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Transcribed August, 2026 from travel notes recently found. There are minor corrections, additions and edits.
"Hamlet, Hamlet. Acting Balmy. Hamlet, Hamlet. Wants his Mommy." — Friends of Fiddler's GreenFinally, on Thursday November 6, Reg got his formal job offer from Waterloo (University of Waterloo, Department of Information Systems) and we finalized the deal selling our house in St Marys. The job starts January 1, we move to St Marys in February of 1998.
Friday afternoon, Reg's mates at Information Systems (University of Western Ontario) took to him to the Grad Club (Middlesex College) for drinks and to the celebrate his new job. Rob Brennan was telling us how the PeopleSoft group were in shock. Somebody came into his office and said to him, "I'm going to ask you something. Now don't lie to me. Is Reg leaving?" Rob answered that he was and the person said, "I told you not to lie to me!". Mike Bennett (recent chair of IST/UWO) sent Reg a kindly e-mail telling him how much he would be missed.
"Nashville is rough on the living, but they surely speak well of the dead." — Shel SilversteinSaturday, November 8. Woking
We're out of bed at 5:30am (we lived in London, Wortley Village, Old South) and flew from London to Toronto at 7:00am. After walking 10 miles in Terminal II (at this writing in 2026 it no longer exists!) we finally reached the International area. One entrance had a very long snaked line of black men with carts loaded up with things wrapped in cardboard. They would have been seasonal workers headed back to the Caribbean. The other line was shorter (people without carts) and we went through there and to the duty free where we stocked up for our trip — a litre of "double vodka" at $15, a half bottle of Crown Royal, another half bottle of Johnny Walker at $8.50 each. Then another 5 miles to our gate. There were a lot of black fellows there but they were waiting for another flight.
Our daytime flight to England was less than one quarter full. The stewardess suggested to Reg that we should fold down the seat backs in front of so we could put our feet up! What a great flight! The one male and three female attendants were really, really nice and the booze was free. We also saw two movies which weren't too bad — the second Jurassic Park and a courtroom/lawyer police movie with Andy Garcia (perhaps that was Night Falls on Manhattan (1996)). This day time flight was very much more pleasant than the overnight flights where you're packed in like sardines and struggle to catch a bit of sleep.
The flight left Toronto at 9:00 am (our time) and we're into Heathrow at 9:00 pm (London time or 4:00pm our time). We've rented a car and are off to see Mom2 and Dad2 in nearby Woking where we stay overnight. Kate has already made, and revised, several plans for tomorrow.
We arrived at "Winterset" (the home of Jean and Chuck) around 10:30pm. They were pleased to see us and somewhat surprised that we made it there before midnight. They have a 12 week old puppy, named "Brie" (the mother's name was "France"), who is also excited to see us. So excited she poops on the floor! While sitting around chatting, to well past midnight, Kate had the newly purchased DK Eye-Witness guide to the UK lying on top of her travel bag by her chair. She heard this gnawing sound for a about a minute or so and looked down to find that Brie had eaten the corner off the book! When that was taken away from her she started on Kate's runners. After that, we hid our stuff away. Such is life raising puppies. Jean and Chuck dote on Brie — all is forgiven.
We visited with Jean and Chuck until 1:00 am and went off to bed. Reg fell asleep immediately.
Mom is very nice and sweet. Chuck is very right wing but also very clever and funny. Eg. Q: "What does Martin do?" Chuck: "Nothing, he's a senior manager"; when discussing whether a late fall means and a late spring Chuck says, "Well sure it does. Trees have to have a period of rest ... just like teachers".
Sunday, November 9. Stonehenge
We got up at 9:00am this morning. Had some laughs, took some photographs and, by noon, we're on the road heading west.
Our first stop is Stonehenge on the Salisbury Plains where the sun immediately went behind the clouds and the wind and rain whipped up (right after we'd paid the £7 admission). Kate, as usual, is not dressed for the cold weather. She takes about 3 quick pictures and runs back to the gift shop and the car. Reg, dressed more suitably spent a bit more time ruminating on the rocks and snapping gloomy pictures.
Kate writes: Being a passenger on English roads (other than the motorways) is perfectly awful if you're prone to car sickness. The stomach ache is made worse by the white knuckle sensation of careening down narrow winding roads on the wrong side where a car or something else might pop up at any minute all the while navigating with a map and trying to figure out the the signage at round abouts which seem to occur about every 3-5 miles. It makes one long for the roads of Manitoba, Wyoming, or even Southern Ontario.
Every village looks like a movie set. Most houses around here are made of stone. It's very picturesque; although, no thatched roofs as yet (except for the hokey painting in our hotel room).
We left Stonehenge around 2:30 pm and didn't know what time it got dark so decided to find one of our "Flexiplan" hotel rooms prior to further touristing in Bath or Cheddar Gorge (the gorge after which all cheddar cheese are named).
"A lot of people in this country poo-pooh Australian table wines. This is a pity, as many fine Australian wines appeal not only to the Australian palate but also to the cognoscenti of Great Britain." — Monty Python
The Blanchard-Nissouri Cheese Factory near Wellburn, just south of St Marys, made wonderful unpasteurized cheddar. But, had closed around this time.
"Scrumpy is a traditional, strong, and cloudy alcoholic cider originating from the West Country of England. It is typically un-carbonated, dry, and unfiltered, made from a mix of local or windfall apples." — Google AI
So far, so good. We left for Bath and arrived around 11:00am. We drove around in mpossible traffic for about 40 minutes trying to figure out where we were, where to park, where are the baths, who are we and why are we here? We found our way to the "Royal Crescent" and en route parked illegally in the "Circus" (a square of houses only in a circle) to take a few photos.
While Reg wandered off in search of that "perfect photo" Kate stayed back guarding the car (illegally parked) when a familiar face approached on the sidewalk — it was her colleague Virginia Carver from Ottawa who was in the area visiting with her mom in Box (a village about 5-10 miles outside of Bath). Kate and Virginia could not stop laughing; it was so funny to bump into each other so far from home. Reg came back, wondering who had Kate met, and joined in the jocularity. We went our separate ways with promises to see one another back in Canada.
The "baths" at Bath are from Roman times and seem to have been excavated/restored fairly recently. It's organized as a museum where you walk around getting little lessons on particular features of the baths from your hand held taped personal guide. There was a picture from 1914 of people lunching up on the upper balcony (probably swimmers below). But now you can't get out to that balcony and, of course, no one goes into the waters. We had to told Mom we'd go to Bath, for a bath, how wrong and naive we were.
The museum has a bit of a 1984 feel about it as people walk around quietly with taped guides held to their ears, not talking to one another, and being educated on ancient Roman history. Kate writes: As far as I can tell there aren't any functional spas from the Roman era in England anymore — they're all just historical sites. Although it was interesting from an historical perspective. It's just that we had selected the site for soaking in the water, not for soaking in history.
We ended up driving around for 40 minutes or so trying to leave Bath, getting on the wrong road because the right road was closed, etc. However, we finally made it onto the motorway where we back tracked to Bristol and finally are headed north towards Nottingham shortly after 2:00pm.
At this point the diary includes Kate's relieved comment: "Reg did much better with the car today."
At a very posh, somewhat pretentious inn, the Riverside Country House — chosen because the food was supposed to be outstanding (and it was) — and again part of the FlexiPlan, we stayed in the "Orchid Room". There was a small problem with the hot water for a bath (the bath we missed in Bath) but that was ultimately fixed. At the dinner there were four couples (including us). It's a small dining room with space for 6 groups of 4 or less.
For dinner we had anchovies on potatoes with black olives as the appetizer (Kate passed on the anchovies); for starters Reg had the smoked salmon and grilled scallops while Kate had a wild mushroom soup; for a refresher we had strawberry sherbert; for the main Kate had Bambi while Reg had most of Bessie (beware mad cows!). Very nice dinner.
We starting talking with a couple from Sussex (south of Woking on the channel). Reg called him "the Dragon" because all through the dinner he kept making loud yawning, sshsshing and grunting noises. Perhaps a Tourette's victim. They had come to celebrate her 60th birthday and were quite nice — perhaps a bit racist/zenophobic but that seems pretty normal for Brits and Europeans generally. They told us one of the other couples was also from Ontario. Kate was surprised as she had heard the lady speak and it seemed to have an English accent. We were talking with them later that evening in the lobby. He was from Ontario but she was originally English. They live in Creemore, famous for it's craft beer, in the Highlands near Collingwood.
Tuesday, November 11. Nottingham & Malton
We buzzed up the road in the morning heading north to "Morton" — the home of Jane Eyre — with great views of the "moors" in all directions. Reg startled a sheep who bolted into the traffic and almost got killed right before our very eyes! Fortunately, the Brits are used to dodging obstacles that pop up on the road; they alertly swerved and avoided any bloodshed. In this part of the country they don't have fences to keep livestock contained. Instead they wander the moors at will.
We drove on to Nottingham where Kate had a meeting with a colleague, Phil Leather, at the University. Reg wandered around the campus while Kate was at her meeting. It was a brief stop in Nottingham. Martin, Reg's BFF from university days, Jean and Chuck's son, did his undergraduate work here. Ps. Later Martin's son Christopher did his Engineering PhD here. I suspect that Chuck may be an alum as well but I should check.
From Nottingham we continued on the Malton which is just north east of York and stayed at the Talbot Hotel. This old hotel is right on the highway which is very busy, very noisy, the cars thunder through the narrow streets of town. Kate asked for a quiet room away from the noise and we were given a very odd room at the back of the top floor. The sign outside our door said "break glass and turn handle in case of fire". Our door didn't close properly as it (and we) were the fire exit. Instead, to keep the door closed, you had to insert this church key into a hole and lock it. If there were a fir, the entire hotel, or at least our floor, would be tromping through our room to the fire exit! An odd place.
In our room there were two emergency fire exit doors (break glass and turn handle). One in the bed room proper and one in the bathroom (sic!). I suspect the renovations might have been done by Larry, Darrel and his other brother Darrel of the Bob Newhart show. But we had a good dinner and a good sleep — it was quite quiet at this end of the hotel.
For dinner: the appetizer was a Waldorf salad with tons of mayo on a slice of pineapple (yech!); Kate had turkey (quite good) and veggies for her main while Reg had Scottish salmon with some veggies; for dessert Reg had creme caramel (of course) while Kate had a raisin cake with custard (for her it was the best part of the meal). We shared a bottle of Chateau La Claire, Medoc, 1992.
Wednesday, November 12. York & Hayden Bridge
For breakfast at the Talbot Hotel in Malton Kate ordered fried eggs "runny" as that's how she likes them. But then she got scared and lost her appetite when she remembered stories about how some British eggs have salmonella and ought not to be eaten raw. In Canada that's not been an issue.
The hotel tonight, the Anchor Inn, Hayden Bridge, has a sign as you enter saying they're proud to serve British Beef. Mad Cow disease was a major crisis, poorly handled, it was a real fiasco.
The "Mad Cow Crisis" was a major public health and agricultural emergency centered on an outbreak of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and its human equivalent, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). Over 180,000 cattle were infected, millions were culled, and 178 people died after eating contaminated beef. The crisis peaked in 1992 with over 37,000 new cases in a single year.
Back to breakfast at the Talbot Hotel in Malton near York. Reg had the whole nine yards for his breakfast: bacon (it's really ham), bangers (in the EU they can't call that meat), fried bread (yes deep fried), fried tomatoes, spuds, eggs and toast. He passed on the blood pudding. Kate had less of the above but much of the same.
All of the Brits in the breakfast room clicked the knives on their plates as they packed their forks with morsels of their dinner. They do this click click incessantly and it drives Kate crazy. She's very noise sensitive in the morning. This is one feature of British dining that drives her up the wall.
As we are checking out it's the same clerk from the night before. Likewise the same waitress from the dinner last night. Don't they ever sleep or get some time off?
We drove back to York (centre/Northwest of England) for the day. Getting into town was pretty easy, getting out was much harder. York is a walled city, or at least a lot of the wall remains, with a large "minster" they call, oddly enough, "York Minster". It's an impressive very old cathedral. A fire in the early 1908's had almost destroyed one wing but the restoration following the fire is very impressive. The walls and ceilings are now all clean and white with beautifully gilt ornamentation. Often times these old churches are grey and dreary from years of soot and grime. It's impressive to see how it might have been orginally.
We went to the top of the minster for a view of the city. It was hazy and smoggy, the usual condition in most English towns, so we didn't see too much to be impressed by. Other than, I'm impressed we climbed the 270 steps to get to the roof! It's not St Peter's in Rome but it is very big. You climb up one tower on a wing to the roof (150 or so steps), then across the roof to the central tower where you climb another similar height to the very top. Both towers have a narrow circular staircase of 150 or so steps; it's quite narrow and you go up/down in shifts so you don't meet others going the other direction.
We also went to a Viking Village in York. It's a museum/dig that was only lately discovered. It's under ground where things were found during some building project. They have this interpretative ride backwards through time to the Viking era. And then you go through a village, some homes and shops. You even get to see a Viking on a crapper — a pit with a some wattle walls. Very impressive.
A real Viking guy (i.e. a person, not a model) was going to chop off Kate's head with a big broadsword but relented when Reg paid him £1 for a replica coin that he stamped with a small sledge. The Viking pointed out that his helmut didn't have horns, he told us that no Viking helmut ever had horns — that's a fiction Hollywood will have to pay for.
There were some neat souvenirs in York. Kate bought some lace calendars at the York Market and some fruit for our travels.
That evening we stayed at the "Odd Fellows Hall" in Hayden Bridge. They have lots of "blue" china and other odd things for sale at the gift shop but oddly, no odd fellows. Kate bought a doily for Brenda. At our dinner that night Kate had the lentil soup and chicken tikka (the special) while Reg had the trout with lots of veggies, salad and fries. The service was more than ample, enough to feed a small army. We shared a bottle of 1995 Sait Emillion (brick colored but fruity). And, oh yes, the dinner menu is at 7:00pm not 6:30pm.
Thursday, November 13. Hadrian's Wall
Hayden Bridge, no surprise is a real bridge, on the Tyne River. Out hotel overlooks the river and the bridge. We have another English breakfast (deep fried toast, deep fried sausages, deep fried back bacon, deep fried mushrooms, fried tomatoes and scrambled eggs) at our table overlooking the river. There's a bit of a drop there with a slight water fall/rough rapids. We watch the salmon jumping as they desperately try to make their way up stream to spawn. During our breakfast we saw a couple make it and probably another hundred attempts.
We're outside to take pictures of the hotel, the bridge, the river, fish jumping, etc. when Reg notices that the battery on his camera is running low. He had a look of sheer panic on his face! We asked in the post office about a camera shop, a place to buy new batteries, but we end up having to return to Hexam where we find a store and battery. In Hexam we explore the Hexam Abbey.
Next, off to Hadrian's Wall. It was difficult to know which part of the wall to focus on, and, from the car it was hard to identify it from an ordinary "Farmer in the Dell" kind of wall. Ultimately we select a National Park headquarters, it happened to be closed for the season, as a starting place. There was a road leading to the wall and a "Park & Display" parking lot where we put our car. We set off to explore the spectacular scenery and clambered over the wall despite the signs telling us not to. Kate didn't see the signs, Reg did but ignored them — more on unseen/misunderstood signs later in this saga.
Hadrian's Wall was actually pretty darn impressive but more impressive was the country side around it. After taking far too many pictures and climbing yet another steep hill we had enough and left.
We decided to take obscure "B" roads into Scotland, at that point we still had lots of time left in the day. We followed a road for about a half hour or so through the usual narrow lanes with periodic round abouts, stone walls and building abutting the roadway (Kate was worried we might clip the passenger mirror and what would happen should someone else meet us). We drove along , it's getting less and less urban, more forested, and at one point encounter a sign that says "Ministry of Defence, Private Road, No Access". We assumed this referred to some lane off the nicely paved road we were travelling on and continued on. After a bit, we passed another sign saying the same thing, but once again thought it was interesting but obviously not relevant to us. Until a few more miles down the road we stopped at a barrier, military gate, and small gate house. At this point we thought it might be a good idea to ask for directions from the staff (military with guns) at the gate house. So Reg went in to ask (the sign outside at the gate said something about searching people, etc. which we weren't that keen on).
Well, apparently we had missed our "B" road at one of the many round abouts and we were on the wrong road. One of the reasons we hadn't twigged to that was we're in a National Park, an unpopulated area, where there was but one road shown on the map (the road we weren't on). The road we were on was not on the map, purposely, as this was some sort of secret military operation hence the signs we had ignored. They kindly sent us back the way we had come (without any strip search) and we decided then and there to stick to the "A" roads which are confusing enough.
This travel Diary ends abruptly here. Photo album is wine and beer labels found in the diary.
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