The airplane shuttered as the flaps lowered and the ground appeared below us peeking through the clouds. ENGLAND…patchworks of green and gold…unfolded before my eyes as we banked in a long turn. My heart picked up it’s pace…
Heathrow Airport is HUGE! Good grief, heck with the the luggage I wished I could spot a skycap…to carry ME (do such things even still exist?) On we slogged through the customs…through the luggage pick up…IT FELT LIKE MILES and on to the information booth where we were to meet a taxi driver from the city of Windsor.
In among the men lounging around…needing a shave and with names of their ‘fares’ written on pieces of cardboard torn from a box…stood Bert! A very dignified man dressed in a suit and tie, holding a carefully printed sign that said MR AND MRS. GIBERSON. He looked, for all the world, like he was there to pick up a Lord and Lady. Oh, did he look good to a couple of tired and befuddled tourists!
Turns out Bert is a character and under all that ‘dignity’ there lurked a devilish sense of humor! When Rick went around to the right side of the car and started to get in he said “Oh, you want to drive?” “Go right ahead!” Several ‘red faced’ moments later everything was sorted out. By the time we had driven to Windsor Bert had thrown off his jacket and was regaling us with stories. I haven’t laughed that much in a long time.
Bert has lived in Windsor all his life and really HAS driven scores of “Lords and Ladies”. He had a picture of himself and his car in the forecourt of Buckingham Palace where he’d just dropped off one such pair. AND where, he told us with no small amount of pride, he was allowed to use a palace ‘loo’.
When we pulled up in front of the hotel Rick gave him the fare and a tip. Bert looked at us for a long moment and said. “You know you gave me too much money…and he handed most of it back to Rick. He said “I’m going to tell you something…In Britain we don’t tip like this. Americans have a reputation for over tipping. They even tip at restaurants when on the menu it says ‘gratuities included’. And it’s gotten to be a joke. DON’T YOU DO IT! A couple of ‘quid’ is enough for good service. That fatherly advice…delivered in that wonderful English accent and with such sincerity really touched us. It was a wonderful welcome to this country.
We’d heard so much about ‘jet lag’. One of the reasons we flew in four days early for the tour was to allow our ‘old bodies’ to acclimate to this ‘awful’ business. Well…after days of work and nights of no sleep and hours of waiting and hours of flight…all I wanted to do when we got to our room was throw down our suitcases and go out and photograph!!! And we haven’t stopped yet! Maybe we are on some sort of adrenaline high or something…but all we feel is energized.
Our little hotel is within sight of Windsor Castle…and the flag is flying the Queens banner…so the queen is in residence! There is a long road that leads up to the castle…called the Long Walk. Only the queen is allowed to ‘drive’ down it but us commoners can stroll along it.
We walked over and started photographing the castle in the distance. Along the way we met up with the cutest English girl and her dog ‘Alphie’. She joined us and we walked all over the place together…exchanging views on President Bush and Tony Blair….and solving all the problems of the world. We were to experience this friendliness all over Britian.
In our ambles around town we came upon the Parish Church. While we were looking at the old gravestones there, a gentleman came outside and said he was going to lock up soon and if we’d like to see the church before he did he would enjoy showing it to us
He turned out to be the ‘bell ringer’ for the church. Sun, when we were walking by the church, suddenly the air was filled with the deep melodious chiming of the bells ringing out….and we smiled because we knew who was ringing them!