England and France - Dover, Battle, London

The France portion of my trip now ended. I traveled back through Paris to Calais to take the hovercraft back to England. While waiting to board I talked with a spaced out hippie backpacker from California. I also noticed a nice looking girl nearby. The hovercraft began to board, but I waited because I wanted to see where this girl was going to sit. Finally, it was me, the hippie, and this girl. As we entered the hovercraft I quickly ditched the hippie by sitting down immediately. The girl I had noticed in the terminal sat down right behind me. I am stupid, but I am not profoundly stupid. I turned around and asked if I could sit by her. We talked all the way across the Channel. Nicola had been going to summer school in Paris. I told her I was going to travel in a big circle around England and Scotland. She told me I should stay with her and her family for a couple of days. I asked her where she was from. She said a small city that I wouldn't have heard of. So I said "Sunderland?" Yup. So, on each leg across the Channel I met someone, each one invited me to come stay with them, and each one was from Sunderland. So now I had two parties to visit in Sunderland. Weird or what?

I stopped off in Dover and visited the castle there. This is the view from the castle hill back toward the town. Notice all the fog?

Here is information about the parish church of St. James - enlarge it to read about it. The church is near Dover castle. I remember the castle guide telling us that up on the hills around Dover you can still see rifle pits dug by the British when they were concerned that Napolean I would invade in the early 1800's.

The Union Jack flying over Dover Castle. After Dover I headed down to Southeast England - I wanted to see where William the Conquer fought King Harold in 1066 at the battle of Hastings.

I did some hitchhiking. The gentleman on the left is Terry. He was an Australian from New South Wales who had been traveling Europe throughout the summer. He had been picking apples for money, and out of his wages he bought the car he is sitting on. Maybe you can tell - he didn't want me to take his picture. We stopped in a little town around lunch time. Terry already had something to eat. I started to walk to a little convenience store to buy something to eat. Terry called to me and threw me his car keys. My duffel bag was in the back seat of his car. In a pretty cool way, he tossed me the keys so I would know he wasn't going to take off with my stuff. Terry dropped me off soon after lunch, here at Crowhurst station.

From Crowhurst I took the train to Battle. The battle of Hastings was actually fought at a place later named "Battle". Makes sense.

Here is my ticket. I have kept it all these years.

Follow along on the map - I left Battle (near Hastings) and hitchhiked up to London. One guy who stopped for me told me he picked up Americans about once a week where he stopped for me.

Once back in London I stopped at a kiosk and the man there booked me a hotel room on Belgrade Road. I took down the directions and rode the Underground to the stated stop and then walked up the street to my hotel. What a disappointment. I had to share a common bathroom, and the bed had a hole so deep in the middle that if you lay in it your head and feet stuck out at forty-five degree angles. Here is a picture I took of Belgrade Road from my sub-par room. You can spot a red storefront in the picture - I remember stopping there to buy a carton of milk.

I had planned to stay two nights in London. There was no way I would spend a second night in this flop house. That evening I picked an underground ("the tube") station that sounded interesting and rode there. I remember some of the escalators were wooden, not metal. I got off at the Hyde Park station. It was probably mid-evening, maybe 8 o'clock. I soon found myself on a busy street with beautiful colonial style row houses. I walked up to one that seemed to be a bed and breakfast and entered. I asked the man behind the counter if I could get a room for tomorrow night. He looked at me like I was a total moron. "Tomorrow night?", he asked incredulously. In an annoyed tone he concluded, "Then come back TOMORROW night!" I walked out of there very confused. I must have looked very confused standing out on the sidewalk. A polite man approached me. It was my experience while in England that personal space is very respected, to the point that everyone seems to ignore everyone else. Until they figure out you're an American. The English seem to love Americans. "Excuse me, but you're an American, aren't you?", he asked me. "Yes". "And you just tried to book a room in there?" "Yes". "I'll have you know you are in the Red Light district!" (In other words, I just tried to make an advance reservation in a whore house!) This gentleman told me he knew where I could get a room, and proceeded to walk me about four blocks to a more conventional place to spend the night. I thanked him profusely, and did spend the next night there. As I get older, I wonder for the sake of adventure if maybe I shouldn't have gone back to the whore house ...

I went to Buckingham palace, but didn't get to see the changing of the guard. Here is a photo of me taken by a man who made a living taking tourist's pictures. I paid him a couple pounds and he took my address and told me he would mail me my picture. He was true to his word. You can see the 35mm Argus camera that my dad let me take on this trip. You had to know more about photography in order to use these old manual cameras.

Here are some "Bobbys" or "Peelers", London police officers. These two nicknames derive from Robert Peele, who created the London police force. At first,they looked into the camera and smiled. But something malfunctioned, and by the time I took this picture they were done humoring this tourist.

top	Informationhighwaytohell home page     Feedback? Enter your comments in the guest book
Previous	Back to Travelogue	Next	2 of 5
Marseille, Cassi, Aix-en-Provence     Dover, Battle, London     Oxford and Salisbury     Bath, Birmingham, Edinburgh     Sunderland, Cambridge, London
Click on any picture to bring up the picture enlarged in a new window