London-on-a-Dime (Free Tours)

Way back in the '70s, my father owned a dog-eared copy of Europe on $5 a Day. He loved planning frugal trips for his family of six and Mom aided and abetted him by packing peanut butter and Tang in her purse to provide cheap meals. We stayed in dingy hostels, never bought souvenirs, and NEVER took any form of transportation if walking was feasible.

When my husband and I traveled to England recently for our 30th anniversary, my dad would have been proud. We pinched pennies so hard  you could practically hear them scream. But we had so much fun that I decided to devote a few posts to how we did it in case someone else needs suggestions.

On our first day in London, we took the free Sandeman's Tour. It was a three hour walking tour of Westminster (half of it in the rain), but it showed us how easy it was to walk around the city. Check the website for meeting times and places. My travel book said our tour was at 3 p.m., but when I checked online it was at 2.

Almost all museums in London are free, but did you know that many of the museums offer free tours? The museums are so loaded with artifacts that you don't know where to start, so a guided tour, focusing on a specific exhibit, was extremely helpful. Our favorite free tour (at the Victoria and Albert Museum) lasted just over an hour and took us through the Medieval and Renaissance rooms. The guide was terrific. We also took a half hour free tour at the British Museum on Assyrian history. Later we returned to that same museum armed with a pdf we had downloaded from the internet, "The Bible and the British Museum." This self-guided tour took us through the Assyrian and Persian rooms, pointing out archeological finds that confirmed biblical accounts. Unfortunately the second half was hard to follow since some of the exhibits had been moved and we couldn't follow the map. Still, it was great to see biblical history verified.

Lastly, we took a train to Oxford to do the C.S. Lewis tour. We felt deflated when we discovered it was only on Wednesdays. BUT all was not lost. I was in Blackwell's bookstore (where the tour originates) and looked down and saw an Oxford tour booklet for 3 pounds (about 5 dollars). The subtitle said "Self-guided Walking Tour" so I snatched it up and Dan and I wandered the streets of Oxford at our leisure, stopping in at restaurants and book shops as we followed the map around the city. Lovely! (The tours from Blackwells normally cost 8 pounds (about $12 each).

No trip to Oxford would be complete without a trip to the Eagle and Child Pub where the Inklings met weekly. This stop was not on our walking tour, so we sauntered across town to enjoy a glass of non-alcoholic ginger beer and to browse in a nearby book store.

Incidentally, we took one very expensive tour to Canterbury Cathedral, but these free ones are what we'll remember the longest.

(Other posts: dining and book shopping.)

I Saw Two Englands by H. V. Morton

H.V. Morton (1892-1979) came to public attention as the reporter who scooped the story of King Tut’s tomb in 1922.  Afterward he became known as a travel writer, initially in England and the Holy Land, but later in other countries.  In I Saw Two Englands Morton writes of the summer just before World War II began and of the first few months after it started.

Rumors of war were imminent in May of 1939 and Morton set out to see England “one last time.”  In his traveling and journaling, he is never in a hurry.  He offers descriptions, bits of history, and occasional philosophizing as he visits each city.  His prose is gentle and lyrical. (“The contours of the Sussex Downs are as restful as a day in bed.”) But modern readers may find his meandering to be nerve-wracking. 

In September of 1939, war was officially declared and Morton began another set of travels - to observe the effects of the war on the English:

It happened to me at Peterborough.  I was sitting in a restaurant which overlooks the market place.  The old town hall, lifted on its Sixteenth-Century columns, stood immediately below me, and I sat there watching people queue up outside it.  Each one held in his hand a small cardboard box; inside the box was the State’s gift to its children – a gas mask.  Somewhere inside the building the citizens were having their masks tested so that they might face the future with confidence.  They were an ordinary-looking crowd.  Some were smiling, others were just dull or impassive, and no one could have guessed that they were candidates for survival in a mad world: they looked like people waiting for a bus, not a cataclysm. (p. 186)

He recounts the disappointment of the English people during the first months of the war.  Massive evacuations of women and children seemed to have been for nothing when the promised air raids never came.  In those pre-Churchill days, Morton decried the lack of a full-blooded leader who would have given blow for blow, and have expressed the contempt and indignation that existed in England for tyrants and aggressors. (p. 281)

Little did he know that the Battle of Britain was just around the corner and that Britain’s “phony war” was about to become astonishingly real.  This book is recommended for anglophiles and WWII buffs who like stories of the homefront.   (But if you are looking for a quick, exciting read, you’ll want to pass on this one.)

Books about Travel to England

I wrote in my last post that I hope to go to England next summer.  Since this plan was hatched three weeks ago, I’ve been devouring books on the subject.  The first was Susan Allen Toth’s My Love Affair with England.  Unfortunately the book dealt too much with her difficult marriage, problem students and her daughter’s very bad foreign exchange experience.  Happily, her second book, England as You Like It, had more information about how to actually plan a trip to England.

I appreciate Toth’s habit of heading off the beaten track, as well as her practice of balancing comfort with frugality.   Her suggestions are, “always seasoned by experience and caution, with a substantial dash of adventure and a huge dollop of curiosity.” (p. 4)

Her best traveling tip is to spend a week in one area (no bigger than a thumbprint on the map) while exploring its museums, beaches, gardens, churches, shops, etc.  This relaxed type of trip has more appeal to me than one where you try to hit as many cities as possible within a short stay.

The final book I read was Philip Crowl’s The Intelligent Traveller's Guide to Historic Britain.  All entries in this book are very brief.  It will be useful once we decide on a location since it covers the main places to see in each county.

“From  private gardens to quirky museums, woodland walks to seaside resorts, all of Great Britain is a treasure-house for the thoughtful and observant tourist.” (Toth, p. 51) 

I’d love any suggestions for other books to read or places to visit.

Through the Brazilian Wilderness by Theodore Roosevelt

In Through the Brazilian Wilderness Teddy Roosevelt chronicles his travels through unchartered territory in Western Brazil. Roosevelt, along with his son, Kermit, and several naturalists from the American Museum of Natural History joined Colonel Cândido Rondon, a Brazilian explorer on his scientific expedition to discover the source of a previously unknown river.

I was very interested in TR’s story because I’ve lived in the part of Brazil where his journey began. I recognized some of the city names and most of the animals he mentions. But I wondered if some of the details might be dull for someone with less knowledge of the area. Also, I felt severely handicapped by the Kindle version of this book because there was no map and I would very much have liked to have seen exactly where they were at specific times.

The trip fulfilled two purposes. The naturalists collected specimens for the museum: 2,500 birds and 500 mammals. (Amazing in light of the many laws in place to preserve Brazilian wildlife today.) The other purpose was for Rondon and company to travel up the unexplored river and chart it on a map for the first time. Roosevelt wrote:

We did not know whether we had one hundred or eight hundred kilometers to go, whether, the stream would be fairly smooth or whether we would encounter waterfalls, or rapids, or even some big marsh or lake. We could not tell whether or not we would meet hostile Indians, although no one of us ever went ten yards from camp without his rifle. We had no idea how much time the trip would take. We had entered a land of unknown possibilities.

At first the journal was a dull routine of animals seen and miles travelled. Halfway through the trip they reached some rapids that were impossible to descend. The canoes had to be unloaded and the baggage carried by land to the bottom of the next calm spot in the river. Then they were reloaded and the group went down the river for a few miles until the whole process had to be repeated over again. The action picked up as canoes were lost, a man is killed, Kermit almost drowns, and Teddy becomes ill with a life-threatening fever.

After two months in canoes (Feb 27 to April 26, 1914), their mission was accomplished. They had put a 600 mile river on the map which had previously been unknown. The unofficial name for it was “The River of Doubt”, but by the end of the grueling trip, it was dubbed “The Roosevelt River”.

Final note of interest: If you type in River of Doubt on youtube, you can see several short, silent movies of the expedition.