Welcome To The UK
In May of 2023, to celebrate my fortieth year and also my parents' anniversary, we travelled to England, Wales, and Ireland. This is the first segment of our trip, covering May 11th to 14th.
After arriving, the first order of business was to catch the train. Travel by public transit was a key element of my rather detailed holiday plan. We started with a bang, trying out the new Elizabeth Line from Heathrow Airport to Farringdon Station in Central London. I was excited to walk the curvy corridors over which I've been drooling on YouTube's transit channels. From Farringdon we took a Thameslink train to the small town of Hitchin in London's outer suburbs.
Hitchin is a beautiful town. We enjoyed strolling its bunting-festooned streets. The first leg of our trip was dedicated to my father's interest in our genealogy. Hitchin is the burial site of our last Old World ancestors on one line. We went to the Church they frequented and walked among its graves. As we expected, they were too worn to be read, but we knew that it was our blood watering the massive tree that spreads out over the cemetery.
Here's a look at my itinerary going into the trip. We strayed a little from it, but on the whole I was pleasantly surprised at how well we did sticking to the schedule, and how well the schedule did reflecting the reality of transportation.
That said, we did run into a hitch in Hitchin... A railway strike! That scuttled the next leg I'd planned, to another ancestral site in the lively town of Caunton. We rerouted by bus to Luton Airport, where we spent a few hours waiting for a bus to Milton Keynes, where we spent another few hours waiting for a bus through Nottingham and then on to Uttoxeter, which put us back on schedule for our next day's plans. That turned out to be the only rainy day of our entire trip; and we soon had an elastic change in our luck...
After breakfast in Uttoxeter we got on a bus (as had been our plan all along) to the nearby city of Stoke-On-Trent. We didn't run into Robbie Williams, but did see a mall with a suspended sculpture that seems like it would be rather nasty in the event of an earthquake!
From Stoke we got on the #64 bus in the southwesterly direction toward Shrewsbury, and alighted in the town of Whitmore... Or, rather, we meant to alight in Whitmore. Instead we ended up in the next town over, Baldwin's Gate. Some people tending the garden at the local post office took pity on us, and gave us a lift back up the road. The son of the man who drove us had once rented an apartment beside Whitmore Hall, the ancestral seat of that lineage who ended up in Hitchin and later in Canada. He dropped us off right at the place. There, we struck up a conversation with the housekeeper, who took my Dad's family tree into the ladies of the house. The daughter of the family gave us a private tour of the place, and the matron gifted us with a book about the history of the family! It was absolutely incredible.
Traditionally, the eldest son inherited everything. Our branch of the family tree comes from a second (or later) son who had to set off for fortune and glory elsewhere. Meanwhile, the first sons of the Hall were busy moving up the ranks of the Royal Navy (much to my Dad's delight to learn!) and having pet peacocks.
At the end of the visit, I took this photo of my parents with the distant cousin who gave us the tour. She asked us to sign the guestbook - but not the "regular" book that standard tourists get to sign, but the special family guestbook. To be treated so warmly as random interlopers from the #64 bus was beyond our wildest dreams. It was truly a highlight of the trip.
Near the Hall is a tea room and also a pub. We had a scrumptious lunch at the tea room.
We got back on the #64 (from the stop right in front of the pub this time!) and continued on to Shrewsbury. There we took a Transport For Wales train (TfW was not on strike) to the Welsh city of Wrexham. We watched Eurovision at a lively community party.
The next day we walked to the Racecourse, home of Wrexham FC. We stopped by the Turf Hotel, where we got to meet Wayne Jones, the bar owner made famous by the show, Welcome To Wrexham.
In the next segment of our trip, we visited the Victorian resort town of Llandudno.