Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Hello from the other side of the Atlantic! I’m traveling with my mom for four weeks through England, Ireland, and Scotland, and I’m going to write about it.

I debated for a long time whether I was going to blog this trip. I brought along my bluetooth keyboard that I used to blog every day of the PCT last year and knew that I was at least going to journal, but I waffled on posting it. But today I came to the realization that knowing people were reading what I was writing is what kept me posting in the first place last year. I’ve not felt super accountable to my goals or focused on anything lately, and having a possible audience for this journal makes it more likely that I will actually write.

Most people followed this blog to join along with my PCT journey in 2022 (heyyy, friends!). I’m aware that people who enjoy normal, run-of-the-mill travel content don’t always overlap with people who read thru-hiking blogs. So if the latter describes you, I totally get it. You are hereby excused from reading my travel journal about this trip.

… But maybe I can convince you to stay by telling you that there actually *will* be some hiking?

In the first week of July, I’ll be hiking the 96-mile West Highland Way in Scotland from Milngavie to Fort William, plus Ben Nevis at the end, the tallest mountain in the UK. Trail updates from across the ocean? Anyone? Want to watch me get eaten alive by midges and my mom possibly get lost in rural Scotland on public transit? It’ll be grand.

So here we are, whoever’s with me! I’m in a tiny flat in Shoreditch as I write. It’s after midnight, I’m tired from walking all over this city today, I’m over-sugared on Revels and Jaffa Cakes and gelato, and my body has no idea what time it is. Time to write!

We land in London this morning after a really quite pleasant flight on Virgin Atlantic. (They call Comfort Plus “Economy Delight”! Why are even airline seat categories cute in the UK?) We garble our way through scanning our Heathrow Express tickets and get on the train, winding up at Paddington Station. This is the station where, five years ago on our way into Dartmoor, my friend Lauren dropped her open, pound-spewing wallet into the gap between the train and the platform, which made us miss our train to Exeter and started a series of hilariously dramatic events that eventually, mercifully, led us to arriving at our hostel in Moretonhampstead. RIP. Never forget. I toke a photo to commemorate the occasion.

Outside, it is a balmy, sunny, very un-England like day. There are perfect white clouds in the sky and I am actually concerned about the possibility of sunburn. We can’t check into our Airbnb until after 3, so we walk a few blocks over Kensington Gardens. In the Italian Garden, we watch a mama duck and her babies frolic and fish among the lily pads. Everything is so green. Was it this pretty and in bloom the last time I was here? That was late May, a cooler one, and this is a steaming mid June, but it seems so much more vibrant than I remember.

We’ve packed super light for this trip because we’ve got an ambitious schedule that requires us to traipse all over these islands on budget regional airlines. We each only have a handful of clothes, and I brought the absolute bare minimum of hiking gear for the West Highland Way. Still, it’s not fun to carry what you don’t need, and we’re tired from the flight, so we find a patch of grass in the shade and positively plop on it. Then I pull out my toothbrush and toothpaste and start brushing my teeth right there. Mom is incredulous.

“I can’t believe you’re brushing your teeth in this park.”

I shrug. “Hikertrash.” Slurp my toothpaste when I’m done, take a nice swig of water. Late-PCT, lazy LNT-style. No trace at all. Yum.

We continue walking once we feel refreshed. The path is right up against the Serpentine (I have the Alt-J song “Get Better” stuck in my head all day as a result, because there’s a line that goes “A younger you and a younger me, meeting at the Serpentine…”). We observe more baby ducks (why are there so many baby ducks, and why are their moms so chill with them being so close to us?), then walk across the bridge to the Princess Diana memorial fountain.

I’d also been here before, but had sort of forgotten about how cool it was. It’s a kind of big concrete loop with water running through the whole ring. It starts from a source at the top and runs down the sides. There’s a large pool at the bottom where children (and some adults, too) are wading, shoeless, in the cool water. In places the stream is quick and narrow, and at others it’s a slow cascading babble, or nearly still. It’s a beautiful monument that has become a kind of community gathering place—appropriate for the People’s Princess. We take our shoes off and put our feet in the water for a while. It’s the summer solstice, it’s perfect weather, and it feels like an auspicious start to this chaotic adventure.

We eat lunch at a restaurant right on the water, then hop on the Tube. (Andy, James—take note. I pronounce this with a proper hard American “t.” None of this “Chuseday Chube Chuna” nonsense. Though as this is not my country, I suppose I have no right to instruct you on the proper pronunciation of your days, public transit, or sandwich of choice.) Gosh, but I love the Tube. It’s so colorful, efficient, pleasant, and organized. (Organised.) The lines have cute names and the standard Transport for London font is so aesthetically pleasing. I love London in general though. I’ve only been here a handful of times, but I really have this deep-set affection for this city. Maybe it’s because of Sherlock Holmes, or my love of the English language and its literature, or because of Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. In any case, that affection is there. I don’t know if I could ever live somewhere like this, but it feels magnetic to me, like a place you just can’t help but return to again and again.

It’s a little bit of a chore to find our Airbnb because of all the construction at Old Street Station, but eventually we do, and it is tiny. It’s also baking hot because England is not typically this warm and there is no air conditioning. But it’ll do for two nights.

Mom falls asleep immediately. Poor thing. I think I might have overworked her today, plus she’s not used to carrying her luggage on her back. She did a great job packing, but there’s a learning curve to getting used to a backpacking-style pack.

I take a shower in the microscopic bathroom. Look, I know it’s an American stereotype to say that European bathrooms are small because we’re used to our massive whizz palaces, but this bathroom is genuinely tiny. It’s Lilliputian. The sink basin is barely big enough to get both my hands wet, and the tap is so close to the bottom of the basin that I have to wash one at a time. In the shower I’m constantly knocking the handle or accidentally opening the door or stepping on the loose drain cover. But there is cool water and good pressure and I emerge feeling significantly more comfortable.

I try and fail to resist napping and before I know it it’s 8:00 PM. But no matter, because this is London, and nothing ever truly shuts down in London, and Seven Dials and Covent Garden (which I like to be silly about and call things like Convent Garden and Convenient Garden and Coven Garden) are still positively bumping when we get there. We dip into a chippy and get a delicious plate of fish and chips and a side salad. If you don’t get fish and chips within your first twelve hours in the UK, are you really in the UK?

Then we raid a Tesco for treats. Revels are my favorite. They’re like a mystery bag of chocolate-covered things and you never know which one you’re going to get. Jumbo brought a bag for me to Germany last December and I rationed it for the better part of two months. Cadbury Fruit and Nut bars are my second favorite. They taste like hiking in the rain in Dartmoor and evening god rays in the Lake District. I get a G&T tinnie, too, and some other goodies. Then to top off all of our excessiveness, we stop for gelato at a place I remember from before. It starts with A. That’s all I’ve got.

Mom’s standing there in the light outside a Zara eating her caramel gelato, looking like she’s about to transcend this earth. “This is the best I’ve ever had,” she says.

“Best gelato, or best ice cream?”

She’s nodding before I even finish the question. “Both.”

It’s gone 11 before we’re heading back to the flat, but we take a little spin around Leicester Square first because the Covent Garden Tube station is mad. Eventually we make it back to Shoreditch with my bag bursting with our Tesco treasures. And here we are.

The first days of travel are always a little weird, like a liminal state. Still adjusting, half in one world and half in another. You’ve just exited your everyday life and entered something new. Not that the UK is particularly foreign or radically different from our culture or new to either of us, true, but it is a right treat to be here for a little while, somewhere different than the everyday, to explore some new places on these storied islands.