Robin's Log
Introduction
Montreal, QC
Saturday September 13, 1997
Montreal, QC Safe and sound back from England and missing the civil English way of life more every day. In the long term we would like to move there, high cost of living or no.
England was a breath of fresh air, having the civilized type of life that we had both forgotten just how much we had enjoyed when we were resident there. Now read on about our adventures and why we enjoyed this our best vacation so much.
The Log
Sunday August 24, 1997
I, until now had never realized how far out of Montreal Mirabel was, it is an hours drive through the countryside. British Airways, as always has the same deplorable ground service with uniform switching staff, hopping from one uniform to another to minimize operational costs of the airlines they serve.
On the plus side, the Boeing 777 is nice aircraft, and since we arrived at the BA desk first, even before it had opened, we managed to get exit seats with a full 7 feet between us and the midship's bulkhead in place of the poorly located seats preselected by the airline. The hop over the pond was a remarkably quick one aided by screaming tailwind, finding us on Heathrow approach over 90 minutes ahead of schedule with little time to sleep.
Monday August 25, 1997
On our arrival in London it was raining hard, and since customs never gave us a second look, it was the quickest I have ever transited Heathrow. The car hire company was located off the terminal thus giving me a chance to readjust my senses to left-hand side driving and traffic patterns, which I found had changed little over the past 15 years.
Our objective was to stay as far away from London as possible so we quickly turned our baby Fiats nose west into the sheeting rain. All ran according to plan as we worked our way westward with the Salisbury Plains as a first objective. Within an hour I found an exit to the un-numbered back lanes to Litchfield where we had exited the motorways and followed the single lane roads carefully picking our way through the hedgerows and fog.
By 13:00 hrs we found ourselves at St St Mary Borne yet another unmarked hamlet at a crossroads. I was becoming too tired to drive and worried about our continuing safety and the hunt for day ones lodging began.
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Finally in Andover, perhaps 50 miles west of London we found a" Station Pub
" which every small town in England has. Exhausted we crawled into some very lumpy
beds for a catch up nap before exploring the town in search of something to fill our empty tummies.
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After several hours sleep and a meal at the local Indian restaurant we both felt better and we began my planned investigation of the English Pub scene. Not too bad but the beer was weaker than I remembered but the natives were still friendly and talkative as ever.
Tuesday August,26 1997
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This morning we set forth working southwards towards the remains of ancient Britain, targeting the old hill forts and leys as a navigational objective.
The first of these was Danbury. Unfortunately it was almost a mile walk to the summit and
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I had to abandon Edgar a few hundred
yards along the hilly approach. Once atop the hill one entered imposing earthworks which it was easy to imagine the chieftains of old riding through on their way back from battle.
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The now raised mound topped by stout wooden walls contained all the necessities of a major iron age trading town.
We picked our way back and forth following the line of iron age hill forts until finally reaching Stonehenge which has now become a tourist trap. We passed on giving them our 14 quid and continued west.
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