Destination: England

I’m having a great time researching my guidebook in England. I really am. But a few things are bugging me. I just need to vent for a minute. I love traveling in England and still marvel at the fun of it — but those coming this year on a budget will need to cut a few corners. From my experience, it’s doable, and the essential fun of being in Britain is not determined by how much you’re spending. Having said that…now let me vent.

I nearly got into an argument at the Bath tourist information office. I guess I was in a sour mood at how expensive things are, compounded by how greedy Bath, the most delightful (and probably richest) little city in England, has gotten. Tourism is its bread and butter, yet even the tourist office — now privatized — does its best to gouge visitors.

My guidebook listed the tourist office’s free phone number — the one dedicated to booking rooms. (The office gets a fee, plus takes a 10 percent deposit — which they pocket — and B&Bs then need to increase their prices to recoup the TI kickback. You and your host do better if you book direct.) I give that toll-free number to my readers for tourist information.

As I updated my guidebook information, they asked me to change that phone number to their 0906 number. In Britain, “09” in the prefix sends up flares. In each country, you need to watch out for costly phone sex-type prefixes. The Bath tourist office now charges a dollar a minute to ask them for advice on how to spend money in their overpriced town. They no longer give out maps, but sell a lousy little sheet for $2 — no better than the one hotels give out for free. More square footage in the TI is devoted to their retail shop than information. And a far handier map is for sale just steps away for $2.50.

 

Bath’s ancient Roman spa has more appeal than its 21st century spa. Enlarge photo

Part of Bath’s desperate greed is because their spa project ran about $50 million over budget, and they’re trying to pay that back. Locals as well as tourists are being hit. A local told me that on the town’s picturesque Pulteney Bridge, which is open only to buses and taxis, the city hall was photographing unknowing tourists as well as sloppy locals and fining each vehicle that crossed $120. For a while, the city was netting $60,000 a day just on Pulteney Bridge infractions. (By the way, anywhere in Europe, tourists driving in city centers can unknowingly cross a no-go line and be hit with a huge fine by mail.)

Britain is really expensive, and apparently it’s tough for locals, too. Everyone is talking about the recession (they raise prices “because of the recession,” which makes no sense to me), the high cost of oil (they blame the USA), and the housing and mortgage bust (just like ours). Local minimum wage is about six pounds ($12) per hour, which I think has even less buying power than the minimum wage in the USA. Knife violence (four killings just yesterday) and the singer Amy Winehouse (she keeps slapping bouncers and being photographed with “blobs of white stuff in her nose”) seem to dominate the tabloids. Each day this week, wasted Amy has been shown oblivious to the sober world on the cover of the leading papers (the National Enquirer types dominate on the tube).

Part of the high cost of living is the fear everyone has of being sued or burned up in a fire. I can’t walk down a hall without having to open big, heavy fire doors. Whenever I encounter something really inefficient or absurd, locals say, “risk assessment.”

School kids are taking fewer historic field trips. Why? “Risk assessment…it’s too legally risky for the schools.” Some walking tours don’t go if it’s raining. Why? “Risk assessment…danger of an umbrella poking someone’s eye out.” A male local guide refuses to do a tour if he has only one, female customer. Why? “Risk assessment…she may claim he molested her.” Why is the water not really hot in my room? “Risk assessment…we don’t want guests to scald themselves.” Why can’t I open my window more than four inches? “Risk assessment… a baby fell out of a window once right here in London.” What?! “We have even more lawyers than you do. It’s ruining our country. A burglar can sue me if he’s rifling through my home and he trips on a stray cord.”

As long as you have money, there’s no risk that you won’t have a good time here in England. But bring your pointy umbrella and a lawyer just in case.

(By the way, if you haven’t seen it yet, our daughter Jackie is writing a fun blog of her own about her high-school-graduation, no-parents-in-sight trip through Europe.)

Shaking off my umbrella, I stepped into my room exhausted after a long day in Bath, England. Blowing my nose, I noticed a spray of red dirt on the Kleenex…and I remembered the snuff.

Paul, who runs the Star Inn — the most characteristic pub in town — keeps a tin of complementary snuff tobacco on a ledge for customers. I tried some, and — while a drunk guy from Wales tried to squeeze by me holding two big pints of the local brew over my head — I asked Paul about it. He said English coal miners have long used it because cigarettes were too dangerous in the mines, and they needed their tobacco fix. Paul wanted me to take the tin. I put it back on the ledge and said I’d enjoy it the next time I stopped by.

Walking home through the English mist, I reviewed my day backwards. I was pleased that even by just researching B&Bs, restaurants, and pubs in one of the most cutesy and touristy towns in Britain, my day was filled with memories.

School’s out and, while I’m heading home, the streets are filled with young kids partying. English girls out clubbing wiggle down the street like the fanciest of fish lures — each shaking their tassels and shimmying in a way sure to catch a big one. As one passed me, eyeing a gaggle of guys smoking outside a pub, I overheard her saying, “No spray, no lay…no cologne, you go home alone.”

The rock star Meat Loaf was playing a big concert in the park, and during his performance, much of Bath rocked with him. While the concert was sold out, I gathered with a hundred freeloaders craning their necks from across the river for a great view of the stage action.

The musical highlight of my day, however, was a worship service at the Bath Abbey. Earlier I had logged onto www.bathabbey.org, and — bam! — the day’s schedule was right there: Sung matins service at 11:00, visitors welcome.

I’ve noticed that any on-the-ball B&B or guesthouse these days provides free Wi-Fi for guests, and more and more travelers are carrying laptops or handheld computers to get online. I need to be better about using the Internet — it’s how today’s travelers book and buy things like train tickets while on the road.

The Anglican service was crisp, eloquent, and traditional. I was struck by the strong affirmation of their Catholic heritage, the calls for sobriety, and the stress on repentance (repeated references to how we are such wretched sinners). “Knife violence” (by gangs in the streets), which has replaced fear of terrorism as the main threat to communities in England, was a subject of prayers.

The Anglican worship ritual is carefully shuttled from one generation to the next. That continuity seemed to be underlined by the countless tombs and memorials lining walls and floors — worn smooth and shiny by the feet of centuries of worshippers. With the living and the dead all present together, the congregation seemed to raise their heads in praise as sunlight streamed through windows. (Bath’s particularly bright church is nicknamed “the Lantern of the West” for its open, airy lightness and huge windows.)

Glowing Bath stone columns sprouted honey-colored fan vaulting fingers, and cherubic boys in white robes and ruffs (old-time ruffled collars) filled the nave with song — making it a ship of praise. The church was packed with townsfolk, proper and still. Sitting among them, I was no longer a tourist. The scene felt timeless. I gazed at the same windows for the same inspiration that peasants sitting on these pews centuries ago sought.

 

Local volunteer guides still bring the wonders of Bath to life. Enlarge photo

The sermon was about Christian servanthood. The pastor’s stern comment about the USA took me by surprise: “If, after 9/11, that great Christian nation, the USA, took its responsibility to be a servant among nations seriously, how different our world would be today.” When he was finished and the offering plate was passed, his gentility also caught me off guard: “If you’re a visitor, please don’t be embarrassed to let the plate pass. It’s a way for our regular members to support our work here at the Bath Abbey.”

After the choir paraded out, the huge central doors — doors I didn’t even realize existed — were opened. Indoors and outdoors mingled, as the congregation spilled out onto the main square.

Bath is an expensive town in an expensive country. A young couple hired to manage an elegant Georgian guesthouse I recommend told me they took the gig just to live in Bath. (“Work-a-day English can’t really afford to live here.”) They have an apartment in the basement, but enter through the grand front door just to marvel at the elegant building they live in and manage.

I started my day joining a gaggle of curious visitors in front of the Abbey, where five of a club of 60 volunteer guides divided up the gang and proceeded to take them on a free town walk. My guide, a retired schoolteacher, explained that in 1930 the town’s mayor — proud of the charms of his historic town — took the first group gathered here on a free town walk…and “the mayor’s honorary corps of volunteers” has been leading free walks daily ever since.