Art & Culture various essays on, well, art and culture Bookbinding & Conservation lessons learned from this profession Humor ok, I'm not the guy from SNL, but I still have a sense of humor 'Jim Downey' Stories mostly true stories from my adolescence Personal Essays more "it's all about me" Politics I’m at -7.13/-7.33 on The Political Compass.  Where are you? Society observations on the human condition Travel Europe 1994       Kronach       Coburg       Vienna       Mödling       Vättis       Ramsgate       Chester Wales 1998 Wales 2003 Wales 2006 CCGA Vignettes

Ramsgate We left Cologne on the direct train to London, through Öostende and Ramsgate.  This route itself was a little bit of a surprise, which we discovered when we arrived on the Continent and were making plans for getting around . . . almost all the information we had previously had indicated that the main landing on Britain was at Dover.  The BritRail literature told us that.  The EuRail lit told us that.  Only the Thomas Cook train schedule indicated that we would have to go through Ramsgate, and with some of the other discrepancies that we had found in hat, we weren't sure that we should trust it. But it was true.  Through Öostende by jetfoil to Ramsgate.  A surprise came when we tried to get through into the waiting area for the jetfoil.  Even with the surcharge we had paid at the train station in Cologne, and the reservations we had made for the jetfoil, we were told we still needed to buy a separate ticket for the passage.  No Belgium money, but fortunately they took credit cards.  No idea how much it was, but we bought the tickets, settled in for the little bit of a wait before embarking. Jetfoils are interesting things.  Like the hydrofoils I first remember from the old 'Johnny Quest' cartoon show.  But they're BIG.  Really big.  You maybe expect a little speedboat to ride on skis, but not a real, honest to god transport ship.  At least not when you're from the Midwest, you don't.  Maybe a hundred people loaded into this thing, it easily had room for a hundred more.  We pulled away from the docks, the jet engines doing a low drone.  I looked up and saw a plaque on the wall indicating that Boeing had made the jetfoil.  Made sense to me.  People who build jets should be able to make a jetfoil, right?  Until I noticed that this was "hull number 00020".  About that point the jets really kicked in, and you could feel the ship rise up out of the water, first the front, canting us back at a sharp angle, then the aft of the ship, levelling out.  And we were really moving.  I looked at that plaque more than once during the crossing. We arrived at Ramsgate in about 90 minutes.  Cleared out of the jetfoil, cleared through customs, crowded into the courtesy bus which would take us to the train station.  Our tickets were good through London, but we didn't want to go to London yet.  We had a rental car waiting for us in Canterbury, about ten minutes down the road on a different train. The Ramsgate train station is small, really small.  After travelling all over the Continent, where even little bitty burgs have reasonable train facilities, with an information center, a small stationery/travel store, and usually a decent restaurant and/or bar, this came as another bit of a surprise.  This had none of those things, though it did have a little area where you could buy stamps.  But no place to change money.  The main point-of-entry train station for coming from the Continent, and there was no place to get the local currency.  Sigh.  We stepped up to the only service window to exchange the vouchers we had for our BritRail/Drive passes.  The fellow behind the window at least spoke our language, though at first you couldn't tell it by the way he looked at us when we told him what we needed to do.  The voucher didn't exactly confuse him, but it was clear that he hadn't had too many experiences with the things.  And the fact that we were also to receive a little book with coupons for our rental cars threw both him and his supervisor for a bit of a loop.  The shuffling of many books on procedures.  The thumbing through of many 'Directive Updates,' and about 20 minutes later they handed over BritRail passes and coupons for the car.  We bought tickets for Canterbury, using plastic.  Caught the train a few minutes later. Got to Canterbury, a city not much smaller than Columbia, and one of the major tourist-attraction towns in Britain.  The train station there was even smaller than the one at Ramsgate.  Still no place to change money.  No place to get a map of the city, so we could at least figure out where we were relative to the central business area (where there would be banks where we could change some money) or the location of the Hertz office.  I came to understand then and there that the train stations in Britain are not centrally located in the cities they serve, the way the ones on the Continent are.  I fear that if we ever expand our railnet, we'll follow the British example. We asked at the service window about where we could change some money.  No help.  Tried the small postal window.  The nice old gent there thought about it, then wandered outside, and asked one of the cabbies.  The cabbie and several of his cohorts went into a huddle.  Well, there was the main post office.  They thought it closed at 5:30 (it was now about 5:10), but it might have closed at 5:00.  All the banks closed at 4:30 or 5:00.  Did we have a place to stay?  Major hotels could change some money for us, but only if we were guests there, probably.  Then one of the cabbies thought about ATM machines, and figured we could either get money out of our home account, or at least get a cash advance on one of our Visa cards.  We jumped into one of the cabs, and the driver took the chance that we'd be able to pay him somehow.  Off we went.  Got to an ATM in fine shape, got some Sterling, and then went off to the Hertz office to get our car. The Hertz office closed at 5:30.  We were about 5 minutes late. But the fellow who ran the gas station which shared the building called the guy who ran the Hertz office.  He called his boss.  His boss called us back at the gas station.  Sure, he would be happy to come down and get a car for us, but there was an 'after-hours' charge of 20 pounds.  No, he didn't have a reservation order for us.  If he did, then he would have expected us, right, and there wouldn't have been a problem with the car, since he could have left all the relevant paperwork with the fellow who ran the gas station.  Right? Right.  Whatever.  He came down, and got us a car.  But all he had left was big cars.  Some variety of Ford bigger (across anyway) than my station wagon.  Nice car, except for the size, and the fact that everything was on the wrong side.  We tossed the luggage inside, hung the "Caution - YANKS - Driving" sign in the back window (a nice touch, that.  We had been forewarned by a friend who had driven in Britain before that it really was only fair to give the poor locals some notice that crazed Americans were loose on their highways and byways), fired up the car, and went off to find some food. The first few minutes were the most exciting.  I only had Alix really frightened a couple of times.  I had myself terrified more often than that, but I put on a good show of being comfortable with driving on the wrong side of the road.  With all my instincts telling me to drive headfirst into the oncoming traffic.  With the tendency to shift the doorhandle every time I needed to change gears.  With the fact that they don't believe in stop signs in Britain, but instead keep the traffic moving through the ingenious little device of 'roundabouts,' which work quite well once you get the hang of them, but which are custom designed to drive hypoglycemic Americans just off the jetfoil absolutely nuts. Our plan had been to drive to Battle, the site of the Battle of Hastings.  It was just getting dark as we left Canterbury.  We missed all the food places, and so just headed off in the direction of our eventual destination.  After driving for about 45 minutes, in a cold sweat from fighting all the training of about 20 years of driving on US roads, and still without food, we decided to stop in the little town of Ashford for some food.  The first experience with diabolical British town traffic, lack of recognizable signage, and one-way lanes going the wrong direction in a loop which never lets you free.  And the hideous low-pressure sodium lights which are used all over Britain . . . things so ugly they are used occasionally here in the States by local authorities in areas where gangs hang out to run the kids off.  Sort of a cross between bile and a cattle prod to the eyes. Finally, after about the fourth round through the old town, we just parked the beast, and got out to go in quest of food.  I wanted a drink, badly, but dared not to tempt fate if I was going to continue to drive to Battle.  All the decent little restaurants were closed, but there was a Pizza Hut open we had seen on one of the circuits of the downtown . . . on the way there we went past a Wimpy's (sort of like a home-grown variety of Wendy's, at least like what Wendy's was like when they first opened here 20 years ago), and figured that it had to be better than transplanted American pizza.  It was OK.  We ate, relaxed, decided that it was better to try and find a B&B someplace locally, went back to the car to look over our guides.  Alix found a couple of likely candidates, and we sort of spun around Ashford until it spit us out in a direction that seemed promising.  Picked a B&B almost at random, pulled in, got a room, parked the car and went inside to fall down.  It was a small hotel, actually, and they even had a bar.  We were both exhausted, and a couple of pints put an end to the evening. The next morning a nice little breakfast, and my first taste of British pork sausage.  I had forgotten the warning about this imposter wurst.  Particularly after stuffing myself with wonderful German sausages of several varieties, this pasty, bland, nasty little thing left me impressed in all the wrong ways.  But hey, travel is supposed to be broadening, right? Wanting to get on the road, we packed up, cleared out, and I went to fetch the car.  There was frost on the windows, and I had nothing which could fake being a scraper.  Did the best I could using hands and credit cards, cranked up the defrosters, and backed the car out with nary a fender mashed.  Picked up Alix and the gear, and went on to Battle. Actually, we went to Hastings.  Figured that it would be a good place to actually change some money.  Nice little sea-front town, popular since Victorian times for holidays.  We were there long enough to change money and find the way to Battle.  Nice little roads the Brits have.  Made me want to inhale and hold my breath every time a truck came the other way.  They don't have to trim the hedges along the roads there . . . the trucks do that as they drive down the road, making a nice little tunnel through the undergrowth and trees. Drove into Battle, and pulled right up to the gate of the Abbey, which is now used as a 'public' school.  Found a parking lot tucked around the corner.  Walked through the little modern giftshop, not unlike something you'd find at Silver Dollar City, and out to the Battlefield.  It makes sense that the British treat these things as commonplace . . . they are . . . but still it was a little weird, the 900 year old site being so much like a nice little park.  The sun was just getting high, it had warmed up well, and we stood there on the top of the ridge, just below the walls of the Abbey, about the same place where Harald assembled his line.  Down the slope, across the way, and to the lower ridge where William arrayed his forces. Sheep munch grass there now.  A small group of schoolkids were out with a teacher, all of them wearing their rubber boots to protect from the wool by-products.  Over the last millennium a lot has happened to the land there, turning the marshes that the Britons slogged through when they moved up the left flank into a series of small fish ponds to support the Abbey, those ponds in turn used to produce water power for mills and the production of gunpowder later on.  But the basic lay of the land is still clear, and it added a logic to the many diagrams of the battle I have seen in all the books over the years.  William had to send his French cavalry around from the right . . . they wouldn't have made it through the mud at the bottom of the small valley.  You read these things, can even see it in the topo maps of the area . . . but walking it, looking up that slope, gives it reality. Nothing sacred about the space now.  No sense of the death, fear, exaltation felt there all those centuries ago.  But it is a quiet place, heavy with its accumulated history, even in the full brightness of the crisp autumn sun. The Abbey is there, in bits and pieces, built over by successive Crowns, used this way and that.  Wonderful old stone foundations, part of a covered passageway, a large part of the original building which housed the monks.  The wall which fronts on the battlefield itself, a couple of Elizabethan towers, and the later buildings which are still used for the school.  Thick, luscious grass.  The old icehouse, dug deep into the earth, with the triple-doored entryway facing north. We hiked, explored, took pictures, told ourselves and each other the stories we knew about the place, the history we have come to regard so close to the heart.  An odd thing for Americans.  When we left we went across the street, had a nice little lunch in a 14th century inn, and planned the trip to London where we would turn in the car, and take the train to Chester. PREVIOUS NEXT