A Tour of Britain

By Glynn Baugher

This book presents a chatty view of literary and gardening Britain--England, Scotland, and Wales--in the 1980s. British strengths and eccentricities highlight the comic idiosyncrasies of that time, of that place. Lavishly illustrated with the author’s own photographs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781532077180

Glynn Baugher

Glynn Baugher grew up in rural Virginia; graduated from William Monroe High School; earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Emory and Henry College; earned his Master of Arts degree and Ph. D. from Tulane University. While teaching at the college level for thirty-four years, Glynn married and fathered three children. Today he is retired and lives in Emory, Virginia.

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Copyright © 2019 Glynn Baugher.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-7717-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-7718-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019911045

iUniverse rev. date: 08/20/2019

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Contents

DEDICATION

PREFACE

A Tour of Britain

DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to my family—my wife Mae, my daughters April and Dawn, and my son Eric—all of whom took up the slack while I went to Britain for six weeks. As my older daughter said when I returned, I didn’t realize how much you do around here, Dad; I appreciate their doing it instead.

The book I also dedicate to Brian Hays, my travel companion and worthy navigator.

PREFACE

This book is the journal of a tour of Britain (not of the U.K. since it does not include northern Ireland). The journal is printed almost exactly as written, with a very few minor changes for clarity. The tour lasted for six weeks in June and July of 1986, a mostly literary tour, for I was then an English professor at Frostburg State in Maryland, and my fellow traveler—Brian Hays—was a recent graduate of Frostburg with a major in English. His parents gave him the trip as a kind of graduation present. I was spending a small inheritance I got from my mother.

Because it has now been 30-plus years since the tour, the journal has attained a bit of historical interest in matters such as the prices of items, particularly the bed-and-breakfast rates.

The pictures illustrating this book were taken as slides, nearly all during this trip. A few are from a later trip to Britain, almost altogether those from the Lake District, for my roll of film for that shoot in 1986 was faultily loaded and did not take. Let us all give thanks for digital photography, so easy in comparison.

Since Brian did not drive a stick shift, and new driving conditions would complicate the job even further, I drove for the four weeks that we had a rental car, and Brian ably navigated. The places to visit and the route to follow I had planned and overplanned ahead of time.

The picture on the front cover is from one of the slides I took of ‘Scott’s View’, lovely Scottish countryside near Dryburgh Abbey.

A Tour of Britain

Monday, June 16, 1986

Our World Airlines plane from BWI (Baltimore-Washington International) to Gatwick, due to leave at 7:00 p.m., left at about 1:15 a.m. on June 17. We had some fun at the airport, talking to an English exchange student, Robert Pratt, 16, from Thetford (Tom Paine’s home). He was a dirt bike enthusiast, very good by his account, with a $700 bike in his baggage. We also talked to a German couple reading Robert Ludlum action stories. And to a group of New Zealanders with a collection of stuffed animals as carry-on baggage. Brian and I played cards and were watched by others. We walked down to see Mae’s Korean babies brought to this country for adoption, drooled at a Mercedes replica kit car, and piled in ten abreast in the DC-10. The takeoff was very smooth. Having taken a Valium for my first international flight, I was scarcely nervous at all.

They fed us all night long and apologized again and again for the delay. Since the delay seemed due to the need to repair or bring in another plane, I was less upset than at flying on an unfit plane. The seats were very narrow and hard to sleep in, but I dozed fitfully between bouts of being plied with food and drink. We got into Gatwick, not at 6:40 a.m. London time but shortly before 1 p.m. Obviously, I’m already on Tuesday. Very smooth landing.

Tuesday, June 17

Airport entry ran smoothly, but we saw the notorious British passion for standing in queues. Every official we encountered was most helpful and friendly. We caught a courtesy bus to Budget Rent-a-Car, quite pleased with our car, a new, pretty blue Peugeot. I practiced shifting a bit left-handed (Brian not driving a stick shift) and keeping to the left in the very small parking lot (car park) and headed out into traffic, Brian as my alert navigator. We went through a few roundabouts, always keeping to the left. If confused on where to go, one just goes around again. I bounced the car slightly off a curb, steering too tightly, and got onto the motorway. The speed limit was 70 mph, but I was going no more than 55 in our little car until I got the hang of English driving. Fortunately the clutch, the brake, and the accelerator pedals were in the same position as in American stick-shift cars. I soon got reasonably accustomed to shifting with my left hand. We had rented a small stick-shift for economy’s sake.

We missed the south direction and had to backtrack a little, getting off the motorway at Pease Pottage. For the first time it looked like England, not just any large metropolitan area, and the name of our location was charming. We traveled narrow two-direction roads, tree-shaded, with 10-feet tall rhododendron a-bloom for miles. (Rhododendrons and azaleas were naturalized from America many years ago.) Even little bitty yards in the villages were full of flowers. We stopped to eat supper at a cafeteria and both had steak and kidney pies, for the very Englishness of the food. I liked it better than Brian did, the pastry like a meat potpie but a bit stronger-flavored than just beef.

We learned the British coins (decimalized since 1972) by getting change in 1 penny, 2 pence, 10 pence, 20 pence, 50 pence, and 1 pound coins. The pound coins have at least Welsh, Scotch, and Latin/English motifs, lettering around the edge. We stopped at a red classic phone booth and, using my reference book on bed and breakfast places, got one near Pulborough, a wonderful first choice—Frithwood Farm, a 16th-century farmhouse with red-tiled clay roof, the house dripping in wisteria. Around the lawn ran a beautiful border, mostly of perennials, with the biggest rhubarb I’ve ever seen mixed in. The doorways to the house were only about