The Lake District

England’s Lake District

For once in my life, I decided to follow the tourist guides’ list of things one must do in England. A group of us, all Indians holding mid-career fellowships at LSE, decided to hire a large van and drive from London to the Lake District, spend two days in the salubrious environment of hills and dales and the nights in some B&B, and drive back over a long weekend. Some research on hiring a vehicle was conducted and a deal was struck with some firm in north London – to our relief an Indian driving license, or any driving license written in English, allows you to drive anywhere in the UK. We picked up the vehicle, a large Volkswagen, on an early Friday afternoon and duly hit the motorway pointing north. The Lake District by late evening, locate a Bed & Breakfast with a view, and start soaking in the environment was our official plan of action for the day.

The rest of England seemed to share our plans. All routes north had gigantic quantities of traffic moving at a snail’s pace, with jams, obstructions and blockages all along. Oh dear! We soon realized that we were not going to get anywhere near the Lake District unless we were planning on driving through the night, and decided on a night halt at some small town on the way. And thus, quite by chance, we hit upon Stafford by about 7 in the evening and found a place for the night. Having settled in, three of us males decided to hit the town center and check out the Friday evening action.

The town center was buzzing with life. Stafford is the local county (Staffordshire) headquarters and apparently the height of excitement for the local peasantry is to hit the town center on Friday evenings. Taxi after taxi came in, offloaded groups of young people dressed to get laid, and went off. This was pretty good fun to watch for a while, and to fancy our chances, until the throats started clamoring for some alcohol. We found a bar in which the crowd looked late twenties onwards and went in. It was crowded with huge men with bulging muscles, shaven heads and tattoos, the signature attire of right wing white supremacist groups, and with lovely women with next to nothing on, all drinking loudly and chatting each other up. The women were more of an incentive than the men were a deterrent, and so we made our way to the bar, got our drinks, and settled down within quick reach of the doors in case of the need for a hasty exit. By our second drink we realized that we were in no danger, the men were all perfectly friendly and nobody, despite this being the October after September 11th, gave us a hint of a suspicious look. By our third, we started circulating and by the fourth we were the targets of eye contact from unattached old women. We wrenched ourselves away after far too much to drink and a little more, all of us thinking that an ideal career would be as the official gigolo here.

We managed to leave Stafford the next morning and reach the Lake District by midday. A word about driving in the UK – apart from the fact that they also do it on the left side of the road, there are few similarities between there and in India. For one, it is necessary to know the rules, especially the right of way rules, and also necessary to observe them. This is surprisingly difficult for those of us who have learnt our driving here, where the rules are not really rules and where might is right. Second, it is not done to stop wherever one feels like – for a pee, to ask for directions, to pick up a paan, or any reason – one has to look for an exit to the road with space to park. Third, it is absolutely necessary to know the way, as one’s lane selections have to be spot on to reach the desired destination and not a completely different place, and taking a U-turn is near impossible. Having a navigator, someone who can read a map and point out the correct way and the correct lane choice, is an asset. Fourth, the driving rules on the motorways (the main highway system in Britain) are quite different from driving in the towns and on the lesser highways, which in turn is quite different from driving in London. Having said that, we were quite all right once our driver had got used to the vehicle and the driving etiquette, and that took about two hours on the road.

The less said about the Lake District that weekend, the better! Huge crowds, long queues, no accommodation, traffic jams - anyone who has been to Nainital or Mussoorie on a hot summer weekend will know the experience. We did manage to find parking space, but options for serious walking were limited by restrictions due to the foot-and-mouth epidemic and the need to find somewhere to sleep. We finally gave up the search by evening and decided that the best course of action would be to head to the next county, Lancashire, and find a small town where, like the previous night, there would be accommodation for seven people on a Saturday night.

We ended up, after a long and tiring search, in an old-style hotel in a coastal town called Morecambe just in time to settle in, grab an hour at the bar and find a place still open for dinner. The hotel bar was quite an experience – it was reasonably (but not very) packed with locals, all of whom were over 50, mostly lower middle and working class, with strange accents and tired faces, enjoying an evening out with the mates. Most were already plastered by the time we got in, and the talk was mainly on the fortunes of the local football team FC Morecambe, struggling away in the third division, to the exclusion of nearby Liverpool and Manchester United. Not at all the beautiful people associated with Saturday night drinking in a bar! The only barmaid, a middle-aged but buxom lady called Cindy (pronounced Sin-deh) did all the serving and washing up and still managed to find time to chat, telling us how difficult it was to get rid of those morons (i.e. the clientele) at closing up time, right in front of them. The hotel was not, in the slightest way, on the tourist track and they were all quite surprised at being found by a bunch of Indians on the road. Between Cindy and the drunks, we were made very welcome indeed.

The next day was spent returning to London, with an afternoon in Stratford-upon-Avon to add to our list of ‘been there, done that’. Stratford is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare, and everything in the town is geared towards selling him to American tourists. The things to do in Stratford include seeing a play at the theatres along the river, visiting his birthplace, visiting his school, visiting his wife’s birthplace, visiting the restaurants he frequented, visiting the toilet he graced with his refuse (no, no, not seriously, but you get the drift). The best that Stratford had to offer on that Sunday afternoon was a visiting motorcycle gang, and thus a bewildering array of Harley Davidson, BMW and Kawasaki motorcycles all parked in formation along the river. I wonder if the riders had come to see a play.

The return to London was preceded by a great English dinner at one of the pubs in the countryside around Stratford, and was uneventful until we reached London and got thoroughly lost. All the map reading skills acquired on the highway went for a toss in central London’s one-ways and no-entries. We finally did manage to reach our residence, and to return the vehicle the next morning.