Friday 11 May 2018

The Great British Isles Pilgrimage



Planes, trains, automobiles, boats, and buses.

It is the mantra that condemns all of us who suffer (and I mean suffer!) from chronic motion-sickness to the fiery bowels of hell or at the very least, the sterilized bowl of a flushable toilet. But it is also the chant of the world-traveller and without the aforementioned modes of transportation, we screamers of "stop the world, I want to get off" would be confined to our bedrooms and bathrooms at home for a lifetime.

I resolutely and absolutely refuse to suffer such a parochial fate. The world is a wide and wondrous place and there are so many locales yet for me to explore. And so, I drug-up, eat the dreaded ginger, take medication prescribed for chemotherapy patients, (no...seriously!) down copious litres of tomato juice, (It helps me. Go figure?) and bind my wrists with prophylactic sea bands, all in the name of adventure and travel.

The Husband, ever my support, would rather sit at the back of the plane, train, automobile, boat or bus rather than deal with a puking Dawn, but he has grown ever more humane about my issues over the years and would rather travel with me than without, so he does everything short of disavowing me in order to make my travel comfortable when the plague strikes. He has come a long way from that time in Capri when he pretended that I was the wife of the guy on the other side of me. He has upgraded us, Amex-ed us, business-classed us, mini-suited us, and purchased me my very own stash of sickness bags, all in the name of travel and adventure.

And so we are off again, motion-sickness be damned. We are going to Britain to meet the Queen and wish a hearty Mazel Tov to Hank and Meg. Ok. Not really. Instead, we are about to explore the lands of leprechauns, kilts, James Joyce, Maeve Binchy, J.M. Barrie. J.K. Rowling, and many many angry British subjects who wish that England would just go Brexit themselves and leave them alone in the EU. We will walk in the footsteps of Victor Hugo, Robert Burns, Robert L. Stevenson, and all of those members of the Night's Watch who have defended the Wall and Castle Black. (Game of Thrones for you newbies.) And for good measure, we will trek across volcanic rocks and geysers in Iceland.


Apparently, I will be forced to taste all manners of whisky under the guise of corporate research, and I will be subjected to the cat-strangling cries of bagpipes on more than one occasion, but it is all in the name of travel authenticity.

I will be keeping up with the goings-on through this space. Follow along if you choose and if you don't, well that's ok too. This is my way of keeping a travelogue and remembering what we saw. A few photographs will accompany these missives. The cast of characters on this voyage are The Husband, Twin Son, and His Better Half. I will tag them as well on Facebook when I post these updates.

Lock up the whisky. We're coming for you, Ireland and Scotland.



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