Travels in Europe, continued

When Louise had finally recovered somewhat, we piled back into the car and drove back to Malaga where we turned in the car and took our flight to London. There we rented another car and headed north to visit my Uncle Russell and Aunt Pauline in Leicester. Our plan was not to spend much time seeing the sights but rather touching base with my British relatives and their families. The weather was cold and dull – Louise remarked on what a refreshing change this was from all of the relentless good weather in Spain. I also got some satisfaction from being able to show the girls my early meteorologically-disadvantaged background. On the other hand, if the truth be known, the weather sucked almost all of the time we were in England.

We loved visiting Russell and Pauline – they were suitably amazed by the girls and plied us with good food, good wine and good conversation. Madeleine found a great expanse of historical romances by Paula Marshall and dived into them, finishing four before we left. (Pauline has now written nearly 40 and they are translated into zillions of languages.)

Russell and Pauline

Next, we drove on up to Keighley in Yorkshire to visit Phil and Maggie and their family. Maggie took us for a stroll on the Dales and the girls were amazed by all of the sheep wandering around looking cute. We also got to sample Taylor’s Landlord Bitter, which we had drunk on our last visit and which we had been dreaming about ever since.


Maggie and Phil's house in Keighley	Tiger

Maddi in Keighley	Ram on dales

Then to Ledbury, a charming little village full of Tudor buildings in Herefordshire, to visit Sue and Neil, second cousins on my father’s side. We could only stay one night with them before we had to go on to Pinner to clear out the bank deposit box remaining from my father’s estate and then heading for Reading to visit cousin Tom and his family. While at Tom’s, we also got to see my cousin Bill and his family.


Maddi in Ledbury	Toni in Ledbury

Toni with baby hedgehog	Neil and Maddi

Tom and Izzie	Group with pig

Our final departure was marred by my belated discovery the day before we left that we were not, as I had thought, flying out of Heathrow (which is just down the road from Reading) but instead out of Gatwick (which is several counties away.) This also messed up Louise’s plans. She was planning on remaining in England for a week after I left with the girls in order to do some research for her next book. She had however gotten cold feet about driving the rental car, and so we had fixed her up with bus travel to Stratford out of Heathrow. She had however no interest in making an unnecessary trip to Heathrow on her own so she ended up throwing away her ticket and going directly from Reading while the girls and I took a train to Gatwick. You might expect that she would have traded in the ticket on the new one. However, when we made the original reservations, the agent had accidentally sold us two tickets, not one. When we returned the next day to point out the error, she said she would have to charge us a cancellation fee of 15%, so we knew better than to try to make any further alterations – who knows what that would have cost us!

The girls and I dumped the rental car and took a train from Reading to Gatwick and we got our flight without incident. The day of the flight was also Madeleine’s birthday, and Louise had called the airline to alert them of it. They (BA) rose splendidly to the occasion, giving her a birthday card signed by the entire crew and inviting the three of us into the cockpit. The captain and first officer seemed glad of the company and we chatted for some time. Then back to our seats and back to New York.

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