Dec 2015 -- The UK
I've been bumbling around the UK a bit this week. The small towns and countryside are marvelous, of course. Some things have been on my mind, travel-related.
1. I have a theory that islands breed walls. Okay, so there are lots of reasons to put up walls, hedgerows, hedges, and whatnot. But I've been seeing a lot of them on the islands I've been visiting. The Isle of Man has lots of old stone walls and hedgerows. Malta is triangulated with ancient stone walls. Cyprus has them. So do the Canary Islands, Heligoland, and Cuba. Crete is historically famous for being home of the labyrinth, which is really just a mess of walls, when you think about it. I think Prince Edward Island has more walls than the mainland, but I'll have to ask my sister. It's all terribly claustrophobic. Worst of all, though, is Capri. That place is like a rat's maze.
2. The shops in the UK have deliberately-confusing names. Why doesn't Boots sell footware? Why is Carphone Warehouse selling cell phones? Why can I not buy metalwork from WH Smith?
3. In the latest Bill Bryson book, there is a quip about how ghostwriters are responsible for so much of the books we read these days, followed by the claim that this very book (Road to Little Dribbling) is ghostwritten. I haven't been able to find any mention of this in the various middling reviews. So, (a) what does that say about book reviewers, that they missed such an interesting nugget? and (b) I'm pretty disappointed by that. I'm okay with celebrity books and the latest "Tom Clancy" novels being ghostwritten. But Bill Bryson is an author, and the book is purported about his latest travels around Brittain. Did he actually make the travels, but then just get someone else to type up the jokes? Why?
4. I've been thinking about how we sometimes build cities around exquisite pieces of natural geography, and how the best cities embrace that. My hometown, sort of, is Halifax, which is wrapped around, and wrapped up in, the eponymous harbour. Everything in Halifax (and Dartmouth, and Bedford, too, if you include the basin) is located relative to the harbour. Ulaanbaatar is sat between four mountains, the southern of which is sacred, special, forested, and visible from nearly everywhere in the city. Riga has the mighty Daugava river. Vancouver has two: the river, and the mountains in North Van. Naples and Havana both have their waterfronts.
But other cities either don't have such a feature, or have expanded so much they grew out (or away from) the feature. Ancient Athens had the Acropolis, but has now expanded so much that it's merely a landmark today. London, Paris, and Rome grew out of their rivers. Calgary and Seoul, too. Toronto, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles all have great shorefronts, but grew away from the shore, forsaking their wonderful locales in favour of urban sprawl.
The best I've seen so far is Douglas, the capital town of the Isle of Man. It has a superb promenade, but is also dwarfed by a hill that is populated by sheep! I felt comfortable there, as if the sheep were watching over me.
