Finally, onto the trail and doing something I'm familiar with!
So happy to have done with all the stressors- catching trains, planes, taxis, reading time tables, jet lag, and just plain strangeness. There was some neat stuff too though, flying over the Arctic circle and seeing the midnight sun, the Greenland ice sheet, the inside of a 777. Then there were some neat but kinda strange things like watching a fellow in the airport high on something dragging a wheeled suitcase down an up-escalator. His emotional progression was a cool thing for Matthew to witness. First, triumph when he spied the escalator and abandoned the staircase for it. Then confusion and puzzlement when the bottom landing stubbornly kept out of reach. Then anger. For some reason, he thought the suitcase was responsible. He wrestled with it, it resisted, he prevailed but the effort and energy expended to secure his victory tipped him over into rage. When he reached flat ground, he banged it on the floor. One of the handle's telescoping struts tore off, as did one of the little wheels. This made the suitcase stubbornly willful on flat ground now, behavior that should be punished, and severely. With MME-style body slams and knee drops, administered to the little miscreant right in front of us while we were waiting at the shuttle bus stop just outside the Gatwick airport. Welcome to great Britain!
But then a really neat thing happened when we were about to miss a train connection. An older gentleman, my father in-law's doppelganger, approached us, saying" You look like lost Americans. Let's have a look at your tickets, yes?" We followed him onto another train (not the one he needed) "through the tube" to Paddington station. " Now go up those stairs, turn left, and look on the board for the Cardiff train's platform and go there," he said. " I have to leave you now as the train I need leaves in six minutes. No, four. Nice to meet you." And back he went to the tubes. We followed his directions nervously - we weren't going to Cardiff, our tickets were for Taunton. But it worked!
Then a friend of a friend picked us up when we got off the train in Taunton, took us to a hardware store for stove fuel in a 1954 30 horsepower Aston,
fed us lunch-tea-dessert, and drove us with his wife in her car the 30 miles to Minehead where we'd start the Trail. Duncan and Sandy are special,peachy people. They will be always some of my favorite neighors, even though we live 5,000 miles apart.
Our last night as travelers opposed to hikers was spent in the quaint Waverley house on Tregonwell Street, just 3/4 miles from the official starting point of the Trail. We were still slightly jetlagged, so stayed up to watch some British TV. It was a game show, Bare Attraction, where 6 dating hopefuls stand nude behind frosted glass shower doors while the female host and contestant inspect and make comments about them. There are several inspect and comment rounds, with the glass doors being raised a bit between each. Not long after the kneecaps round, all the hopefuls were revealed to be men, but not very appealing or well-groomed ones though. Matthew howled with laughter, and his fingers blurred with the speed of text messages he was shooting off to all his friends back home.
"You are never,ever going on that show," I told him.
"Oh, yeah? I'm already registered for it."
His mother, I'm sure, will be so proud of the European culture I've been able to expose him to. 'Good gravy. I need to get out and walk,' I thought.
Next morning, we could. I'll attach some photos....
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