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 back to the Anglotopia podcast we missed you we missed you there was a hiatus unplanned hiatus yes for several reasons um one the flu went through the entire thomas
household for most of march so that was fun like legitimate influenza and we had our flu shots but we still got it we're not starting a debate on vaccines or anything like that just saying so we
were we were felled there was actually at one point there was a week where i almost didn't publish anything on Anglotopia and i didn't even do the newsletter which is the most important
thing we do every week i was just so sick well what was crazy is you actually had people like reach out to us like hey are you guys okay yeah so thanks for the concern people were genuinely worried like that was super sweet yeah normally like you kind of think you're just screaming
into the void when you run a publication like this on the internet you kind of just like does anybody actually read it and so to get messages like that it's yeah it's nice you guys noticed we were gone and a couple other things some big life changes um i finished my book adventures in Anglotopia and then i started the editing process um stay tuned for news on that i started a new job
and if you've seen on our social media, I too have wrote a book. Although mine is not of anglophilia, it's romance. So it's really exciting. A lot of writing, a lot of really good life changes going on.
Trying to take Angletobe in a new direction we talked about last year. It's still in process.
Yeah, this podcast isn't about us. It's about Britain. And if you hear a dog whine, it's our puppy who's in his crate because he eats everything in sight and he's disruptive during the podcast. We managed to have the kids outside of the house, but we couldn't get rid of the puppy for the afternoon. So if you hear him, he's fine. He's in his crate, his happy place.
But it's the best way to summarize what this is. We've been at this since 2007 now. And there are things that are kind of like life goals that I really want to do in Britain. There's things that I've actually done. I did an article a couple years ago on my top ten things I wanted to do, and I've done like half of them so far. So I'm a big proponent in setting goals and achieving them. So when we make a list like this, I fully intend to do everything on this list. But this list is the long game. This is like for the rest of our lives. So some things are kind of out there. Some things are very simple. It's just a matter of booking a trip and doing it. Some things require physical training. Some will require growing courage.
But I thought this would make an interesting topic for us to go back and forth because it's no secret around here that she's an Anglophile by proxy. she's kind of been dragged along i'm the crazy one so um but over time she's developed things that she likes to do there and yeah and so it'd be interesting to see if there's anything that she wants to to make sure we do sometime because i will gladly book a trip to do something she wants
to do just so i can go well and i want to say though that through all of our travels it's become my second home like we when we land in britain i feel like it's the same feeling as when we land in Chicago. It's like, oh, I'm home.
So this list is very personal. You know, we're not seeking to compare what would be on your list.
But you're free to comment. Yeah, you're free to comment and let us know what you want to do.
But in the end, sorry, our future watching machine is talking to us. You know, it's very much things that we really want to do and it's very They're very personal choices. There will be things that maybe you would want to do that we'll leave off. So that's where the comment section comes in handy. If you are looking for inspiration for things to do on your Britain bucket list, I recommend getting this map, the Great British Adventure Map, which we sell in our online store. Shameless plug alert. Although the shameless plug would make more sense if we actually had any in stock, which we don't. But I'm going to be getting more, so go join the waiting list. This map is just filled with adventures in Britain and things that would be on the bucket list. We used this to plan our drive from Lanzan to John O'Groats last year, which was on my list. And it's just filled with railway journeys and walking journeys and highly recommend it.
You could spend hours looking at that and still find something new each time you open it.
So I'm going to, I'll put a link in the show notes to this. So get on the waiting list for when we get more because this is one of our best sellers.
Which, and it should be just for those on the waiting list, it timetable ideas of when it might be back in stock?
Yeah, in the next month. I just have to place the order. I need the money to pay for it. So.
Oh, look how chivalrous. So this is really kind of corny, but I really have a thing for really grand, regal, and stately hotels. And I think London does it really, really well. You have the Savoy. You have the Ritz. You have, is it the Dorchester? So we have this thing. It's silly because these are very exclusive, very high-end hotels that we cannot afford to stay in. So instead of being able to afford to stay in one of them, a lot of these hotels are very famous for their cocktail bars. So it's been a tradition that I've started that we go to, we pick one hotel per trip, and we'll go have a cocktail in the cocktail bar. So I would, but as fun as that is, and I highly, highly recommend it, It is great to people watch. I have had some of the best cocktails and appetizers of my whole life.
I had a legit drink with gold flakes in it. It was the most beautiful thing. It was almost too pretty to drink. And then we did the Dorchester.
I can't remember which bar, though. It's the big bar at the front that faces Hyde Park.
George wouldn't approve. He means George Clooney. She's a big George Clooney fan.
But, that being said, I would love to actually stay in one of these big hotels. Like, where there's fresh flowers in the room. And not just stay in one of these hotels.
Yeah, I don't want to just be an interloper because then that's just uncomfortable. but like really do it in style like that would be what an amazing experience we saw a thing wasn't it the savoy where if you stay in a in a room that is of a certain level like they give you a butler yeah that's insane it is insane it is indulgence at the highest level but just to have an experience like that and i just have to say if i'm gonna go anywhere in the world and have a butler i want a british butler right like that's the gold standard of butlers right so that's my that's mine um that's like a two-parter to stay at one of the big fancy um landmark london hotels and to finish our cocktail crawl in the big fancy london hotel bars but like they have to be i want to make clear that they have to be um like landmark yeah i mean there's a thousand cocktail bars in Exactly. And I'm sure they're all great, but...
Well, let's put it this way. If you did a shift during the Blitz, and you were like, man, I need a drink, and you knew that bar was open, you're on the list.
I should say, I don't actually drink alcohol ever. So when we go to these things, I usually get tea. So I have a good judgment on who has good tea in all the cocktail bars.
So my number one is probably the one most likely to happen the soonest, I hope, because it's been one that I've been working towards for, I've been banging on about it for like five years now. It's pathetic, actually. know exactly where this is going uh there's uh there are many dead not dead but many uh zombie dreams on Anglotopia of trips on gone on and one of them is i really want to walk hadrian's wall um it's about an 80 mile walk from coast to coast in northern england that follows the route of the wall built by amber hadrian most of which is still there in ruined form and it's a it's a moderately strenuous walk that takes about a week and it takes in some of the most beautiful countryside in britain and you know um there are companies that can help you plan it and you basically just check in at the b&b at one end and then your bags follow you to each b&b along the way and i think the longest stretch is like 16 miles so but there's a problem with wanting to do hadrian's wall and that problem is that i'm very lazy and i don't walk so i work from home and i live in an area where you can't i can't like walk outside my front door go for a walk i'll get run over by a car so i don't really walk that much currently and so if i try to do the hadrian's wall walk tomorrow i will probably die in the process because i'm fat
and lazy so i'm just staying quiet so a few years ago i started an article series
training for Hadrian's Wall about the process of getting ready to do it. And, you know, it's walking. So it's like the training is that strutuous. I just need to walk and I need to walk a lot and I need to be able to do 15 to 20 miles in a day and not feel like I want to die. So a few years ago, I started doing that. I started going to the local national park and doing walks and I got my range up to a four mile walk in a day. and then winter came because winter comes every year and winter is terrible and you can't go for
you can't it's just it's really freaking cold and then the parks close it's hard the paths get you
know they're snow covered snow covered and and then uh you know the seasons go by i i half-heartedly start walks again and try to train it just doesn't freaking happen so you can come work out with me yeah i don't want to do orange theory wimp yes so how are you ever going to do that walk if you don't legitimately put your mind to it i'm getting there
oh folks he really wants to do this but you're going to have to help hold him to account
i mean seriously so here's the plan okay plan for action how am i going to do hadrian's wall um we're not traveling this year um for various reasons unless the donton abbey tour we're sponsoring happens um that's still up in the air um but we're not traveling this year so i can't go this year and you can only do the official walk from may to september because they they they they don't close the trail but they don't want people to use a trail on the off season because it damages it for everybody else.
Well, not only that, too, unless you're really hardy, like, that's way far north.
Like, I imagine the weather probably turns... Well, we've, you know, we've experienced Northern England now.
It was rainy, too. So you kind of have to do it in the summer months. So obviously I can't do it this summer. So my hope is that I'll do it next summer. So if I'm going to do it next summer, I want to do two things to kind of kick this bucket list thing in the arse, as the British would say. So this summer I'd like to go for walks with my kids and with my wife and with the family or by myself and try and build up my mileage. I'd like to maybe get back up to that 4 or 5 mile mark this year okay and then I'd like to get the Thomas family to get a treadmill so that when October comes and we can't leave the house for 6 months
I'd like to keep the mileage up during the winter and this is just walking I'm not going to run on a treadmill running is awful why would I run on purpose
And then at some point, if I can meet my mileage goals this summer, I think I should be allowed to buy my plane ticket to go next summer. Because then if I have a hard deadline, then nothing can stop it, right? So through the winter, I'll do the treadmill and keep up the mileage, try to increase it. And then when spring comes around, really whole hog it. And I figure I'll be ready to do the walk when I can do 16 miles in a day and then get up and do it again the next day and not die.
Yeah. Because the pace, I mean, you can do the walk at whatever pace you want.
The whole point, this is one of those examples where the journey is a destination, not a specific place. So, you know, I don't have to walk at a fast pace. You just have to be able to do it.
Well, that's what I, but my point is, and I'm not meaning to offend, but you don't want to still be walking out there at 9 p.m. having set off at 9 a.m.
And the routes that are laid out in the guidebooks I have will, like, if you do this many miles, you'll arrive at a nice pub for lunch. And if you do this many miles, you'll arrive at your B&B and eat like.
Although I have a feeling you need a pub lunch and then wanting to get back on the trail is going to be a difficult challenge to overcome.
You've just got to eat light. And then the last pub, you can, like, have a steak and a bottle of wine. You're going to need it.
I'm going to do the two other walks that I kind of want to do, since I segway into those, and then you go next.
Now, if I can accomplish this walk, which is one of the shortest long-distance walks in Britain, Um, next I'd like to do the Wainwright Coast to Coast. I have a book right here. For those who are unfamiliar, Alfred Wainwright wrote, um, the best walking and fell guides of the Lake District that have ever been published. Like, his attention to detail is incredible. He hand wrote every single page and hand drew every single map.
Yeah, he was very dedicated. many people speculate he might have been on the spectrum, which would make a lot of sense, because he was obsessed. He actually said, this is the day I'm going to finish doing all of these guidebooks, and he finished on that day.
Yeah. So he's a very interesting character. And so one of his famous walks is the Wainwright Coast to Coast, which goes from the North Sea to the Irish Sea, or vice versa, St. B's Head to Robin Hood's Bay. And it's about twice as long as the Hadrian's Wall Walk. So it takes about two weeks to do. And it goes through, the elevations are much, they change much more steeply. So it's a little more strenuous and a little bit more of a challenge. So, but I figure if I can do Hadrian's Wall, there's no reason why I couldn't do this.
I think I could do Hadrian's Wall, like, in the summer. But that, like that one, I would have to train for.
Yeah. So there's that one. And then one that I really want to do with you is the Cotswold Way.
Yeah, which is about 130, 140 miles. And it literally goes from one end of the Cotswold to the other. And, again, it's a national trail that's maintained.
A lot of people do this, but it takes about two weeks as well. So, like, you've got to, like, train for it and block some time. And I've heard that it's like Hadrian's Wall. It's kind of a gingerly pace. The elevations don't really change too much, but it means the Cotswolds. But that's something I think you and I would have a lot of fun doing because we like the Cotswolds a lot.
The next thing on my list is the Scottish Coast. So we went up to Scotland for the first time ever when we did the John O'Groats, Land's End to John O'Groats, and I absolutely fell in love with the eastern Scottish coast. Now, full disclosure, I haven't been down the western side. It might be just as beautiful. It might be more beautiful. But as we were driving up, like, these beautiful winding roads and cliffs and just, It reminded me a lot of actually like Northern California. But it was so beautiful. And we had this like idyllic fantasy where like, you know, we'd stay in a stone cottage that has a fireplace. And you could see the sea and we could write. And, you know, we would have our groceries delivered and go down to the pub for dinner. And like I would love to legitimately do that. to just like maybe when our kids are much older, just be like, okay, like we're going to take six months and we're going to rent a little cottage up in Scotland and that's all we're going to do. We're just going to write and we're going to sightsee and, you know, eat at the pub and just explore Scotland and enjoy the noise of the sea. I think that would be amazing.
It's, we heard about this while we were up there. And it's a drive that does, it's a 500 mile drive that does a loop.
Along the way. And then you drive. And so that's something we really would like to do. I love driving in Britain. It's like my favorite thing to do. And we'll talk more about driving when we do our podcast on getting around Britain. But it's just something I'd really like to do. If you watched Grand Tour on Amazon Prime, the Top Gear spinoff, the guys from Top Gear, They did an episode where they did a drive through the Scottish Highlands, and they started doing the North Coast 500, and then they kind of diverted off of it. And it gives you an idea of what it's like up there. And they have said, they said in the show, that they've been all over the world, but they think that that drive is the most beautiful drive they've ever been on.
up there yeah i mean it's just endless sea of all the roads fall hug the coast and there's mountains
and it's not it's not expensive no it's not i mean i maybe northern scotland is very affordable well and maybe because we have spent so much time in london which is one of the most expensive cities in the world like you will get sticker shock but you go up to northern scotland and it's it's very affordable yeah so that's mine um one thing i'd love to do is like i said i love to do
long distance driving in britain well now we've done lances and john of growths like what else
is there because we could do it in the opposite direction yeah we could do john of growths to
lands then i mean we've talked about doing a guidebook because there isn't a guidebook for the drive so we'd have to do it again if we did that but um that's kind of a nebulous plan that's just kind of something we thought about um but i really want to do the channel shore um if you can see the map behind me um in the video portion i want to drive basically from i guess ramsgate or margate or dover and drive west all the way to lands in it's it's a long drive i'm game but it takes in some of the most famous landscapes in southern england
you drive it and i'll sail it okay that would be amazing but it takes in so many beautiful places
and i read a book by tom fork called the channel shore where he biked it and that was really that was that's a really good book so it made me really want to do it i mean it's full of seaside cities and towns and and cliffs and whatnot and it would take in dorset which i totally approve of actually
that kind of feeds into one of mine is I and I know that you have something really similar when we were down in Cornwall for um four lanes into John and Groats there were some really beautiful little Cornish villages I would love to rent a cottage for the summer while our kids are still kids and somewhere where we can walk to the shore or it's just outside the door and you know just kind of do a Cornish British summer. I mean, Cornwall was amazing and beautiful in September. I can only imagine what it's got to be like when you can go sit down on the beach.
They're just amazing. Yeah, we haven't talked a lot about Cornwall in general, but we really...
Yeah, I could see, like, if we ever settled in Britain, I think Cornwall would be in the running. I really do it's so beautiful
and you can fly to Newquay from Heathrow so we wouldn't have to drive or take the train down
speaking of Cornwall I emailed Dracoth and T about stocking their tea here in the US
Yeah, they're very keen. So hopefully we'll be stocking that soon. I'm waiting to hear back. I lost track.
Feeding into that, and we talked about this the other day, actually. I would love to do the season.
Okay. For those unfamiliar, the season is basically the Great British Summer. And there's debate on when it starts in the year. Some say it starts with the boat race in April. Others say it starts properly with the Henley Regatta.
Um, the season is the, and it's more, the season's more of an upper class thing and a middle class thing. And it, it, uh, it encompasses all the big events of the Great British Summer. You've got the Henley Regatta, you've got Wimbledon, you've got the Last Night of the Proms, and I'm forgetting all the other things. But, um, there's events throughout the summer that the British social calendar kind of revolves around.
The Queen's Garden Parties. And then also her official birthday in June with the...
so but it's something so what I would love to do is go at the beginning of the season and stay the whole season and do all the things
somewhere where we have a garden like a back garden and we can just sit and enjoy somewhere that's calm
yes um and because you have to be in london because a lot of the things are in london well
that's what i'm saying like but we have so we'd have to be close if we'd like if we stayed somewhere
like windsor we can just take the train it's 20 minutes to pat it you know okay but correct me if
i'm wrong here if this is like a high class thing we're not gonna be rolling up on the train oh that's very common to take the train really like all dressed to the nines like with my big
my ridiculously big beautiful there is first class on the trains my dear oh this is true
And let me just say, the British picnic like no other. Three words. Four words. Scotch egg, strawberries and cream. I rest my case.
That's the Wimbledon thing. That's what you do at Wimbledon. You have strawberries and cream.
that we can that we can afford to do and obviously this would be a very extensive proposition
would be hopefully by the time we're able to do this somebody else is paying for it through a book deal or whatever
it would be a thing that we would economically exploit to for articles on the website traveling like we would make it it would be a business proposition so like you know it wouldn't just be like us effing off for the summer in
england we went there yeah um but i noticed like look at how many of our bucket list things take place in the summer and i wonder if that's because when we normally travel we're not usually there in
the summer yeah i mean i like i went last summer and it's so nice in the summer we usually go off
season because it's more affordable it does get hot but it gets hot here i have a whole chapter
in my book on the great pretty summer yeah it is pretty great i won't lie so um why don't you pick
one next um i really um well i guess i have two more i want to do the scottish islands um i'm a knitter i agree and so like there is a huge tradition of knitting um excuse me up on the northern islands and i just i love how remote they are i feel like as great as communication is these days and interconnectivity and a global society these are these are all really important and great innovations but sometimes the world is just really loud and wouldn't it be amazing to just be able to basically just kind of check out like go up to one of these little islands and you can only get to by boat yeah and just you know spend some time together as a family and
and you know just kind of disconnect yeah we watched a show a few years ago about fair isle about people of a fair isle which is everyone knows fair isle as as the fair isle knit pattern
and knitting pattern knitting patterns and it's a it's a little speck of an island
in between the Orkneys and the Shetlands in the middle of the North Sea. And you can only get there by boat or plane. And if it's cloudy, nobody gets there.
I know, but they set the mark for Tweed. I mean, these are really tiny islands that made a global impact, which is amazing.
Yeah, well, you can see in the frame of the Fair Isles, a little speck there. Paris is...
Is on the other side. I know. But I would really like to do a really good survey of the British Isles. I think that would be amazing.
I agree. Let's take that off my list too. Speaking of islands, I'd also like to do the Channel Islands, which are off the coast of France.
They have a very interesting and unique history, mostly because they were invaded by the Germans during World War II. So, like, it's the only part of the, you know, Great Britain or the United Kingdom that was occupied by the Germans.
I didn't know that until just a couple of years ago, which I thought is just crazy.
a good movie actually i wouldn't mind watching it again we'd endorse that one um and then continuing the island thing like over the isle of man um i the isle of man is in between ireland and great britain it's kind of in the it's in the middle of the irish sea so that's not where all
the footballers are there's an island that like all the footballers live on what you don't know what I'm talking about. Like, it's a wealthy island. Is it... If it's not in Guernsey...
Yeah. No, that's not the Isle of Man. Okay. The Isle of Man is famous for the Isle of Man TT race.
For men? Huh? It's the Isle of Man. Oh my gosh. That fell flat. Slow the uptake today.
But it's a race. There's a road that It goes the ring road around the island. It's a motorcycle race that, yeah. Until a few years ago, Jeremy Clarkson actually owned a house on the island.
You're not a big motorcycle enthusiast. No, I'm just saying for people who give them context. I get it.
All right, here's my last one. I would like to stay somewhere long enough. um close to london so that i could go shop at their amazing markets they're like spittle fields and um and be able to like cook burrow market and burrow market thank you um they have the most beautiful markets and i would love to like when we go um and we're in london and we're there on business we're usually in a hotel um which is great because then dinner's taken care of for you but I absolutely love to cook. Love, love, love to cook. And so we have spent a lot of time as I drag you through these markets going, oh look, a cheesemonger! And oh look at this! And it's almost painful to not be able to be like I'll have a wedge of blue, please. A good wedge of cheddar. I feel like it's like Wallace and Gromit here, right? Jeez!
Exactly. But it would be amazing to like to go like source our food at the market and be able to like cook really amazing dinners and maybe have dinner parties oh my god we could have dinner parties with our british friends that would be amazing okay i'll totally stop like being all girly over here
what are you doing i'm gonna introduce them to our british cat our british cat who is an american cat yeah this is mcgonagall named after mcgonagall from harry potter we had a cat named harry potter
he was an orphan can i can i explain why he was named harry potter because it's the best story okay okay so how he came into john's possession is not really important he just he he happened to
find john one day i found him in a vacant house that we were cleaning the carpets in and he his dad owns a carpet cleaning company and he uh he made himself at home in the front seat while we were cleaning okay so he was very friendly like but he'd been clearly been abandoned like uh i was
i was in chicago for the day and i get this phone call from john going um honey i brought home a cat i had a cat when we moved in we had just adopted a cat because john wanted one so we had two and now he had brought home a third and I'm like oh my god like three cats and like 600 square feet you are nuts and so he like he he brought the cat home and he put the cat in the bathroom and he was like babe just go meet this cat like if you really don't like him like we'll figure something out maybe my parents will take him like I'm like all right and so I walked in and he had like a notch taken out of his ear. So I don't know if he got in a fight or it was a deformity or the vet had done it.
He wasn't fixed. So he had this notch. It was almost like a zigzaggy notch. And so it made me think of Harry Potter. And so I said to John, I'm like, okay, here's the deal. We can keep him. But he's an orphan. And he kind of, like, his coloring reminded me of Harry Potter. Like the boy with the brown and the glasses. so we named him Harry Potter and he was our our orphan cat
she's a very large kitty he was our favorite cat he was like he was everything you could hope for in a cat
which was actually really gross but he was really he was attentive like but so we you know he was
hp he was harry potter uh when we moved into this house five years ago we had him for like 10 years yeah he was an old guy um we moved into this house about five years ago when we bought it and
one day um we just noticed like we couldn't find him he wandered off and never returned yeah we looked and looked and we were heartbroken yeah i mean and so were our friends which was
crazy yeah he was very old it was probably time anyway and so we don't know what happened to him maybe he's made himself at home it's one of our neighbor's houses we just don't know it but
probably that would not surprise me that would be very much how he rolls but he he had a chip but
you know he never came he never came home and so to circle back around why we have mcgonagall um we got her from the shelter and she looked she looked like the cat that mcgonagall is in the
harry potter movies and she's very very full of herself yes she let's shall we say as the british
say she has an air about her she has an air about her and she had she's so sweet yeah and she had
big paws to fill and so she she has big paws and so so the tradition now is that we we name one of
our rescue cats after a character from harry potter so she's mcgonagall yeah so i wonder if we'll ever name it name a cat snape you got to be a black cat yeah we had a black cat but he died
too yeah he was he was a rescue cat too but there was something a little off he was a little off
but we loved him just the same he's just he's a little off anyway we're we're way off topic no one really wants to hear about our cats probably not but even our even our anglophilia goes to our pets our dog laid at my feet his name's grommet our dog in the crate is named winston after winston churchill um folks and help i'm kidding i'm kidding our other cat pearl
she's not named after a british no she's named after a knitting technique um our our basement cat who lives in outside who is like 35 years old who's like yeah she's like 20 years old um no joke
she is like the world's oldest living she's an orange football her name's elizabeth yes but queen elizabeth but she's an outdoors cat because she's got her claws and she likes to be outside
so she doesn't get to come in but she we are responsible pet owners she lives in the basement
She's well taken care of. Last year, I don't even think she went outside that much.
I spend eight months of the year in this house. It's just there's too much snow. Yeah.
Where are we at in time? Okay, we've got 20 minutes. Okay, so one of the things that we have done, was the sleeper to Scotland.
Which was amazing, kind of. Like, that you travel all the night and you wake up in London.
It's, I have an article about it on the site. I'll put it in the show notes. The problem is we didn't really like doing a sleeper train.
It wasn't a great experience. But it, maybe because we didn't know what to expect.
That, and I've got IBS, and so I was inflamed, and I had a very uncomfortable ride. I was in pain pretty much the whole way down. So I don't know if that would happen again on the sleeper train.
So on my list was doing the Cornish sleeper, which is an overnight train from London to Penzance, because it takes like six or seven hours. And I really wanted to do that. But now I'm not so sure if I want to do that.
But maybe I'll give it one more try. You weren't sure, though, too, if the rocking of the train aggravated your issues and contributed to motion sickness?
Yeah, it had started before we were on the train. So maybe we'll give a sleeper train a try again. If you want to go to Scotland, I highly recommend doing the sleeper train.
I mean, it's an experience. And this year, all the trains are going to be new.
So, you know, you could tell. But they're getting brand new trains this year.
It's not that I don't. It's just, it's a lot like the Anglophilia. It's like, all trains, all the time. Trains, trains, trains.
So, there are a couple train things I'd like to do. One of which is, I want to go to the top of Stodonia, the tallest mountain in Wales. I'm not going to walk up the mountain.
Thankfully, the Victorians put in a narrow gauge railway that goes to the top of Stodonia.
I'll wait for you in the bottom at the pub come up as long as it's clear is there a pub up there?
and so I love to there's a lot of heritage railways in Britain heritage railways I jokingly call railways to nowhere Britain has a lot of disused railway lines and train enthusiasts have reopened them. Sorry, that's our water filtration system screaming. It happens every couple of hours. Keeps the pressure.
The full gamut. So, there are usually small lines that are like 5, 10 miles. They're steam trains, usually old train cars. And they have a very vintage train experience that you would have had at the early 20th century. I've been on several of them already, and they're all kind of a type of how they are. And I like them. They're fun. So I'd like to go to all the Heritage Railways around Britain.
There's like 50, so, you know, I could just tick off a few every couple of years. I'd also like to drive a steam train.
No, I'm just saying the Swanage Railway, they have driver experience days where you pay them a large sum of money.
Well, if the apocalypse happens, you will be our guy. You can drive the locomotive.
And then this one, which will probably be one you get dragged along on. I'd like to visit every tube station.
I'll lay out the plan here. I'd like to do the tube challenge, which is the thing where you visit them as quickly as possible in one day and just write all the lines. But remember a couple years ago, I wanted, not a couple years, it was last year, I wanted to do Along the Lines where you ride each tube line and stop at every stop and, like, along the way and do a video and article series about it. So I'd like to do the fast way and the slow way. So the Along the Lines way will take several years, obviously. But, like, eventually visit all the tube stations.
You have fun with that. I'm not knocking your dreams here, and I'm not knocking your bucket list choices.
And the tube is great, and the tube is beautiful, but the older I get, I've got issues with claustrophobia on the tube. Yeah, I just... I wish you the very best with that.
Along the lines of driving. This one's a weird one. People are going to be like, why do you want to do this? Look, I'm...
I didn't say I want to do all the rail lines. All the heritage rail lines. All the actual rail lines. I've seen the video series on YouTube with Jeff and Vicki. That's enough for me. I don't want to do it myself.
There's the M25 right there. It's like 200 and some miles. you can do it in a couple hours as long as you don't have traffic. The joke is that the M25 is Britain's longest car park.
We should do a collab with the guys from the Green Tour and they can build me a pub in the back of the car as we do the M25.
It crosses a huge, beautiful bridge. There's stuff to see. It's not just driving the road.
I once went, when I was sitting at Tunbridge Wells, I had to take it from Seven Oaks all the way to Heathrow. That was at 5 in the morning. That was the only one on the road.
So I'd like to drive the M25. I'd also like to visit every National Trust property.
You know, I love Stately Homes, but they don't just own Stately Homes. They own mills and...
Old factories and parks and all kinds of interesting things. So I'd like to just visit them all, mostly because I have a membership at the Royal Oak and it's free for us to do that.
And I think that it's impossible to get bored at a National Trust property. Like you have to try and be bored at that point. There's so much to do.
They put a lot of work into making it an all-day experience. And I don't want to get on about the National Trust. We have a podcast from a few weeks ago about the National Trust. But that's something I'd like to do.
One of the things that was on my list they did a few years ago back in 2016 was, or was it 2017?
It all runs together. As I did a summer course at Oxford. I'd like to do that again. They occasionally do a Churchill course I really like to do that Or you know get a graduate degree From Oxford Oh guys Something I don't need to do Or could afford to do Or probably don't even have the GPA that would let me in on But you know
If anything I'd like to do another summer course Because I Like Oxford in the summer
is so lovely well isn't that's like key britishness right yeah like it's just beautiful
yeah and the the golden stone and the golden summer sunlight it doesn't get dark till like 10 o'clock at night and there's so much going on at Oxford there's concerts and outdoor theater and like like when I was there uh from my last course like there was just so much to see and do like it was amazing and then when it rains like on the stone and it's just it's great like I really want to go back to Oxford this summer and there's a great bookstore there so I'd like to do one of those again and then have you thought of anything more while we've been sitting here alright then it's time for the final two the big ones the big one is I would like to fly in a spitfire that's really cool um for those unfamiliar spitfire is the iconic airplane from world war ii that is largely responsible for winning the battle of britain although the hurricane played a role i'm not knocking the hurricane letters to jonathan at Anglotopia but it it's it's the spitfire is like part of that whole world war ii mythology the british has built around themselves it's a symbol of the Battle of Britain.
When we were there for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, oh this is the craziest thing. We went, we had Will with us and he was like maybe 18 months and so we went down to the park to go get a spot down by the river, but it was so crowded that it was, like, scary, like a crush of people, and we had, like, a kid in a stroller, and it was just too much. So we went back to our flat on the Brompton Road, not far from Harrods, and we were, like, high up. We weren't, like, a penthouse, but... And so we watched it on telly, which is hilarious, with tea and a fire. even though it was June, it was freezing and raining outside. And then, so the announcer said on the TV, like,
Yeah, get ready. And, like, before we could see it, we could feel it. Like, the whole flat, like, vibrated. And I just, I said to John, like, and then they did come right over, they came right over the flat, and, like, we went from a vibrating, like, to a rattle. And it was by far one of the coolest experiences.
The Battle of Brit Memorial Flight is a wing of the RAF that maintains their classic planes for special events and whatnot. And they usually bring them out for the Diamond Jubilees or the Royal Weddings. I saw them at the Royal Wedding as well. And usually it's a Lancaster bomber, which is the bomber that the famous Dan Buster's raid bomber a spitfire and a hurricane. And when those things fly by, they...
The British have a phrase for it. They call it the sound of victory. Lay down, Gromit. Sorry, he's demanding his dinner. His dinner time. He's a crotchety old man. He wants to eat right on schedule. So there are two companies now that have taken the trainer spitfires that have two seats. And you can pay to have a flight experience and a Spitfire. Fully restored, the Merlin engine and everything. It costs about, last time I checked, it was like 2,500 pounds, which is like $4,000. It's a lot of money, which is why it's a bucket list thing.
I don't think any of the things that we've said here won't cost a lot of money. Yeah, I mean, it's a bucket list.
It's a dream list. and so one of these days I'm going to save my money and I'm going to go do this. Maybe we'll do it in the summer we do the season because you should do it in the summer. And they take you on a flight over the White Cliffs of Dover. They film it for you. You get to put on the flight suit and like have your own little you know you can hum you can hum Land of Hope and Glory while you're on your flight.
Yeah and so that's something I really really want to do and if anybody from those companies
listening and would like some free promotion on Anglotopia.net i will write an article series that you will love if you would like to just you know invite sponsor sponsor me on board
um i am not above shamelessly using using my website to get thanks i'm not above it oh man so um yeah i really want to fly to spitfire that's that's that's yeah and then my final thing She's going to roll her eyes. It's not really a travel thing. It's more of an Anglophile thing. It's one day I want to become a British citizen. So one day I want to raise my hand and make the oath to...
Because it's a long-term... It'll probably take 20 or 30 years for this to even happen because we have to move there for one, which is very difficult. And then we have to stay there for, I think it's seven years.
When I was at the RWI, the author sponsor was sitting across from me at the farm table. And I was wearing my green hat.
in my country garb with my boots yeah he's like jonathan you really do look look like an english countryman it was a nice thing anybody's ever said to be well you know what's kind of funny about that
too is okay so because you're ginger like in a crowd i could spot john right away in britain you look like every man like you are hard to spot in a crowd which i think is really funny actually
My family did the Ancestry DNA. I'm 75% British, so I have pale skin right here. I fit right in, right? So, you know, I have another shameless plug for the book. There's a chapter in the book about this. One day we went on a cottage somewhere. We want to live a British life, become British, get a British passport. And, you know, one day I'd like to just come to Britain from America and go through the citizen line and be welcomed home. And, yeah, I mean.
Although I don't know There was that big news article Was it last week or two weeks ago?
There's a reason we invented airplanes I don't necessarily really want to do this But I've heard from people who have done it
whole luxury hotel experience quiet grommet we'll feed you in a minute in a minute that luxury hotel
experience you like i mean it's literally the lap of luxury on the open sea yeah but you know yeah i don't know so um it doesn't have a sale it's not a proper boat right doesn't have a sale
not that i would really be interested i don't know i don't know so um what would be on your
britain bucket list feel free to leave a comment on the youtube channel or on the facebook post
that will go out with us or on the website or if you hear your ideas if you've done any of these
experiences yeah if you've done any of these we'd love to hear any tips or advice um that's one of the most that's one of the great things about running this website is we get lots of great
Speaker 6 advice when we ask for it so um yeah feel free to send us any ideas and what your bucket list things are or any tips so thank you bye bye
