andamu

Sunset at O'Hare, Dec. 31, '02, waiting for our flight to board.

Two years ago today we arrived at Heathrow for a two-and-a-half week vacation in the U.K. Vacation? In the U.K. in January?! Dear reader, your incredulity is certainly well-founded, but we had a number of reasons for going at that time. The advantage of going to Britain (or indeed most of Europe apart from the ski resorts) during winter is that it is outside the tourist season, resulting in lower prices and smaller crowds. Also, most private accommodations (Bed & breakfast, self-catering etc.) and many hotels, even four and five star ones, have neither air-conditioning, nor good ventilation; summer is generally too brief to warrant the expensive overhaul of ancient buildings. But during that period, the heat settles in like a hot wet blanket, suffocating and impossible to escape. Heating, on the other hand, they have had a lot of practice with!

The disadvantages are first, that it is outside tourist season, so a number of tourist attractions are either closed (like the London Eye’s annual maintenance overhaul) or have shortened hours, and second, that it is, well, midwinter! It is cold, especially when walking outside for extended periods, and daylight is precious. Sunrise and sunset when we arrived were at 8.06 a.m. and 4.02 p.m. respectively; by the time we left it had stretched to 7.58 a.m. and 4.23 p.m. On top of that, our trusty Dorling Kindersley travel guide warned us that the average daily hours of sunshine during January in both London and the “Heart of England” was a miserly 1.5.
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I had had the opportunity to visit England and Wales for 8 weeks in the summer of 1996 as a journalist. It had been a wonderful experience, but also a very frustrating one. I did not have transport of my own (the vehicle was rented in another journalist's name), so unless we were in a city with a good public transport system, I was relatively stranded. Also the work hours were such, and the itinerary so cramped that I had the minimum free time (and much of that had to be spent at the laundrette).
I did however grab every possible opportunity to do as much sightseeing as possible, and this trip was an attempt to fill in the blanks for me, and for me to show mpo a lot of the things that I had valued on my previous trip.
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Rule #1: NEVER plan to drive a significant distance straight off a transatlantic flight.

I sleep poorly – if at all – on planes, and the previous night had not seen much sleep either, given my excitement and the inevitable worry about little details.
In Britain, even spouses have to pay a sizeable extra fee to drive a rental car. Thus, given that I grew up, got my license and drove for ten years in a country where we drive on the left side of the road in right hand drive, stick shift vehicles, I became the sole driver of the ice blue Fiat Stilo.

The rhythmic slap of the windshield wipers through the pouring rain, the release of anticipatory tension and more than 48 hours with little or no sleep turned slumber into a heavy weight that slowly and inexorably pressed down on my eyes and the back of my head.
I tried everything I could to fight it off: frequently and violently shook my head, got mpo to talk to me in a constant stream, directed icy cold air full force on my face, turned on the radio full blast and experimented with classical, jazz, rock and talk radio, chewed gum, drank soda – but nothing, NOTHING could dissuade the creeping sleep for more than a few minutes at a time.

In desperation I pulled off at the first truck stop, parked the car in a quiet spot and put the seat back so that I could sleep for a while: and was immediately wide awake!
After half-an-hour of unsuccessfully trying to sleep, we got out, visited the rest rooms, had a belated lunch in the food court, stocked up on candy and soda, and grabbed some fresh air among the raindrops.
With daylight frittering away, we knew it would be disastrous to be on the road for too long after dark, so we got back on the highway. Within ten minutes, I was fighting off the same insistent, importune sleep.

We ended up hopping from truck stop to truck stop, (roughly thirty miles apart, if memory serves), until our nightmarish ride finally came to an end on the outskirts of Bristol. By now it was strongly dark, and we had to find our hotel in an unfamiliar city with a lot of confusing roundabouts. Which brings us to this:

Rule # 2: Avoid searching for addresses after dark, especially in unfamiliar places.