Category Archives: Opinion

England ’23 – The City of London (and other bits)

26 Sunday Nov 2023

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Today was a planned slow start, and we didn’t get out of the flat until 1pm, which I suppose is proper holiday mode.

A leisurely run into Liverpool Street station on the Overground was followed by a walk through the City of London, which was full of City types on their lunch break. We stopped in Boots, then Sainsbury’s for supplies, then wandered into a very windswept Leadenhall Market. It’s a high vaulted Victorian arcade with some seriously fancy ironwork on show, and I’d never visited before. Like everywhere else, it was full of people on their lunchbreaks, just like I had been forty years previously.

Then we walked down the gently sloping roads to the Monument. It’s a bit like a squat Nelson’s Column and has golden ball of fire on the top that signifies this was the approximate starting point of the Great Fire of London in 1666. You can go up inside the column and stand on a little balcony at the top, and I have done that before. But it has 311 spiral steps that take you up around 200 feet, which for old farts like us is a bit much. You do get a certificate if you make to the top, and presumably back down again, though. Fortunately, it was closed for lunch.

Then we followed the river, past the old Billingsgate fish market, to one of the City’s ruined churches, St. Dunstan’s, which is now given over to a curiously exotic garden. Apart from the surprising number of people in there on a cold November afternoon, it was a calm and beautiful place right in the City, and only yards from the Tower of London. There were notices about not using the place as a set for professional photography without permission, and there were some people in there with photographic paraphernalia, but at a guess I’d have said it was an Internet “Influencer” because the photographers were using their phones to record the pictures, which is hardly professional.

The Tower was looking fine in the sunshine, and of course was packed with tourists, so we skirted around the back (still a fine view) and made our way to St. Katherine Dock. This was the closest dock to the Pool of London and one of the first to cease trading as goods started to be moved in ISO containers in the 1960s. It’s been under redevelopment for decades and is now a place for expensive boats and expensive flats and offices. That said, there are still a fair few council flats to the eastern end, so it’s not all posh. There are loads of bars and restaurants, and it was to the Dickens Inn that we were headed. It’s situated in an old wooden warehouse, the origin of which I’m not sure, but I do know that in 1970 it wasn’t at its current location. It has been rebuilt, though, and is a popular place to drink for locals and tourists alike. The kitchen wasn’t open when arrived, but we had a drink and waited. To be honest, the grub was a little disappointing, but we were tired and would probably have eaten anything. A dull but interesting point is that the place is known as St. Katherine Dock, not St. Katherine’s Docks. When I was using the TfL bus app, I couldn’t locate it using the possessive and plural form. Who knew that it wasn’t St. Katherine’s personal dock, and that there was only one of them?

As it was getting dark, my planned walk along the river gave way to a bus ride to Wapping Station, following more or less the same route. There I posed for photographs in a vain attempt to recreate Sidney Poitier’s emergence from the station in the title sequence of the film To Sir With Love. Then we had a short walk along Wapping Wall (actually a cobbled street lined with warehouses, or at least buildings that had once been warehouses) to the Prospect of Whitby pub. The walk was fascinating, the narrow cobbled street lined with the old warehouses, albeit that they were now occupied by monied people rather than goods offloaded from ships. Whatever I think about it, they are at least keeping the place vibrant.

The Prospect of Whitby is a fine old nineteenth-century pub that replaced earlier pubs on the same site. It is claimed to be London’s oldest riverside pub, and I have no reason to doubt that. Because it was dark, we couldn’t see that it was right on the river, but we learned some of its colourful history from a nice little printed card on the table. The menu in the pub looked so inviting that me and the good Mrs. Mayne decided on a second dinner, barely two hours after the last one, and what a good decision that turned out to be. Although just “light bites”, the beetroot tart and salmon fishcakes were simply excellent.

Actually, the whole visit was great. The pub is quite authentic and was filled with people having a good time, and while it was quite noisy, it all added to the atmosphere. It seemed a bit Dickensian, especially with the Christmas decorations up, and I half expected Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim to come along the street. That’s not such an odd notion of course, because this is one of the very areas that Dickens wrote about.

I did see a fox come trotting down the road, though. He stopped to pee on an e-bike, then carried on with his mission. The things you see…

We walked back to Wapping station to catch a train north to Dalston Junction and were pleasantly surprised to see that the train platform, under the street, was at the northern end of the Marc and Isambard Brunel tunnel under the river, completed in 1843. It was originally built for horse and cart traffic, but was more used by pedestrians, and became a tourist attraction. In 1869 it was converted to rail traffic, and that’s what it’s used for today. Mind you, it looked like any other underground railway tunnel to me, and the only thing a little odd about Wapping station was the really narrow platforms.

At Dalston Junction we left the train and did a bit of evening shopping before getting on a number 56 bus and heading home. Kingsland High Street was so busy given the relatively late hour. We remarked that provided you had some money, you’d never starve in London, given all the food outlets.

It had been a long and enjoyable day, the walk in the City proving that there is history on every corner, and in such a small space. Had we gone on the Tube, we’d have missed it all. We were both shattered, though and crashed out early, because our next run out was to be to Midlands.

England ’23 – A Busy Day

25 Saturday Nov 2023

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Our first port of call today was Westminster Bridge again, this time to Facetime with Charlie for the full twelve bongs of Big Ben, at midday of course.

It was raining when we arrived, and the streets around were thronged with tourists, and I’m talking three deep on the pavement here. We had a little while to wait so headed to a pub. It was packed, so we went along Whitehall to the next pub, The Red Lion. Officially it’s on Parliament Street, but who cares when there’s the prospect of a pint of Fuller’s ESB coming your way?

We did find a couple of stools to sit on here, so we stayed. When I was waiting to order, the barman was explaining the Parliamentary Division Bell to a couple of tourists. The Division Bell is a bell that sounds in Parliament when the house “divides” to vote on something. As I caught another barman’s eye he said, “It’s up there”.

I said, “What’s up there?”.

He said, “The Division Bell”.

I said, “I only want a beer”.

At this point he realised that it wasn’t me asking about the bell. Cue one very confused young barman.

Anyway, there is a Division Bell in this pub, as there is in most of the buildings along Whitehall and Downing Street, that sounds when the House is about vote. It lets people like MPs and Lords know to put down whatever they’re doing and head over to the House of Commons, just at the end of the street. Voting in the House has to be done in person, of course. The Division Bell didn’t sound when we were in the pub, so I could enjoy my excellent beer in peace. Or relative peace, because like all other pubs in Central London, this one was quite noisy.

Back to the task in hand, off we scuttled in the rain to Westminster Bridge. The tourists were all there, regardless of the deluge that was about to ensue, but we managed to get onto the south side of the bridge. The rain was hammering down, but we stood fully five minutes in it, talking to Charlie and Emma in Canada, and me recording the event. The Quarter chimes were just starting when a tourist fellow a few feet away started hollering at the top of his voice for his kids to come back to him. I hollered, quite fairly I thought, “Stop shouting!”, and while he grumbled a bit, he did stop shouting. I know he was just trying to attract his kids’ attention, but he effectively drowned out most of the Quarter chimes. Tsk. I have it all on video.

Our immediate plans had to change because the rain was so heavy, and we were soaked through. We decided to head to South Kensington and the Victoria and Albert (V&A) museum.

There is a tunnel which runs from the tube station to the V&A, and the other museums, so as we walked to the museum, we stayed out of the rain and away from the traffic, which was good. What wasn’t so good was the stream of visitors heading to the V&A with us, and the galleries closest to that tunnel entrance were packed. The queue for the Café was huge, as was the queue for the toilets, so we moved off to the Diva exhibition of British Fashion through the ages.

I’m sure that the vast numbers in the museum that day were in part due to the weather. Like all the major museums in the UK, it’s free to enter, so it makes a great place to get out of the rain. I’m still slightly shocked, though, at the sheer numbers of visitors in mid-November. What must it be like in the Summer?

We looked at the fashions, which were fascinating, then at all manner of domestic historical items that made up people’s homes through the centuries. While it was all stuff from the homes of the wealthy and well-to-do, it was still really interesting. The problem with the V&A, and the other museums, is that it is vast. We wandered around for an hour two before fatigue overtook us, and we’d barely seen anything. Like the man in the orange V&A jacket said, you really need to decide what you’re going to look at before you arrive, and just go straight there. He’s not wrong.

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The rain had stopped, and we still had some daylight, so we decided to head to Chelsea Football Club’s ground and its superstore, to buy some gewgaws. Well, you have to, really. We hadn’t eaten, so we stopped for a sausage roll and a Samosa from a little kiosk at the tube station, then headed west on the Underground. We got to Earls Court, ready to change onto a Wimbledon train when the announcement came over the PA system that there was a trespasser on the tracks at High Street Kensington, so all Wimbledon trains were stopped. What to do, what to do?

We decided to continue on foot, despite the fatigue, but then I messed up. When you leave a tube station, there are often many exits, and looking at my A to Z map, I incorrectly assumed we had left by the exit on Warwick Road. Not so, apparently. I am sensible enough to keep checking the map, but to put the mistake right it added about 15 minutes walking (that maybe an exaggeration). On the way, though, we were able to walk through Brompton Cemetery, which was on our list of things to do anyway. Unfortunately, it was 3:35pm and the gates closed at 4pm, so we were on a bit of a time crunch, not least because it’s a big place and we had to walk from one end to the other. I was panicking about getting locked in, so it was all a bit of a rush. However, we found the plot we were looking for and took a squillion photographs.

As we were heading to the gates of the Cemetery, a Royal Parks car came through with a loudspeaker on it, telling us all to vamoose, and we made it with barely a minute to spare. Like the museum, the Cemetery is so full of interesting stuff that you really need much, much longer to explore.

Chelsea FC and Stamford Bridge were excellent, even if the prices of stuff in their shop were daylight robbery, and as it was getting dark we mooched over to Fulham Broadway tube station to get the Underground back into the West End. We’d decided to visit the Marquess of Anglesey pub in Bow Street, Covent Garden, because that was the site of my first pint of beer in London, when my dear departed older brother met me there in 1977. I remember the occasion well, and that the beer was 26p a pint.

On the way to the pub I thought it wise to check out a restaurant to eat at, because although the pub advertised meals, I had my doubts. We eventually ate in the Wildwood Italian restaurant, right opposite the Royal Opera House, where we were skillfully upsold an expensive bottle of Negrini water. Not that the restaurant was any more expensive than anywhere else, but the waiters were clearly pushing to maximise the bill, and why not? We did make it to the pub, and it was packed. The noise level was huge, like all the other pubs we’d been into, and it’s just people socialising, not eating or trying to get drunk; that’s how English pubs work, mainly the socialising.

After the one drink, we went outside and had a lovely walk around Covent Garden. We saw the street in which Victorian Maynes had lived, and saw their church where they were baptised and married. The old market building, still boarded up when I first went to London in 1977, two years after it has stopped being a market, was lit up in its Christmas finery. At 7pm, it was packed with people, and most of the shops that now occupy the market were doing a good trade. From there we walked up Neal Street towards where the aforementioned dear departed brother used to live. We stopped on the way to pick up cupcakes (of course we did), then ambled up towards St. Giles. Neal Street used to be almost entirely greengrocers’ shops (being close to the market, of course). Those shops didn’t have windows and doors, but opened straight onto the street, so at night they were closed up with boards. If you went down there on a Sunday, it was a ghost town of boarded shopfronts. Now the street is full of very trendy shops and packed with people, seemingly 24/7.

St. Giles was the site of my first workplace in London, although the building has long since been demolished and replaced by something big and orange. The Angel pub is still there, as is the convenience store next door, the home of my youthful Mars Bar cravings.

We crossed New Compton Street which was, as my family tree research informed me, the home to another part of the Mayne dynasty. It’s all post-war development now, but I never had any idea that my ancestors had been so close when I worked just across the street.

Our target for the evening was Oxford Street, London’s main shopping street, to see the Christmas lights. After Covent Garden’s impressive display, I’m afraid Oxford Street’s offering was paltry. Somehow, Oxford Street always was a bit of a disappointment.

Heading back to Lower Clapton (the official area designation, I’m told), Liverpool Street Station was a bit of mess because there had been a “Passenger Incident” that was affecting trains on the line we were to use. As I had my lucky mascot (t’wife) with me, there was a train waiting to leave, and although it was standing room only because so many other trains had been cancelled, we reasoned it was only four stops, so on we hopped. Two passenger incidents on the same day, it must be some kind of record.

That was a long day, and we were both shattered, but we had covered an awful lot of ground and ticked a few things off the list, so it was all good.

England ’23 – Too Much Stuff

25 Saturday Nov 2023

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A late start for us this morning, but an interesting day unfolded before us.

Cards on the table here, we bought too much stuff. So much stuff that we had to buy another case to take it all home. We had contemplated bringing an empty case with us, in anticipation, but that has logistical issues as well. So, we found ourselves on the number 30 bus to Marble Arch, to buy a case in Marks and Spencer.

It may seem a bit odd to do a 50 minute bus ride to buy a case when there are lots of other places you can buy a case, but the M&S Flagship store had what we wanted, and a few other things, and well, we do like a bus ride through the hugely fascinating streets of Hackney and Islington.

I had forgotten just how big that M&S store at Marble Arch is. It’s on four floors and is pretty much an old fashioned department store, but it looked as M&S should, and it smelled like M&S should as well. We bought what we needed and decided to take it straight back to the flat, on the bus, as it’s not a great sightseeing look to be wheeling a suitcase around.

Or is it?

There are hordes of people in London wheeling flight-sized cases around. They can’t all be prepared for an unexpected stopover somewhere, so I’m speculating that these are the replacements for briefcases and big handbags. Sure, they can be wheeled, but even the flight-sized cases are pretty chunky. Still, I guess it’s fashionable. (Not my photo).

On our way to the bus stop, we paused on the corner of Gloucester Place and Portman Square to admire the big house that was once the residence of an ancestor of mine. Mary Anne (Polly) Mayne was born in South Africa in 1856. In 1880 she married Robert English, a man of private means, and moved to London. In the 1911 census, she’s shown as living in the big house I pictured below, with, get this, her family and 11 servants. It’s some pile. Robert died in 1914 and is buried, along with Polly, in London’s Brompton Cemetery. There’s a grave we intend to visit.

We took a lazy day back in Hackney (or is it Clapton?), did some laundry and then headed out to Waterloo to meet up with my brother and his wife who’d come up on the train from Hampshire.

We finally arrived back in Clapton (or is it Hackney?) at around 10pm, absolutely exhausted. It’s a tough gig this holiday lark.

England ’23 – Welcome to London

24 Friday Nov 2023

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Our first full day in London was a late start for us. It was Remembrance Parade Day in Whitehall, so we watched it on the TV in the flat. I’m not really a flag-waver, or someone who makes a big deal about veterans and service, but I do like the annual ceremony that takes place here in London. Indeed, I try to watch the one in Ottawa, but that’s often during the week as it’s marked on September 11th rather than the following Sunday as it is in the UK.


Perhaps it’s time to say that I’m uncomfortable with the growing sentimentality around Remembrance Day and the wearing of poppies, so I devote a little time to think about those young lives lost in the many wars inflicted upon us, and to think of the families that lost their men (and women, of course), especially when war became industrialised. It has become more poignant for me as I discover more ancestors in my family tree who perished, particularly in the First World War.


Anyway, leaving later than planned, we caught a bus into the City of London. It stopped short of our intended target, St. Paul’s Cathedral, so we walked from the Barbican and London Wall. Walking was a good idea because we came across a number of things that we’d kind of earmarked to see. First it was the church of St. Botolph-without-Aldersgate, now the London City Presbyterian Church, and the wonderful Postman’s Park on what had been the church’s burial ground. We had been watching John Rogers’ fabulous London Walk videos on YouTube, and this was one of his stops on his Churches series.
There was a service just finishing inside the church, and the park was one of those green corners of calm that you find all over London, but this one is special because of an art installation, the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice. It’s a roofed bench with a series of painted enamel tiles on the wall that describe, well, acts of self-sacrifice. It’s by the artist G F Watts and was unveiled in 1900. The people mentioned on the tiles are not well known people, just ordinary folk doing ordinary jobs, but doing extraordinary things. This was a great way to start the day.

Then it was down to St. Paul’s (I never appreciated the size of the place), just to mooch around as it’s not open to tourists on a Sunday, and quite right, too. The Remembrance Day service had not long finished so the gardens were full of commemorative poppies, which were a nice splash of red on a dull day.

I should say that I’m not really a church enthusiast, or religious, but the City of London is defined by its churches. There were over 100 in the Square Mile prior to the Great Fire of 1666, but that number is much reduced these days. However, Sir Christoper Wren, and a few other architects, rebuilt many after the fire. A few have been lost to German bombing, and a few more through the need to expand the business heart of London, but there are still 59 churches in the City, and you can’t turn a corner without finding one. They are undeniably beautiful, standing or ruined, and make a brilliant contrast to the steel and glass of the modern structures that surround them.

We sat in Paternoster Square, on a very cold stone bench to eat our lunch, then rambled though the Square Mile to find a shop to buy some stuff. We passed more churches, The Bank of England, The Royal Exchange, The Mansion House, and quite a lot of other stuff we didn’t recognise. This was all in a ten minute walk. It’s fantastic history, crammed into a very small area.

The shop in which we were buying stuff was TK Maxx, and very popular it is, too. The Canadian equivalent would be Winners. The place had way too much stock on the shop floor, there were too many people in there and it was a zoo. Stuff bought, we left.

We had a plan to be on Westminster Bridge for four o’clock, so hot-footed it to Bank underground and the long and winding walk, underground, to the District Line, which is in fact Monument station. A quick look at the map confirmed that it would have been far quicker to walk to Monument in the first place. Hey-ho.

We made it to Westminster on time, but I was a bit taken aback at the sheer numbers of tourists thronging the place on a cold November afternoon. It was probably thanks to the Remembrance Day shenanigans. We FaceTimed the Grand-baby so he could hear Big Ben, about which he was more excited than a three-year-old should be.

Eventually we fell into a pub on Whitehall, although not before admiring the poppy wreaths at the Cenotaph, and pulling faces in front of the MoD Main Building. Beer and a wee was on the menu, but the footy was on the TV, so we parked ourselves in front of that for a couple of hours. All the pubs down there were heaving with men wearing medals, and they’d done well as most had been there since the morning. The music in the pub was unnecessarily loud, although I may only have felt that because I am now officially an old git. Not a pensioner yet, though, that’s next year.

England ’23 – Heading to That London

24 Friday Nov 2023

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My missus is good at logistics, so she did the packing, ready for us to head down the motorway to London first thing. We were more or less on time as we headed out of Holmfirth for the last time.

The car’s navigation system plotted a route for us, but I ignored her and made for the M1 on my favoured route, despite her ever-increasing anxiety as I deviated. It being Saturday, the motorway southbound was busy, but not with trucks, just (mostly) cars. It was slow around Sheffield, but never to the point of stopping, and apart from a natural break at the Watford Gap Services, we had a clear run to our lunch appointment in Northampton.

Rejoining the M1 at about three in the afternoon, the traffic still wasn’t too bad, and we got to the North Circular pretty much without stopping. Then it was London traffic, but you’d expect that.

We arrived in Lower Clapton/Hackney Downs at our rented flat just as the sun was disappearing, had a breather, dropped the bags off, then climbed back into the car to return it to the rental company at Heathrow.

My first mistake was deciding to allow the Navi to guide me. Before I knew what was happening on the dark and busy streets, I was heading south down Old Street and into the London Congestion Zone. I was really trying to avoid getting stiffed for another £15 to enter the zone, but I genuinely didn’t see the signs. The traffic was hideous, and we crawled along the edge of the Square Mile, up into Holborn (and past a lot of places I have worked), then I decided to go my way to airport rather than that decided by the lady in the Navi. A crawl up Southampton Row to Russell Square, then Tavistock Square, and we eventually emerged onto the Euston Road. My plan was to use the A40 up to Hanger Lane, not the most direct route for sure, then run down the North Circular to Chiswick to pick up the A4 and M4. My idea was that I could refuel the car at Chiswick, and that plan actually worked out. But we crawled all the way from Euston to Hangar Lane, bought petrol in Chiswick as planned, and joined the thousands of other slow moving vehicles on the M4. We did eventually get to Heathrow Terminal 5, and after a bit of searching, found the Sofitel and the Sixt car returns. It took us longer to cross London, around 35 miles, than it did to drive all the way down from Holmfirth, which was 188 miles. That’s driving in London for you.

I enjoyed the little Audi A3 we had, but after a fair few thousands of miles, I was happy to park her and get out onto public transport. We had tickets for the Heathrow Express train and were in London’s Paddington station very quickly. From there it was the Tube to Liverpool Street, an overground train to Hackney Downs, and a ten minute walk to get back to the flat. No driving. Wonderful.

As a postscript, I had the invoice from Sixt car rental and I’m happy to report no penalties. I was very happy to rent from them.

I’ll do a separate post about the quite unique place we’re staying in, but I will say that the bed is very, very comfortable.

England ’23 – A Down Day At Last

24 Friday Nov 2023

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A down day at last, before we pack up and head to The Smoke, and a chance to have a look at the town we’re staying in.

The walk down into Holmfirth was wonderful, along the side of one the steep valleys, in among the old, now blackened, Yorkshire Sandstone cottage. The autumnal views on clear and crisp morning were lovely. It was pleasing to note that some new builds on top of the hill were constructed with the same stone, and the same stone window casements as the much older cottages that surround them.

The final drop into the village was very steep and was the hill we’d driven up on day one. It fair makes your knees ache as you take tiny steps downward. There are some scary slopes in this town.

The town itself was pretty, all old buildings, and all in the blackened sandstone that the houses on the hill were made of. The River Holme was moving a quite a lick, unnaturally narrowed I think to help with the mills that used its water in the nineteenth century. Oddly, there were four bridal shops in this little town, and at least five barbers’ shops. People with neatly trimmed hair get married a lot here, obviously.

We sat a while in a park that overlooked the town and ate lunch. With some watery sunshine warming things up a little, it was a very, very nice place to pause. We also chatted with the owners of a sweet shop, and the vegan ice cream shop, both happy to spend the time talking with odd people like us.

The downside of Holmfirth, and so many other places like it, is the traffic. It’s never ending, and with the shops so close to the road, you feel you’re walking in the road all the time. There are very few places to park all these cars, too, so people tend to find the tiniest and often almost dangerous places to leave their cars. It’s not like there are no buses, either, because we saw plenty. But this is the age of the car, and we in our rented auto had been contributing to the problem all week. This is perhaps one of the reasons we’re not contemplating moving back to our mother country.

Having stepped carefully down the hill in the morning, it was a long slog back up in the afternoon. I’m sure if we lived in the area we’d soon become used to it, but this was hard going.

We have enjoyed our stay in Holmfirth, although this was the only time we actually visited the village. It has been a good base to strike out to Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool, and even further beyond. After a week of negotiating roads barely the width of the car, vertiginous hills and bends well beyond a right angle I will probably be quite happy to ditch the car for a week.

England ’23 – A Note About Driving

24 Friday Nov 2023

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Driving in England is certainly quite different than driving in Canada, or indeed North America. It’s not about driving on the left in the UK, although if you’ve never done it that could faze you, it’s more about the sheer quantity of cars and trucks on the roads, and how people drive in a way to keep things moving.

UK roads are rarely straight and rarely wide, so the new arrival to the country needs to think about the car they want to hire. Big cars are a disadvantage in so many ways, not least in petrol (gas) costs (gas is so much more expensive in the UK), the general width of the roads, and the parking. Oh, the parking!

The speed limit on the motorway is 70mph, unless signed otherwise. But trucks are limited to 60mph, as are any vehicles towing trailers, so that left driving lane gets pretty full. There are also many people who do not drive at the limit, keeping it somewhere between 55 and 70. That will sound odd to Canadian And US drivers, but the traffic everywhere is so heavy that it’s very often not safe to drive any faster. Lane discipline is fairly good, people don’t hog the right lane (of three), although slower drivers do get caught in the centre lane sometimes, but that’s down to the heavy traffic. To keep moving at a sensible speed, you have to be very aware of the big picture, know what’s ahead and what’s behind so that you can anticipate lane changes well ahead. But here’s the thing, everyone’s doing the same thing and most are going to be very co-operative. If you signal a lane change then others will move to allow you out, or adjust their speed. It really is driving with co-operation.

In the same vein, when someone passes you, they’ll pull back in front of you so closely that it looks dangerous. But, as I’ve found on this trip, they’re just doing the lane discipline thing and move on to build the gap between themselves and you as quickly as they can. There’s no slowing, or braking, they just get going.

The co-operative driving goes further on regular roads. People driving along will often slow slightly to allow someone else to join the traffic from a side road. There seems to be an understanding and the person in the side road pulls out and everyone just gets on their way, there’s little in the way of insisting on rights, it’s just being co-operative. The driver who lets someone join the traffic will be the driver in the side road next time, so everyone gets it. I’m talking generally, of course, because there are some idiots out there, but generally it all works quite well. I haven’t come across the “established right of way” during this trip. That’s where someone pulls out across the road and waits (to turn right, typically), essentially blocking the traffic in one lane. That’s allowed in the UK when the road is clear to start with and you’re considered to have established a right of way in so doing. I tried that in Canada once and I swear the buggers would have driven straight into me if they could have. Once again, this is an example of co-operative driving.

In a lot of the bigger cities, London particularly, the speed limit has been reduced to 20mph. That will sound crazy to North Americans, but on tight, congested roads it actually works. Slower speeds keep the traffic moving, and when someone does pull out across your lane, you have plenty of thinking and stopping time. Add to that the fact that the limits are quite rigidly enforced, with speed cameras everywhere, and you get people driving to the rules. It’s a breath of fresh air, I can tell you.

There are also lots of roundabouts and Give Way (Yield) intersections, which I think keep the traffic moving as well. Roundabouts are often very small and just painted on the road, but if you just yield to the traffic on the right, they’re easy to use. In Canada I get quite irritated at the need to keep stopping at Stop signs and stop lights, so Yields and roundabouts keep me happy.

On the negative side, though, the UK can be a tough place to drive. Narrow roads, steep hills and very heavy traffic all combine to make driving a real chore sometimes. Petrol costs are about 30% higher, and parking is almost always paid, and very often really difficult to find. Bus lanes are everywhere, and you really can’t use them in the car, unless you want a hefty fine. With the weight of traffic generally, congestion can be a serious problem, and journey times can often double because of it. For the visitor, if you’re staying in London or another big city, ditch the car and rely on public transit. It’s cheap and plentiful, and believe me, it’s a lot less stressful.

England ’23 – Saltaire

23 Thursday Nov 2023

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If you know your nineteenth century social and economic history, you’ll know all about Sit Titus Salt and his model town and mill, built on the banks of the river Aire, just three miles north-west of Bradford. So significant is/was Saltaire is that it now enjoys UNESCO World Heritage Site status.

I don’t intend to write out the history of the place, but here is a link to its Wikipedia entry, should you feel the need to read into things a little.

Saltaire

We decided on run out there because we’re both interested in social history, and of it course it offers some insight into the lives of my ancestors who lived in that part of the world at the time Salt’s mill was running. I was feeling very happy that we were able visit, actually.

The drive took us through Bradford, sister city to Leeds, and historically the centre of the British woolen industry. Like Leeds, it’s going through some major regeneration, but some of the old soot-blackened buildings remain, hopefully to be repurposed rather than pulled down. I’d never been to Bradford, so that was a tick in the box for me.

The mill at Saltaire has been repurposed, or at least parts of it have. It’s absolutely enormous, being the first mill to bring all the manufacturing aspects of cloth production under one roof, so there’s a lot of space to fill. I had imagined that it would be shops and offices, and indeed there are retail outlets and offices, but there are also exhibition and performance spaces, as well as very popular restaurant. All these things are required to keep the mill from falling into disrepair, and it was the life’s work of Leeds businessman Jonathon Silver to bring the place back to life. We’ve a lot to thank the (sadly now departed) Mr. Silver for, not least in his friendship with the artist David Hockney, because the mill now contains the largest collection of Hockney works in a single place. I may be a bit of a Philistine when it comes to art, but I appreciate seeing the real thing when I can.

The big machine halls are impressive spaces, and I always try to imagine what they might have been with the machinery installed and running. I think noisy might be one descriptor. It’s easy to dismiss the modern uses the mill is being put to, especially given that it was the world’s centre for the production of quality Worsted cloth, but without the modern use, the mill might not exist any more. We had a browse around, tried to picture the thousands of people working there, and generally appreciated the mill for its significance, past and present. We also watched a very slick video about how the mill was built, and how its been brought back to life, which was worth our sitting down to watch.

The other side of Saltaire is the model town. The jury is out on whether Salt was a true philanthropist, but he certainly understood the plight of tens of thousands of workers in Bradford who lived in absolutely squalid conditions in the nineteenth century. Initially he brought workers to the mill from Bradford on the train each day, but ultimately he constructed an entire town of modern (for the time) housing for his workers, complete with gardens, sewers and running water. There were shops built, a communal bath and laundry house, a grand church, a town hall, a couple of schools, a hospital, and all manner of recreational facilities, including a park and boating and swimming area in the river. All of this was a world away from the squalor of Bradford and Leeds, of course, and broke the mould when it came to workers’ welfare.

While Salt had owned the whole town, renting the houses to his workers, all of the houses are now in private hands and are Grade II listed to ensure that they remain as part of Salt’s legacy. We spent quite a while wandering the streets, all named for Salt’s children and grandchildren, admiring the sturdy houses (although sometimes wincing at some of the modern “improvements”), and generally feeling very lucky to have had the opportunity to visit. Indeed, we went as far as to find out how much a house might cost to buy today, and the prices were quite reasonable. They’re small, though, and the Grade II listing will limit the price, but what a wonderful place it would be to live.

I almost forgot to mention that the main school that Salt constructed for the children of his workers is still being used as a Sixth Form College today. Indeed, the streets were flooded with students when it was lunchtime, which made the place seem far more than simply a World Heritage Site.

We dined in what had been Salt’s communal boat house, wedged between the canal and the river, and spent a happy hour or so gazing over Salt’s park on the opposite bank. The food was OK, too.

After Saltaire, our daylight was limited but we jumped in the car and headed towards Pateley Bridge, deep in the Yorkshire Dales. This thing with the daylight was an issue as it was almost dark at 4pm. However, we did get to see plenty of stunning Dales scenery, and couldn’t help humming the Emmerdale theme tune all the while.

It had been another long day, but a worthwhile day. If you’re in central Yorkshire, put Saltaire on your list, you won’t be disappointed.

England ’23 – Liverpool

22 Wednesday Nov 2023

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Liverpool. Beatle Country. Somewhere we’d always been reluctant to visit, but now having committed to go, the forces of evil tried very hard to prevent us from getting there.

We had planned a train ride from Huddersfield, about half-an-hour’s drive away from Holmfirth, to Liverpool Lime Street station. The day before the trip, though, I had an e-mail to say that the train we were booked on, and the return train, were cancelled. A wise woman of our acquaintance had suggested this might happen, so we were disappointed but not too surprised. The train company did at least offer some alternatives, one of them being a refund, and after some deliberation we decided on that option.

In sorting out a refund, the rail company, Trans-Pennine Express (TPE), demanded that I supply all the relevant information, which I duly lifted, word for word, from the e-mail they sent me. I then had to send them a scan of the evidence. We hadn’t collected our actual tickets, so I sent a PDF scan of the e-mail I’d used to copy down all the information they wanted. The e-mail, that is, that TPE sent to me in the first place. They promised a reply within 28 days. 28 days? They have systems to swiftly take money from you, but giving it back, when it was they who cancelled the train, seems to require a massive amount of nugatory effort on my part. Bastards. *Late news: The refund was approved and paid in under two weeks.

Our alternative plan was to drive to Liverpool South Parkway station, close to Liverpool’s John Lennon airport, where there was a big, free car park that we could leave the car, and enjoy a train ride into the city. Before we set off from Holmfirth, I heard on the news that trains were further disrupted at Huddersfield that morning after a landslip. Driving was the only option then, obviously.

On arrival at Parkway station, there wasn’t a single space left in the car park, not one. I spoke to the fellow at the information desk, and he said that it’s full at 8am every weekday. So much for using public transport.

Yesterday I had gone off the idea of parking in central Liverpool after reading a couple of reviews of car parks there. Liverpool has a poor reputation for petty crime, and stealing from cars was high on the list. However, the good Mrs. M looked at Google again and suggested some of the Waterfront attractions car parks might work. So, Navi reprogrammed, off we set towards the city centre. After a slight issue when we thought there was no parking available at our chosen destination, we saw there was a gated car park, half-empty, right next to the Royal Albert Dock. Undoubtedly it wouldn’t be cheap (it turned out to be £11, the same price as two train tickets), but for the sheer convenience of it, this was going to be worth it.

I’d never been to Liverpool, so to see the regenerated waterfront with plenty of people around, even on a cold and wet November morning, was most encouraging. First things first, though, a visit to a toilet was on the cards, and possibly some refreshment.

We went into a store that sold nothing but Beatles memorabilia, looking for the advertised Fab Four Café. It turned out that both the café and the store were at the end of a Beatles exhibition which we wouldn’t have the time to see. No matter, though, we used the toilets had some coffee (or Fanta) and listened to the endless loop of Beatles music. Even the loos were Beatle-themed, and the music was on a different loop in there.

The waterfront attractions looked good, but I did want to go to Matthew Street, in the town, to see the Cavern Club, where the Beatles first made their mark on the British music scene.

A wet walk through the city was interrupted by an odd visit to a key cutting shop. I’d stopped to admire the huge range of shoe cleaning products there, when the good Mrs. Mayne decided she wanted some big, heavy keys to go on a key ring she’d bought earlier. First she had to persuade the bemused looking key cutter that she wanted to buy two blank keys. I don’t know that anyone had asked for that before, especially not a wet tourist. Having established that she would buy the keys without having them cut, the man behind the counter supplied the keys and we set off into the rain again, leaving the bemused proprietor scratching his head. But it didn’t end there. The good Mrs. Mayne really wanted the blank keys cut, so when I’d found an old key in the recesses of my bag, she hot-footed it back to the shop to have her new keys cut. I wouldn’t go into the shop again, preferring to stand out in the rain and watch the Liverpool office workers on their lunch breaks. Fair play to the missus, though, she now has two keys, cut to a lock that I don’t even know exists still, but at least she’s happy.

Matthew Street and the Cavern Club were a disappointment. The street is narrow but is crammed with all things Beatle. The weather wasn’t great, but it was dark and dingy and, basically, full of tat. The Cavern itself was charging £5 each for entry, plus £2 to take your coat. There were three, yes three, bouncers crowding the tiny lobby, so I decided not to go in. I was happy enough to have my photo taken there. Perhaps I’d go in when there was some live music on, but it all felt a bit crap. I have no doubt that Matthew Street was always a bit shabby, but the Beatles crap everywhere really didn’t help. I guess that’s people making a living, though.

Despite the rain, we walked back to the waterfront. We decided against a trip on the Mersey Ferry (You’re already humming the tune, aren’t you?) and started back towards the Albert Dock. Unusually for me, I got caught short and had to make an unaccustomed dash for the toilets, which were further away than I thought. Relief was achieved, though, so then we made for the International Museum of Slavery, incorporating the Maritime Museum. Liverpool played its part in the Slave Trade, and much of the city’s prosperity came from either trading enslaved Africans, or the cotton and sugar their labours produced. The museum was full of kids on school trips, and rightly so. Many of the kids were themselves of distant African origin (a huge assumption on my part, of course), so it was all as it should be. We didn’t have sufficient time to give the place our full attention, and only skimmed the Maritime Museum, but it was well worth the visit.

Our meal of the day was in the Italian restaurant called Gusto. It’s a chain, but the place was OK with a view over the docks. The food was good, too, with plenty of vegan options on the menu. Our server, a very knowledgeable lady from Sardinia (Italy, but I’m sure she’d claim Sardinian first), who helped us out hugely by pointing out our error in ordering two huge starters when one would do. The final bill wasn’t as awful as I’d thought it would be, either, so well done Gusto Liverpool.

We’d headed off to look at a shop within the dock buildings when I realised that I’d left my phone in the restaurant, which started a major panic. Luckily it was still there when I dashed back. As the great Homer Simpson would say, Doh!

Our final act of our Liverpool day was to spend a king’s ransom in the Beatle memorabilia shop. I mean, who doesn’t want a tiny music box that plays Hey Jude?

We really enjoyed Liverpool, with the possible exception of Matthew Street, and could easily have spent a few days there. The people are friendly, and the city’s architecture is really worth a look. The only thing is that you really have to be able to put up with all things Beatle. The Beatles are everywhere, you cannot escape them. I just hope that Paul and Ringo are getting their cut, and that the estates of John and George are getting theirs, too.

England ’23 – Leeds Again

22 Wednesday Nov 2023

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A quick rearrangement of the planned schedule due to the prospect of reasonable weather had us motoring north again to Leeds. Goodness, it’s a busy city.

We drove up the motorway again and into the east side of the city, to make our way to the Thackray Medical Museum, just next to Leeds’ famous St. James Infirmary. Parking at the museum was billed as “Pay and Display at the front of the building”, but there wasn’t a single space to be had in that area. If you’ve ever tried to park in or close to any major hospital in the UK, you’ll know that the staff and visitors to the hospital get there very early.

Parkopedia showed some car parks nearby, so we scuttled off, only to find that the supposedly free car park nearby was in fact a Morrison’s grocery store. We didn’t want to get a ticket for parking there more than two hours and pretending we were shoppers, so the good Mrs. M. downloaded the Euro Car Parks app, went through the process of buying an electronic ticket that allowed us legal parking there, but kept getting bounced back with an error. So much for that.

We motored back to St. James’ Infirmary and found its mega-sized multi-storey car park, and even found a space on the road level. That enabled us to walk through the hospital campus, around and through the loading bays, and back to the museum, which was just fine and dandy.

The museum itself was really good. Housed in what had been a workhouse, then part of the hospital, it’s aimed at younger people and takes you through medical care throughout the years. There was a part called Disease Street, where they’ve tried to recreate what nineteenth century Leeds was like, with the horrible housing, overcrowding, lack of sanitation, and back breaking work for all. Given we were in Leeds to look at where some of my ancestors came from, and they were from poor stock, it was an apposite exhibition.

Further around and we were able to chat with one of the volunteer guides, a former Anesthetist, who gave us a mini-talk about the dreaded Iron Lung, used for Polio sufferers in the fifties. That, and a few other things in the museum, should give people thought about vaccination. Who has Polio these days? Hardly anybody. Why? Because of vaccination. The museum guide summed it up when she said that people had responsibility for more than just themselves when considering vaccination.

Being a weekday, there were parties of school students moving around the museum. Noisy, for sure, but I think they were enjoying it.

After the museum, we stepped across the road and into the Beckett Street Cemetery, one of the large burial grounds built in Leeds as the population boomed (and died) during the nineteenth century. Our reason for visiting was to find the grave markers for a handful of my ancestors who lie there. On entering the cemetery, we were confronted with thousands of Victorian grave monuments, all blackened from years of soot, and looking fabulous in the bright autumn sunshine. The people that run the cemetery (handed over from Leeds Corporation), have a great guidebook and there is a trail to follow to find the local worthies. It’s a big place and obviously takes a lot of work just to keep it from becoming totally wild, but it was clear enough for us to find the grave markers we wanted to find. If you’re ever in Leeds, it’s a great place just for stroll.

Following that cemetery, we made our way to the University District to find St. George’s Field, the former Leeds General Cemetery, where at least twenty of my ancestors lie. Getting there was an issue, though. There are more cars than there are available parking spaces in Leeds, so every single available space is already taken. Cutting a long story short, I did find a place to park eventually, quite by accident and it was restriction-free. But, unless you have a Leeds city parking permit, you’re generally stuffed. Also, we were both taken aback at the number of university students walking about. Yes, it’s the university district, but the streets were full of young people making their way to and from the campus, and seemingly it’s a permanent state in term time. I guess it’s because most of the university buildings, and its students, are concentrated in a small area.

The cemetery has long since been closed, and all but a few of the grave markers have been cleared away, leaving a beautiful walled park area within the university campus. The main gate, still imposing, remains, as does the chapel in the centre. Many of the City’s poor were buried here, often ten or more to a burial plot, and some of those plain, City-provided grave markers have been laid down as pathways. We spent a fruitless half hour searching for Maynes but didn’t find any. There can only have been a fraction of the original markers used, given the tens of thousands buried there. Still, it was reasonable work on rapidly darkening autumn afternoon.

I was very pleased to have stood where the ground was full of the remains of Maynes, and families associated with Maynes, including the Linskills, the Longbottoms and the Pickersgills.

After the cemetery, we repaired to the old Public Lending Library, which fortunately had been converted into a pub. A pub for students. Boy, did we raise the average age when we walked in. We did have a chat with a first year student called Coren, from Wales, who was studying Civil Engineering in Leeds. He was such a nice young fellow, and his mother should be proud of him.

After a long day, we motored back to Holmfirth (disobeying the lady in the Navi system), and basically crashed out, although not without a couple of hours on BBC iPlayer first.  There was something we had to do though, but that comes in the next post.