Road tripping around England

September 25: Jonah and I just got back from a three day road trip to Oxford, Bath, Stonehenge, and Salisbury. At first, the trip seemed like a great idea. Then the morning we were leaving, as Jonah was refusing to take his antibiotics (having detected and completely rejected it in every possible food I could find), it seemed like a horribly conceived idea. I decided to give it a go anyway. We took a bobby car to the car rental place, came back to the flat to pick up our stuff, and were off. Once we got on the road and I managed to find my way out of London (which took up 25 of the 30 Mapquest direction lines), it became and remained a brilliant idea—brilliant in the British sense. I just love their use of that word.

We arrived in Oxford around lunchtime so found a cute Italian café with a high chair for Jonah. On this trip he learned to say “high chair”, and now every chair is a high chair, one in which he must sit. The authors of our guide book weren’t kidding when they wrote that parking in Oxford is near impossible. We managed to find a spot with a 30 minute time limit. That meant I spent most of the meal thinking through how I might go about finding our car in a towed car lot when I didn’t know the license plate number and wasn’t quite sure of the make and model. I figured we might be spending the night in Oxford, and at least I wouldn’t have to worry about parking. Then I happily enjoyed my latte.

Forty-five minutes later, our car was still there. We found a small side street where I could park to empty the boot of our car (that’s trunk, for us Americans) to change Jonah’s diaper. It’s actually a great place to do it when there’s no changing station available. We had parked next to a lovely old church, St. Thomas the Martyr Church, with an old cemetery. I have a church and cemetery fascination, and Jonah needed some freedom of movement before heading to Bath, so we spent some time on the grounds of the church.

We arrived in Bath around 4 pm, unpacked a bit at our B&B, and strolled into town. Our B&B was just across the River Avon and only a 10 minute stroll to the main part of town. On our way over the North Parade Bridge, we heard a loud boom and saw dark, black smoke just over the first set of buildings in front of us. We spent the next 45 minutes or so in the lovely Parade Gardens as the black smoke billowed just off yonder. Seemed a bit surreal, but we were a safe distance and couldn’t be of any help anyway. Apparently, a gas canister exploded at a construction site, which caused the blaze, thankfully resulting in no injuries. That night, I read in the bathroom as Jonah slept in our room. I felt a little ridiculous, sitting on the closed toilet reading a book. So it goes. I imagine I won’t do this with the next child.

The next day we had a fabulous time exploring Bath. Bath is one of the loveliest towns I’ve visited. It’s just darling. We visited the Bath Abbey (where Jonah loved the organ music and seemed content to stay for hours to listen to it) and museum in the morning before walking to the main tourist attractions—The Circus (30 Georgian-style homes in a circle) and the Royal Crescent (a semicircular terrace of houses designed in the mid-18th century). Jonah discovered how to climb through bushes and amused himself with this until I was tired of dragging the stroller back and forth through them as well. We found a playground, of course…another amusement-park-scale playground…they seem to be a dime a dozen in England. (Our friend, David, told me the British government actually has a policy on playgrounds aimed at ensuring free access to public, outdoor play spaces for everyone to help cultivate good health and prevent a sedentary lifestyle.) In the afternoon we toured the Roman Baths Museum, where we saw the remains of baths and a Roman temple dating back thousands of years. The museum provides steel-framed backpacks to carry children around. Along with an audio device to tour the museum, this bought us 30 minutes of Jonah’s patience.

At dinner we had our second experience in a week of a stranger wanting to take a picture with Jonah. Jonah was quite charming at dinner, flirting with two women at a nearby table. These two women, in their 20s, didn’t speak much English, but I could see that they were pretending to take a picture of one of them to get Jonah in the corner shot. So I offered up my child for a photo shoot. They came over and individually posed for a picture with him. Jonah actually smiled for the pictures. The first time this happened was last week at Windsor Castle, where a couple asked Jeremy, while I was in the gift shop buying a postcard, if they could take a picture with Jonah. The wife held Jonah, and her husband took a picture of the two of them. Right about now, my small but dedicated readership of my mom, Rhona, and Harvey will be thinking we’re not cautious enough, but, trust me, we had the Queens’ guards all around at the castle, and Jonah was strapped into his high chair at our dinner. Semi-bizarre thing number two at that dinner: apparently, lemonade is not lemonade here. It’s 7-Up or Sprite, not the lemons, sugar, water concoction with which we’re familiar. Two nights in a row I really wanted a lemonade and got a 7-Up instead. Big bummer. After dinner, we caught a breathtaking sunset with the Abbey as the backdrop, while exploring the locks and canals in the neighborhood by our B&B.

This morning we headed to Stonehenge. I expected to be underwhelmed, based on the guide book’s description of the tourist mayhem and distance one must keep from the rocks. Instead, I was awestruck by the site. Again, Jonah had an audio device to keep him occupied. When I asked the guy handing the devices out for two, he said to me that Jonah was probably too young to understand it. I told him Jonah wanted it anyway. Much to my own surprise, Jonah managed to get the thing to play and was, in fact, listening to the tour. This required him to punch in a number and then press the green play button. (About now my readership is saying out loud, “Yes! I knew he was brilliant!”) How he managed to do that, I have no idea. I thought the guy might like to know that Jonah did indeed enjoy his device, but I decided we should get to Salisbury for lunch instead.

Salisbury boasts the most beautiful cathedral in England. It is spectacular indeed. It also houses one of the four originals of the Magna Carta, which we got about 5 seconds with given Jonah’s displeasure at being in the stroller and in a church that wasn’t playing organ music. We enjoyed the cathedral, including the oldest working clock in existence (from the mid-14th century) and a beautiful stained glass window honoring prisoners of conscience. We had a nice lunch before letting Jonah stroll along the River Avon to watch the ducks and swans and finding a playground, where Jonah decided he liked running down the slide. I took my eyes off him for less than a second, and he was three steps down the slide before I caught him from falling off the side. All the while, he had a huge smile on his face.

In Salisbury, we had another experience of someone going out of their way to help give us directions. A delightful woman about five to eight years younger than me saw that I was trying to figure out how to get to the cathedral and ended up walking us to the city square. (In Ireland, an older woman actually got in my car to guide me to the old Jewish cemetery.)

Driving in England…I gave my bit about driving in Ireland, so here’s my bit on driving in England. First, it’s, of course, on the left hand side of the road. I still think that’s pretty cool. Second, there are no SUVs on the road. There weren’t in Ireland either. At $100 a tank for a little, tiny car, I can understand why. Third, where are the highway patrol officers? I never saw a police officer on the roads in Ireland, and I only saw one on this trip. There are signs everywhere that indicate there are police cameras, but I honestly could not find a single device that looked like it could be a camera. Fourth, they don’t post speed limits. They post speed limits for areas in which you’re supposed to slow down, letting you know what your new speed should be. But they never indicate what the speed is otherwise. Maybe I’ll be getting a speeding ticket or twelve charged to my credit card via the car rental agency, thanks to the microscopic police cameras. Fifth, there are a ton of traffic signs that make absolutely no sense to me, including a yellow diamond sign (nothing to do with carpools) and three straight, diagonal lines. Not helpful. Finally, don’t ever rent a car at the Alamo/National in Kennington, where they charged me 100 pounds (that’s $200) for a tiny scratch on the tire rim and a tiny scratch on the driver-side door. My 75 pound rental turned into a 175 pound rental (that’s $350!!). I think it’s their way of punishing me for not buying the supplemental insurance. I’ve moved beyond how unbelievably livid I was, so I’ll not rant about it here. Let’s just say I ended this evening with a glass of red wine.

Picture descriptions: Our stop at St. Thomas the Martyr Church; Jonah loved getting in and out of (with help) and crawling under this chair (note the Bath Abbey in the background); A blurry one of us with the backdrop of a lovely bridge with shops (like the one in Florence...I was told there are only two such bridges in the world with shops built into them); Roman Baths Museum; A cute street in Salisbury