The Flight: The Halifax to London flight is six hours long and runs overnight. In my experience (i.e., all two times I have flown it), it has always been on what must be the oldest aircraft in the Air Canada fleet - no seat-back screens, stained floors, musty seats, yellowed plastics; it's like an extended road trip in a vintage station wagon, but with much much less room. Courtesy of the giant pint of beer I had pre-boarding, I managed to sleep through most of the flight, at least until they woke us up for the shitty breakfast. I then watched the last two-thirds of The Hunt For Red October without audio, because I couldn't be bothered to grab my headphones, which made the film something of a puzzle. I had forgotten that Sean Connery was on the Russian sub...
Minor celebrity on our flight - a certain heavy-set weatherman from a certain CTV morning news program. Hint, it rhymes with Chef Shmutcheson.
The Trains: Travel to and from London is pretty easy and low stress thanks to the wonderful but kinda pricey train system. And at 10:00 on a Wednesday morning, heading away from the city, they're pretty much empty. They also seemed to be liscenced. Also, these are a good way to see a lot of the countryside while still managing to stay dry. Also also, did I mention that there were near-gale force winds and torrential downpours that day? Yup.
Stonehenge: The rain. The wind. The tourists. A short guided double-decker bus ride from Salisbury (where we were instructed to leave our luggage at a local bar, The Cat), Stonehenge sits disappointingly close to the highway. When you arrive, you can pick up an audio device that plays narrative mp3s for you at indicated locations on the brief paved loop around the ancient mysterious ring o' stones. The gist: no one's really sure what Stonehenge was (likely just a ceremonial gathering place), but it was most certainly not a druid temple or an ancient observatory or a place of ritual human sacrifice. And it wasn't built by aliens. Booo. It was pretty neat, but would have been a lot neater had we been able to climb around the rocks, at dusk, on a clear day, with no one else around. Alas, the magic was... minimal; lost in the throngs of school kids and elderly ladies.
The Hotel: Our hotel, The Grange, is a reworked farmhouse in a tiny super-scenic village of other actual farmhouses, about two hours west of London. Oborne is the village, and it is a ten minute walk from the equally scenic town of Sherborne. Upon arriving here, I crashed immediately, but was able to take in some sights the next day...
The Sights: Once you get off of the main motorways and thoroughfares, the roads in England are impossibly narrow, and instead of shoulders there are either sheer walls of shrubbery (typically thorned) or a cobblestone wall. I'm amazed that there are not thousands of both traffic and pedestrian deaths each day (which there might very well be). Anyways, the roads from Oborne to Sherborne do have a sidewalk, but said sidewalk is lined with the aforementioned thorn shrubberies, and at least one giant dead badger. Right, the sights...
Old Sherborne Castle was originally built in the 1100s and is differentiated from the New Sherborne Castle ("new" as in 1590) in that it is no longer standing. Very cool.
Cheap Street is the main street of Sherborne and is lined with cool local shops, pubs, multinational franchises, cafes, and pubs. Everything is old and there are a surprising number of homes still with thatch roofing. In fact, the rows and rows of neat little lined rooftops - each with a bent and slanted antenna poking from the chimney - are what I usually associate with the U.K., maybe from old episodes of Coronation Street or SuperGran or Monty Python or whatever. Either way - a very striking visual, IMO, and as such, I took a whack of photos of roofing.
Sherborne Abbey is a huge old church smack-dab in the centre of town. And that's about it. Looking at Flickr when I got home, I realized that the inside is pretty cool too, but I didn't go in... woops.
The Work: Oh yeah, I did have to do some work too. It sucked.
The Food: When I was growing up, we had a friend from England. His mother was the worst cook, maybe ever. Everything was so bland and watery and covered in pepper - few stayed over for dinner more than once. Having said that, the food I had was absolutely nothing like that. Thankfully.
The Return: Was much smoother than the trip over, and also had another minor Canadian celebrity on board - a certain female curling champion who also has a gig as a CBC sportscaster, and who is surprisingly short in person...
Sheesh, that took a while. I need to go have a nap.
More pics are up on my Flickr gallery, which can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/muiseam/sets/72157606167088277/...
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