Walking in the UK

I just finished reading Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island (1995), a travellogue in which the transplanted American author walks about the United Kingdom complaining of poor urban planning, inconvenient train schedules, and rain. He also found some lovely scenery and churches and such. It was a good read for fun. I recommend it particularly if you have been to England, Wales, or Scotland, or if you are thinking of doing so.

Long before my own trip to the UK in 2006, I used to think up places I would like to see there. I wanted to see Jane Austen's house, or her grave, or places her books were filmed. Then I discovered George Eliot, and I wanted to see her house in London. When I eventually made it to the UK, I ended up having less specific plans, though I did see London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, the Isle of Skye, and the town my great-grandfather's family came from near Glasgow.

So, you can imagine my sympathies for Bill Bryson when he wrote, upon visiting Oxford:

I decided to have a walk to Sutton Courtenay for no reason other than that George Orwell is buried there and it seemed about the right distance.

On his way there, things got interesting:

A bit further on the path had been covered with loose chippings, presumably to make the going easier, but in fact the chippings stuck to my muddy boots so that it looked as if I were walking around with two very large currant buns on my feet.

And on it goes. In Blackpool, a seaside resort gone a bit to seed, the author became positively livid about the British way of dealing with the challenge posed by sewage disposal in the sea to the tourism prospects of the town. He writes that in order to adapt to stricter public health regulations, the British government declared that Blackpool and other seaside towns did not actually have beaches. Since the water there contained levels of bacteria that went right off the high end of any "turdometer" by which these problems are measured, it was necessary to declare the beaches not to be beaches, you see.

My own travels today took me to the Gatineau Park for an early ski. What an amazing gorgeous sunny bright freshly snowed upon day!