Tag: travel

Up Close to Oxford’s Bridge of Sighs and Other Bits from Abroad

Random observations from two weeks in England…

We spent an educational afternoon at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, taking in the exhibits. One highlight was tea and dessert amid the opulent surroundings of the world’s first museum café, built in 1852. Europe has America beat hands down in terms of offering plenty of places for folks to gather, with varied food and drink offerings at reasonable prices.

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Bridge of Sighs

We were fortunate to spend two nights in guest quarters at Hertford College in Oxford, where Marilynn gave a talk. We stayed about 15 feet from the Bridge of Sighs, a famous decorative bridge that connects two parts of the college and is modelled on a similar (and older) structure in Venice. That was the good news. The bad news is that from about 8:30 a.m., tour groups gathered under our bedroom windows for a history lesson. Then from about 10 p.m., loud students spilled from the alley leading to the Turf Tavern, a semi-famous pub that offers “an Education in Intoxication.”

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My apologies to the young woman on the train from Birmingham to Oxford who was either copying passages from the New Testament or writing her impressions of scripture while I was reading horror master Clive Barker’s novel “The Scarlet Gospels” about Pinhead, the demon from the “Hellraiser” movies. Heaven and hell, indeed!

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Many European hotels still don’t have air conditioning, including the hotel in Birmingham the Friday we attended the Elbow concert. I couldn’t figure out how to defeat the device that only allowed opened the window about two inches until we got back at past 11. Consequently, we kept the windows wide open that night. By 6 a.m., however, we felt like we were sleeping rough by the motorway, the traffic noise was so bad.

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When traveling, we always find something to climb, something to ride, and a drunkie cab. Fortunately, we saw no drunkie cab in Oxford, but Marilynn and I did climb Carfax Tower, which dates to the 13th century and offers nice views of the city. I was most impressed it wasn’t named for the company that sells wreck reports on used cars. According to displays in the tower, “carfax” is derived from the Latin word “quadrifurcus,” meaning four. The tower is still near the intersection of four central roads in Oxford.

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We traveled many miles during our two weeks in England, much of it to catch up with colleagues and old friends. Our sincere thanks to everyone who hosted us, met us for a meal, or let us stay the weekend in the Cotswolds (thinking of you, Michael and Aleksandra!).

A ‘Fine Mess’ of a Time at Elbow Concert

Rock concert or Laurel and Hardy convention? Across a two-week adventure, I only had one request of Marilynn: to see one of my favorite bands, Elbow, which released its 10th studio album in March and was touring the UK while we were in country.

If you haven’t heard of Elbow, I highly recommend a listen (or two, or three). The Manchester-based band has been together since the members were teenagers, and I became aware of them by listening to the totally free and eclectic Internet radio station Radio Paradise (more on that later). Elbow is, in a word, magnificent, something you will understand figuratively and literally after clicking the link in this sentence.

We traveled by train from Oxford to Birmingham, walked from the station to our hotel near the venue, entered the lobby—and saw a bunch of people in fezzes and brightly colored tropical apparel. We had unwittingly intruded on the England convention of Sons of the Desert, an appreciation society for the comedy duo of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, who made 107 film appearances from the late 1920s to the mid-1950s.

Although Laurel has the English connection from his birth in the Lake District, apparently it was the American Hardy who approved creating the society. He didn’t want it called a fan club, according to my new friend Bob, who was nursing a pint in the hotel lounge when I peppered him and his mates with questions about these odd-looking people.

“Sons of the Desert” is their 1933 film where they join a lodge (hence those fezzes), and each chapter of the society, named after one of their films, is called a “tent.” Hardy was born in Harlem, Georgia, where the Laurel and Hardy Museum of Georgia is located. Harlem, about 20 miles west of Augusta, also hosts an annual Oliver Hardy Festival. The next festival is on Oct. 5.

Elbow Not to Be Missed

Meanwhile, back in Birmingham, we relaxed at the aquatics facility attached to the hotel and had a quick dinner before heading to the venue, a short walk away along a footpath next to the motorway.

While the opening act wasn’t to our taste, Elbow delivered a hit-packed, audience-friendly two-hour set that left everyone fully sated and breathless after singing the refrain from their biggest hit, “One Day Like This.” Despite the limited tour, Elbow created a full rock ‘n’ roll experience for the 8,500 or so people in attendance.

Elbow is the third performer we have traveled to listen to as a direct result of listing to Radio Paradise, a listener-supported internet radio station. We also are great fans of Vienna Teng (we saw her in D.C. before she played at Eddie’s Attic in Decatur), and Mindy Smith (ditto Eddie’s Attic but also saw her at City Winery in Nashville). I’m still waiting for Dengue Fever or Zola Blood to play in Atlanta, though.

Radio Paradise is programmed by a former FM radio station disc jockey from a time when DJs played whatever the hell they wanted. He has great taste in music across a wide variety of genres, so you’ll hear Kings of Leon, then Billie Holiday, First Aid Kit, Mozart, and world music you likely won’t hear anywhere else. It all works beautifully, but if something isn’t to your liking, you hit a button and something else plays. The station has a mainstream rock mix, mellow mix, world mix, and a favorites mix if you register and rate at least 100 songs. It’s great, it’s free, and you should check it out.

As the RP T-shirt says: Eclectic as F**k.

Journey to London Fraught with Delays

Half-day trip turns into all-day adventure.

A clusterfuck enclosed in a shit sandwich and baked in a sardine tin. That aptly describes what should have been a routine train journey from Penrith in the Lake District of England, where we visited friends, to London, our next destination.

Yes, another end-of-semester and another European adventure, this time two weeks in England for Marilynn and me. She’s giving talks in Oxford and Manchester and meeting up with literature colleagues and friends. I’m along for the ride, but after this day I may want to just stay put.

Little did we know when planning our itinerary that the national railway would want to work on nearly 500 train projects over a long weekend, what’s called a bank holiday here. It’s the equivalent of closing I-75 during spring break.

A direct train from Penrith to London became four separate legs, starting with a bus to our first stop. The 60-seater bus to Oxenholme traversed the M6 motorway before exiting on a goat-trail-sized roadway that corkscrewed its way through sheep fields into a sleepy town on an early Sunday morning. Although I wasn’t driving, it was clear this route wasn’t meant for a large bus. I dubbed the road Beelzebub’s Bunghole, which our driver handled with aplomb.

An Oxymoron, Or Just a Moron?

We successfully made the first transfer to a train bound for Manchester, where the trip we’d planned (and made reservations for) fell apart quickly. At least we’d packed a lunch, but the next train was cancelled due to “overcrowding.” Isn’t it an oxymoron (or just a moron) to run fewer trains because there is an excess of demand?

Marilynn handles the travel planning, checking the national rail journey planner on her phone while muttering under her breath about scheduled trains that suddenly get cancelled or the app showing trains the day before the date she’s specified.

After an hour’s wait, the train that had been sitting on the tracks the entire time suddenly became the next train on our journey, and we exited at Sheffield. With apologies to the fine people of Sheffield, I’ll always remember the city from a previous journey when Marilynn, Declan, and I were eating an early morning breakfast at a Wetherspoon’s pub, where four blokes were having pints — apparently before a day’s work. Gotta love pre-work drinkies!

Following another wait, we managed seats on a direct train to London, even snagging unreserved seats in a carriage where 90% of the seats were reserved for some part of the journey. We shared a carriage with far too many others, including a hen party of women in bright pink cowboy hats and some bloke directly behind us who apparently had been in a stage production of “Shawshank Redemption” because he wouldn’t shut the fuck up about it.

Although this train journey was crowded, it didn’t compare to the trip we took last summer from Belfast to Derry, full of fans from the North who were travelling to Croke Park to root for their favorite hurling teams. People were jammed into the carriage with little room to move. Again, we all managed seats, and Declan and I shared Moretti beers with a couple of hurling fans who had come prepared.

Nearly 10 hours after we started (and five hours later than planned), we finally reached our hotel, tired but ready for our next European adventure.

You’d think at this point that our travel troubles would be over. But we also didn’t know that various train operators were planning an industrial action (British for labor strike) for various days next week. Given our travel luck so far, there will be more to this tale soon.