PART II

Great, Great, Great Britain

 

 

Chapter 8

White Cliffs and Castles

 

You get use to the surrealistic scenario of transoceanic flights that end in daylight: the flat blue of the ocean broken by the appearance of the foreign shore as seen through wispy clouds during the aircraft's descent.  You might also become, as I did, suddenly trusting of the fact that despite recent terrorism aboard aircraft and the grim televised aftermath of crashes, flying was still the safest way to travel.

The sudden green of Britain also triggered a knotting in my throat.  It was an abrupt realization: If anything goes wrong here, I can't simply go home again.

The parting with the Madons was one of handshakes and well wishes, but I remained seated.  I felt queasy.   What's the matter with me?   This is jolly old England – I have roots here.  I put on my heavy daypack and joined the tide flowing into Gatwick's Arrivals.

The purpose in coming to an airport is to leave it.  And I had come to the second busiest international passenger airport in the world. (Heathrow was first.)  I saw the usual hordes of people meeting and hugging and leaving with their luggage and loved ones.  There was no one here for me.  I felt crushed by bodies, baggage and the harsh echoing of voices.  I felt alienated by the disembodied though sexy female voice on the PA:  "Mr. and Mrs. Tuppas, recently arrived from New York..."   I scrambled up to a deserted second-level lookout.  I stood below a closed circuit TV camera and surveyed the crowds – such a seething ebb and flow.   Get me out of here!

Gatwick would be home for the next two days and nights.  It began with anxious phone calls.  I was two months late in getting my project underway – would anyone remember that I was coming?

"You're the one going 'round the world on a scootah?  Well, welcome to England, Mr. Smith.  We've been expecting you."  I fell in love with the receptionist at the Canadian High Commission.  I adored her British accent.

I also fretted about Melawend.

"Tom, there's been a slight problem with your scooter," Mike Carroll said.  Static in the line made him seem far away.  "They found some gas in the tank so your scooter had to be re-classified as 'dangerous goods', but you should have it tomorrow."

After Mike's reassurance, even the crowds at Gatwick seemed friendlier.  I began calling hotels.  All of them were too expensive for me.  At a taxi stand, I saw a tall, gray, stern-looking man who looked like an airport official.

"Excuse me, sir, can you direct me to an area of inexpensive hotels?"

He glared at me.  "If you damned Yanks would only prepare yourselves before you leave!"  He walked away.

I did not mind being mistaken for an American, but why was I damned?  Damned if I knew.

In the long run, his rudeness helped lead me to a decision that would save me money and would help orient me for the journey far ahead.  I would stay at the airport until Melawend arrived and cleared Customs.

In two trips, I lugged my gear upstairs to Gatwick Village and spent the rest of the day observing people.  Gatwick was a multi-racial bazaar: shaggy-haired Europeans in frayed blue jeans and baggy tops were drinking beer in the Village Inn Pub; Arabs in flowing white clothes walked by; on a nearby bench, Sikhs in turbans sat next to women in bright-colored saris; an Oriental woman deftly maneuvered a cleaning cart.  When I splurged on a hamburger and a hot doughnut in the Shortstop Restaurant, I may have stared at the Negro man who asked – in a splendid English accent – "May I take your order, sah?"

All this foreignness made me apprehensive.  I laced my gear together with twine and tethered it to my wrist.   I slept fitfully on a bench.

From phone calls made the next morning, misunderstandings over motorcycle insurance led me to make a fruitless train trip to nearby Crowley.  It seemed that I could get insurance for England only, not for Europe.  But it was refreshing to get out of the airport and see small old homes of brick or stone with leaded glass windows, situated on postage-stamp lots that were festooned with fussed-over flowers and shrubs and bordered by trim hedges or rustic stone fences, with cats or dogs sunning themselves on front steps.  England was, indeed, quaint.

I went to the AA office near the airport and fell in love again.  Madeline, the auto club representative, was a blond, blue-eyed beauty who reminded me of Anne Murray.   If she had been single, and interested, the rest of this story would be different (as it also would be from encounters yet to come).   Madeline was friendly and through her I did secure insurance that would cover Melawend throughout Europe.

Late that afternoon, I talked with Mark Baker who was a representative of Atlas Air (an affiliate of Peace Bridge Brokerage).  I drew stares when I hung up the phone and said, "Al-right!"  Melawend had arrived.   The next morning, however, a stoical Customs officer quashed my joy.

"Carnet (kar-nay), please," he said.

"Carnet?" I said.  What the hell is a carnet? 

Burly, bearded Mark, who had accompanied me, explained that it was a document that permitted temporary importation of an item.  In lieu thereof, the officer demanded about US$700 in duty to release Melawend.

The officer just shook his head.

More phone calls.  Finally, there came a suggestion from the High Commission that would become a fundamental practice throughout the journey: "Talk to a senior official." (Someone with discretionary authority.) 

Why didn’t I think of that? 

Mark led me to a small office in which two middle-age men sat at desks that faced each other.  Mark introduced me, then stood aside.

"And how may we help you, Mr. Smith?"  Chris Struk said.

Ah, politeness.

I told them of my journey and about the problem.  I handed Chris a blue plastic-covered portfolio filled with letters and articles.  He braced his chin with his hand, turned the pages and handed the portfolio to his colleague.  "Have a look at this, Roger."

Roger Duckworth eyed the portfolio as if it were a critical report.  I felt like a student standing on the edge of failure or passage.

"I'd say this young chap has set himself a difficult task, but he's obviously quite intent upon it,” Roger said.  Chris smiled and nodded.  "We'll be pleased to help you, Mr. Smith."

With that, they stamped and signed forms that exempted Melawend from duty – she was free!  We shook hands.

"Welcome to Gatwick, Mr. Smith," Roger said, "The start of your UK leg."

It was time to get Melawend out of bondage.  First, I had a package to send ahead.  I had put together a mini-portfolio with a cover letter about the journey and posted it to the chairman of Honda.  I thought the company would like to know that I was riding one of their scooters around the world and would be visiting their headquarters in Japan.  I was not seeking sponsorship – Honda Canada had already declined.  I thought the parent company might simply want to be informed and updated of my progress.  In those heady moments before securing Melawend's release, I felt that I was planting a seed.  I handed over $8.00 for postage.

 

(It would be several months before I would receive a letter from Miss Ritsuko Onodera of Honda's Overseas Public Relations Department.  She had written this letter eleven days after I sent the portfolio from Gatwick.  My reception in Japan would leave me baffled... ah, screw the euphemism – pissed off!  But I had a lot to learn.) 

 

Mark was almost as elated as I was as he drove me back for my second night at Gatwick.  He picked me up the next morning and took me to Bowles cargo warehouse and became the first of so many international recipients of inadequate expressions of "Thank you."

In the warehouse, a stout gray-haired man who reminded me of the former reeve of my hometown led me to the crate that encased my beloved scooter.  He took a hammer and pried off the top.  Melawend was inside, buried up to her handlebars in styrofoam balls.   I pried two sides off and swept away the fallout.  A beefy mechanic came over and fitted two bolts for the battery.  A Richard Burton look-alike cut a 60-foot length of plastic rope to secure the gear.  (I cut it in half and used it throughout the odyssey.  Twelve years later, I am still using that rope.)  A frail-looking man held a funnel as I poured in gas secured from a local gas station.

Finally, I straddled Melawend at the loading ramp.  There were handshakes all around and a thumbs-up from Richard Burton.  On the first try, Melawend came to life and we were away.  I stopped at the AA office to get more printed information, and, yes, to see Madeline once more.   Though busy with other travelers, Madeline waved.  Melawend and I headed out of Gatwick, going the wrong way.

No, I must go east to reach Dover, I thought.  Okay.  M-roads – main roads; A-roads – arteries.  M23 to A26.  Beep, beep!  Please be patient – I'm just a damned tourist trying to drive right.  No, left! 

You adapted quickly to the British situation.

As all drivers in Britain, I was driving on the left because of an edict by Pope Boniface VIII.  In 1300 AD he reiterated that "all roads lead to Rome" and told pilgrims to keep to the left.  The Pope's edict had force of law and it lasted for centuries.  Mounting a horse on the left was also more convenient for swordsmen as ninety percent wielded their weapons with the right hand.  However, during the French Revolution, Robespierre, architect of the Reign of Terror, ordered the citizens of Paris to drive on the right, apparently as a gesture of defiance against the Catholic Church.  A few years later, Napoleon, a southpaw, argued that it was natural to travel on the right.  To avoid collisions, other traffic was forced to use that side of the road.

Britain was isolated from these conflicts and vehicle design reinforced the practice of keeping left.  British freight wagons had a driver's seat on the right because most drivers were right handed, could use the whip with the right hand so as not to entangle it in the load behind, and also pass on the left so they could judge clearance on the narrow roads.  Territories of Britain inherited the same rules, including Singapore and Kenya (Melawend and I would be travelling there).  In 1859, the Japanese were great admirers of things British and so chose to drive on the left.  Today, seventy-five percent of the world drives on the right.

No matter which side you were obliged to drive on, getting started in a foreign land sometimes meant getting lost.  I found my way to the little town of East Grinstead but became mired in its streets of tightly packed two-story houses.  I would stop three times to ask for directions out of town, to Ashford.  I escaped but soon got lost again, this time meeting with a destiny in the big busy town of Royal Tunbridge Wells.

This town in Kent had been prefixed "Royal" in 1909 because royals and other celebrities had been flocking here to rejuvenate in its spa for three hundred years.  I was just a traveler who was anxious to pass through.  When a sign informed me that I was headed for London, I ducked into a residential crescent to turn around.

It was one of those awkward corners: you came onto a main thoroughfare that rose from a hill to the left and curved to the right.  I turned right.  As if from nowhere, a small yellowish car heading the same way clipped my left side.  I fought to keep Melawend upright.  She wobbled violently, bounded up over the curb and we slid on our right sides for a few feet.

Four women came toward me.  One was a short old woman, the owner of the car.  Another was the passenger, a petite woman who reminded me of the mother of a boyhood chum.  She appeared ready to pounce on me.

"You didn't look," she said.

I felt like saying, The hell I didn't!  What about you – driving too fast, eh?  But I felt my foreignness and did not respond.

While the passenger hustled for witnesses, the old woman and I stood between Melawend and her car.

"Oh dear," she said.

"All you alright, Mam?" I said.

"Yes, fine," she said, clasping her hands next to her bosom.   "And you, lad?"

"I'm okay."

When satisfied that no one was hurt, I turned to Melawend because I was concerned about leaking gas.  An older gentleman in a suit helped me get Melawend onto her center stand.  The old woman and I then surveyed her car for damage.  There was none.  It had been a soft impact; the car had merely brushed against the soft-sided saddlebags and threw me off balance.

As more onlookers appeared, I began to feel my foreignness more intensely.  I trembled from fear as well as shock.  Police?  Court?  I felt relieved when the old woman said it was not worth a claim.  But her passenger seemed determined to find fault.  I spotted an old crack in side-mounted mirror.

"This appears to be all of it," I said, pointing to the mirror.  "Five pounds should cover it."

The ladies agreed, saying it would be better to settle here for cash.  I paid.  It was a face-saving move to expedite matters.  I just wanted to get the hell out of there.  The passenger's expression softened.  Onlookers drifted away.  The ladies and I went over to Melawend.

"Are you going to be alright on that scooter?" the passenger asked.

There were scratches on the faring and the muffler and there were small tears in the packs.  The platform was tilted from bent hinges.  I had brush cuts to my right calf and thigh and the Odyssey Jacket was scuffed and slightly torn.

"I'll be fine, thanks."

They got back in their car and I crouched beside the passenger's door.  I asked for directions.  They confided on the best route for me.  I had been right to turn around, having just passed the required turn.

I sensed a mutual relief, that we were not adversaries but victims of circumstance.  There even came a sense of parting from an ordeal shared.

Just before they left, the passenger smiled, put her hand on my arm and said, "Someone is with you."

Melawend started easily but the ride was wobbly.  I stopped, straightened the hinges and re-balanced the load.   Much better.  I was grateful to be moving again.  The plan was to reach the south coast but I had lost too much time.  I made for Maidstone instead and got on the M20.   I was reminded of the fast empty highways of North America, but I was glad to be moving quickly.

It was late afternoon.  I had wanted to pass Canterbury for at least a glimpse of a legendary landmark of England – the cathedral that was "The Mother Church of English Christianity".  I longed to see the city whose motto was "Hail, Mother of England", whose history went to back to the Iron Age, the Roman Invasion of 43 AD, the sieges by the Vikings, the Danes and by the Normans who began the cathedral in 1070.

My attraction to Canterbury began at the age of eleven, when I saw the movie, Becket.  I had been riveted by the performances of Peter O'Toole as King Henry VIII and of Richard Burton as the archbishop who was martyred (butchered) here in 1170 by French noblemen that were anxious to please the English king.

Edward Grim, a clerk to the Archbishop, had his own arm almost severed off by the same first blow that struck the head of Thomas.  According to Grim, after the fourth knight had struck a blow, the fifth knight, who was really a clerk who had come with the knights, used his foot to scatter the brains and blood of Thomas over the floor.  The clerk-cum-knight then said, "Let us away, Knights; he will rise no more."

In a further indignity, the skeleton of Thomas à Becket was placed on trial by King Henry VIII on a charge of Usurpation of office – this was 365 years after Becket’s death.  An attorney was assigned to defend the accused but the skeleton was found guilty.

I shared the same first name with the archbishop, but for that Thomas, Tuesday had been a significant day for it was on a Tuesday that he was appointed archbishop, put on trial on, banished from England, returned from exile, was slain, and was canonized.

Across the flat lands far to the left of the highway, I saw only the imposing visage of the cathedral's Bell Harry Tower. 

I'll come back someday.

I knew I would not reach the coast before nightfall.  I was tired and hungry and eager to write down the events of the day in my journal.  I found a campground at Ropersole, near Barnham, and talked with the Iris Carter, the owner.  I still felt awkward in all these meetings with foreigners in their own land.  And as I was still a virgin correspondent, my early notes reflected mostly impressions.

Iris Carter was impressive.  She reminded me of Dorothy Gage, the short, husky, spirited middle-aged woman who was my Grade Four teacher.  Mrs. Gage had come to a yard sale that I had back home to raise funds for this trip.  She gave me the map of England that I was using.  Gray-haired Iris was an older version of Mrs. Gage, with the same countenance and feisty manner.

In her tiny general store, she discovered she had sold out of bread and so we went into her house and she gave me part of her own loaf.

We talked in the spartan high-ceiling room she used as an office.  She was divorced.   Her husband had left her for a younger woman.   Iris now had a partner, a younger man with whom she had started this campground in 1979.

She told me of when eight men in a van had come in after midnight and said they would look around before deciding if they would stay.  They lingered on the grounds.  Two of them took showers.  They carried on loudly.  When Iris asked if they planned to stay, they said they still had not decided.  She asked them to leave.  They laughed.  Iris left and returned with a double-barrel shotgun.  She shattered their bravado by firing a single blast into the air.  They left in a hurry.

As Iris and I talked, the shotgun rested in the corner behind her desk.  That first night out in England, my first night out overseas, I went to sleep feeling well fed and secure in the campground of Iris Carter.

Under smoke-gray skies the next morning, I reached what I had longed to see: the coast of Great Britain.  For me, Dover, with its five-hundred-foot-high chalk cliffs, epitomized the symbolic threshold of England.  For nearly 2,000 years, the white cliffs of Dover had been Britain's first line of terrestrial defense.   Again, my vision of a place had been colored by movies.  Here it was war movies – aerial images of weary RAF pilots in battered Spitfires relieved to be flying back over these white cliffs from sorties with the German Luftwaffe.

I settled for a land view of Dover and parked Melawend in front of the White Cliffs Hotel.  I saw the gray waters of the Strait of Dover.  These waters had radically influenced recent world history simply by being there.  On the far shore, in the summer of 1940, a triumphant Adolph Hitler, whose armies had conquered Europe from the Pyrenees to the Arctic Circle, stood poised to crush the weak land forces of Great Britain.  I thought of how the world might be a meaner, leaner place if Hitler had not fled from his personal demon at the north coast of France.  His demon: the master of land warfare had a horror of the sea.  He once confided to one of his field marshals:  "On land I am a hero, but on water I am a coward".  What if Hitler had truly prepared himself for the conquest of England by overcoming this limitation?

I heard a sudden roar of what sounded like aircraft engines, growing louder, frighteningly so, almost deafening.  It was the hovercraft ferry coming in from Calais across the Strait.  Dover was the busiest passenger port in Britain, with 12,000,000 people moving though here annually. 

(But that was to change radically with the coming of "The Chunnel", the transport tunnel built under the English Channel that would connect England and France.  The Franco-British Channel Fixed Link Treaty had been signed on the 12^th of February 1986.  The first TBM – Tunnel Boring Machine – would begin work in December 1987 and the Chunnel would be in operation in 1994.)

I took out a camera to capture my own images of Dover.  Two things struck my eyes.  One was the ruin of the Roman pharos (lighthouse) tucked behind St. Mary-in-Castre Church, near Dover Castle, atop the cliffs.  The Romans invaded England in 43 AD and built the pharos eighty-two years later.  It was the tallest surviving Roman structure in the country.   It reminded me that Great Britain itself was a much-besieged country long before it became a colonizer.  In fact, the name Britain came from the Latin name Britannia, which the ancient Romans applied to the island.

The other thing I noticed about Dover was the lack of tourists.   This was mid-July – tourist season.   I saw perhaps ten people, all of whom appeared to be British.  This was the fallout from Britain's role in the bombing of Libya – having provided the air base from which the American F-111's carried out their mission three months earlier.  Being the only picture-snapper in sight, I felt self-conscious though the only person who seemed to notice me was a baby in stroller that was being pushed by a stout grandmotherly woman.

I wanted to stay and explore Dover Castle, the lighthouse, the cliffs – all of Dover – but England was still strange to me.  And my budget would force me to search for places to camp for free.  I had to keep moving.

Keep moving – with all the delays, I was already beginning to feel burdened by that impulse.  I had only one year; so it seemed imperative to keep moving.  I had been further goaded by a radio producer who suggested that Europe was "too cliché" for Canadians and that there would not be much domestic interest in my journey until I reached Africa.  That struck me as a narrow vision, probably based on the fact that the heritage of most of my country's people – most of the radio audience – was rooted in Europe, Scandinavia and Great Britain.  They or their forebears had escaped this place for a better life in the West – why remind them of "the old country"?  The nuclear catastrophe in Chernobyl and all the recent terrorism in Europe had also obviously convinced westerners that this was a place to avoid.  And, though Britain and Europe now seemed to be mine by default, I simply could not financially afford to tarry.  I would have to depend on local people for hospitality.  Being shy also prompted me to keep moving.

But there were soon to be meetings that inspired confidence.   In Folkestone, I stopped in front of a large brownstone house and made a peanut butter sandwich.  I had nothing to drink so I went to the door and asked the old woman who answered if I might have a cup of water.  She returned with lemonade and wished me a safe journey.

I felt free on the road, watching the hilly countryside as Melawend and I glided by.  We rolled into Hastings, past its long pier and the seaside bed & breakfasts and the relatively few tourists that were walking and sitting along the promenade.  I wanted to stop and do some exploring.  Hastings stuck in my mind from history classes in Ridgeway Public School – the Battle of Hastings, 1066.  I had also read that on Queen's Road in 1924, John Logie Baird made the world's first television broadcast.    But I felt that need to move on, and to be with the English girl who was waiting for me in Bath.

Something stood between us – what I thought it to be the essence of England – a castle.  I had made photocopies of maps in AA guides of various regions in England and I had noted Arundel for its castle and so, at Littlehampton, I turned north from the sea.

First, I faced the challenge of finding a free camp.  I turned up a country lane near the village of Angmering and spotted a small farm with a modern house.  I could tell you that I was bold when I drove Melawend up the driveway.  The truth was that my legs were like jelly and I had a difficult time putting Melawend up on her center stand.  A teenage girl answered my knock on the front door just a man in a car pulled into the driveway.  She introduced me to the man who got out of the car, her father, Peter Marshall.  He looked like a young Rex Harrison.  I would have been intimidated by the thought of meeting someone of that stature, but I felt a comfort in seeing the resemblance of a recognizable face.  He was receptive to my request to camp in the treed area off the road to which I pointed.  He said he had some jobs to do and for me to come up to the house when I was set up.  I made camp on a lumpy spot by a tractor lane, just off the road, and then helped Peter change a tire on his tractor.  I returned to my tent to freshen up before going to the house. 

(I have since learned that Peter died years later of cancer.)

The Marshalls had built their house themselves.  And now Peter sat on a stool by the kitchen counter as his slim wife Rosemary, who reminded me of my cousin Patricia, joined us for coffee and cake.

As we became acquainted, a tall, trim, aristocratic-looking man with dark hair came by.  He was casually dressed. Peter introduced me to John Lower, a good friend of theirs. He had just come from a farm auction.  Peter had not been able to attend.  "Ho, ho!"   Peter said when John told him of a piece of equipment that retailed at a nearby emporium for £1200 went for £60 at the auction.   As I had once been an antique dealer, we talked of auctions and of great deals.  John invited me to come to his home the next day to see some of his collection.  He finished his tea and the Marshalls walked him to the door.

When they returned, Peter said, "You see, Tom, John is our local gentry.  It would be quite something for you to go over to the manor."

"Yes, you really must see it,” Rosemary said.

I was feeling a little intoxicated by all this hospitality.   It seemed too good to be true.  I'd had gloomy thoughts of being treated as a vagabond as I made my way around the world, albeit a vagabond with a purpose.  I had anticipated all manner of rejection.  Now I felt a bit overwhelmed and I believe I gushed a little in thanking the Marshalls before I returned to my tent.

I was too happy to sleep.  I listened to the breeze and thought optimistically about the road ahead.   Around midnight, I heard a car pull up and stop nearby on the tractor lane.  I peaked through the screen and in the starlight I saw a young couple in a sports car.  They were looking at each other.  I looked later saw only that the car windows were fogged.  I recalled the couple in Rigaud.  I thought, Will I ever find Her?  For now, I was happy just to be in England, drifting off to sleep near a car that had steamy windows.

I left early the next morning and rode into Arundel.  As I approached the village, I saw the castle on a forested hill immediately behind the town.  I beheld a classic image: a large stone stronghold looming above a Tudor village beside a medieval-style single arch bridge.  It wasn't a period image but a composite of time.  The castle was rebuilt in the 18th and 19th centuries; the buildings of the village were Victorian and Georgian; and the bridge over the slime-green River Arun was modern, having been rebuilt in 1935.  The village sat in a gap in the Sussex Downs that had been carved by the river.  Though five miles from the sea, Arundel had been a port in Norman times.

I rode Melawend up the steep slope of High Street and parked her outside an exit gate.  On the gray stone wall beside me, there were wood-framed notices. Though a rebuilt, the classic lines of the castle concealed the retained 11^th century Norman keep and a 13^th century barbican.  A photo showed the ornate 14^th century Fitzalan Chapel in which the Earls of Arundel and the Dukes of Norfolk had been entombed for over 600 years – "Open as an optional extra when visiting the Castle..."   Though it would only have cost me £2.5 to go in, I had no budget for admissions and I did not yet have enough courage to seek out a free pass.

I had wanted to prowl inside the castle but I settled on seeing the castle from Mills Road below.  I found a view – the gray castle under a gray sky, framed by leafy tree branches – and got out my camera.  Step forward...meter the light...f5.6 @ 1/60 second...step back...shoot.  Descent shot.

Melawend and I rode on further to an open area that was a waterfowl sanctuary.  There were green hills, glades and small farm.  There were bird watchers wearing shorts and caps and glasses, peering through binoculars and cameras.  Some were sitting on lawn chairs on a low hill.  I sat in the open on one of Melawend's running boards, eating a peanut butter sandwich and gazing at Arundel Castle.  Passersby would stare or frown or smile at heavy-laden Melawend.

"Bly me!  That's one 'ell of a load you've got there, lad," a man said in passing.

I returned to the village and from one of those classic red English phoneboxes, I called the girl who was waiting for me in Bath.  Her name was Lin.  We had been penfriends for some time.   From her pictures, I knew that she was tall, blond and beautiful.  To my ear, her voice was exquisite, warm, inviting – her letters made audible.   I told her where I was and that I would be a day late.

She was sexy and as a lonely boy, I was attracted to her, even if she did have a boyfriend.  I felt guilty about that and though the boyfriend was away in London, I felt like an intruder.  It was to be an innocent platonic meeting of friends, but I was still bothered by my thoughts.

I took photos of a retired couple that was reading newspapers as they sat on a slat bench under a tree near the rebuilt bridge.  I went on the bridge to photograph the castle and the village.   A strange-looking man entered my viewfinder and came toward me.  He was thin and wore a black pinstripe suit with a red carnation in the lapel and a handkerchief folded to a point in his breast pocket.  He wore a white shirt and a striped tie with a gold clasp. On his head he wore a cream colored boater with a yellow carnation blooming from the hat's wide black band.  He was wearing big white-rimmed glasses in the early style of Elton John.   He flourished a pair of white gloves and walked with the jaunty lightness of Fred Astaire.

He smiled and talked to people as they passed him.  Most responded with quizzical looks or smiles.  He also smiled and talked when no one was near him.

"And a fine day to you, good sir," he said.

"Good morning.  My name is Tom.  And yours...?"

"Horace is the name."

"Horace, you look splendid in that fine suit.  I love your hat.  May I take your picture?"

"Why certainly, but please be quick as I have a very important luncheon engagement."  As I focused the camera, he said, "Where are you from, Thomas?"

Horace smiled, splayed his arms and hands and for a moment, I had that image of Fred Astaire.  Click.  Click.  I told him of Fort Erie and about my journey.

"That's simply marvelous!"  He came closer, looked about secretively and said, "If I were younger, I would love to go with you.” He stood back.  “But now I really must go to lunch.  Good day to you Thomas and have a fine journey!"

With that, Horace spun on the heels of his shiny black shoes and danced back toward the village.

"Ah, you met Horace," Rosemary Marshall said later when I met her in Angmering.  "He's really quite an attraction around here."

Rosemary led Melawend and me in her little car through Angmering and down a long, narrow tree-shaded  lane, turning into a drive beside an old stone and brick mansion where we were greeted by John Lower, his wife Jackie, two of their children.  We were joined by Jackie's parents who lived in an adjacent cottage.  John's parents lived in another nearby cottage on the 47-acre estate that was also home to eight horses and nine peacocks.  Everyone marveled at Melawend.  John went to the cottage with his parents while Jackie gave me a tour of the mansion.

It was called Ecclesden Manor though it had begun its life in 1634 as a monastery.   To me, it was an image out gothic novel with ivy creeping up rough flintstone walls that were accented with red brick at the corners.  Its multi-paned windows were of ripply leaded glass.  The central wooden arch entry faced a two-tier front lawn.  A stately, modern brick addition welcomed visitors off the sandstone driveway in the rear.

Inside, you saw dark oak paneling and beams and white-painted stucco walls and dark, scarred primitive furniture.  Some pieces were older than the manor.  Its big airy rooms held mysterious closets.  In the mammoth whitewashed attic that the Lowers had recently renovated there was a huge water tank.  The house had twenty fireplaces.

Near the house was a riding stable which had that pleasant smell of manure around the freshly raked paddock.  On the other side of the manor there was a small old greenhouse that was next on their list for refurbishment.

I dined later with John on a sumptuous meal of leftovers – a pork sandwich, salad, cold potato, meat and egg pie and raspberry pie.  We ate and talked.  Once again I was amazed by such open, down-home hospitality.  That evening, I set up my tent in a small clearing near the greenhouse and drifted happily off to sleep.  At 3:00 a.m., my sleep was shattered by a mournful cry.  Eeeyah, eeeyah, eeeyah.  Peacocks!  They kept me awake.  I thought, How can anyone sleep around here?

But it was also a fascinating experience.  When I had heard enough, I wired my ears to my walkman and listened to "People Like You and Me." playing over local radio.  I set the walkman aside and thought about the light-colored Steinway I had seen in the manor, another of John's acquisitions.  It had belonged to Benny Goodman and had come from the bandleader's London flat.  Goodman, the “King of Swing”, had helped create and then dominate the Swing Era of the late 1930’s and early 1940’s.  He was also changed the face of American jazz by integrating bands.  In explaining why he broke the colour barrier, Goodman said, “If a guy’s got, let him give it.  I’m selling music, not prejudice.” 

Long live the King!

I also pictured the Rolls Royce that had been smashed in the movie Goldfinger – John owned that too.  I marveled that John was a self-made millionaire in real estate, restaurants and such, rich enough to retire at 29, bankrupt at 31, and independent again at 39.  Now, at 42, he was local gentry.  John and his family had won and lost and won again.  They were living what I knew as "The American Dream" but what truly seemed "The Universal Dream" – it was certainly one of mine.  For now, as the peacocks grew silent, I fell asleep.

The next morning, over a potluck breakfast in the huge kitchen, John and I talked more of real estate.  I told him of my real estate experience as a law clerk.  We talked of North America and of repressive British income taxes.  And he said, "Drop me a line when you finish this madcap adventure."

John left to attend to some business and I wandered out to the stables.  Jackie and daughter Michelle and a couple of Michelle's friends were preparing to load their horses into a trailer to be taken to a local horse show.  I took their picture and wished them luck.

Then I was alone on this beautiful estate.  I wandered around the manor; taking photos and feeling a bit like an intrusive freeloader.  I went to the tent, put on my oldest clothes and cleaned up the greenhouse.  I yanked weeds out of an overgrown garden and raked up dead debris.  As I worked, I became sweaty and full of thoughts.  Part of me loved doing this kind of work, another part thought, Why am I here, doing this for someone else?  I missed having a home of my own.

I thought of my life and how I had had so much more than I did now.  I was already in debt and I felt that what I was doing was foolhardy and selfish.  I felt very tempted to stay in England and learn from John Lower and then go back and turn things around.  But I had decided to go on this journey in part because I believed the road ahead held riches that I could not even imagine – spiritual riches that I would someday share.   I reasoned that in the long run, the journey would justify itself.  I had only to be true to it and to see it through.

The girls returned and Michelle was content that she had placed well in the competitions.  I shared a fine dinner late that evening with all the Lowers – John, Jackie, Guy and little Jonathan – and they signed the first volume of my Odyssey Books (two guest books that carried with me): "Good luck and a safe journey."  "Happy Camping!"  "Bon Voyage!"  "GOOD LUCK", little Jonathan printed.  They packed food for my trip and we said goodnight and good-bye, for now.  I retired to my tent hoping that I would meet the Lowers again someday, and that I would be so lucky to encounter such fine people again on my travels.

 

Though I again rose with the peacocks at 3:00 a.m. and left Ecclesden Manor before dawn, I still hit London at rush hour – lay it to savoring the beauty of the English countryside in between.  Traffic was thick and the clutter of grim dirty buildings gave me a poor impression of London.   My first thought was to leave it.

There were people scurrying with a purposeful yet reluctant haste and they looked, at first, drab and depressed, but I blamed it on the atmosphere and the workaday world.  I found myself ensnared on one-way streets, straining to find street sign posts, becoming annoyed when I discovered that many signs were mounted on the corners of buildings rather than signposts, or were absent all together.

Motorists revived my spirit.  Traffic was as heavy as in New York’s Times Square but here the drivers were far more civil.  You rarely heard the sound of a car horn.  I was often urged by waves from motorists to split-lane.  In my country, it was illegal to ride between cars but I had seen several motorcyclists doing it here.  I tried it.  I was nervous because the big load on the platform behind me made Melawend wobbly at low speeds.  But it worked and this put me at the front of long lines.   Drivers smiled at me, and an elderly gentleman even tipped his bowler.  I was not a "city person", but I began to like London.

I made my way to Trafalgar Square where I was to begin my diplomatic mission.  It was a popular place for the giving of speeches.   It was here, in 1938, that Jomo Kenyatta – who had been in London studying under British anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski and writing what would become an influential book, Facing Mount Kenya – stood on the pediment beside one of the lions and crusaded for the liberation of Kenya.

It seemed frivolous, even arrogant to include London in my diplomatic agenda, to rank little Fort Erie with such a world-class city, but I had no list of communities to follow.  And because Fort Erie was known as "The Gateway to Canada", I felt justified in incorporating national capitals in my mission: Were they not also gateways to their respective countries?  And because of our British heritage, what better capital to begin with than London? 

Go for it!

London, for me, had been televised pomp and circumstance: like the solemn procession of Winston Churchill's funeral in 1964 and the fairy-tale wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana in 1981.

The city had a horrific history, including the Black Death (bubonic plague) of the 14^th century that officially took 68,596 lives. (It was likely underreported and may have exceeded 100,000 - about twenty percent of the population).   The Great Fire of London in 1666 reduced eighty percent of the city to ashes, including ninety percent of its homes, but remarkably, only six people had died directly from the fire.

At Trafalgar Square, I was struck by the filthiness of the buildings, a reminder that London had for centuries been severely plagued by air pollution, a deadly soup when mixed with the city's quintessential fog. Diarist John Evelyn wrote in 1661 that most Londoners "breathe nothing but an impure and thick mist, accompanied by a fuliginous and filth vapor, corrupting the lungs, so that catarrhs, coughs, and consumption's rage more in this one city, than in the whole earth."  He was trying to get King Charles II to decree the planting of more trees and shrubs near Whitehall to offset the stench of home coal fires.  But the smog problem grew.  Dickensian villains committed some of their foulest deeds in this foggy milieu.

On Thursday, Dec 4, 1952, warm air from Atlantic moved in over the city and stayed put, trapping cool, moist air in a temperature inversion.  There was no wind to disperse the dense fog that was forming.   By Friday morning, London covered in a yellow mist.  Suspended in it were tiny particles of soot, sulfur dioxide and other pollutants.  It had been initially regarded as just another bad "pea souper", but it became the densest, dirtiest fog in memory.  Motorists had to abandon cars.  Aircraft were grounded.  It was a cold weekend and with millions of Londoners confined to their homes – more home fires were lit, adding to the pollution.  Visibility was about 1 foot.  It concealed a rash of attacks and burglaries, and it sped bronchial and cardiac patents to their deaths.   Four-thousand Londoners died. (Eight thousand more perished later from the long-term effects of the four-day smog, most were ailing elderly people).

The fog of 1873 that killed thousands of people barely disturbed Victorian complacency.  But this time it brought about action to clean up the air.  Attempts to legislate against the fouling of London's air went back to the 13^th century, but all were stifled in favor of industrial progress, especially in the 19^th century.  During the Industrial Revolution, London became the world leader in cases of bronchitis.  The "muck is money" school of progress was finally challenged.  But was it more the damage to buildings than people that saved the air?   Testimony showed that corrosive smoke had done more damage to Westminster Abbey in the past 100 years than all the wear and tear of the centuries since King Henry III raised its Gothic towers in 1245 – The Clean Air Act was passed in 1956.  Since then, there had been less fog since fog droplets form around solid nuclei.  London fog was relegated more to stories and to a name brand of high-quality clothing.

From the Acropolis to the Taj Mahal, air-borne poisons were eroding many of man's most glorious creations.

Just off Trafalgar Square I found – just as Ian Norrie described them in A Celebration of London: Walks Around the Capital – "the lifeless piles of Canada House".   Inside, Jack Archer, Press Officer for the Canadian High Commission, directed me to a youthful Tim Baldwin, his counterpart at the London Chamber of Commerce who in turn connected me with Wendy Thompson, a marketing representative for the London Visitor and Convention Bureau.  I scooted around and met them, working in small cluttered offices.   They welcomed the exchange with Fort Erie, at least the concept, and I began to feel the tinglings of a junior diplomat.  Heady with success, I doffed my diplomatic hat and became a cliché – a tourist.  And as mentioned earlier, I was going to go after the travel cliché’s – in London, it would be Buckingham Palace, Big Ben and Picadilly Circus.

Since it was near Canada House, I had already begun with Picadilly.  I focused my camera on the steps below the statue of Eros the Greek god of love. There, a young guy sitting on the steps had turned from reading a book to observe the bum of a shapely girl in blue jeans who was photographing the statue.

(Okay, so I took notice of her bum too – I mean, sometimes you just can't help what ends up in your viewfinder, right?)

For a shot of Big Ben that would include Melawend, I parked illegally on Victoria Embankment near the mammoth statue of chariot-riding Queen Bodicea.   She was the ruler of Iceni, an ancient Celtic tribe of eastern England, and her army had sacked Roman London in 61 A.D.  It was said that Margaret Thatcher stood in front of this queen, seeking guidance.  If so, did she know that Queen Bodicea carried a hare next to her breasts to ensure luck in battle? 

(But that would have been okay too: Churchill carried a "lucky" walking stick and usually stroked a passing black cat.  Eisenhower kept a lucky gold coin in his pocket).

I admired strong, intelligent women.  For over ten years, I had been employed by the law firm of Jones, Jameison and Redekop, and had worked primarily under Eileen Kahler.  She was a tall attractive blonde-haired woman who had been with the firm for over twenty-five years when I started.  She was a law clerk and her specialty was real estate.  In the mornings, I would get my daily assignments from her.  We were often interrupted by phone calls from prominent lawyers in the region who would call to get her opinions on real estate law and procedures.   She was exacting but always good-humoured and I felt lucky for the years that I had worked for her and the firm.

On a national and international level, I thought Margaret Thatcher epitomized strong, intelligent women.  And I thought men unjustly denounced such women – why?  Because of male ego?  The ancient dogma of male superiority?  The outdated hunter/gatherer routine?  Maybe men feared such women.  In a speech to a Conservative Party meeting in 1969, Thatcher had quoted Sophocles: “Once a woman is made equal to a man, she becomes his superior.”  My experience suggested there was evidence of truth in that.

But I was near the impressive statue of Queen Bodecia merely to capture reflected light, like millions of others before me.  Here it was from Big Ben, a heavy-laden scooter and a red double-decker bus that bore an ad for the musical 42nd Street.   When the only person who came up to me was a girl from St. Catharines, just 30 miles from my home, I felt an urge to put distance between me and tourists – to get out of London.

But in looking at Big Ben, which was perhaps the biggest cliché image of London, I suddenly remembered my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Gage, telling our class about the bombings and the evacuation of children from London.  Later, I would read an account by Hilde Marchant who, in 1939, had made observations of children carrying gas masks to school, of children "going on a holiday in the country", of mothers and fathers standing near gates saying goodbye – straightening clothes, blowing noses, kissing goodbye.  And of mothers pressing their faces to the fences,  "Every now and then the policeman would call out a child's name and a mother who had forgotten a bar of chocolate or a toothbrush had a last chance to tell a child to be good, to write and to straighten her hat."  The preparations had raised strong criticism.  Evacuation would "split the British home, divide child and parent, break the domestic background that was our strength."  As a divorced father, I could relate to the separation, but not to the cause.

Before leaving, I was determined to get the landmark I most coveted.  For me, it stood for the pageantry of all England, past and especially the present.  I made my way up the Pall Mall, which on June 4, 1807 became the world’s first street lit with gas lighting.   With some audacity, I parked Melawend in front of the massive main gate of Buckingham Palace and stepped back.  Click.  The palace itself looked cold, barren and stuffy – legal rather than regal, like an imposing old city courthouse.  Maybe it was the lack of greenery. 

The famous balcony under the main pediment is what drew me.    There, five years earlier, to please the jubilant crowds after their wedding, Charles and Diana had broken a long-held taboo by kissing each other.  I believed that in just a few days crowds would surely witness history repeat itself after Andrew and Sarah took their turn at the altar.

(A writer can sit smugly in the future and cast a critical eye on those two couples.  The world would witness the very public dismemberment of their almost celestial unions, which was due in part to the media frenzy over the lurid secrets of celebrities, private failings that were all too human and too common.  At this point in 1986, as the future glowed with promise for Andrew and Sarah, the marriage of Charles and Diana was foundering badly, more than the public was aware.  But just being here in 1986 when romance again held court before the world, it was an occasion that inspired hope – not only for the British monarchy, but for the importance, integrity and durability of marriage.

As a side note, it was the towering statue of Queen Victoria across from this gate that many pro photographers had climbed to get photos of newlywed Charles and Diana when they appeared on the balcony.  When they felt there was no more good images to be had, they climbed down – except one.  And he got that once-in-a-lifetime shot of Charles and Diana breaking the taboo.  His name was Douglas Kirkland.  We will meet Doug much later on, in Hollywood.)

There was something very hopeful about royalty, a sense of national and familial continuity, and I liked this perception of being near it.  Though a commoner (and Smith is the most common surname in the English-speaking world), I felt an affinity for The House of Windsor, despite its faults (and in part because of them).

I left the city.  I had thought that if you drove into, around and out of New York City, and survived, they ought to give you a medal when you reached the city limits.   I had four medals due from New York and now, I felt, one due from London.  I settled for the way the experience forged a new coin in my change of self-confidence.

Phileas Fogg left London and became part of literary history in Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days.  London, too, was the international starting point of my journey.  In a bizarre way, I felt that the odyssey would never be truly complete until I one day returned to London.  And, somewhat like Fogg, I had wagered a lot on the successful outcome of my journey.

I felt a strange pride, like some Japanese tourists, in that I had "done" London, and had done it on one British pound in less than six hours, diplomatic mission included.  But a little further down the road, I felt I had betrayed this noble city, or at least grossly shortchanged it.  I just didn't have the time or money to do it justice. 

"I'll be back," I said aloud as Melawend and I scooted out of the city.

I pulled Melawend up a gate at Windsor Castle, the world’s largest and the longest continuously inhabited castle (built mostly in the 12^th century), hoping to photograph a royal.  But I saw only tourists ambling around a gray stone castle under a gray sky.  The signs "No Dogs"  "No Cycles" by the pedestrian gate and its solitary armed guard were practical but not inviting. 

Click.

I found some pride in my London efforts but I was relieved to be heading west toward Bath.  It was great to enjoy again the rolling green of rural England.  It was mid-afternoon.  I would arrive late if I went on to Bath so I looked for a place to camp.  In the pastoral area of West Overton, I saw a beautiful old church on a hill that put me in mind of Québec.  I turned up a lane toward the church.  At the end of a driveway by a stone farmhouse across from the church, I saw an old man in a worn woolen jacket.  He was cleaning a small piece of machinery.  When I asked about camping on the church grounds, he directed me to the home of the local vicar.  Vicar Jones reminded me of the actor George Segal.  He was friendly and admiring of Melawend and he referred me to Mr. Swanton, the owner of a large farm across the main east-west road. 

The farm with its stately old house and out buildings seemed like the compound of a land baron, but Mr. Swanton, a bald middle-age man, seemed a man of the earth.  He spoke kindly and said that I was welcome to camp where I chose.  He owned the field on the other side of the main road, between the road and the church.   It dipped below the level of the road and it had old trees and a marshy stream.  On one side of the stream, there were sheep.  I set up under a tree across the stream from the sheep and retired, studying my map in the fading light and falling asleep as I listened to the sheep baaaaing.

In the morning the tent was damp and the dew gave a frosted look to the grass.  The pasture was aromatic as a newly mowed field.  Through a thick mist, I saw the ghostly bulk of St. Michael's church and heard its bell strike seven times.   I was feeling lonely and homesick and worried about having only £144 left.  I thought of eliminating Scandinavia and returning to Dover, after a run through the UK, to cross the Strait of Dover to France and pick up my route there.  Maybe, just before that, I could work for John Lower as a hired hand on his estate.   I thought of Lin and hastened my packing.

As the sun burned off the mist, Melawend and I were westward bound again, stopping only to photograph the sign of a bed and breakfast, advertising a place that was obviously popular with lorry (truck) drivers.  It was called The Ridgeway.  Funny how you looked for touchstones of home while abroad.

Not only was there so much to see in England, there were so many mysteries.  Here in the southwest, one was the possibility that Christ had been in England.  The story suggested that he might have gone to Glastonbury, which at the time was surrounded by water.  It was as an important Celtic center and the Druids may have been sympathetic to him.  There was also the Holy Grail, which, according to the Arthurian legend, was preserved in the mysterious Castle of the Fisher, itself buried somewhere in the West Country of England.

 

My penfriend Lin Cox did word processing for the Ministry of Defense and I knew she would be working until 5:00 p.m.  There would be enough time to orient myself to Bath.  Melawend and I rolled in on the A4, took the first left turn in the city, and crossed a bridge over the River Avon.  In front of a fire station, a woman who was carrying grocery bags informed me that I was already on Bathwick Street.  I was just one block from Lin's home.

By now it was sunny and warm.  I had come into Bath down a long shaded road and now that I had located Lin's place, I wanted to see Bath from the heights.  There were spectacular viewpoints along twisting roads and you saw that Bath did not look like a city at all, certainly not like any North American city I had seen.   It had the clean, clear atmosphere of an old university town.  You saw that Bath was spread out like crimson, ivory and gold gemstones on the bottom and sides of a basin of forested hillsides and you saw that it had been that way for a long time.

We rolled back down to Bathwick Street and I parked Melawend on the street in front of the entry to Lin's building.  Across the street, at the corner of Bathwick and Henrietta, there was a bench under some trees.  I waited there for Lin.  It was quiet with only a few people and cars passing by.  I made entries in my journals, but only for a short time as soon an old man came and sat on the bench.  He began to talk to me in a weak and airy way.

"You see the house across the way, son," he said, pointing to a building next to Lin's.  "It was a fine house not so long ago.  Fine house, with servants too.  Now it's all flats, all flats." 

Lin lived in a flat.

He seemed to me the perfect old English gentleman of the working class.  He was lean with gray hair slicked back and thick dark eyebrows and a mustache.  He wore a slightly tattered ivory sports coat and baggy blue trousers.   He had a handmade wooden cane with a hook that was darkened from years of hand oil.  Sitting passively beside him was his dog, Rex, an old sheep dog whose thick hair was matted around the paws.

"Lived here all my life.  It was so much quieter when I was a boy.  Now you see boys and girls with orange hair and leather jackets and they wear collars meant for dogs.  The music they like is really quite horrible, quite horrible."

After he left, a thin, fair, middle-age woman in a gingham dress and floral hat came by.  "You are traveling?" she said in passing, noticing my fat daypack and my motorcycle helmet.

"Yes.  That's my scooter over there."

"Have a good trip."

She smiled sweetly then crossed the road and, in passing Melawend, she patted the load.

It was 5:15 when I finally saw Lin.