England Tour, April 2007

Monday April 16 through Friday April 20

(Note: Clicking on any image in this travelogue will bring up a full screen version of the image.)

Monday, April 16

Monday began a 4-day period with no gigs. Well, here I was in England with nothing to do but see the sights. Poor me! There were a number of things that I had wanted to see. Coalbrookdale was the site of the famous Iron Bridge built by Abraham Darby. Bryn's parents from Bristol had suggested some neat stuff to see there, including the Great Britain, the first iron hulled steamship to cross the Atlantic. There was a RAF Museum that caught my eye on the way to Burntwood. And I wanted to visit my friends Vikki and Ian in Sheffield.

Well, first things first. After searching everywhere I'd been in the house looking for my PDA, I retraced my steps in thought to remember where I had last used it. I knew I had it in the Burntwood Public Library, so first thing Monday morning, I called them. Lord luvva duck, they had found it. OK. That settled it. I'd drive back up to Burntwood, retrieve my wayward possessions, and proceed thence to nearby Coalbrookdale. I could catch the Bristol sights later on in the trip, as that city was more convenient to my gig in Llantrisant the following week. OK. Off to Burntwood. Again.

I hate English road signs!!

Picked up my PDA and fumbled my way to Coalbrookdale on the Severn River.

I like bridges.

The Severn forms a gorge at this point. It was a great source of both coal and iron at the time of the Industrial Revolution, and so was a natural place for the Iron Bridge to be built. It was finished in 1779, and is quite beautiful. The pieces were thought to be cast on the spot and then installed in the structure. You can see some dovetail joints and other imitations of wooden construction. There are also cracks, more modern repairs with bolts and nuts, and other signs of its history.

I took a little garret on the top floor of the Tontine Hotel, right at the mouth of the Bridge. Climbing up to my room lugging my suitcase and guitar was a strain on my ribs.

Tuesday, April 17

Coalbrookdale is definitely tourist-oriented, but in a restrained way. Nothing is garish or kitchy. There are lots of B&B's, restaurants, and shops, but they're all in 250 year old buildings lined up along the riverfront.

There are 4 or 5 museums to which you can buy a universal ticket good for any of them for a year. The Museum of the Severn Gorge was particularly interesting, with a large scale diorama of about a half mile of the river including the Bridge set at the time the Bridge was built. (The Severn for much of its length is an estuary, rather than a river, much like the Hudson. Its mouth is somewhat funnel-shaped, which magnify the effect of the tides. There were some videos of people surfing upstream on the tidal bores.) Of course there was a Museum of the Iron Bridge, and also a Museum of Iron, showing some of the history of Iron mining and manufacturing. It was in this one that the picture at the right above was taken. You stick your head through a hole in the wall and look at yourself in a mirror dressed up in Victorian duds. If you look carefully you'll see where I'm holding the camera through the head-hole of the lady next to me. There were some old homes you could wander through and an early crucible steel smelter preserved inside a huge glass pyramid.

My ribs were feeling a little better, but a little tickle in the back of my throat told me that I had indeed caught James' cold. I was again struck by how a lot of the joy of traveling is lost when traveling alone. No one to talk to but my journal. Oh well, talking's no fun with a cold anyway. All my gallivanting around has got me pooped. I retired to my garret to write post cards and watch TV. Maybe if I go to sleep early, I can kill this cold.

Wednesday, April 18

Damn, damn, damn! The cold is working its way down my throat. I'm starting to cough up lovely little bits of green glop. Singing is going to be a problem.

Today I bid adieu to the lovely 18th Century industrial village of Coalbrookdale and head down to Dorset to the home of Peter and Jane Abbot. They run the Folk In The Vale venue where I'm due to play on Friday. They had invited me to stop by a couple of days early to drop by the Old Down Acoustic Club on Wednesday evening. Another singers' night. I called them up and told them I might not be up for singing, and explained the situation. We'd play it by ear, and see how I was feeling when I got there.

It was a long, but lovely drive, a good portion of which was on the M5 Motorway, and the rest on 2-lanes. I didn't get lost more than once or twice, and then only for a couple of blocks before I corrected course. The South West of England has some lovely scenery, which they keep well hidden behind 8 foot high hedgerows. A photo of the Abbotts' home village of North Cherington is placed next to the OED's entry for the word "picturesque".

North Cherington, Dorset

By the time I got to the Abbotts' my cold was feeling manageable. I took some hot tea, and went out with Peter and Jane to the Old Down Acoustic Club. This was more of a contemporary acoustic music club, with a number of remarkably good floor singers. I took my turn, and was well received, and even sold a couple of CDs on the basis of the few songs I did.

CD sales in England tend to be much slower than in the US. In part because the going price is higher: £10.00, which at current rates is around $20.00.

Thursday, April 19

Hung around the house and recuperated during the early part of the day.

In the afternoon, I took a drive to a nearby naval air base, and poked around the Fleet Air Arm Museum, devoted to British aviation in general and naval aviation in particular. They had the prototype of the Concorde in one huge room, and several halls devoted to different eras of aviation. The displays were hands-on in a manner not usually seen in museums. You could wander all around the old aircraft and touch them and swing the propellors and get a lot closer than I'm used to. It was real interesting to be able to get close and trace the rigging of the World War I Sopwith Camel and SE5A and the like. They had a fine collection of mid-war and WW2 aircraft and dirigibles, and a very interesting segment on the Falklands campaign. Their big finale was the "Aircraft Carrier Experience". You were herded onto a "helicopter" (actually, just the fuselage of a helicopter). They shut the doors, and the floor vibrated, simulating a flight to the carrier. They opened the doors on the other side, and you found yourself on a full width (if foreshortened) carrier deck. There were aircraft on the deck, and simulated takeoffs and landings were projected on the walls at the "bow" and "stern". You were then guided onto the "bridge" and through several compartments simulating carrier operations. Mannequins were posed in action, and conversed in prerecorded carrier operations. Nice try, fellas, but it didn't really work for me. What made it really spooky, though, was that it was late in the day, and I was the only one on the tour! Let me tell you how weird it feels to be the only human being that moves on an entire aircraft carrier.

That evening I took the Abbots out for dinner.

Friday, April 20

Today I took a walk around the village with Peter.

Beautiful thatched-roof houses and a lovely old church in beautiful condition. The church was unlocked and unattended, and we could wander arund and explore. The weather continued splendid.

In the afternoon, the vocal group Thorn and Roses showed up at the house. They were to do the opening ("support", in British terms) act for me that evening. Jinks Jenkins, Rowena Metters, and Sylvia Fletcher are from Cornwall. I'm still pretty hopeless at trying to localize an Englishman by his speech, but the Cornish dialect rang a familiar bell. Aha! Monty Python's local yokel who owned the flock of sheep that thought they were birds was Cornish.

The gig that evening at Folk In The Vale was the best of my trip. Full house, very responsive, and very appreciative. Came home that evening and the Abbots prepared us all a wonderful post-concert dinner.