So Many Trails - So Little Time

A guest blog by Robin Hillyard

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  A tiny part of the beautiful flower beds at Kew Gardens--note the green grass

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  Sad brown grass when we visited my old (high) school

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  Contrast the green trees and the yellow grass at Kew Gardens

I’m using my guest spot to talk about some aspects of ordinary life here in the UK—what we experience when we’re not traveling to Scotland, the New Forest, etc.

Let’s start with the weather (see the photos above for varying shades of grass color).

London has experienced five heatwaves since May. Heathrow Airport had no rain for 56 consecutive days. Many temperature records have been broken: Kew Gardens measured slightly over 100F a few days after we visited on another extremely hot day. We suffer a little more over here because most houses (including ours) don't have air conditioning. Many houses don’t even have fans! English weather just doesn’t make the capital outlay to install A/C worth it—or at least that was true pre-global-warming. Most transport options have good A/C, including our car, but the tube can be brutal. For the three weeks we spent in Scotland, we really appreciated the cool weather.

An added bonus this summer was the partial eclipse of the sun on August 12^th, which was one of many clear blue-sky days. We had something like 90% coverage of the sun, but that was still too much for the naked eye. We had special glasses for ourselves and filters for our iPhones, but we weren’t able to get good photos. Our friends Nancy and Patty went to Spain to see the eclipse in totality - so we got a great photo from them!

Photo by Nancy Olt

That brings me on to one of my favorite subjects: transportation. Although the roads can be crowded, many British people don’t even own a car, or if they do, they will use it only to drive to the station, as we’ve been doing on the many occasions we've visited the capital. From Shenfield, our closest mainline station, the trains are so frequent that we usually don’t even bother to check the timetable. If we miss one, another will be along in 10 minutes or so. From our location in the Essex countryside to the City of London it's about three quarters of an hour. The tube is even more frequent. When you reach the bottom of the escalator and the train is just pulling out, you typically only have to wait two minutes for the next train, sometimes not even that.

And there are buses everywhere: each stop has information about exactly when the next bus will arrive. Even our local once-an-hour bus into town has, at least in theory, a tracker to tell you where it is. They all take bank cards so there’s no fumbling for change. Getting around is just so simple.

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  Pair of Pendolinos at Manchester Piccadilly

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  The Manchester Metrolink tram system

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  Bus coming from London's Tower Bridge

Of course, it wouldn’t be fair to talk about public transportation without a mention of the roads. You’ve probably heard about those roads in Scotland and Ireland which are wide enough only for one car—but have passing places. Well, around here, we have lots of bendy roads which are just (and I mean barely) wide enough for two cars, but without passing places. When a bus, van or lorry (truck) approaches from the other direction, you are obliged to drive into the hedge, the ditch, or whatever just to make room. There’s never a dull moment! Here’s a typical busy but narrow road, less than a mile from our rental house. By the way, the two road signs indicate that you can now legally do the nationwide speed limit (60 mph for single-carriageway roads).  Good luck with that!

Just enough room for two cars to pass--just hope that you don't meet the bus!

By contrast, the motorways are well-engineered, fast (up to 70 mph), and safe for long-distance travel. On the whole, drivers here are more disciplined and, because of all the cameras, they are more likely to obey the speed limits.

Kim does a great job of telling you about food. I don’t really need to say much other than that we eat well. Very well. What I do want to talk about is pub culture—and beer in particular, although almost all pubs do a good, or at least decent, job with food (I’m easy to please). Pubs are an integral part of village life (sometimes the “village” is in a town or city) and act as casual meeting places where you can go and have a good natter with people you may or may not know. Sadly, we don’t have a pub within walking distance—it was turned into a Turkish restaurant a few years ago. But we have a dozen friendly country pubs within a fifteen-minute radius, and they all have cask ale: traditional English beer which, as Kim will tell you, is too warm, flat, and bitter. But I—and many of my fellow Englishmen—love it. The heat of this summer has been tough on the beer, though. It doesn’t keep long even in the cellar when it’s so warm above ground.

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  One of our local pubs

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  fresh from the cask

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  The Prince's Head in Richmond--fans of Ted Lasso will recognize this pub.

We are blessed here in Essex with some fabulous country parks. The UK has quite steep “death duties,” which frequently means that the children of the nobility have to sell off a few assets. The county has done a great job of converting some of that wealth that formerly was in private hands to public parks. Not far from us (30 minutes) is the great Epping Forest, a 6,000-acre former royal hunting ground, that is almost wilderness, or at least it seems like it when you’re hiking there. There are thousands of fallow deer (too many really!) as well as wild Longhorn cattle.

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  Wild Longhorn cattle in Epping Forest

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  Tired dog gets a ride in Epping Forests

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  Lovely Thorndon Country Park

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  Pay and Display (by app or machine)

There are three smaller, yet still huge, parks within 15 minutes of us, each of which we’ve visited several times with our two dogs. There is a parking fee that helps maintain the park. Almost all parking places in the UK are either number-plate-based or app-based. You never need coins anymore. Today, we returned to Thorndon Park (350 acres) and were exploring new, apparently limitless trails when Kim observed, “So many trails, so little time.”

🚗 🍺 🥾 🚊 🌳