2023 England and Edinburgh Day 5: York Minster and Fountains Abbey

Breakfast at the Radisson Hotel in York was a more traditional hotel buffet, with the notable exception being that, in addition to the expected tray of scrambled eggs, there was also a tray of fried eggs. Neat trick! While E had the pork sausage, I had the (English) bacon. My recollection of the latter had me expecting more of a ham flavor, but these also tasted a bit more like pork sausage to me. Disappointing.

York has always been this trip’s “problem child”. By all rights we probably should have scheduled two nights in York so we could enjoy about a day-and-a-half in the city, but for reasons I had us arriving mid-afternoon and then leaving just before lunch the following day, giving us time to only take in two main attractions plus (perhaps) a couple of side attractions if things worked out. From the start I was worried we’d might have to cut some things short. (When we were deciding on whether to do many one-day trips with short drives in between vs basing ourselves in a single location and then making fewer longer drives on the way to Edinburgh, it was York that was the likely spot we’d base ourselves in for a 2-4 days if we’d selected the latter option.)

Anyway, we checked out of the hotel after breakfast (leaving our car still parked in the garage) and did the ½ mile walk to York Minster, walking along a portion of the city walls at one point. We went past the main entrance in order to see the Roman column and statue of Alexander the Great, then purchased our ticket just in time to join the 10A free tour. The tour was wonderful, giving just the right amounts of history, architecture, and explanation of many of the stained glass windows. We were really happy we’d taken advantage of it. From there, back to the hotel to pick up the car and make the (roughly) 60 minute drive to Fountains Abbey.

Approaching York Minster from the south

Closing in on the south entrance.  We arrived just prior to the 930A opening and didn't realize that this was the main entrance since the door was closed and no signs were out yet...

...so we went to the east side, which looked more inviting and where we saw a lot of people (already on some kind of private tour).

About 1/3 of the east side was undergoing structural work - apparently, one of the big windows and walls was unsound and being worked on.  This was all the scaffolding we could see from our hotel room.

A semi panoramic shot of the east side of the Minster.  York is a full cathedral, but it started as a minster (mission).  They've stuck with that name over the centuries.  Although it started Catholic, it became a non-denominational minster centuries ago.  This helped it escape the Dissolution of the Monasteries.  It also avoid significant looting during the Civil War because the Rebel commander who occupied York was a York native and loved the Minster, so he ordered his men to treat the Minster with respect. 

The Roman-era column outside York Minster.

The statue of Constantine the Great outside the east side of York Minster

Various views of stained glass windows at York.  Our tour guide did a nice job of giving us context for a lot of these.  This particular window, located just above the main entrance on the south end, includes the Heart of York tracery at the top.

The middle row of windows here depict the Apostles.  Panes 1, 2 and 8 each show two Apostles, for a total of 11 Apostles.  Pane 7 is SUPPOSED to have a 2nd head, but it was removed during a Victoria-era repair.  Although it wasn't 100% clear, the implication is that the missing head was Judas's.

These windows were found in the Chapter House.  Underneath are the seats lining the walls, each with vaulted ceilings above them that provide amazing acoutical reinforcement.  It was possible to hear everyone who was sitting in a seat even if they were clear across the room from you.  Some renovations going on in the room prevented us from confirming this, but apparently they have school groups sit down and experience this.

The Rose Window.  After the War of the Roses ended the victorious Lancastrian monarch commissioned this window for York - it very clearly shows the red rose of Lancaster rather than the white rose of York, and was a massive display of royal (Lancastrian) power to remind the Yorkists who had won.

Walking through The Shambles

Although we ended up deciding to have lunch at Fountains, there had been another plan initially. I thought that illustrated an interesting example of how things are different between the US and UK.

In the US, if you’re in a decent sized town you’d not only have a huge number of choices on where to grab a bite, but you’d not think twice about where you were going to park your car. OF COURSE the place you were going would have lots of parking just outside the door. Well, not so much in the UK. First, there’s not a McDonald’s on every corner, signage is much more discreet (so you aren’t going to see a place worth stopping for from half a mile away – you’ll be well past it before you even realize it was there) and whatever place you find is extremely likely to have no dedicated parking spaces. Even the street it is on might not have any parking since so many lanes are so narrow.

So I wasn’t prepared to “just wing it” and assume we’d randomly find a suitable place. There was just too much risk of passing something and then finding out that we’d passed the last option for the next 10 miles. Once again, Google and TripAdvisor to the rescue, with a small sandwich shop just barely on the outskirts of York that had a simple menu and an attached parking lot. I admit, when I looked at the Google Street View of the place I could NOT figure out how you actually were supposed to orient your car in the parking lot – even THAT looked different from American-style parking lots. However, this is how Brunches Sandwiches originally made the list. Kinda the best of a bad situation, but it would work.

I say “originally”, because later I had an epiphany. We were going to be visiting York Minster during the morning and would be heading to Fountains Abbey for the afternoon, arriving somewhere around 1PM. This meant we’d be walking back through The Shambles to check out of the hotel in late morning – so I decided to search for options we could stop at and pickup food to go. And here I found Henshalwood Deli and their amazing picnic lunches. Between the convenience of being on our walk back to the hotel, the menu, the prices, and the reviews it seemed almost too good to be true. Top all this off with the fact that Fountains Abbey is rated the 2nd best place in the UK to enjoy a picnic and this was a no-brainer! On the day of we decided that the Henshalwood picnic was massive overkill in terms of the food provided – we would have likely thrown 90% of it away – so we didn’t both stopping there and decided instead to eat whatever they were serving at the food service at Fountains.

An interesting thing I learned while looking up restaurants. I’ve long turned to Google Maps and made heavy use of the “Nearby” feature to find restaurants close to a hotel or attractions – and this remains a great method. However, I discovered that TripAdvisor seems to have 2-3x as many restaurants on their maps compared to Google. I’m not sure if TA has more “dead” places or not. It may be that (AFAIK) restaurant owners have to take responsibility for putting a pin onto Google Maps whereas (maybe?) TA restaurants can be added by anyone entering a review – so there’s more opportunities for a restaurant to get entered into TA’s database than Google’s? I don’t know if this is the case, but could be. Sadly, the UX of researching restaurants on TA is not great, so I’m not 100% sold on using in in lieu of Google.

At the Abbey we bought out tickets and then stepped into the restaurant for a bite of lunch. E had a cheddar and onion jam toastie while I had the ham and smoked cheddar baguette. Both of us pleased with our personal choices, and the sandwiches refreshed us without loading us down. We made the ½ mile walk along a lightly forested meadow trail down – sometimes rather steeply down – to the Porter’s Lodge, from which we knew a 2P free tour would launch. Inside the lodge was a model of the abbey along with some history, all with good descriptions of “just enough” details.

We joined the tour which wasn’t as good as the York Minster tour. It covered a ton of “this is what monastery life was like” and less “this is what you should notice as you look around” and while the guide was quite knowledgeable about her stuff she did have a tendency to repeat things. We still stuck it out for the hour before wandering around on our own for just a few minutes more. However, even with our great sleep last night we were starting to flag and, knowing that we were going to have to go UP the steep path to get back to the car we decided to make our way to the car and back to Ripon to The Royal Oak.

A panoramic view of Fountains Abbey ruins taken from the Porter's Lodge as we awaited the start of our tour.

More details of the abbey ruins.  I had thought that the ruins were the "draw" for this site, but it turns out that Studley Royal Water Gardens are the main attraction (and what earned this place its Unesco designation).  At the height of operation, Studley used that ruins as their hook to get more people to visit.  

The ruins of old guest houses next to the abbey.

Fountains Abbey had been a very successful Cistercian facility up until Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries.  At that time, following seizure of assets, he had all the roofs removed to prevent the monks from being able to return.  Fountains was essentially made uninhabitable and therefore fell into ruin.  

A view of the undercroft.  When the abbey was in operation, this area would have had many walls separating this into multiple smaller rooms serving many different purposes.

An aisle on the side of the nave.  At some point the arch in the background was in danger of collapsing so the monks stuffed it full of supporting materials.

A view through to the other side of the nave.  Huby's Tower pokes up in the background.

Huby's Tower, named after the prior who had it built.  It wasn't many years after the construction of this was completed that the abbey was seized by Henry VIII.

The cloister. The dark arch in the middle background led to the Warming Room, which typically had a fire going and would provide a few minutes of relief to the monks who would have had workstations lining the outer walls of the cloister.  Important documents (leases, landgrants, etc.) were kept in the rooms with the small windows on the 3rd level, where they'd be kept safe and dry due to the heat coming from the Warming Room.

The remains of the Chapter House, where the monks would have meet for administrative matters.  There were the remains of graves in what would have been the floor (or at least the surface that they walked on).  As part of the seizure of assets, Henry VIII's men would have dug up all graves to search for buried artifacts.

Some birds seen on our walk back from the Abbey

The Royal Oak is a pub nee 18th century coaching inn with rooms above the ground floor – so this was our chance to experience this very English form of lodging. The pub fronts a small one-way street without any real parking, so upon arrival we did the very English thing of making a parking space out of something that isn’t REALLY a parking space and walking in to check in. They gave us the padlock code to their private carpark, which is simply a field next to a building behind them, accessed through a very narrow alley. (I had to carefully thread my way between a brick wall on my right and a bag of garbage on my left as I drove between the two buildings lining the alley.)

Our room was on the 1st floor (thankfully not higher since we once again had to lug the luggage up stairs) and consisted of a king sized bed, a couple of nightstands, one chair, and one stool (which I’m sitting on as I write this up). The bathroom basically looks like the boys’ bathroom at our house. The window is open to a very nice afternoon outside, and we can hear the sound of passing traffic on the through street at the front of The Royal Oak. (The RO is just at the LH side of a fork in the one-lane, one-way road, with the RH fork being the main road and the LH fork not having any through access. Only vehicles with business on the LH side are supposed to be here.)

Our room at the Royal Oak Hotel in Ripon

The fork in the road right outside our window.  The far road is the main road, while the near road is limited access for those having business or residence on our street.  That road intersects another road about 200 feet to the left directly in front of Ripon Cathedral.

The funky chandelier in our room

Ripon Cathedral, at the end of the street outside our window

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2023 England and Edinburgh Day 4: Chatsworth House and York Castle Museum

Another long night. Despite staying awake until 10P, we both ended up power napping until 1045P or so and, having woken up, had varying degrees of success getting back to sleep. In my case, I was once again awake until somewhere around 4A, so when the alarm went off at 8A I was again knackered. We dragged ourselves downstairs for breakfast, where we “enjoyed” a continental format. We’d been smart enough the night before to choose this rather than a hot breakfast because we both realized that it was hard to muster an appetite when our bodies were so out of whack. Breakfast done and bill paid, E walked across the street to a gas station to purchase a Diet Coke, and then we were off to Chatsworth House, arriving in about 15 minutes time.

 

Approaching Chatsworth House from the car park

The morning and afternoon were both gorgeous weather with clear blue skies and shirt-sleeve temps. We had pre-booked for a 1030A entry at Chatsworth and following car parking and walking up we got in the gate around 1040A. Turns out that pre-booking simply means you stand in the same queue as everyone else – all that changes is that your encounter with the cashier to receive your tickets is streamlined. So we didn’t get into the house until right around 11A.

 

Waiting to enter Chatsworth.  We had timed entry tickets for 1030A, but despite arriving in time we still had to wait until about 1050A before we actually got into the house.

Chatsworth is definitely opulent. It is one of those houses with hundreds and hundreds of paintings, ceilings decorated with painted Greeks and/or nymphs and/or biblical scenes, along with large chambers designed to flaunt the wealth of the owner. There’s a tightly controlled pathway you traverse through the house across three levels of the building. Of what we saw, only one of the rooms passed the “I’d be willing to spend time in THAT room” test, and that was a room that one of the more recent owners – not sure who, but could have been someone in the last 200 years – converted into a library. Warm oak carvings and shelving, deep leather furniture – just looked like a great way to hole up for the day. Some of the notes in the guidebook mention that the owner’s book collection is considered one of the finest in the UK.

Various scenes from Chatsworth House

The wooden door and violin are both examples of trump l'oeil art - they are both flat 2D art skillfully painted to look 3D.

A couple of views of The Emperor Fountain as seen from inside Chatsworth House

We actually finished the house portion of the tour by around noon, and we just didn’t have the energy or inclination to tour the gardens, so we ended up buying a simple ham sandwich (carefully advertised as Just a Ham Sandwich – white bread and ham with nothing else), some chips (“crisps”) and a banana, then loaded ourselves back into the car for our drive up to York, which we expected to talk about an hour and 45 minutes, sharing the sandwich as just a way to tide ourselves over.

The original plan for an afternoon arrival in York was to try to drop our stuff at our hotel at our expected arrival time of 3P and then immediately make the 10 minute walk over to the York Castle Museum and try to get as much time in before they closed at 5P. From there the idea was to walk over to The Shambles and get a little medieval flavor before ending up at The Corner Grill House for dinner. I was extremely worried that we’d be rushing through the Museum, however. About a month before the trip I noticed that Clifford’s Tower would still be open until 6P, and I figured we could potentially add this as a 5P-6P activity (since the last entry was a 530P) if we needed a bit more “meat” – I thought that the promised vistas from the top of the tower might be interesting around 530P. Notably, searching online suggested one could “do” Clifford’s Tower in just 20-30 minutes.

However, getting to the museum by 3P seemed very unlikely, because it basically assumed we’d be able to check into the hotel in about 10 minutes and immediately walk over. I figured we’d lose AT LEAST 30 minutes to check-in, so at the last minute, I panicked and decided that it would be better to forgo the one hour tour of the gardens at Chatsworth House in the morning in order to arrive 1 hour earlier in York – which would put us at the hotel by around 2P and would pretty much guarantee we’d make it to the York Castle Museum by no later than 3P, thus relieving the pressure to potentially rush through it. I felt like this was a much better approach.

We pulled into York right around 1:45P and made our way to the hotel (called York Park City Inn when I first started researching it but fully renamed to Radisson York by the time we got there). I chose them as they were listed as one of the few hotels in central York offering guest parking, and indeed they had an attached garage. At 2P we were too early to check in, so we stored our with them and walked over to the York Castle Museum, just a few minutes away.

Clifford's Tower on our way to the York Castle Museum

A marker at the base of the mound atop of which Clifford's Tower sits

The YCM is housed in an old women’s prison and had a somewhat eclectic set of exhibits. Some were about life in York – specifically, some sample sitting room recreations; the impacts of WW1; and a large simulated city street of Victoria shop windows. Other exhibits included the 1960s, fashion and body shaping, the prison itself, and period toys. Overall, things just seemed a bit unfocused. Even given how tired we were there wasn’t anything that really hooked us. However, it did succeed in killing 90 minutes, after which we returned to the hotel and got ourselves checked in.

The mound upon which Clifford's Tower sits rises up on the the right hand side as we look toward the dramatic Magistrates Court building.  This is from our walk back to the hotel after having toured the York Castle Museum.

The Radisson York is a modern hotel, so actual A/C, a real king bed, and so on. I had booked “Minster View” and we found ourselves on the top (9th) floor with a wonderful vista over the River Ouise, just outside the hotel, to the Minster – can’t claim that we didn’t get our money’s worth here. I had opened the window to get some fresh air in (while we turned on the A/C and almost froze ourselves to death – it was REALLY efficient) and we could hear the minster’s bells on the both the hour and half hour. At 5P there was a really long bell song following the chimes of 5P.

I'd booked us a "Minster View" room at the hotel, and they delivered in spades!

Another view from our room.  The Radisson was directly alongside the River Ouise, which our room overlooked..

There was a moderate amount of traffic along the River Ouise, most of it tourist-related in nature.  Most of what we saw were larger than this small guy - although we did also see a few skullers, too.

River Ouise wildlife

For dinner I had selected Corner Grill House, which met our location criteria (only a short 0.2 mile walk from the hotel, just across the river bridge from us) and was also a steakhouse, meaning we’d get a chance to try some famed UK beef. We did our best imitation of “dressing up”, meaning I wore my black jeans instead of my blue jeans.

Dinner was nice. I had one of their 60-day “salt aged” rib eyes while E had their sirloin. I THINK my steak corresponded to a US rib eye, and I THINK hers corresponded to a NY Strip, but not 100% certain. We were both feeling a bit more recharged, so we both had a glass of Merlot. Mine was a French wine (CGH) while hers was Chilean – which I’d avoided due to its description mentioning that it was “plumy”. Good choice on my part – I enjoyed my wine much more. While E did enjoy hers, we agreed that mine was the better of the two. We finished up with a shared Sticky Toffee Pudding dessert and then made our way back to the hotel. We were both able to get a good night’s rest in, sleeping from 10P to about 7A(!), so started Day 5 feeling pretty normal

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2023 England and Edinburgh Day 3: Hardwick Hall and Bakewell Old House Museum

Between the heat, our interrupted sleep, and the general effects of jet lag, we were both pretty tired when 8A rolled around and my phone alarm went off. We showered and went down to breakfast, where we both eschewed anything ambition and each got eggs over toast. Even that was a challenge for me, as my body was still convinced it was midnight and didn’t really want to put more food into my stomach. However, we got through breakfast and checked out, heading for Chesterfield and Hardwick Hall.

On our way out, Eileen commented that Newport Pagnell is clearly “just a place where people live”. Totally agree. It isn’t a tourist spot – most shops we passed closed at 4P on Mondays – and had nothing of any real interest to recommend it.

The drive to Hardwick Hall took just over 90 minutes on the M1. We had a pretty good amount of rain on the drive, as well as some fog. Driving on gray motorways in a gray rain with a grey fog and (mostly) gray cars made for some challenging moments where visibility is concerned, but we soon found our way following signs directing us to Hardwick. As expected, however, the second time in the car was much better than the first. I’m more comfortable with the car now, particularly where lining up in the lane left to right is concerned, and we’ve gotten smarter about writing down key info about the roundabouts at the start of the journey. Basically, we’re spending less time counting exits and more focused on the road names to scan the signs for. We got to Hardwick soon after opening, but there were already a surprising number of cars presents. The car park was probably 70% full, and would approach 100% by the time we were leaving after lunch.

Hardwick was a bit of a “meh”. Interestingly enough, a big part of the marketing for Hardwick emphasizes the architectural incorporation of windows everywhere, quoting the standard doggerel “Hardwick Hall, more window than wall”, but none of the onsite materials posted seemed to make any mention of it. Hardwick mostly came across as “the place with tons of meh tapestries”. There were a boatload of docents posted throughout the property who were quite excited to chat, but there was no real “hook” to the house as far as we were concerned. We wrapped up our trip faster than planned (partially because the wet weather dissuaded us from wandering the gardens) and were on the road to Bakewell right after lunch, arriving about 2P.

The approach to Hardwick Hall.  This, along with a lot of CGI, was used as Malfoy Manor in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. When we were there this part of the grass path was closed.  We picked our way through the garden on the other side of the right-hand hedge and emerged at the intersection in the background.

A couple of statues hidden in the hedges outside Hardwick Hall.

Hardwick Hall is known for its many tapestries, which they had recently completed conservation work on and we apparently were seeing ALL the tapestries for the first time in decades.  Ironically, while the tapestries are a main feature of the house the National Trust acknowledges that the works themselves are not particular GOOD.  Beth Hardwick apparently didn't spend top dollar for what she purchased.

 
Earlier in the morning I’d received email from Avenue House with self-checkin details in case we arrived after they’d left. However, as we were gathering the room card from the lockbox he door opened and Jeorgi, the girl manning the office during the morning and early afternoon, greeted us and welcomed us in. Our room on the 3rd landing was up narrow stairs which required us to lug our luggage with us, but our room was nice.

After a quick pit stop, we ventured back outside and made a 15 minute walk to the Bakewell Old House Museum. Along the way we had a rather dramatic sighting of All Saints Church Bakewell when we rounded a corner and found it majestically displayed in front of us. Completely unexpected and quite a nice surprise! If we’d had a bit more energy (and the Old House Museum wasn’t going to close in about 90 minutes) we would have tried to go inside. Didn’t know it at the time but the church dates from about 990 and has the best collection of original stonework anywhere in England – although the current building dates from about 1230, with the original stonework having been discovered at that time and either incorporated in the rebuild of 1220-1240, or perhaps on display inside? Not sure. Our path took us right through the graveyard outside the church filled with tombstones from (mostly) the 1800s to the museum.

All Saints Church Bakewell was at the top of a hill, but hidden from view until we came around the corner of a pathway taking us to the Bakewell Old House Museum.  As such, it was a pretty dramatic reveal.  If we'd had more time (and hadn't been so tired) we would have probably taken a peek inside. As it was, we needed to hustle over to the Museum before it closed.  It was located behind and to the left of the church.

The museum was one of those unexpected finds that pop up from time to time. The house itself IS the topic of much of the museum, accompanied by some exhibits illustrating several facets of life in Bakewell at various times. We spent about an hour – and would have likely spent more if our brains weren’t still tired. However, we were kind of glossing over a lot of the informative text scattered around the rooms so we probably missed a lot of good stuff.

We walked back down into central Bakewell and found a charming little town, fairly busy with pedestrian activity. We window shopped, including one place advertising vacation rental homes and another real estate firm showing homes for purchase. Alas, no ice cream or other snack place leapt out at us, which was a shame as we were getting a little puckish. So we ended up back at Avenue House around 330P or so and available ourselves of a couple of packs of complimentary cookies up in our room while catching up on email, etc. (I’m typing up today’s earlier activities as part of this downtime). We know we SHOULD be maximizing our time here by being outside exploring…but we’re also not in our 20’s anymore and we’re aware that we’re not as spry as we once were, nor are we rebounding from the long flight and time change as quickly as we used to. So, yes, we are sitting in our room on our tablets when there’s a lovely town outside to see…and we’re OK with that!

Dinner for the evening was atThe Woodyard, an English restaurant alongside the River Wye housed in an old marble works dating from 1810. At some point in the building’s history it was apparently split into two, with the second part becoming a woodyard. There’s a glass floor in the bar area where you can see the old millstream running through the building. The restaurant was a simply 9-10 minute walk from Avenue House, along streets we hadn’t seen on our earlier trip to the Old House Museum. At one point we had to cross the river on a small foot bridge. From a distance, we both thought the bridge had two stone sides, but upon getting closer we realized that the “stones” were actually…padlocks! Hundreds – maybe thousands – of padlocks were clipped to the bridges side rails, many with notes attached. Obviously a local custom.

A very pleasant walk alongside the River Wye on our way to The Woodyard.  We'll be crossing the bridge in a moment.

The river was surprisingly shallow - we could see the bottom easily.

From a distance, we'd thought the sides of the bridge were small stones.  Turned out that they were padlocks - hundreds (thousands?) of them!  Some of them had notes or other trinkets attached to them.

Dinner itself was quite nice. It wasn’t pub food at all – I basically didn’t study the menu enough ahead of time. It was more “upscale English”. E had a risotto while I had seabass on top of smashed potatoes. We both enjoyed our dishes a lot. For dessert we had planned to get a Bakewell Pudding, since that’s the town’s claim to fame, but upon review we discovered that they had crushed almonds in theirs, so that was off the menu. We instead got a Biscoff Cheesecake which also had a scoop of salted caramel ice cream along with a drizzle of fresh caramel. It was a great finish to a nice meal. I happened to do a conversion of the bill to USD – the whole meal cost us $56. Bargain!

While still partly cloudy after dinner, the rain was gone and the temp was probably in the low 60s, making for a very pleasant walk back to The Avenue. We climbed the stairs which, if anything, got steeper while we were eating, and ended the evening with brainy game shows on TV before turning in at a more reasonable 10P.

Our room at Avenue House. The lucite chairs were a bit funky, but the room was pretty nice.  A recurring problem throughout the trip was that most bedrooms lacked A/C and the beds were equipped with down comforters, so temperature control at bedtime was sometimes a challenge.  This bedroom was on the top floor, up some very narrow stairs - it was a bit of a squeeze to get our luggage up the stairs.

The view from our bedroom.  Although there was a gas station directly across the street (to the left, in this picture), we were basically in a residential area.  However, the commercial district was just a short 0.2 mile walk away, in the opposite direction shown in this photo.  So it wasn't like being on Firefly and surrounded by miles of suburbs.  The road on the left was a relatively busy A6 road.

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2023 England and Edinburgh Day 2: At Heathrow and Driving to Newport Pagnell

One of the first things to take care of upon landing was to get some pocket money. I’d (of course!) done some research before leaving the US on the best strategy for exchanging USD for GBP. I could have had money delivered to the house by either Wells Fargo or BofA before leaving. WF had the best exchange rate, but required a minimum conversion of USD200, which was well more than the GBP40 that I wanted to have. BofA was OK with delivering only the smaller amount, but their flat delivery fee was $7.50. So, ultimately, it would be less expensive to withdraw money at an ATM at Heathrow than to get it ahead of time.

The key is to avoid a Travelex ATM (far and away the most common ATM found throughout LHR) and instead use one of the less-common local bank ATMs. This would avoid both Travelex’s conversion fees as well as their flat GBP 2.50 surcharge for using one of their ATMs. So by using our WF ATM card at the ATM at the end of T3’s baggage claim hall (near the Virgin Atlantic baggage office) we’ll be able to withdraw GBP 40 with (hopefully) minimal surcharges. If for some reason the ATM in baggage claim isn’t available there’s another one post-Customs, near the Help Point, that we’ll pass while walking to the rental car bus stop. I figure it will also make sense to pop into an airport store post-ATM to buy something tiny – maybe a newspaper? – so we can get some coins back.

Once we clear Customs we’ll be off to get our rental car. Alamo doesn’t appear to have a desk at the terminal (actually, they do – it is the Enterprise desk, since Enterprise owns Alamo). As per our confirmation email from them we’ll proceed to Bus Stop 17 and 18 outside to board a shuttle which will take us to the offsite facility about 2 miles away. From there we’ll pick up our car.

We deplaned and made the LONG walk from the T3 gate to T3 passport control, which is automated for (among others) US passport holders. You place your passport photo-down on a scanner and then look at a camera and if everything matches up the gates unlock and you pass through. From there you go downstairs to baggage claim (on level 0). As PE, our bags were tagged for priority unload and, in fact, our two suitcases were within the first 10 placed on the belt so we grabbed them and exited through the “Customs – Nothing to Declare” doors. There’s nothing that happens at Customs – it was just a door and there was no inspection, no forms – not even anyone watching you. Unexpected.

Once in the public arrivals area we stopped at an ATM to withdraw GPB 50 (at a Travelex ATM, sadly) and then went into a shop to buy a Diet Coke (but mostly to get some small change made). Then out the terminal doors to the bus stops where the rental car company shuttles are – just a few steps out the terminal door. An Alamo/Enterprise/National shuttle was just driving away as we stepped outside (of course!) so we had to wait 7-10 minutes for the next one, but we soon found ourselves at the rental facility.

This turned out to be a bit of a cluster because they were out of automatic transmission cars…but it wasn’t clear that they were OUT – it was represented to us that they just needed to do a bit of juggling and they’d get us one. However, after an hour of nothing being communicated to us the girl who had been “helping” us directed us to go the “Emerald Customer” kiosk. Essentially, she punted us to a more experienced rep. She was very honest about them not having any AT cars but offered us a nicer/newer manual transmission car at the same price and also threw in the perk that we could return it at any gas level and they’d cover the gas charges. Driving stick wasn’t high on my list of choices, but we were tired and we needed to get this show on the road, so we took it!

Our Vauxhaul Mokka.  The front seats were a bit tight to get into because the dashboard was kinda in the way, but it was pretty comfy to drive and very quiet on the road.  The modern-day displays, including backup camera, lane change warnings, shift advisories, and Android Auto (which allowed us to use our phone's Waze app on the car) made driving so much easier than on previous trips.

Biggest challenge of MT turned out to be remembering the stick was under my left hand, not my right. I kept moving my right hand to find the gear knob before correcting myself. Otherwise, Waze demonstrated right away how much easier nav has become with modern phones. Of course, we (I) still managed to make the wrong lane choices when we exited the motorway at Newport Pagnell and accidentally got back onto the motorway…which meant having to go another ELEVEN MILES to the next exit in order to turn around and come back to where we should have gone. Ugh.

A couple of pre-trip resources I marked prior to our trip were aboutroad signage and parking in the UK.

I’d selected Milton Keynes as our stop over point on the first day on the presumption that, upon landing at LHR I’d still have enough energy left to drive about an hour, even after a long flight. The idea was to get to the outskirts of London before the start of our first “real” day in-country and launch our activities from there. At some point I learned that Bletchley Park was in Milton Keynes and I’d tried to find some tour configuration that would allow us to visit the exhibits there. I couldn’t find a reasonable configuration, however and, given that Bletchley was likely to appeal to me much more than Eileen, I didn’t see any reason to force it into the schedule. (We’d also seen an Enigma-related exhibit somewhere previously – I don’t recall where that was. I don’t think it was during our 1998 UK trip, but maybe?) Therefore, Milton Keynes existed only as a layover location.

The hotel I found was the Swan Revived Hotel, a hotel inside a 15th century coaching inn. During planning I managed to misread the hotel’s name so for the better part of two years I kept typing “Swan REVISED Hotel” into Google and didn’t notice that Google was finding it despite my misspelling. It had both an attached restaurant (in case we were running late or lazy around dinner time) as well as on-site parking, which was an ongoing necessity since we were bringing a rental car along the whole way. We were going to have to await our visit to see whether we felt they had earned their 2021 and 2022 Hotel of the Year Award from the Milton Keynes Food and Leisure Awards. Update: I’m not sure they have any serious competition – at least there’s none in Newport Pagnell. Hard to judge them objectively given our exhaustion and the high that normal temperatures making our visit so uncomfortable.

As part of our strategy to acclimatize to a new time schedule the idea was that, post landing, we’d power on through the remainder of the day before turning in for an early night’s sleep. Since our plan put us into Milton Keynes right around lunch time we needed to find some simple activity to keep us awake and occupied for a few hours before we could check in to the hotel and relax a bit pre-dinner. I finally settled on visiting Willen Lake Park, a popular outdoor family destination. Of course, the amusement park and water activities held no interest for us, but there were walking paths (of which the Peace Pagoda Walk seemed to be the perfect choice since it circles the lake and includes the option to see the Willen Labyrinth. There was also a local shopping center we could stop at before hitting the park that offered several eating options, including Eat Your Heart Out, a sandwich shop. This was all within a 5-10 minute drive of our hotel, so the routing was quite simple and natural.

The selection of Willen Lake Park as a time killer is an example of how my long planning process pays off. I didn’t come up with this option until (my version of) really late in the process. That means I added this part about a month before the trip, when a lot of my trip planning was of the “what small little details can I worry about now?” variety. Having already selected the major features of the trip I could start to think of the small details (like this one). It was during this same period that I did stuff like map out parking details at various locations, updated attraction pricing, and confirmed current operating hours. Obviously, this kind of detailed planning is My Kinda Thing and gives me tremendous peace of mind when we travel.

That was the plan. The reality was that the car snafu set our timeline back considerably. That, combined with the missed roundabout exit, put us into Newport Pagnell around 3P rather than 1P, and we were DONE! So we went straight to the hotel.

Ironically, the Swan Revised in undergoing revision! The building frontage was covered with scaffolding when we arrived. Fortunately, found a very convenient parking spot on the street to allow us to check in, and they then directed is around the corner and behind the hotel to a public car park that (essentially) offers free parking from 3P to 11A the next day, which is perfect for overnight guests. So we stashed the car there and took a leisurely stroll back to the Swan. On the way we discovered that the Thai restaurant I had planned on us going to (Pin Petch) did a buffet on Monday rather than normal menu service, and that didn’t appeal to either of us. A lot of stuff was closed on Monday, and what was in walking distance didn’t much appear to us – so we punted and ate at the hotel’s restaurant as it was convenient.

The restaurant we'd intended to eat at (but ultimately didn't).  Note E standing next to the doorway of the Grade 1 Listed church by the restaurant.  Ho hum...another historic building in the middle of everything.  The restaurant itself was a Grade 2 Listed building.

Dinner for our first night was going to be at Pin Petch, a Thai restaurant that, like all our choices, was just a short walk from our hotel. In this specific case, only about 250 feet away. In one of those “ho hum” moments that mark being surrounded by so much history, the restaurant was located in a Grade 2 listed Victorian building from around 1850, formerly known as Odell’s Ironmongers – and was itself next door to St Peter and St Paul’s Church, a Grade 1 building with parts – including the entry door visible next to Pin Petch - dating back to about 1350. However, the discovery of the buffet plus our exhaustion had us staying in at the hotel where we dined instead.

We got back to our room around 730P and tried our best to stay awake, watching several panel game shows on BBC2 – but by 930P we were toast and crawled into bed. The room was very hot, having only a portable fan on the desk to cool things down, and that was inadequate, but we were both so tired it didn’t matter initially. However, we both woke a couple of times, including at 130A. In my case, I didn’t get back to sleep until around 4A.

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2023 England and Edinburgh Day 1: SFO to LHR on Virgin Atlantic

We’d arranged with Sharon and Weo to pick us up at our house and drop us at SFO so we wouldn’t have to worry about stashing our car at long term parking, nor have to drive ourselves home at the end of our long journey upon returning to the US. So all we had to do was pack our bags and be ready.

For this trip we decided we’d each use a full-size suitcase for all our stuff and I’d carry on our new laptop backpack. I’d done a test run of the backpack when we’d taken Andrew to CU Boulder to move him into his dorm in August and had a good sense of what we could pack in that – and I was actually quite pleased with the way the backpack had worked out on that trip. So the backpack had my computer (supplemented with a Bluetooth mouse so I didn’t have to also bring along the USB hub just to have the wireless mouse’s receiver with me), both our tablets, cables, phones, electrical gear, noise-canceling headphones, passports, crossword puzzle books, water bottles, etc – and, of course, the Folder of Fun. We also grabbed our sunglasses and portable cell phone dashboard mount to make it easier to see the phone while driving. Eileen carried a small purse mostly so we’d have quick access for our pills and her phone. The plan was that, once on the ground, we’d use the backpack to tote around our 3-in-1 jackets and water bottles during touring with the intent of offloading the electric gear either to our suitcases or to another smaller backpack that we’d plan to keep in the car trunk during travel.

One of the “things” I’d done pre-trip was to periodically look at the history of our flights on FlightRadar24. This allowed me to see the actual takeoff and landing times for the most recent seven days. Based on that I could tell that VS20 typically left SFO 25-40 minutes late but still managed to make up that time in the air and arrive at LHR close to on-time. While this info didn’t change our timing for reporting to the airport – we are, still, us, and that means we’ll be chronically early even when it isn’t necessary – it did mean that we had a pretty solid understanding of what to expect once we got to SFO and there would be no reason to either rush nor to worry if our boarding call was delayed within the “normal” margins.

On the day of takeoff I awoke to an email from Virgin that our outbound flight was delayed 30 minutes and would take off at 531P. Looking online it was clear that the problem was that the inbound flight (VS19 from LHR) had been delayed leaving London so we were just suffering from cascade effects. No big deal.

Upon arrival at SFO we dropped our bags off at the Virgin desk and cleared security relatively quickly. Been ages since we had to take our shoes off, but there was no pre-TSA marks on our boarding passes so we had to do it old school. Once past security we stopped at a shop so Eileen could buy a reusable water bottle, as none of the ones we had at home was suitable. Bottles filled, we went and sat at the gate and read.

Boarding was also painless. As Premium Economy members we were in Group 2, just after 1st Class. All we had was our backpack which we put into the overhead bin since there was a surplus of bin space. (Post takeoff they appeared to move 4-5 Economy pax into some of the unused PE seats.)

The pacing of VS20 is as follows, with all times expressed as PDT/BDT(Elapsed from Pushback):

• 440P/1240A (T-0:40): Boarding
• 455P/1255A (T-0:30): Pre-flight Prosecco, juice, or water for Premium Economy
• 510P/110A (T-0:15): Cleanup
• 530P/130A (T-0:00): Pushback (about 28 minutes later than published schedule)
• 541P/141A (T+0:11): Takeoff
• 615P/215A (T+0:45): Snack/drink service. Salty/crunchy snack.
• 635P/235A (T+1:05): Cleanup
• 645P/245A (T+1:15): Dinner/drink service. In PE they started in the first row at least on the RH side, didn't notice the LH side...on the return flight it seemed liked they started the LH side from the back row. However, since there are only 5 rows in PE service is completed in about 10 minutes. As expected, our pasta was harmless and mostly tasteless. The key lime cheesecake dessert wasn't bad. The canned(!) Sauv Blanc that I'd selected was HORRIBLE, while E's canned rose was passable. Wines inflicted on us by https://nice-drinks.co.uk/..
• 710P/310A (T+1:40): Cleanup
• 745P/345A (T+2:15): Coffee/tea service
• 800P/400A (T+2:30): Clean up and lights out. E and I both watched the D&D movie – which was a hoot – before each trying to get some sleep. She managed to get 2-3 hours of semi-restful shuteye, but I got nada and gave up after 90 minutes and went back to ready on my tablet.
• 110A/910A (T+7:40): Lights on
• 130A/930A (T+8:00): Breakfast/drink service. We both had their “cooked breakfast”, which was a pretty decent take on a full English breakfast (minus the beans).
• 311A/1111A (T+9:41): Landing...which was still earlier than the officially scheduled arrival time, despite the 30 minute delay at SFO.

About to push back from the gate at SFO.  We wore masks at all times at the airport and on the plane except when eating or drinking.  In Premium Economy we were the only passengers doing so, and I didn't see any other random passengers in other sections wearing masks - but I saw very few of the others.

Enjoying our pre-flight Prosecco.  Premium Economy has some perks.  Note also the comfy leather seats.  We also had 22" wide seats, tons of legroom, and a footrest.  I tried using the footrest but it didn't do much for me.

The food menu on VS20 SFO-LHR.  E and I had both pre-selected the creamy pasta for our dinner about a week before the flight.  Virgin only allows pre-selection of the one meal - we had to choose our "In the morning" choice when they brought the food cart around.  However, since we were in PE and were served before Economy I assume that we would have been able to select any of the choices w/o worry of them being out.

The list of available drinks.  I had some (water-based) hot chocolate as part of the after dinner drinks service.  

The seat-back video display. There were about 100 video choices, about 800 music choices, and (I assume) several video game choices.  The "follow the plane" app was pretty poorly designed.  Although you could select one of several views (e.g. "Cockpit", "Right window", "Top down", etc.) your selection would timeout after a couple of minutes and it would revert back to a loop that included boring/unhelpful things like "things to see at your destination" or "world view"  It was possible to use the game controller screen for this app which gave a very pared down look - this would have been OK if it hadn't insisted on displaying all units in metric rather than imperial form.  Finally, the USB plug on the bottom of the screen was VERY worn and our USB cables would tend to work their way out of the socket just from the weight of our cables.

Dinner.  The tray was pretty crowded and it took some stage management to get things situated!  My pepper shaker had a loose top, which I didn't realize until I tried to shake pepper onto my salad and dump the entire contents into my bowl!

The hot breakfast in the morning.  It was actually pretty decent!

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