Letter 10 from Europe RV trip

We were in England, driving on the “wrong” side of the road again. Ron doesn’t have any problem with driving on the left. What does throw him off is driving from a different side of the car. After all, the car has ended at his left elbow ever since he began to drive. It’s hard to get used to a driver’s side on the right side of the car. That’s one of the reasons we love traveling in England in our own vehicle.

We drove to a campground in Maidstone, where we spent the night. In the morning we left for our first tourist stop. That destination was Chartwell, the home south of London that Winston Churchill had purchased in the 1930’s and lived in most of his life.

Several things stand out about our visit to Chartwell. First, there were hundreds of people on the property, and we probably brought the average age down! That’s a bit discouraging, but it was a Wednesday and school isn’t over yet.

On a more historical point, while the Churchills were obviously a lot wealthier than most people, this was not only what is referred to in England as a “stately home”. It was a very large house with beautiful, extensive grounds, but it was also a home that was designed for a family to enjoy eating meals in, or entertaining, or writing, or painting--all things that Churchill did in abundance. It was full of things that belonged to the Churchill family and Lady Churchill had arranged everything in the house as it had been in the 1930’s. Then she turned the building over to the National Trust. It is perched on a hill overlooking one large pond, and a couple of smaller ones, a perfectly even croquet lawn, and several gardens.

Ronald’s favorite sight was a hand written letter from the Prime Minister to General Alexander, Commander of British forces in the Middle East. In quite elegant language, it told the General in two short paragraphs that he was commanded to defeat and remove all traces from North Africa of the Nazi and Italian forces under General Rommel. Underneath his note, was Alexander’s later handwritten reply. It said something like, Sir, your instructions have been carried out!

Adelle’s favorite was the picture of the Churchills in 1916. They were already obviously middle-aged then. The picture underscored the fact that this man didn’t become Prime Minister until he was 65 years old. While we always knew that, somehow this picture made it more real. And of course, the fact that hit her was that he became Prime Minister at such a critical time in history when he was only five years younger than she is now.

We learned a new Britishism while we were parking the RV. A volunteer helped us fit into a small space. He told us about a brand of auto that they have in England called a “Rolles Canardly”. That is: rolls downhill, can‘ardly go up’em! How appropriate for our aged chariot!

When we left Chartwell in the afternoon, we drove directly to London. This is normally a nail-biting procedure that leaves one ready for a drink. This time it was easy! We passed Biggen Hill, a very famous RAF base in WWII, and the town in which Charles Darwin was born. Just before we had too many roads to choose from, a sign announced “Crystal Palace”, and we simply had to follow the signs. Heaven!

Once in the campground, we don’t drive until we leave London. 500 meters from the campground there is a city bus. It takes a long time, but it takes us right into central London—Oxford Circus. On the route, the bus stops at Brixton – which is a very busy, noisy section of town. At least twice, we’ve gotten off the bus in Brixton and spent several hours on different days trying to post our pictures on this site, and found that our efforts are consistently blocked. Why? It is still a mystery. But the lack of pictures is certainly not from a lack of trying.

We stayed in London for six days. Most of those days we saw things that we’ve never seen before – but we have to admit to returning to past sites occasionally.

One excessively hot day, we visited the National Gallery. We’ve been there before, but we couldn’t decide exactly what to do, and Adelle wanted to do something that didn’t require a lot of walking outside! This building is close to Trafalgar Square and doesn’t require either more buses or walking. We were late getting into town, having spent a long time trying to post pictures.

We had to have lunch so we opted for the least expensive thing we saw. Would you believe that was a Burger King? But we have never spent so much money in a fast food joint. The bill was more than 6 pounds. That doesn’t sound too bad, until you remember that the exchange rate these days is $1.85 dollars per pound. For one double hamburg meal and a Whopper, we paid more than $12! In the US that same meal would not have been more than $7.00. After this, we tried to make sure that we took a picnic lunch with us. It tasted better and certainly was less expensive!

In the afternoon, we spent several hours peering at paintings. There are a great many treasures in this museum, including a lot of Impressionist paintings and a number of wonderful paintings whose artists, male and female, were mostly unknown to us.

London seems to us much more expensive than it was when we were here in 2003. And it’s not just the fact that the American dollar is worth so little against the English pound. When we visited in 2003, the fare on the bus for a single ride was one pound. Four years later, it is one pound fifty. That is a 50% increase! The cost of the campground also seems high, 16 Pounds or about $29– but that is probably because we had been paying much less per night in France—12 to 15 Euros in Normandy, or about $15 to $20. But this is London and one should expect to pay more. Paris would have been a lot more expensive than Normandy was.