“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men

Gang aft a-gley.”

– from “To a Mouse,” by Robert Burns.

I never cared much for Steinbeck and prefer the original. It has never been truer than this trip. Those of you who have been following this trip (and those of you who listened to my incessant talking about it beforehand) probably know how much I planned. It was not enough. Partly due to the inherent vagaries of travel and partly due to COVID, things keep falling through. I do hope the boys are learning lessons on how to roll with the punches but, honestly, I could do with a few less lessons myself.

We started with 149 nights worth of hotel/Air B & B reservations, and I just received notice that yet another has cancelled on us- a total of 9 nights cancelled so far by hosts and 10 by me to adjust our itinerary. I made the advance arrangements so I would not be slowing us down by taking time out to hunt down hotel rooms. I am horribly slow at this, mostly because I always think there is a better deal out there. There really often IS! I just need to spend another 5 minutes looking- which becomes and hour because- SQUIRREL- Aimee got distracted. (I know, I know- NOBODY is surprised by that, right?!) Well, the problem comes when the Almost-Perfect-Place that I had in one browser tab while I searched for the Absolutely-Perfect-Place on a dozen others, sells out during the time I was down the rabbit hole looking at info on this castle or that cathedral that I might want to stay near. And so I have to start again…

I currently have 43 tabs open- I just counted. So now I will need to take the time to close some of them, which is not as simple as it sounds because my brain needs to look at each one and verify that there is no needed information there. This mess is exhausting, guys!

This is a clumsy segue into what I had planned to share with you today, but again, plans gang aft a-gley (and the Gaelic is apropos because we are headed to Scotland in just a few days!). What I had planned to share was the weird things we have noticed or learned that we did not expect. We knew that what we call fries are chips, and what we know as chips are crisps. We were prepared for cookies to be called biscuits, and biscuits to be called scones. Some of the other things we were not prepared for:

• The vegetables have different names, too. We had to learn Aubergine, Swede, Courgette, and Rocket.
• Bumper cars are not allowed to bump. The idea is to AVOID hitting other people! For added difficulty they park the empty cars along the edges, rather like they do on the roads.

• Even the American hotel brands I know, sometimes don’t have air conditioning and ice machines.
• The UK has it’s own brand of scary protestors that believe in out-there conspiracy theories. We saw a man in a tin-foil sombrero. We were told by one guy that we were guilty of attempted murder for making the kids wear masks (we were wearing them, too).

• Brits, who are so polite face-to-face can be horribly rude drivers sometimes. I have never been honked at so much in my life.
• They can also be incredibly friendly and chatty. I have had several people strike up long conversations in the oddest settings- gym locker rooms, the swimming pool, a carnival line when I was just walking nearby… Usually it’s me that speaks to strangers, but I am not nearly as apt to do that here as at home.
• Wash cloths are not common here. You can sometimes get them by requesting them, but we just bought a pack. They are called “flannels”, even though they are terry cloth. Evidently, most people travel with their own.
• The children stare! It is disconcerting how young children will stare you down almost menacingly, lol. The parents don’t, but they also don’t feel the need to tell the children not to.
• There are no large glasses unless you are drinking a beer. Everything else comes in 4-8 oz size.
• Information given on roadsigns is either overkill or incomplete.

• 

• 

• Chips are served with almost everything but if you order Chinese or Indian you have to order rice separately.
• Acetaminophen and ibuprofen are controlled- at least the quantities that you can buy are. No more 500 caplet bottles, the max is 16 per package and you may only buy two packages. (As a related fact, though, the Tylenol scare never happened here so you CAN still get capsules of paracetamol, and they work so much faster than tablets!).
• Small bookstores are still alive and seem to be thriving.
• Hard candy is hard to find. Ditto gum in more than one or two mint flavors.
• Evidently, men are considered smart enough to use electricity in bathrooms but not women. The only plugs in bathrooms in the UK are for shavers only and have their own special plug. The light switches are outside of the bathroom, as well. There are 3 separate kinds of plugs in the UK and our adapter only works for one of them. It has made plugging stuff in interesting but at least I didn’t catch anything on fire or knock any power out like I did on our first trip!
• Kids enjoy the things that they could actually do at home the most. Out of this weeks activities the kids would rank the trampoline park and the carnival as their favorites. Neither of those was any different than trampoline parks and carnivals at home. The court jester who swallowed swords and fire at Bolsover Castle’s Knight’s Tournament was better in my opinion!

• 

• 

• 

• 

• The deer are bigger!

• The playgrounds are more challenging/adventurous/dangerous then what we are used to! The boys are enjoying them and we try to stop as much as we can and just let them play.

• 

• 

• 

We are headed out to the park today. We laid around the pool yesterday and went to the beach the day before- so haven’t been very adventurous for several days. We will head to Scotland in a few days, stopping to see Blackpool and the Lake District on our way. There is so much to see and so little time! Can someone send me the winning lottery ticket so we can extend this indefinitely???!!!

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns please feel free to leave them below!