Portsmouth to Brighton to Bognor Regis to Glasgow to Inverness to John o'Groats to Birmingham.
Saturday:
Forget lingering in Plymouth. Do the sights:
....and then Get OUT, preferably on a peaceful weekday evening train.
Beyond the historic tourist areas, the rest of the Plymouth, and especially the shamefully grungy, semi-unlandscaped university campus (my short cut from a dodgy apartment near the shabby ‘70s station in search of something looking like nutritious food) seems like a failed grand project of 1960’s Soviet centralist, brutalist planning.
Sunday:
Go somewhere just as militarily/seafaringly interesting but with a fine city attached: Portsmouth! And sample the Royal Maritime Hotel, across the road from Portsmouth Docks where Horatio Nelson’s “HMS Victory” is under an impressively continuing cycle of preservation in the dry dock. The rooms are former “off-base” naval officers’ accommodation from the 1950’s converted more recently (but not too recently) into a pub decorated in Naval memorabilia where part of the income is spent on veterans’ support programs (hidden on a side-stairway down on the second floor). Apart from the fading wallpaper and minuscule televisions, savour Horatio’s Restaurant for a full English breakfast, the Victory Bar, the Trafalgar ballroom, something called “Below Decks” (closed for renovation) and a large naval library (much enjoyed by the families of some regular guests). Public areas are painted out in every possible shade of blue. Rooms are fawnish; sauna-ish in climate.
Nelson's Victory: Portsmouth Docks
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Monday:
On a day-trip to Brighton (ornate Pavilion for George IV and brothers to use as some kind of luxurious knocking-shop, once the mandated wife has been procreated with and dispensed with... Pavilion subsequently on-sold to the local council by the far more proper Queen Victoria), and to wonder at English seaside “culture”, only to find an Australian-style cafe preparing genuinely good flat whites and smashed avo… but I digress…
I took a little side-track to Bognor Regis. Not sure why: perhaps the redolent name, perhaps because it was the butt of satire from the likes of Tony Hancock, Benny Hill and perhaps because Alf Garnett and his family had an appalling workers’, holiday there with the boarding house landlady from hell. Or just that old Anglo upbringing? I should have recollected the wise words of Bill Bryson:
“Like so much of coastal Britain, Bognor has seen better days. Once upon a time, happy, well-dressed throngs flocked to the town for carefree weekends. Bognor had a Theatre Royal, a grand Pavilion with what was said to be the finest dance floor in the south of England, and a much esteemed if not very accurate Kursaal, where no-one was cured of anything but patrons could roller skate to the music of a resident orchestra and afterwards dine beneath giant palms. All that is distant history now.” **
The “Regis” in Bognor was a gifted Royal title due to the (relatively) fine weather, before the Royals shifted any holiday frolicking to the nearby and more secluded Isle of Wight. It’s not so “Regis” these days.
The sad recent history of largely neglected English seaside resorts - in these days of budget-airline-package-holiday-travel - becoming “down-at-heel” welfare housing and places of sad refuge, is replicated here. The slab-concrete pedestrianised shopping mall/main street is lined with fast-food, vacant premises, cheap-fashion; charity and “Pound Shops”.Fresh food may linger, lonely, in the back of the Co-op store, but it’s mighty hard to find. There are some genuinely prosperous looking Turkish and Polish restaurants and delis. Some fine, well-maintained public buildings remain such as the recently-closed “Picture Drome”.
The English taste for cobblestoned streets stretches to the surface of their beaches. A few kids in shorts are running in and out of the pebbly waves; most everyone else is rugged or puffer-jacketed up. Those sleeping on the beach appear to be there for reasons other than suntans. But… but… in the several cafes along the main drag, people are reading and discussing books. The quirky bookshop in one side of the station building is well advertised and seems well patronised by “those of a certain (perhaps genteel retired) age”. Sadly this seems not to have included the heavyweight fast-food grazers plonked on the defensive-steel picnic furniture of the main street.
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Wednesday:
Covid has largely killed off another annoying British tradition: “spending a penny”. In railway stations and local council public facilities across the south of England, the nastily coin-operated entry gates have been switched off, or disabled, or vandalised into dereliction. Good thing too!
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A Cultural Note:
The Chinese Restaurant across from Central Station in Glasgow offered a generous two-course pre-theatre menu for 14 pounds 90 pence. Your serve of sweet-and-sour will be accompanied by your choice of boiled rice, fried rice, or chips.
The sign opposite the entrance stated: “In GLASGOW we bin our GUM”
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Thursday:
The Artto Hotel in Glasgow, handy to Central station (sadly, due to heavy pre-Easter bookings, my train not-of-choice arrived into more distant Queen St), features one of the world’s most arthritic elevators - by sound as well as speed as well as croaked floor announcements. It elevates you from the smart whiskey bar run by gruff German blokes, back to the white-painted, pinewood panelled 1990’s. The TV picked up all of two channels. The room was a cosy attic. In the distance were muffled construction works. Whenever a sudden distant thudding occurred, the impact in the room was that of a cat jumping onto the bed. I loved it.
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Friday:
On the packed train from Aberdeen to Inverness: a harassed father quickly bundled cheery wife, bug-eyed pug lapdog and 2-year-old shouting in glottal stops into the aisle seats opposite and next to me. Unfortunately I scored the glottal-stop-yelling lad, not the impeccably behaved bug-eyed-pug. Mr glottal-stop-yeller then proceeded to dismember a sausage roll, consuming some and sharing the rest with any possible orifice of a Sheriff Woody Pride doll in an unspeakably enthusiastic manner… which should never be witnessed unless, perhaps, between consenting adults in private.
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Saturday and Sunday:
Warm hospitality at Culloden Moor, Loch Ness, Nairn and Cawdor Pub with Mz Lizzie, her Laird, and their Hoond.
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Monday:
A very scenic 5 hours of rambling up the most northerly railway line in Scotland: crossing canal locks, climbing ridges, returning along fast flowing streams to coastlines of harsh rocks festering with dark black cormorants. Between vast rounded highland mountains spotted with clustered clumps of yellow gorse, blue-marked sheep and fresh lambs populated farms on lower ridges, amongst lonely stone farm houses and the occasional elevated grey castle or grand house. After skirting wartime gun-emplacement mounds while reversing into, then out of the Thurso branch, we rumbled to a stop the end of the line: Wick.
The walk down to the B&B past massed daffodils on the riverbank (and massed utilitarian NHS architecture to the right), led to a stone arched bridge with the ornate grey stone memorial clock of the Victorian town hall beyond. All good, so far, in the weak Spring sun.
The converted bank building B&B, diagonally opposite the town hall’s rock-stolid grandeur, was firmly locked. A small sign next to the bell asked that one might wait an adequate time after ringing. How long is adequate? How many rings? Two wild and crazy Italian dudes roared up in their hot-red Maclaren (both doors opening the roof like the jaws of Spit Bridge), leapt out, ignored the signs, called a magic number, grabbed their room key - and then mine - from a bag hanging behind an external door, and we were in.
Upstairs was a heavy-set young bloke who seemed a bit surprised that we were finding our way in. He seemed even more surprised when asked about parking and potential bag storage the next day and why the door wasn’t answered… and, and, and… the standard answer was: “I’m only the nephew. I can call and find out but I can’t tell you…” repeated by rote.
A wander of the port’s preserved remnants of the once huge industrial fishing industry was through deserted and windswept late afternoon streets: sad window displays of the new king’s coronation, sadder overgrown memorial gardens to seafarers who lost their lives in WWII bombings (a neglected bomb site), and a walkway of instructional signs about the rise and fall of massed herring fishery. The incredible human and industrial demands of the industry led to the town becoming one of the first properly planned industrial workers’ settlements in the country, accommodating all of the trades required for the extensive fleet. This included hand-made giant wicker baskets for the accurate measurement of herrings caught for sale and processing. The planned housing was picturesque 3 to 4 storeyed flat-fronted stone row buildings with impressive clusters of matching geometric chimney pots marching up the ridges to the main street from the defensive concrete harbour, once so crowded with craft that crews could easily walk from ship-to-ship-to-ship-to-shore.
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Tomorrow’s increasingly shaky plan was to catch the 8.40 Stagecoach (bus company) service to John o’Groats in the morning, then another service back for the afternoon train. All relevant physical signs of timetabled bus services had been removed from the town (apart from school buses, and I was not going there…). At the station was a 2005 timetable and a worn, pasted note saying buses now went “from the bridge”… where no clear bus stop was to be found. Online were three different timetables by two companies, all contradictory and providing no clue about where to actually pick up a bus. On the ground, no information was to be had. A passing Stagecoach coach staged a stop beside me outside the Co-op. I stepped in and asked advice. Slow smile and wry humour aside, it was that the company had lost the contract to a smaller local business: Aarons, so to only trust their online timetable. Their service would leave from right outside of my B&B’s (locked) door.
The only departing bus was at 7am.
So much for the “freshly cooked Scottish breakfast” of your – pre-ordered - choice by our lovely (absentee) hostess. So much for coming back to collect my maybe-minded bag on the way to the afternoon train ( “I’m only the nephew. I can call and find out but I can’t tell you…”) as any return service was going to be way too late to reach the afternoon train. Plans upended. Decision made. I retired to my best restaurant meal so far at the Mackay’s pub: baked haggis shepherds’ pot pie floating in a whiskey sauce accompanied by red cabbage.
It was a rather formal pub welcome at first: “You are NOT booked, but you CAN sit at the bar,” said the formidably well-upholstered receptionist/gatekeeper. This was much more to my taste. The young waiter, seemingly on “L” plates’ was rather too efficient in taking my order and serving the wine (evident from receiving “a look” from she-who-was-in-charge when she arrived with another menu). After meal delivery and a furtively obsequious: “Is everything all right?” He was quickly despatched to assist the recently arrived waitering team next door in the posh room: “same menu”.
The owner (flowing grey hair, partner of she who gate-kept(?)) arrived with the bill and asked where I was from. Did I know that the local British Legion commemorated ANZAC Day on 25th April each year at the local Australian and New Zealand war graves? The local British Legion had also sent a group to the 2015 ANZAC commemorations at Laureton in NSW. Did I know it? He had attended as a volunteer to assist the elderly veterans. One 94-year-old veteran had got off the British Airways plane in Sydney and demanded beer with his breakfast “because I’ve gone without for the whole day, you know!”. I was shown photos and videos of the Laureton dawn service and the role that a Wick local piper had played in a subsequent ceremony at Canberra War Memorial. I was also given lots of information about walks around John o’Groats and where to find a hot breakfast, before being sent on my way back to the B&B of the (absentee) charming owner.
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Tuesday: 7.30am.
I had John o’Groats all to myself:
A strong breeze stung in the blue-green dawn light, and every possible layer was on my body in a bracing 4 degrees: quite the experience!!!
The threatened 7am “school-bus” was a school bus with 5 seats across all firmly seat-belted with a “No Standees” sign, but I was the only school-holiday passenger with a chatty driver, so we talked all the way from Wick to the northern coast. Apparently the local council is fed up with contracting the unreliable Stagecoach company, so has recently diversified some contracts to a local lot, but “promoting the actual service isn’t great….”
So I enjoyed the invigorating isolation of John O’Groats (all sad surrounding tourist businesses firmly shuttered in the dawn light) accompanied only by my uncomplaining luggage-on-wheels under a huge, brooding, sky, with the famous John O’Groats sign behind me and the Pentland Strait across to the distant to the Orkneys in front of me, separated from the shore by a commemorative display of lives lost to the elements, and the small concrete ferry wharf at a very low tide.
The hot pub breakfast recommended last night was 300 metres up the hill past fields of new-born lambs; the horizontal drizzle was just starting to prickle as I was welcomed in to B&E on pancakes and a reviving coffee.
On the subsequent wandery bus to Thurso (so many optimistic pauses in the hope of passengers at bleak little shelters on the edges of quaint villages: distant views of vast cliffs towering over river flats of white-painted cottages), the charming (absentee) landlady from last night’s B&B made phone contact. She was very chatty and SOOOOOO SORRY to MISS me at breakfast and would I perhaps care to PAY with a card over the phone???????
You can tell quite a lot about a place from its commercial radio advertising (on the bus): how to restructure your eight thousand pound debt on a fifteen hundred pound salary; type 2 diabetes symptoms and warnings; WIN 50,000 pounds!; bargain basement furniture; Euro Lottery for only “players” over 25… Actual conversation between a couple of local passengers travelling to shop in town drowned out the rest. We arrived at the Royal Bank of Scotland terminus. An old couple on the footpath plaintively asked the driver about times of buses to John o’Groats. He was unsure and non-committal. I can guess how they felt….
Thurso: most northerly town in the UK mainland, more lively than Wick with fewer shuttered businesses and a relentlessly jolly welcome to the tourist info centre with its displays of Norse and Pict history and stonework (“Did you know we are slightly north of the most southern point of Norway?”) as well as evidence of the history and decommissioning of the local nuclear research industry.
It’s an easy and charming town to navigate, baggage in tow, from the remnant 11th century church to the sharp wind and medieval remnants of the seafront. Local old folks in their warm glass conservatories intently observed the wayward tourist with bag and camera on their nice seafront grass verge (you could almost hear the “tch”s) above the concrete promenade of walked-doggies-in-coloured-winter-coats.
The station café promised by the Tourist Office failed to reveal itself.
On the train wandering back south from Thurso to Inverness: “We apologise for the lack of a refreshment trolley service this afternoon due to staffing issues…” So “lunch” was the remnant of Mz Lizzie’s dairy-free Easter egg, washed down with Ribena.
The Turkish grill and an early night in a comfy and welcoming B&B in Inverness (owners present and very helpful) more than made up for such “deprivation”.
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Wednesday: 12.45pm:
Cultural Note from the Costa Cafe infested buffet at Newcastle station:
“Ketchupron?”
Wha…?
“Ketchubron???
It was s-l-o-w-l-y translated by the waitress:
“Do you want ketchup or bron soss with your horrt rorrll?”
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On the Cross Country express train to Birmingham (occasional gallops; long stops at junctions): a passenger behind me who had joined the train at Chesterfield was slugged 18 pounds for “travelling with the wrong company” and was told he’d be put off the train at the next stop, Tamworth, where he would need to pay another fare for the rest of his journey. With 3 different operating companies running this route, you have to be oh-so-careful about which train you join. He took it like a lamb.
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I’m tapping this out in the pub across from my modern but bare-bone-budget hotel in Birmingham, where the majority of Brummie spoken sentences seem to start or end with “Ehhheeerrrrrrmmmmm!… “ followed by tuneful untranslatability. I’m pondering my last UK day’s “plan” (a increasingly nefarious concept, I’m finding): maybe some time in Bournville and perhaps a canal tour. This pub bar is playing Death Metal music and the weather forecast is for developing rain and wind gusts. Perhaps the heavily publicised coffin museum might be a better option?????
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And thank you to Cathy in Ingatestone (but not there for much longer???) for a fine lunch on Wednesday, and to Mz Lizzie and Laird Alan (and their “hoond”) for hosting me in Inverness. There’s no more information for you this time, because it was all so goooood!!
Cheers!
** This quotation is taken from Bill Bryson’s “The Road to Little Dribbling” which I have been dipping into on quiet nights in B&Bs before drifting off to sleep. The title of this piece is’ however, shamelessly semi-appropriated from his splendid earlier book of UK travels.
Bill Bryson uses the word “splendid” a lot….
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