall because it's so remote, which if you are holidaying in Cornwall, you should be like down at the beach and enjoying the beauty of Cornwall. But while you're trying to still run a business, it gets a little tricky.
Yeah. Like we, you know, we had planned to vlog our way through the drive and upload the pictures, the videos every day. And while I was able to shoot the videos and get them edited, I couldn't upload them. So, like, by the time we got to Castle Combe, we had, like, three videos in the can that we had to upload. But we had blazing fast internet to do so.
If you'd like to watch the vlogs, just go to our YouTube channel. Search for Anglotopia on YouTube, and all the vlogs are there. And they'll be there forever.
So, we really had a quick stopover in Castle Combe. I mean, we really needed to get on the road because it was one of our longest driving days ahead.
Yeah, when we planned this, we wanted to focus our time on Northern England and Scotland because we haven't spent any time there. So we've been in the Cotswolds a lot, so that's why we just stopped for the night and got up and basically got in the car and left. It was raining too, so there wasn't really anything to see or do. It poured. Yeah, and so we wanted to, this is where we diverted from the route on the adventure map we talked about last week. That kind of hugs the western coast and shore of Britain. So we instead, we kind of jogged through the Midlands and came up the east side up through Yorkshire and Northumberland into Scotland. So to do that, because we did the Midlands in detail a couple years ago, we skipped the Midlands as well. But there was one place we wanted to stop. But this was going to be our longest stretch of driving, I think, of the whole trip. Because we had to get from Castle Combe to the city of York, which is like a four to five hour drive. It was about more five hours because we had bad traffic.
Coming into York. Coming into York. But we were also coming into York at the end of the business day. So something to keep in mind that you want to, I think that's something that we would pay attention to again. We would either want to come in early or late because that happened to us several times through the drive where we just, like in Bristol, we just, we got caught up in traffic with the evening commute. And, you know, I think that's something we'd be mindful of going forward.
Yeah. And so we wanted to make a stop. So we decided to, you know, we love National Trust properties and we love historical homes. And there was one kind of right in the middle, which is Hardwick Hall. Hardwick Hall, for those unfamiliar with it, is an Elizabethan-era stately home. It was the home to a formidable woman named Bess of Hardwick, who she gained so much power, it rivaled Queen Elizabeth and the monarchs at the time. And she even, her children even married into the royal family.
Can I say, though, that just having an overview, just a very limited understanding of who she was as a woman, she was an incredible woman for her time. I mean, she married up, she married for money.
And she made herself into something amazing. And I think one of the things that I really enjoyed is that going through the house, she has her own throne room. Yeah. I mean, she really did challenge Elizabeth's power.
The house is famous for its windows because the line is that the house is more glass than brick.
It's not unusual now, but it was very unusual in Elizabethan times because glass was very expensive. It was highly taxed, and it wasn't a structural material like it is now. So just how they managed to do it and make these walls of glass in this building are incredible. And then when you go into the house and see the long gallery where all the windows are, I mean, it's the most incredible space architecturally I've ever been in. You know, and it's a National Trust property. There's a cafe on site, bookshop, gift shop. When we were there, it was pouring down rain.
We were grateful that we had the Land Rover because we had to park in a muddy field.
And, yeah, so we had a nice lunch there. We toured the house. You could walk around at your own pace. That took about an hour or so. We learned about the history of Bess.
We did a very quick but tried to be thorough tour of the house because we still had a lot of road to cover. So you could easily go and spend a whole afternoon.
Yeah, and there's actually another stately home. Oh, not really a stately home. was a ruin there which is old hardwick hall which best tore down and had ruined as a garden ornament
for the new hardwick hall yeah this is how that's how wealthy she was how like much of a boss best was she was like um that house is old-fashioned let's tear it down and it's my new garden ornament and i'm gonna now do this um amazing uh beautiful glass and stone house um just quite a woman quite a woman for her time and even in today's time quite a woman
we're going to have an article in the magazine maybe in the next issue in March about her I have it mostly written but she's an interesting woman and the house is an interesting place we highly recommend stopping for sure in the midlands it was a good stop off for us so we saw it and we went on our way and continue to drive up to York. Oh, I should add, before we got to Harvard Hall, we made a stop at a British rest area.
Oh, yeah. And can we just talk about how much we love British rest stops, which sounds like the most bizarre thing to say.
Yeah, okay. To give you some context, American rest areas are usually terrible.
Yeah, it's usually like a cinder block, really small house that's either not heated or minimally heated so the pipes don't freeze.
And if you're lucky, there'll be a vending machine where maybe you can get a stale candy bar.
Yeah, if you drive from here to Indianapolis, our state capital, there's a couple. And they're terrifying places. And then there's truck stops. But then truck stops are places for truckers. And there's nothing wrong with truckers, but the truck stops are usually...
The areas where they are are usually not the nicest, and they're very transient, and they're not really places people like to stop if they don't have to.
I think that's a great way to describe it. It's very... The ones that we've been to, and granted, not everyone in Britain is like the nicest, but the one we stopped at had a Starbucks, had two Starbucks in it, actually.
Had two grocery stores, very clean and nice bathrooms, plenty of food options.
But I think that's also one of the things that we really like about British culture, and it's one of the things that we've observed, is in our experience when we travel, the British will pull over at a rest stop and they will sit and have a coffee. and just sit and have a cup of coffee and then get back on the road. Unless they're in a hurry. Well, yeah, I mean, not to overgeneralize it, but, you know, we're here, you know, we kind of pull off the highway and go to a drive-thru, and that's how that works. So maybe that's kind of why they're nicer is because people spend more time in them. I don't know.
Yeah, and we bought umbrellas because we forgot to pack our travel umbrellas, so we had to buy umbrellas overpriced.
That's the other thing is while the rest stops are very nice, the prices are to match.
Everything's overpriced in a British highway rest area. So you're going to pay a premium for convenience. And that brings me to petrol, which was one tip that our friends gave us from Cornwall. You never buy petrol at a roadway service station, a motorway service station.
if you just get off the road somewhere else. And since most cars have a GPS, they'll take you to a cheaper gas station. So, you know, only stop at services if you need to. It's going to be overpriced, but they're nice. Clean bathrooms, but don't buy petrol there.
So after that and after Hardwick Hall, we drove up to York, and like we said earlier, we hit some bad traffic as we were going past Sheffield and Doncaster and all of the major cities in Yorkshire. But we got there eventually. We got there kind of as it was getting dark.
And it was still raining pretty steadily, so we kind of just tucked into the hotel for the night. We stayed at the Grand Hotel in York, right across from the train station, and right within the city wall, which was very cool. And I'll admit it, I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to hotels. I am very choosy. I want a good, comfortable night's sleep. And the Grand did not disappoint. a very high-end hotel but we got a really good deal yeah i i would say the hotel is high end but
the prices were high i mean we paid less to stay there than we did in castle coombe yeah and there's
a spa there's a pool a luxury center on-site restaurants they um they were able to valet our car so we didn't have to worry about parking it in york very stylish um if you if you are heading to York for even for a night I definitely recommend to stay the hotel was housed in the old railway offices building um and so you can see a lot of that architecture they really they really stuck true to that and that was that was an amazing experience yeah the the building architecturally
was incredible I would stay there just to see to admire the building and the like the room for example the room must have had 20 foot ceilings i was just gonna say easily i mean you can they
the rooms are set up as the offices would have been so you literally walk through a historic office door um but that being said you have all the mod cons that you would want um i could take a swim in the bathtub in that room it was glorious and the bed was comfortable um the food was great I think we tried to make sure that wherever we stayed that breakfast was included, which is a great budget tip just in general for traveling to Britain, but specifically for a trip like this. That way we didn't have to spend on breakfast. This was by far my favorite breakfast of the trip. We had dinner in one of their restaurants, their more casual restaurant. Great dinner. Food was absolutely superb. But the next morning they had, it was buffet style, but you could order as well. We chose to do buffet. They had a hot buffet. They had a dairy buffet. They had grains and breads and then fruits and meats and cheeses and a fresh juice buffet. coffee tea i mean we were spoiled for choice i think i could eat three meals a day off of that buffet and i am i want to also say nothing against those who enjoy a buffet it's not normally my thing
but this was on a whole nother level yeah that's that's a good point to make is british breakfast buffets are not like a buffet you'd find here back home i mean it's most of the hotels that do breakfast, put food out, and then they get orders at high element of it as well. And it's usually pretty good.
And it's a great way to save money because it's included in your bill, and then you don't have to buy breakfast, and you don't have to take time for breakfast other than before you leave the hotel.
Well, and I think that, you know, knowing that this trip was going to be pricey, we, well, and just in general, I think we have kind of an ethos that we have a good hearty breakfast that we try and make sure is included in our stay wherever we are. A light, inexpensive lunch. So whether that's a sandwich at a National Trust property and a cup of tea or, you know, just something on the go. And then we will push the boat out a bit for dinner so um make sure you grab snacks too um you could do that just about anywhere but
um it keeps your food budget down to a minimum yeah so so that night um we had dinner at the hotel and then we went to bed and dinner in the hotel was very nice um it was a little on the pricey side but it was a nice restaurant so it was which is also where breakfast was but it was
good value for money as well the food was really yeah nice quality so then the next day um we wanted
to explore york uh so we kind of allocated the first half of the day for that um we had rain which is fine um we had our umbrellas cold rain um so we walked in our the big thing we wanted to see was york minster and the shambles um so we walked into york uh the hotel is kind of a cross in a train station so you can it's very it was very walkable very nice location so we so we arranged the hotel when to get our car and everything so then that way we were checked out and everything and they kept our car so we walked to york minster and york minster was incredible it was stunning
get there early we got there right as it opened yeah um and we saw tour groups kind of amassing to get ready to go in and we were very lucky and because we were there early we beat a lot of the groups that came in after us but definitely um get there i would say get there early or get there
late yeah i think it opens at nine or ten yeah check um it can change based on when they have services uh there was scaffolding inside which i whenever i see scaffolding i'm dismayed even though the buildings need care and attention and renovation but so you the views inside weren't spectacular because the scaffolding because they're read they're literally i read up on that later they're they're refurbishing the organ so they have to completely take it apart refurbish it and put it back so it's gonna it's actually going to take them a couple years so you're if you want unobstructed views of york minster by the guidebook or don't go until they're done
the cathedral is the official cathedral of the RAF, the Royal Air Force and it's the centenary year so they were preparing for a special centenary service so that was interesting was there singing there or was that at Durham?
I haven't gotten there yet yeah so we explored the cathedral there's my memories are jumbled between the two cathedrals so I don't know I can't separate the two
there was that beautiful round gallery with all the faces I'm sure it's got a name and I'm doing it a disservice
all the places we've been in England all the cathedrals we've seen I've never seen anything as beautiful as that.
Yeah, it was quite an ornate chapter house. Yorkminster is a great example. We talked, we haven't done Fountain of the Abbey yet. There's a lot of ruined abbeys and cathedrals in Yorkshire that were built up from the wealth of wool in the Middle Ages. And then Henry VIII destroyed them and there's a lot of ruins. Well, Yorkminster is an example of one of the ones that wasn't destroyed. So the cathedral is on par with something that would be in London or the other major British cities, even though York is a very small city.
Or even just anywhere in Europe. I mean, this is it's a world class cathedral. Yes.
It's such a small city because it was built by the wealth from wool and it managed to survive the dissolution. I read it. I read why, but I forgot. I can't think of the reason right now. Yeah, so after that, we walked around your work. I found out there's a great bookshop kind of right outside the exit. You cross the street, and then you kind of get into the medieval twisty-turny streets where all the shops are. There was a great bookstore that was very topsy-turvy, and it was a nice little bookshop.
A lot of high-end shopping. A lot of British brands that you would see on any high street.
Yeah, I mean, it was none of the shops. There were a few good independent shops, but nothing.
You could find, you know, there's an Edinburgh Woolen Mill. There's a Crewe. There's, you know, there's all the typical British, you know, brands. So then after that, we, the other thing we had to see in York was the Shambles, which is, for those unfamiliar, The Shambles is a medieval street that basically, and this context will help most people, at least our age, is it looks like Diagon Alley. And it was kind of the inspiration for Diagon Alley and Harry Potter.
Yeah, I mean, it's old. It was an old market street. And now, it's almost like an alley.
the building eves like hang over the middle of the street where they almost touch sometimes and the uh it's very medieval and it's it's really it's really picturesque it's whimsical it's
whimsical it's it's i was saying earlier like castlecombe it's one of the most famous street scenes in britain so we that was one of the things we had to had to do while we were there if you want
to see what it looks like watch the vlogger uh we did do a live video too yeah i don't know where that is it's on facebook so you'll i apologize you'll have to scroll back down through the feed
where i think there's a spot where you can look at yeah we'll find it and put it in the show notes
um so we went and did that and one of the things about that is because it's so harry potter inspired or it's not it's the other way around but um if you're a harry potter fan like all the just about all the shops are Harry Potter themed.
But it's a beautiful street mobbed of tourists. So what do the shops sell? Well, they sell the things that people would expect to buy there, which is Harry Potter merchandise.
But then the thing is, it's all stuff that you can get here. Like, none of it's, all the Harry Potter stuff is made in the same places now. So it's not like.
Well, granted, there might be special things, but we also didn't go into the shops because it just didn't interest us.
Yeah, I mean, the shambles used to be a market street with independent sellers.
It's called the shambles because it used to be a meat market. You could buy meat there.
But now it's, I mean, there's tea rooms. There's some food shops. but, I mean, it's basically Harry Potter Street.
You know, I love Harry Potter. I grew up with it, but it's a bit much. I mean, there are other places you can get your Harry Potter fix in Britain, and I just, it's a shame because it's...
Yeah, I agree. It would be neat to see, like, a bookseller that's been there for, like, 300 years or something like that. I mean, but don't let us dissuade you from going. Go see the architecture.
you should go see it and just ignore the tourist hat because again i think it's one of those where
you should go early or late we were there about 11 o'clock and it was starting to really yeah it was
really crowded and you get all the tour buses will empty out and visit it and and you know you've got
people trying to take selfies in the middle of the street and which is great but at the same time if you're it just kind of makes a bit of a mess as people are trying and to get down the street and you know john wasn't kidding when he said really it's it's about the size of an alleyway so imagine everybody wanting to get down this little narrow alleyway um it could be a little crazy yeah so we did that um and then we kind of hit the road because we we ate lunch we did um we're slightly
to admit that we ate lunch at Five Guys. There's five guys in York and that's where we
You know, we've done Five Guys before in England and one of the things that amazes us is you know, you, when we eat quote unquote American food in Britain, it tastes slightly different. But not bad, just different. But one of the things that has amazed us about Five Guys in England is it tastes like home. So, you know, don't, that's another tip too. Don't be afraid to, if you're craving home, you can find American food in England.
So we did that. And then we were going to try the Jorvik Viking Center because York has a huge Viking history. That's why it's called York. It used to be called Jorvik. But the line was too long, so we didn't go.
Well, and can we say, too, that while there's real history in there, and we really did want to see it.
They had people kind of dressed in costume as Vikings out front, which kind of makes me leery about what kind of experience we would have.
Or, like, I thought it would be more like a museum, but it looks like it's an immersive experience.
Which, for some, that's great. Which is fine, but that's not the kind of experiences we like to have.
Yeah, the London Dungeons with horse traps in London. But, I mean, next time we go to Europe, we should definitely check it out and make sure. I mean, we didn't go inside, so we can't...
And then one of the things I wanted to do while we were in New York is I really wanted to visit... What?
Sorry. John keeps scribbling on his paper, and I'm afraid our microphone's going to pick that up. So.
Okay. So I wanted to visit the National Railway Museum, which is conveniently across the city wall from our hotel, because the hotel used to be the railway's headquarters. But by the time we'd eaten lunch, it was like 1 o'clock or 2 o'clock.
And we still had an hour or two in the car ahead of us. So we decided to hit the road. So we have several excuses to come back to York.
You can't do York in the day. I mean, you can if you're on a guided tour and you hit the highlights. But I think we'd like to spend a couple nights in York.
And get a feel for the place, do the river cruise, try some of the other restaurants, see the National Railway Museum, which is supposed to be awesome. That's where the Flying Scotsman is based when it's not on the rails. And do the Georgia Viking Center and explore the surroundings of York as well.
Yeah, there's so much more to see than we were really, we'd like to say, a whistle-stop tour.
Yeah, and that's the trade-off of doing this drive is you only get a taste of all these places.
But, I mean, we'll talk about this in our final thoughts at the end. But it gave us a lot of ideas for places we need to go on future trips. Because we tend to stick with the familiar and stick to places that we've been to already, that we really like. But Britain is so big and so varied, there's so many more wonderful places to see that we really need to widen our horizons. And this trip gave us a chance to give us a taste and become familiar with those places so we can go back.
Yeah, and we went to Durham. But we stopped somewhere. We did. That's where we kind of built serendipity. And we were driving down the main roads between York and Durham, and we saw the signs for Fountains Abbey. And Fountains Abbey is a big ruined abbey that I've heard about before. And I thought, well, I can't resist a ruined abbey.
So I'm like, there's got to be a national trust around here somewhere. Let's go have cream tea.
Yeah, let's go have tea and cake. So we followed the signs to Fountains Abbey. We didn't use a GPS, followed the signs. And found Fountains Abbey. and it was one of the coolest places I've ever been.
You know, it's, again, one of those rich wool abbeys that was built from the wealth of the wool. And there's a wool experience there where you can knit.
If you, like, knit, you're more than welcome to pick up the needles and add a row or two or a few. So that's something I did. So some really weird seed stitch for those who knit. If you happen to see it, some neat seed stitch and green. Some are probably now way further down. That would be mine. Super cool. I really enjoyed that part of it, actually.
Yeah. The coolest thing at Fountains Abbey, because there's a lot of ruins are more ruined than building, but there were a lot more buildings at this ruin.
if that makes any sense at all well you could there was so much of the building still intact i mean obviously all the glass is gone the roof is gone but the stone structure of the building
still remains yeah and the the i think it's the was the long thing the caverns or the oh the crypt the cloisters the cloisters i don't know well you you when you come And then, like, and to your right, there's a long, I'm going to say cloister if it's wrong. I'm sure the people will tell me in the comments. It's, you know, the underground area where, like, it just goes on and on and on. It's the most amazing structure.
And the wool, the monks raised wool. It's, like you said, it's another wool cathedral. Just incredible. Definitely take the time. It's a little bit of a walk, but it's a paved path. So as we talked about packing in the last episode, bring a pair of trainers or tennis shoes or a hiking boot if you want to. You won't really need it, but it's a good thing to have for National Trust. So if you want to kind of get out of the city and, yeah.
And I think after we talk about Durham, I think we'll stop because we're getting up there in time.
So Durham. Why did we go to Durham? Durham wasn't originally on the itinerary, but we added it when we realized that we had an extra night in Scotland and we weren't going to the Lake District, which is the traditional route. We talked about this last time, but I'd been to the Lake District earlier in the summer, so we wanted to go to places we hadn't been. So we thought, well, let's go to Durham. But why Durham? Well, Bill Bryson described Durham as the most perfect English city in Britain because it's old, it's medieval, it's got an incredible cathedral, it's got a world-class university.
I wanted to go because my great aunt, who's very close to us, who she's actually the one who usually watches our kids when we go to Britain, she did some family genealogy and found out that on my father's side that my ancestors came from Durham.
She had a street address and everything. She had a street address and everything.
So we said, okay, well, we're passing through. We'll stop there for the night and then we'll spend the time to go.
Yeah. And so we arrived in Durham. We stayed at the Hotel Indigo, which is a modern hotel chain, but it was in an old building, which used to be part of the university. The building was another one of those grand old civic structures that had been converted to a hotel. So it was a treat to be there. It was incredible.
It was. And the building itself was beautiful. And I don't want to take away from that at all. But the hotel itself was, I think the only word to describe it was lush. I mean, it had, it was a gorgeous hotel. It really, it felt like a very high-end experience.
So it wasn't super expensive. And it was a great walking distance into the center of Durham.
Yeah, it's right across the river, so it's not quite in the center, but it's easy to cross the bridge and get into Durham. So we settled in. I would say one criticism, the rooms are kind of small.
But even, okay, small by American standard, but big by British standards. Like the shower in the room had a rainfall shower, And it, like, steam, did steam. And you could listen to the TV while you were in the shower. Like, you couldn't see it, but it had a volume control and really high-end toiletries. And it was nice. It was really nice. And they had these iPhones that you could take and walk through the city with if you wanted to.
So we had dinner in the restaurant again. We didn't really talk about this. But while we picked places that included breakfast, most places don't include dinner. But we tried to choose places where we could eat dinner in the hotel. That way we didn't have to venture very far because we've had on previous trips. Sorry, I'm getting a sore throat. On previous trips, we would stay in hotels that didn't have restaurants. And then we would struggle to find somewhere to eat, especially on a weekend without having had booked in advance.
So the nature of this trip, we're like, let's find hotels that have restaurants. So we eat there rather than having to find somewhere to eat. So wait, because you have to stay fueled. So we ate the restaurant in the hotel.
The restaurant's like in an old rotunda. And then is it, was it Marco Pier White?
yes it was one of the chefs that won master chef in britain i think and if i got the name wrong i'm sorry we'll put the correct one in the notes but the food was amazing the service was great so good the atmosphere was wonderful and the stained glass of the old university it was an old university assembly room yes i think so it was just it was incredible well and then before even before that
we had pre-dinner drinks in the bar because our table wasn't quite ready which is common and the bar was in another like round rotunda room and can i just say that i i know that through this podcast i sound very high maintenance and i'm really not that much of a high maintenance person but no um i just i have a real respect for um any kind of eating or drinking establishment that gives you like the correct glass like if i order a glass of red wine i want it in a red wine glass i don't want it in just a standard wine glass um it's meant for a certain reason um so excellent barware excellent my hat's off to them beautiful crystal barware so that's random but anyway yeah
so then the next day um we wanted to see durham quickly because we had more road to cover yeah we had to get to edinburgh so um so we had to see we wanted to see the cathedral so we got an early start we saw the cathedral it was incredible
it was covered in scaffolding it was a really special experience though when we went we didn't realize um that night at dinner we saw lots of parents um with um college age kids yeah it was
So we did the cathedral. Durham Cathedral is incredible. It's Norman. The Venerable Bede is buried there. One of the first proper British historians. The only criticism I would say is they don't allow any photography inside, which sucked because I don't have any pictures of the occasion or video. So that forced us to just be present and enjoy the place.
The choir was practicing, so we sat and listened to that. That was a great experience. We had a great experience.
But had we been taking pictures, we probably would have not, excuse me, I apologize. We probably would have not noticed. And so I can see the point.
Yeah. And that's another thing is it was very clear to put your cameras away when you came in. There were plenty of signs for you to put your camera away. There are language neutral signs with the camera with the line through it. And yet we still saw tourists. We were horrified, but it wasn't our place to say anything. We were in the area where the nave where the preacher would stand on the lectern. I'm sorry, my terminology is, I don't know the terminology. But he was at the lectern. She was at the lectern with her friend. And they stood there. They went on the lectern, which is roped off. You're not supposed to go on the lectern. And then they were taking selfies of themselves on the lectern in Durham Cathedral, and it was very clear you weren't supposed to do either.
As the choir is practicing. As the choir is practicing. In proximity. Like, it was just.
It was like, really, I mean, you've got to be respectful of these places. Even if you're not of the religion or you're not religious, at least have respect for the people who are there.
Because there are places you can pray and light candles. And, you know, I'm not religious. I'm there for the architecture. And you've got to have respect for the context of the environment. And we've noticed it more and more. It's a real problem with. We actually kind of vented in the vlog, too, as we walked out.
If it says no pictures, that means no pictures. Not even a quick selfie. So, I mean, please be respectful.
So after that, we walked through, back down through Durham, visited the bookstore, because there were some good-looking books in the window. We needed some souvenirs. And then we...
Yeah, and so then the trick was to go find where my ancestors came from. So we had an address, which was 10 Shin Cliff Lane, Durham. So we Google mapped it, and the GPS took us right there. The thing is, is there actually isn't a 10 Shin Cliff Lane.
There's like one to six, and then that's it. So the records are very blurry and very old. So it may have been one Shinnickliff Lane. So we even, Jackie, I didn't want to do it.
We're sitting like, we're sitting wanting to cross like a big road. And we're like, we're sitting in a lane and we're going like, oh, we're not going to find it. What are we going to do? and the postman drives by and like stops to like collect posts or something.
And so I'm like, John, if anybody's going to know where this cottage is, it's going to be the postman. And John's going, no, no, don't get out of the car. And granted, it wasn't the safest place to get out of the car, but I literally got out of the car and like a just crazy lady, I'm like waving the postman down, you know, because like I said, if anybody's going to know. So the postman thought that it was highly likely that the address was probably one Shincliff Lane.
Yeah, because he said he'd done the route for 30 years and there'd never been a 10.
Well, and he had talked about there was a woman on the opposite far end of the lane where it kind of dead ends into a farm. And she had lived there for almost 90 years and said at some point they had had a conversation and that the cottages that were on Shin Cliff Lane were the only cottages that were ever there.
Yeah, so we went back to where one Shin Cliff Lane was to park the car and looked at the buildings. Because if you read the buildings, you can kind of tell when they were built. The one Chincliffe Lane was clearly a cottage that had been there since the medieval era, or at least Victorian era. And the other buildings were more modern. One was Edwardian. The other one was pre-war. So they were too new. The ancestors were talking about they left in the mid-1800s.
And there were multiple generations living within. So it needed to be a cottage that looked like, I mean, you could be really kind of cramped in there tight, but still you can only fit as many people as you can fit. But it looked like it looked like you could accommodate multiple generations in this cottage.
Yeah. So that's that's kind of we kind of settled on that would have been the place. um we've had a moment and you know it's I talk about it in the vlog in more detail but you know I've I've searched for years to have a physical connection to Britain in some way to explain partly why I'm so obsessed with the place and so it was it was moving to finally have a physical place I could go there that's where some of your ancestors came from that's the connection you have um so then after we did that and it was cool the there was like a manor house that was a hospital now yeah an eye hospital i think yeah and i suspect that maybe the the my ancestors probably worked on the estate somewhere um we actually went into the village of shin cliff before we did though we noticed that you could like you could see durham cathedral
all over the fields from a really pretty spot a very beautiful spot so we drove into shin cliff
village proper and it's the most beautiful picturesque english village it's it's now mostly residential areas but you can see where the old pub was you can see where the old post
office was they're all converted it's all been converted but it it felt very much like a place
i connect to and a place i would be happy to live if i lived in england it was very
it was beautiful beautiful it was very middle england it was it was lovely we parked and had a nice stroll they have a they had a nice common in the middle um we sat for a while and just kind of took in the scenery and it was probably one of my most favorite things that we did on the trip because i think that it was very clear that you felt a connection to the village and just
So after we did that, we continued on our journey. We needed to get to Edinburgh by the evening, but we wanted to make a stop halfway along the way. So we wanted to go see Annette Castle and go to Barter Books. Because for those that familiar, Barter Books is one of the most famous bookstores in Britain. It's a secondhand bookstore. And it's where the Keep Calm and Carry On poster was rediscovered. The poster had been made during World War II and it kind of had been forgotten. There were other posters that weren't. And so the Keep Calm and Carry On poster became a thing. And you found, you know, 15 years ago it was everywhere and it was oversaturated. But the original sign was, the poster was found there. And that kind of put Barter Books on the map. And it's an old train station that had been turned into a bookstore. And it's one of the coolest bookstores I've ever been to. There was a restaurant on site. That's where we had lunch. The food was all right.
Yeah, it was very cramped. You know, I don't know what my mood was. Maybe I was still pontificating on. It was also really hard to park there.
We couldn't park. We couldn't park because we had to park several streets away from the bookstore. And the bookstore, while it was very nice, I found a couple things I wanted. I really wanted a copy of Cider with Rosie because I'd never read it. I have since read it, and it's an amazing book. I highly recommend Cider with Rosie if you haven't. It's about a little boy growing up in Cotswolds between World War I and World War II, and it's considered one of the finest writings about the English countryside. A lot of English children read it in school during their schooling, and it's about a time that's long gone and it's lost, but it's a fantastic book. So I picked up my copy of that there, and I got a beautiful old map of Dorset. But that was really it, because the bookstore was actually really overwhelming.
There's a lot of people there, and there's a lot of books. And in all honesty, the books are a little on the pricier side, I found.
I don't hold it against them for taking advantage of their positioning as a huge tourist attraction for the town. I think I need to go back on a day, maybe on a weekday when there's nobody there.
I think so, because I think that it was almost like an oversaturation of noise.
Yeah, it was so draining that we actually wanted to go to Anna Castle, but it was already late in the day, and we were just like, we're going to have to do another time. We have to get to Edinburgh.
And we were, I think that even though we tried to keep, you know, the idea was breakfast, see a site where you're at, get in the car, maybe see a site between your final destination and get to where you go. I am really surprised at how tiring these days were. I mean, granted, we did a lot of walking when we were in a town or in a city, but we do a lot of walking anyway. There's just something about it that, you know, I know that it might seem like we weren't very adventurous by eating at the hotel most nights, but it was just purely out of function.
I mean, you get so tired. Yeah, when you're doing a drive like this and it's work, you want the things that you do to facilitate that. So sometimes things have to fall off, like Annie Castle.
Yeah, I mean, we loved Yorkshire. We loved Northumberland. We loved Northern England. So we want to go back because we kept seeing science from places I've always wanted to go. Like, as we left Annek, we saw the castles for Bamborough Castle. And I was just like, I want to go to these places. But we had, you know, time was short. We needed to get to Edinburgh to begin the Scotland part of the trip. And so we drove from Annek up the coast, the eastern coast, to Edinburgh. And it was one of the most beautiful drives we'd ever taken.
And you can see the railway that follows a similar path. You see windswept castles along the way. You see the little sea. It was incredible.
Yeah, one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. And by far, my favorite scenery of the trip. Although, not to do Cornwall a disservice either. Anything with the sea, I'm game.
So we drove to Edinburgh, and we crossed the border. We stopped at the border crossing and took pictures and video.
We were officially in Scotland for the first time and I think that's where we'll stop today because we're over an hour now and then we'll do Scotland in the third part because there's a lot to talk about in Scotland.
Christmas. We'll talk about our British Christmas trip we took a few years ago. We'll stop there for Scotland. Thank you
for listening. If you have any Questions or comments? Yeah, questions, comments. Let us know.
We'll put in the show notes everything we talked about, all the places we stayed, so you can see them for yourselves. And we hope you enjoyed listening.
