Jim Mathis
10851 Mastin Suite 130
Overland Park, KS 66210
913 269-6709
Jim@MathisPhoto.net
To see more photos from England, go to: www.JimMathisPhotography.com
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May 1, 2009
We left Kansas City, right on time. Friend, Mike Devine had agreed to drop us off at the airport. Our flight AA # 46 pushed off from O’Hare at 8:15 PM bound for London’s Heathrow airport. The flight was uneventful except that the seats were very uncomfortable. Imagine riding in the back seat of a Mustang from Kansas City to Denver with a driver who refuses to stop; and you will have an idea of what a flight from Chicago to London is like on American Airlines.
May 2 we arrived in England and rented a car from Hertz, a beautiful black Ford Mondeo. The Mondeo is similar in size to a Taurus in the US. The trip computer showed that we averaged 69 MPH and averaged 47.5 MPG thanks to the diesel engine.
Driving on the left side of the road required some getting used to, but not as much as sitting on the right side of the car and remembering to turn in the right place at an intersection.
We stopped at a “Welcome Break” at Oxford for lunch and to stretch out legs.
The Welcome Break at Oxford
Phil, Mark, Imogen, Claire, and Judy
Phil & Judy Bland's house in Knutsford 
We found Phil & Judy Bland’s house in Knutsford, 186 miles north of London. They are wonderful people the same age as us. They are Christians and he is a musician involved with a band called, “Mid-life Crisis.” The group came out of the praise band at their church, Knutsford Methodist Church.
After catching up on family history, we went for a walk to the city centre. It is a nice little English town with two main streets. Phil & Judy’s daughter, Claire, her husband, Mark, and their baby, Imogen, came by for a few minutes. We enjoyed meeting them. Then it was time for dinner – lasagna, salad, raspberries and ice cream for dessert.
We had a nice evening talking about the Queen, the President, and Anglo-American relations. Louise and Phil spent quite a bit of time studying family tree charts and filling in new information. Louise's Great-grandfather and Phil's Great-great-grandfather were brothers.
May 3.
After a glorious night’s sleep we awoke ready to tackle the next two weeks in England. It is a beautiful sunshiny morning.
The first thing after breakfast was to drive the short distance to Liverpool. We stopped to photograph a “Penny Lane” street sign and then on to the docks. The former shipping area has been gentrified into museums, shops, and cafes. Our destination was the Beatle’s Story. This is a nice museum telling the story of John, Paul, George and Ringo from the time they met until after the band’s breakup. There was lots of memorabilia and information. It was well worth the time and money to see.
After lunch and lattes at Costa Coffee we headed for Cumbria, arriving at Phil and Judy’s cottage in about two hours. After settling in, we went for a drive through a number of small villages on some extremely narrow roads, visiting places that had significance to the Bland family.
The first stop was Dufton where we duplicated a photo that Louise has of a house named "Ivy House" where her Grandmother's cousin lived. The photo was sent to her grandmother in 1910 with a lady sitting on the bridge out front. We found the house and photographed Louise in the same spot. We found a rural church cemetery where several family members were buried.
Back at the cottage we had tea and later a nice dinner.
Monday, May 4, 2009
On Monday, we had breakfast at Phil & Judy’s cottage and set out on long cold and rainy drive around Cumbria riding in Phil’s new Audi A4.
We went to Appleby, Long Marton Penrith, Clifton, Ullswater, then over Kirkstole pass to Hawkshead, Sawery home Beartrix Potter, and back by Windemere and Kendal. We stopped at several cemeteries looking for family names, making several discoveries. We found the grave of William Bland born September 11, 1760 and died July 25, 1818 and Elizabeth Burra Bland, born November 4, 1770 and died December 20, 1845, and their son Thomas Bland at the church at Long Marton. William Bland was Louise’s Great-great-great-grandfather.
At Sawrey, we visited Hill Top the home of Beatrix Potter, the lady who wrote many children’s books during her lifetime of 1866 to 1943. Her first and perhaps most famous was Peter Rabbit. We had seen the movie about her life, Miss Potter, so it was a very interesting.
We then stopped for an early dinner at The Drunken Duck in Lake Ullsworth.
We returned to the cottage for a restful evening.
We watched a couple of interesting TV shows. The first was a documentary about Johnny Cash. The second program was a documentary called Britannica Blues about the history of blues in England.
Hill Top - home of Beatrix Potter 
Dinner at the Drunken Duck
Tuesday, May 5.
Breakfast at the cottage. The cottage is actually a farm that has been converted to holiday (vacation) homes. Phil and Judy’s is in a converted barn and is beautifully finished. They have a wood burning stove, big screen satellite television, and a beautiful kitchen.
Our first stop was the waterfall over the Eden River at Kirkby Stephen and then the library in Sedbergh. After that we went to the court house in Kendal to research some old documents concerning the Reagil Foot Farm and find a little more family history.
Lunch was at Artisans’s in the lower level of Booth’s new grocery store in Kendal. The ladies had fish and chips, Phil had a fish pie, and I (Jim) had bangers and mash. Bangers and mash is sausage and mashed potatoes. Everything was very good. We then walked around Kendal in the chilling rain.
We went by Wyebourne Farm near Reagil then to Blandsgarth where the sculpture and painter, Thomas Bland lived. He was Louise’s Great-great uncle.The garden is filled with sculpture in various stages of repair. Next to Blandsgarth is Reagil Foot Farms where Phil was born, before heading back to the cottage.
Our drives around Cumbria seemed to be mainly about seeing thousands of head of sheep, miles of rock walls, and countless miles of roads about eight feet wide with stone walls on both sides, that we drove down at about sixty miles per hour – in the rain. It was great fun.
Sculpture Garden at Reagil by Thomas Bland
Wednesday, May 6, we got up and drove back to Knutsford with Phil and Judy. Their daughter, Claire and her baby daughter, Imogen were there where we had a nice lunch before we said our goodbyes and headed out on our own. We had no trouble finding the M6 motorway to Burmingham where we connected with the M5. We found the Bank House Hotel south of Worcester where we stopped for the evening.
Driving on the busy Motorways, which are similar in Interstate highways in the US gave us a little time to think about cars. Phil and I are both interested in automobiles so he was knowledgeable about European driving. It appears that in Britian that gas costs about twice the US prices, but cars, on average get about twice the fuel economy. So, the costs of driving is about the same. Cars are a little bit smaller on average because there are more small cars and fewer very large cars and SUV’s. The typical car in England and the rest of Europe is about the size of a typical American car.
I noticed many fewer Japanese cars in England than are in the US. German cars are most common with VW leading the way, then Audi, BMW, and of course Mercedes Benz. There are also a surprising number of Porsches. Other common brands are Ford, Puegeot, Citroen, Fiat, Jaguar, Honda, and Vauxhall. I saw an occasional Toyota, Mazda, and Subaru, but only one Prius so far, the only hybrid I’ve seen. We've see a few Bentleys. I expect we will see more Rolls-Royces when we get to London.As near as I can tell, at least half the cars are diesel because of their excellent fuel economy and long life.
Cars are taxed on their emissions level, so there is a strong incentive to drive as clean burning car as possible. The diesels are every bit as emissions free as the petrol cars. It is not obvious why the European models get such better mileage, though the high number of diesel engines is most of it. Slightly different emissions requirements are probably the other difference. In Europe the emphasis has been on highest possible fuel economy while in the US, the emphasis has been on lowest possible emissions. The result is the while American cars, or foreign cars sold in America, struggle to reach 27 mpg, European drivers consider 50 mpg not uncommon.
We have been enjoying listening to BBC radio. They various BBC stations seem to play a lot of “oldies.” We realized that England and the USA share so much music, it is not obvious which artists are American and which are English. Many well-know musicians move back and forth so much it is easy to loose track. Oh yes, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, and of course, The Rolling Stones, Jethro Tull – all British.
The bay at Falmouth
We spent the day listening to various regional BBC radio stations. I had always heard that the BBC was old and staid and that in the US we benefited from many local stations. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The BBC is sponsored by the government which means that stations don’t have to rely on the sale of advertising. The producers seem to have a lot of freedom to produce very interesting and varied programming. In the US, the stations are mostly owned by a small handful of large corporations which are very conservative, cram in as many commercials as possible, and reduce on air talent to a bare minimum.
May 7, 2009
Thursday morning we headed down A4103 to Hereford in search of the church at Hereford where Ann Deddens’s relative was a Vicar in the 14 th Century. We walked around in the City Centre before heading down the road looking for the M5. A few hours later we were cruising into Cornwall.
We have driven about 500 miles which seems to be about the distance it takes to get used to right-hand driving on the left side of the road. We filled up the Mondeo noting that the average mileage was right at 47 MPG. Pretty decent for a combination of city and highway driving.
After driving around Falmouth for about an hour we finally found the Penmere Manor and got settled in. After resting a little we headed to the hold town for a dinner at a local pub – The Quay Side.
May 8 is Flora Day in Helston. We had heard about this centuries hold celebration of the passing of winter and the arrival of spring. We didn’t know about the thousands of people that descended on this little Cornish town. We got to Helston in time for the Hal-An-Tow at 8:30. We aren’t sure what it was all about, but it was some sort of musical pageant about spring.
The Children’s Dance started at 10:00 where about a thousand children danced down the streets wearing all white outfits. The Furry Dance at 12:00 consisted of the town leaders and invited guests dancing down the street, in and out of businesses, wearing formal clothes. They stop for refreshments half-way and then continue. The Helston Town Band marched and accompanied all the dances. The dances were all to the same eight-bar tune that played continually. With the narrow streets jammed with people, this was one of the most amazing things we have ever seen.
During a coffee break we met a nice couple from Redding who had sort of stumbled across Flora Day themselves. They had been to the US several times. We enjoyed the few minutes conversation with them. We discovered that they were Christians. Our anecdotal research indicates that there are a lot more Christians in the UK than we had heard.
After the Furry Dance we drove 12 miles to St Michael’s Mount. This is a mountain island with a castle on the top a few hundred yards off the coast. During low tide it is possible to walk across on a causeway, but most of the time you get there by motor launch. We took the boat the short distance, in rather choppy water, to tour the castle. The challenge was climbing the steep treacherous steps to the top. When we got back to the mainland, we felt that we had accomplished something significant.
We drove on down the coast to Land’s End about another dozen miles, the furthest West point in England. Then back to Falmouth to the hotel. It was one of those fantastical days when we saw several things that few people ever have the opportunity to see.
The Children's Dance
The Furry Dance
The Helston Town Band
St Michaels' Mount
National Maritime Museum at Falmouth
Cheddar
Limpley Stoke Hotel
May 9, Saturday
Our first stop was the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth. Falmouth was a major seaport in the days of sailing ships. As the most western port in England and immediate access to the Atlantic, the location made it an ideal port. When steam ships took over in the 1850’s, it became easier to steam up the English Channel to London, so the easy Atlantic access became less important.
There was a special exhibit at the museum about the Titantic as well.
After catching up on our maritime history, we began the drive to Bath in the Midlands, leaving Cornwall behind. We detoured through Cheddar, driving through the Cheddar Gorge. Cheddar is the town where the cheese of the same name was first made. We decided not to buy any cheese, but had some ice cream instead. We then drove up the canyon, and back to the highway toward Bath.
Our hotel for the evening is the Limpley Stoke Hotel in Limpley Stoke a few miles south of Bath. The oldest part of the building was built in 1760. This may be the oldest hotel we have stayed in, but most of the hotels are quite old.
There seem to be a lot of places with live music. Many of the towns we drove through had signs advertising bands playing at local pubs or clubs. We’ve also seen several music stores. When we got to the hotel this evening a band was sitting up to play for a wedding. The live music scene seems very strong in this country. We hadn’t noticed anything like that in France.
A big change that we’ve noticed since our first trip to England 30 years ago is the food is much better. In 1979, we had trouble finding anything we wanted to eat. This time everything has been great so far. This evening we ate in the hotel lounge. Louise had fish and I had steak and they were both very good.
May 10, Sunday.
First on the agenda was a drive into Bath and a walk around this beautiful old university town. We had coffee at the famous Pump Room Tea Room at the Roman Bath. The baths dates from Roman times over a thousand years ago.
From the mid 1970’s until the 1990’s, my hobby was photography history. A person that has always been of great interest to me has been William Henry Fox Talbot. He lived from 1800 until 1877 and was key player in the invention of photography. The Talbot family home since 1539 has been Lacock Abbey in the village of Lacock in Wiltshire.
Talbot was a mathematician, chemist, astronomer, artist, Member of Parliament, and an aristocrat. He had an idea that chemistry could be used to affix an image produced by a lens to a piece of paper and set out to figure out how to do it. He made the first successful photograph from a window of Lacock Abbey in 1835. Since I first heard of Talbot, I have wanted to visit Lacock and today was the day.
We drove from Bath the short distance out to Lacock. Our first stop was the Fox Talbot Museum which told the story of Talbot’s discoveries. Since I recently reread Talbot’s biography, it was very interesting to see some of his equipment and memorabilia.
We then walked around the village, having lunch at the George Inn, in business since 1631. We then visited the Abbey which is still the Talbot family home. Matilda Talbot, WHF Talbots’ granddaughter, gave the Abbey and the entire village to the British government in1944, but the family continues to live there. The photography museum opened in 1974. That was when I first heard of it.
I couldn’t help but think about how Talbot’s discoveries had been gradually improved upon for 160 years with no significant change from the basics of exposing an image, fixing the image, and making prints in the same way. Then dramatically, a few years ago, everything changed and photography is now all electronic with no chemicals.
The next stop of the day was some ancient rocks known as Stonehenge. This is a World Heritage Site and was very interesting.
We then drove on to Lyndhurst and the Crown Hotel.
Louise in Bath
Cappaccinos at the Pump Room
Stonehenge
Supercharged Bentley
Montagu Palace House
On our first day in England, the front page story in the London Times was about a resurgence of Christianity in the UK. The article expressed amazement at how Christians in America are routinely ridiculed by the media and especially by Hollywood. The article said that if any other minority group received the same treatment, the ACLU would be up in arms. Everywhere we went we saw signs of revival such as Alpha groups, youth groups going on mission trips, banners out in front of churches advertising outreach events, and so forth. It is very encouraging.
May 11, 2009
In 1952 at the age of 25, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu inherited the Beaulieu Estate. The next year he opened the house to the public and it quickly became a successful tourist attraction. A lot of the attraction was the old cars in the front parlor which belonged to his father, who was an early automobile pioneer. An auto enthusiasts himself, he added to the collection, as the auto museum became a major attraction. In 1972 it became the National Motor Museum. It is now one of the finest automobile museums in the world. Of course, the emphasis is one European cars, especially British.
The British put a high value on cars that are fun to drive. The exhibits pointed out the automobile really took off in Britain because driving was fun. The Brits are less enamored with vehicles such as the Japanese cars whose main attributes are reliability and long life.
The Ford Mondeo we are driving has become a lot more fun and a good driving car since I settled into sitting on the right-hand side of the car.
The Montagu collection at Beaulieu had been on our “Bucket List” for a long time, so we were pleased to finally see it today. The motor museum is heaven for a recovering motor head like me with exhibits from the very beginning of the eternal combustion engine until today. There also are a number of race cars and special interest cars such as cars used in movies, and those owned by famous people.
We were also able to visit the ruins of the Abbey and the Montagu home on the grounds. Lord Montagu and his family still live there and it is very much a modern day palace suitable for an aristocratic family.
Tuesday, May 12
After a leisurely breakfast at the Crown Hotel in Lyndhurst, we drove into London about 100 miles away. Actually we dropped the car off at Heathrow airport and took the train into the city. We had driven about 1050 miles in the black Ford Mondeo. We averaged 41 mph and 44 mpg. I felt pretty victorious getting the Mondeo back to Hertz without any new scuffs. There were some pretty close quarters.
We found the Delmere Hotel a few blocks from Paddington Station. After lunch at a nearby deli we walked across Hyde Park to Harrod’s department store. Louise had declared that she intended to start on the top floor and work her way down looking at every item, or at least every department. Do you know that Harrod’s is one of the largest department stores in the world? It is a city block square and seven or so stories high. Harrod’s has the best of everything and people come from all over the world to shop.
I hadn’t realized that they have a musical instrument department. They have Fender, Gibson, Gretch, Taylor, and Martin guitars. Guitars are one thing that American’s make better than anyone else in the world.
When our eyes were full and our feet tired we hiked back to the hotel, stopping at a pub for fish and chips and a local ale.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Today we rode the Tube to South Kensington station to the Science Museum. The Tube is the affectionate name for the Underground. In some cities the subterranean train is called a subway. In London “subway” is a walkway under the street. The Tube is a very quick, inexpensive, and safe way to get around.
The Science Museum is actually a museum of science and industry with some very early steam engines, models of Victorian Era factories, and some space relics such as Apollo 10.
We got back to the hotel in early afternoon to hear some very bad news. A good friend, Kyle Tomes, was found dead in his home yesterday. He was a very talented and outgoing person with many friends. I enjoyed playing music with him as our substitute drummer with Sky Blue and also at Pickin’ on the Patio each summer at Homer’s Coffee House. This year’s Pickin’ on the Patio will not be the same without him. He was only in his mid-forties. The reminder is that life is short and fragile. None of us know when our time is up. We must live our lives in such a way as to have no regrets for what we have or have not done.
Louise at Harrod's
The Rocket - the first modern steam locomotive, built in 1829 - see Wikipedia
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Today was the Shakespeare Day for us. I hadn’t realized that William Shakespeare had his own theatre, the Globe, and an acting troupe that worked with him. They worked as a cooperative and shared in the profits. 16 th Century London didn’t allow for such frivolities as theater or play acting, so he built his theater outside the city limits, south of the Thames. The theater burnt down in 1613 and again in 1666. When the American actor, Sam Wanamaker came to London in 1949 in search of the Globe, he was surprised that there was only a plaque commemorating where it had been.
Wanamaker made it his life’s work to rebuild the Globe Theatre as it had been in 1600. This took fifty years of research, organizing, and building, but the new Globe opened in 1997.
Our day started with a tour of the Globe, then at 7:30 in the evening we went back for a sold-out performance of Romeo and Juliet. The performance was as close to the original as possible. It was very interesting to see a sixteenth century played acted out in a duplicate of the theatre it was written for, using four hundred year-old staging techniques.
Before we went to see Romeo and Juliet, we attended a worship service at St Paul’s Cathedral. The Evensong featured medieval music but had a modern sermon. The reverb in the cathedral had a delay of literally five seconds. That made the music sound kind of cool, but the words hard to understand. A modern sound system helped.
They didn’t allow photography inside the cathedral, but I have photos from the first time we were here thirty years ago when it was acceptable.
Our concerns of riding the tube late at night were quickly alleviated when we realized how busy it was even at 11:30 PM and that most of the people looked like that had been to the theater, out to dinner, or perhaps working late at the office. We realized that we have seen nobody in London, or even the rest of England, that looked like anything other than upper middle-class professionals. If there s a recession going on, I think they forgot to tell Londoners.
Friday, May 15, 2009
This is our last full day in England. We decided to go down to Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, etc. There were a lot of tourists standing around taking pictures of each other. We did that too and then decided to take the train out to Greenwich. After getting on the wrong train, due to me misreading a map, we got it sorted out and headed in the right direction on the right train.
We had lunch in Greenwich and then walked around the National Maritime Museum there, the Royal Naval College, and the Greenwich Observatory. We took turns taking pictures of each straddling the Prime Meridian – zero degree longitude line. The trip to Greenwich allowed us to see some new scenery, especially the new part of London in the Docklands area.
Back at the hotel, we rested up for dinner and began to get ready for the long flight back to the states.
Me at the Prime Meridian
Jim and Louise Mathis in front of the Victoria, our favorite neighborhood pub
Final thoughts.
This was my eighth and Louise’s ninth trip to Europe. Each time I spend some time trying to sort out what I’ve learned. There are some puzzling questions. One concerns Christianity.
If statistics are to be believed, about 20 to 25% of Americans attend church regularly. In England that number is about 5 to 6%. The puzzle is that Christians seem to have had much more impact on that culture than this one. The definition of Christian behavior is found in Galatians 5 which says, “ The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” It doesn’t take very long to realize that these things are much more evident in the UK than the USA. I don’t know if it has to do with history, culture, education, or just general effectiveness of the churches, but the difference plays out at many levels.
For example, large scale public transportation will probably never be as useful in America as it is in Europe, not because of distances, but we because we are just too angry, rude, and violent, to travel in such close quarters.
The murder rate per capita in Kansas City is 15 times higher than in London. There are many factors, but it comes down to the fact that we are just an angry people.
Europeans see Americans as rude and arrogant, but if they would come to the US, the first thing they would see is not that, but rather that we are overweight and dress poorly. The first thing that Americans notice when landing in London or Paris is how trim, fit, and well-dressed everybody is. I have no idea why this is. Actually, I have no idea why Americans have become so sloppy. This becomes readily apparent anytime we travel outside the US.
The next thought is cars. I have been a careful observer of the automobile for fifty-two years, since I first cut out advertisements from magazines and put together a scarp-book of all the new 1958 model cars. Since WWII, Europe has taken a slightly different road than the US. The Japanese have tried to appeal to both markets with more success here that in Europe. Europeans put high emphasis on the driving experience, Americans more on comfort, and the Japanese more on dependability. That is why European cars drive better, American cars are more comfortable, and Japanese cars have a reputation for reliability, though European, and especially US, makes are now as good.
When we were there, gasoline was the equivalent of about $6.00 per gallon, but most cars get around 40 mpg and many much better. Most cars are diesel which they say is about 35% to 50% more efficient than gasoline. Our experience is that they do much better than that. Modern diesels are quiet, clean, and have plenty of power. A big factor is that European streets and highways are designed for maximum fuel efficiency with minimal stopping. In American cities, drivers spend more time stopping and starting than moving smoothly. Roundabouts and other features common in Europe keep traffic moving smoothly, reducing fuel consumption.
I only saw two hybrid cars in all of England. I presume that this is because hybrids are most efficient in stop and go driving common in the US, and less so, driving at a constant speed which is more normal in England. Besides, diesel engines are more efficient, last longer, and are less expensive.
Overall, Europeans are more eco-friendly than we are, using less packaging, more recycling, and so forth.
Another difference is that everywhere we went we saw people reading, especially newspapers. On one train car, I counted 25 out of 30 people reading a newspaper. And these were mainly young people. In the US, newspapers are dying because their readers are growing old. I expect that English papers are geared toward younger people with more pictures, stronger graphics, and more cultural articles – sports, entertainment, gossip, and so forth. Just my casual observation.
The news media in England is more adversarial and aggressive than we are used to – continually attaching politicians and big business.
Small business is encouraged much more than here. Consequently most shops are owner operated without the homogenization that has taken place here due to chains and franchises. Part of this is due to a health care system that is not tied to one’s employer as it is here. This is a huge obstacle to small businesses in the US.
Finally, the quality of life is different – not better or worse, just different. The average house is smaller, but better built. There are virtually no wood frame houses in England. Wood is not considered a permanent material. Houses are either brick or stone, but the average square footage is probably 50% less than in the US. As Americans, we quickly noticed higher quality plumbing fixtures, wood work, etc. than we are used to. I am guessing that people have fewer but better clothes.
As near as we could tell, all school children wear uniforms. They certainly do when on field trips which is when we saw them. It was not at all unusual to see a class of children with the boys all in matching suits and ties and the girls with matching skirts, sweaters, and so forth. I expect that this culture translates to adult life with people more likely to wear uniforms associated with their work and a need to be well dressed at all times.
Well that’s my observations. Two weeks hanging out in pubs, watching TV, and talking to people doesn’t make me an expert by any means, but it does give a strong impression, especially mixed with similar experiences two years ago in France.
I think, as Americans, we can learn a lot by looking at our neighbors across the pond who have been living in close quarters thousands of years longer than we have, have had to adapt to high fuel prices for longer than we have, and have fewer natural resources than we have.
America is built on the premise of cheap energy. This must change and a good start is to look to places where energy has not been cheap for a long time - like Europe.