“Oh dear,” said Front Desk Anna, as we greeted her the next morning to check out. “I’m afraid I have some terrible news.”
Well,
that’s it, I thought. Some tragic yet casually overlooked traffic infraction, a
sudden swoon of non-cooperation by my credit card company, Interpol mistaking
me for a long-hunted international jewel thief. Hey, it’s happened before…
“You have a flat tire.”
Hardly a
surprise, and dutifully confirming my suspicions about the behavior of
inflation-challenged tires in England. My first thought (well, second, after
imagining swarms of uniformed Interpol infantry dragging me off to some
Brezhnev-era gulag) was, hey, if this is the worst that happens to us on this
trip, we’re doing okay.
Anna
called Thornbury Tyre (she said her Mum worked there – I didn’t ask what she
did) and asked Mike to come ‘round and have a look. We squared up the paperwork
on the room (gulp) and headed pack to get the luggage. Mike showed up in the
company van, found the jack (I had no idea where it was), jacked the thing up and
gave the tire a spin.
“Ah,
yeah. Right there,” he said, pointing to the head of a screw embedded snugly in
one of the tire treads.
I asked if he could fix it; he said no, we’d need a new
tire. The car came equipped with what they promised was a full-sized spare, but
the thing was about yay-big and not meant to be driven over 30MPH, and we were
on the other side of the country (admittedly, across England’s narrow southern
waist) from our ultimate destination, the EuropCar office in Chelsea.
So, how
much?
Mike
called in to the office. Good news: they had one. Bad news: £125. About $180
for a glorified doughnut. We didn't have much choice, so we said sure. He
headed back to the shop and returned 20 minutes later with a replacement. The
rental car company should reimburse us, he assured us, and of course they didn't ..
We
chatted a bit while Mike replaced the tire. He was from Charfield,
coincidentally, and we mentioned we were just up there the day before, prowling
around the old church and churchyard. He hadn't been to the States and said
he’d love to go sometime, especially Vegas. The place gives me a headache, I
told him, but if you’re into pretty girls, gambling and lots of partying, it’s
tough to beat Vegas. He flashed a knowing smile. “Sounds good to me, mate!”
One of
the laundry girls came out to watch the proceedings; she had been to Florida
with her family some years before, and said she loved it. “Everybody was so
friendly there!” she said enthusiastically, which for some reason struck me as
odd. It was obvious to us that neither of these young folk made anywhere near
enough to contemplate another trip to the US soon.
Mike didn't have a card swipe with him, so we said goodbye to Buckingham’s Summer Place and followed him into town to square up on the tire (sorry, “tyre”). In
the parking lot, Sharon punched up the next few churches and our last abbey,
and we headed southeast, ultimate destination Hilperton.
Thornbury
to Hilperton (where???) was more or less a straight shot southeast, but we
months earlier made a mental note to avoid Swindon at all costs, which wasn’t
terribly far from Hilperton (where???), just across the massive M4, and where we
could have gone through had we picked some destinations in that direction. Allegedly one
of England’s most famously dreary cities (and the home to Andy Partridge,
founder of XTC), the thing about Swindon we desperately wanted to avoid was the
Magic Roundabout, a gleefully Machiavellian traffic-circle obscenity
constructed in 1972 and one of the scariest places to operate a motor vehicle
in the entire UK. The outer ring of traffic moves clockwise, while an inner
ring moves counter-clockwise, connected by a paradox of multiple mini-roundabout fractals
that promised, in no uncertain terms, unbridled terror for me. We mentioned it
a few times to some of the locals when the subject of the driving came up, and
they all agreed: go there, risk doom.
No doom
for us, at least not in Swindon. We headed south.
Langport is a small town south of Bristol, where we found another CCT church, the
ancient All Saints. Dating from the 12th century, the church is a
Grade 1 listed building and one of the best medieval churches we found off the
beaten path. Like many of the others, we visited the place quite by ourselves.
Nearby
Langport, and the real reason we came this way, was Muchelny Abbey, the
scattered ruins of a 10th century Benedictine Abbey. Henry’s
Dissolution fairly stripped the place clean, leaving only the Abbot’s House and
the monks' barn-ish lavatory (yes, the lavatory) intact.
 |
| Abbot's House, Muchelney Abbey |
 |
| Monks' lavatory, Muchelney Abbey |
The museum portion of the
property was located in the Abbot’s House, where we met Dennis, a jovial
red-haired bloke of about 50 or so, the English Heritage concessionaire and
ticket-taker on duty that day. Dennis was usually stationed at another
property, but was filling in for someone else, and he seemed unnervingly happy
to see us. I kind of wondered if, since there isn't much left of the Abbey
itself, the place doesn't get a busy tourist trade, and being a Tuesday, it
must have been especially slow.
We took
the tour through the Abbot’s house and on our way to go out and look at the
Abbey ruins themselves, we got to chatting with Dennis. A degreed archeologist,
he just about flipped out when we told him that Avebury was on our schedule for
the next day. Grabbing one of the Heritage free maps, he started circling and
arrow-ing all sorts of Neolithic sites in the southwest of England. “You must go here,” he enthused, “and since
you’ll be close these two sites are also utterly beguiling…or you could head
north and try this, no one ever goes there and it’s utterly magical…oh, and
there, and there…” Sharon had a keen interest in the Neolithic sites, and I did
too, but at this point we had a few sites left to visit – churches mostly – and
there was no practical way we could get to all these stone-circle sites.
But
clearly, he was pleased – flattered, even – that we were going to Avebury instead of Stonehenge and expressed our interest in Britain’s Neolith past. I
thought to myself, this is a guy, in a tidy and spotless English Heritage
uniform (well, a logoed sport shirt and slacks), who really, really needed to
be out on the Wiltshire Plain under a glowering summer sky with a spade and
bucket getting history under his fingernails…not cooped up in an office
handing out brochures and minding a car park.
There are lots of people in this
world who truly and deeply know their calling… but scientists have a special
passion for their chosen field that just seems to resonate more joyously and
harmoniously.
The
Abbey, the Church and Hilperton in the next installment. (Had enough yet?)
