AUGUST 19, TUESDAY

ROAD TRIP

Our first five days in England were so packed full that we felt Tina and Martin needed a break. We would rent a car and drive around Englands for three days. So Susie spent the early morning lining up a rental car. We had no idea where we were going to go and hanging over me was both a deep lethargy for some reason and memories of driving on the left side around the Lake Country 15 years and when turning into a McDonalds finding myself on a curve on the right side and swerving right (instead of left, the safest thing to do) and hitting the curb, blowing out a tire and ending up, miraculously, on a wide sidewalk. I certainly wasn’t going to try driving on the left again and was worried about Susie doing it.

Susie had settled on a car rental place and was about to call them when brother Martin called. Why rent a car, he asked, he was semi retired and free, he would drive us in his large Mercedes. We accepted, relieved to not having to drive, and in half an hour he was over and we were off for a day filled with wild stories about his Uncle John and a couple of hours spent at the seaside and a night of adventure in Scalby.

We drove first to Bridlington, a seaside vacation village for the masses, not the rich. Factory workers would save all year for a week’s vacation at the seaside, hoping for sunshine,but usually finding chilly weather and rain and then, because the beach was too cold, would spend their week on rides in the amusement park on the beach or playing arcade games. Sure enough, Bridlington was cold and drizzly. We walked on the promenade along the beach where a narrow fifty yards were to be watched by a life guard with no life guard or swimmers in sight. And then we played a game in which you deposited 2 pence pieces into a slot, trying to nudge a pile of pennies over an overhand where they would drop as winnings which you could continue to play with.

We were trying to nudge a small rubber duck, worth very little, over the edge with no success and finally gave up, as everyone did. A little girl next to us was trying to nudge a one pound note over the edge, egged on by her grandfather who finally concluded that the pound note was glued to the edge and would never drop.

Then we got in our car and were off to Scarborough. We circled around there for awhile observing the crowds walking the gloomy streets and then came to the little village of Scalby. By now it was 4 p.m. and it was the height of the school vacations and everything appeared to be taken. An old man named Leon came to our table to give us advice.

He warned us away from the Plough, an elegant pub just down the street with hotel rooms where we were going to eat as being frightfully expensive. We needed two rooms, now that there were the three of us. Susie found an Airbnb with a room, we looked further and then, went back to it as our only choice, but it was gone. We found a camping site with an outdoor toilet that didn’t look attractive as some distance. So with no options we decided to go to the Plough, where Martin had had a great meal once before, and have a beer and decide what to do. On the way in he asked if they had a room. No, no rooms, but they did have a cottage, but only for one night on which they could give us a discount since they had no prospect of renting it for the night. It was offered to us for 250 pounds, 50 more than what we were willing to spend on two rooms, and offered to show it to us.

It was not a cottage, it was a three story mansion with a game room, a large kitchen, a long dining room with a table for eight, a huge living room with three huge sofas, an outdoor patio with a fenced in yard and upstairs four bedrooms with four bathsrooms. It was large enough for two families with four kids in each. We took it.

We then sat down for a very elegant dinner. There was almost no one in the pub as we ordered, but by the time we had eaten our fancy pastry starters and then our huge main course and were on our second beer the pub was clear full of people. It was a wonderful evening.

I was barely able to stay awake at this point so we came back and I settled into my huge bedroom and went to sleep while Susie and Martin went to the Nag’s Head pub where we had met Leon and ordered a beer and were entertained by a coal miner and his wife who were staying at the Miner’s Hotel, a free hotel for coal miners, a number of whom were in the pub.