Bristol to Edinburgh by Train

Bristol to Edinburgh by Train

We got up early about 6 am in order to get going and to get to our train on time.  My wife and I woke up the younger ones ( ages 15 to 26) at 6:30 AM as they were already packed up and ready to go pretty much. The night before the Bear Hotel was surrounded by workmen repairing the roads so we had to park our rented Mercedes several blocks away and to carry all our goods and packs and all to our hotel room about 6 blocks away and up one flight of stairs to our hotel rooms.  We had been to Glastonbury that day and it was wonderful to bring more of my family as in 1999 it had only been just my then 10 year old daughter and I and my then In her 80s mother who has since passed away. At that time we went to Glastonbury in 1999 I didn’t know about Glastonbury Abbey in the middle of the town but only  the Glastonbury Tull up on top of a hill that legend says was the home of the Holy Grail carried by Joseph of Arimathea direct to England (some say along with Mary Magdelene) both of who were wealthy enough to have done that then.

So this time we found Glastonbury Abbey and the ruins of where King Arthur was said to have been buried. This Abbey was there at the time of his death also on the side of the Isle of Avalon which was then an island in the middle of a lake. The lake has long since dried up and been replaced with farmland so now the only time it is a lake is when there are floods. There was a presentation there in the round sort of domed ancient building that is still intact there. A cooking area is depicted as close to how things were actually done inside around the early 1500s and the time of King Henry VIII of England. I felt either that I was on a movie set made up for a cooking area at that time or a historical recreation which is what it is meant to be. Two pigs were depicted being roasted on a spit in the corner of the room with smoke staining the wall up towards the ceiling in that corner of the building. There were real herbs gathered locally and hung upside down on a rack to dry to season whatever they were going to eat. There was a sink hewn from a rock about 3 feet in diameter (approximately by about 2 to 3 feet high by grinding it down into a large sink with a hole in the bottom to be able to drain it to wash everything before cooking it. So  we all witnessed  an actress in her 60s playing the part of a woman in the 1500s during the time of King Henry the VIII in England. She said that the King needed money to run things as he was running out so he sent runners around England at that time to see which Catholic Abbeys were the richest. He found that because of the love and interest in King Arthur and Merlin and of the Knights of the Holy Grail and of the Round table that Glastonbury was the richest. However, it was a time of change when the world tried to stamp out such notions of Arthur and of his knights and the round table and the holy grail. So, Henry VIII accused the Abbott of Treason against the king. The Abbott, an 80 year old man knew it would destroy the lives of many people and many would starve who served the Glastonbury Abbey so he would not give into the King on principle. However, the King’s men tied him to a rack and dragged him through town until he was bloody and then hung him at the top of Glastonbury Tull and after he died he was drawn and quartered and the pieces put in tar.

It is clearer to me now why the Catholic Church didn’t think much of King Henry the VIII. Then they stole all the gold and silver and lead and melted it all down so King Henry was rich once again but the Abbey closed and many people in that area starved and died. And the idea of King Arthur and the Round table was crushed in this way during King Henry the VIII’s time. It appears to me that King Henry VIII was jealous of the  King Arthur and his legends because he couldn’t really compete with them in any useful way. So I guess in this way he crushed the legend and took all things of value there directly into his coffers. Also, the grave site of King Arthur was crushed and smashed by the King’s soldiers.

When we asked the History Actress there where Arthur’s bones were today she said that it is possible that local people hid away his bones before the soldiers desecrated and smashed his grave site. But still the legend lives on.

It is also interesting to me that King Henry VIII’s daughter Queen Elizabeth I eventually took over the throne and ushered in the Renaissance in England. And after the Spanish Armada was destroyed by bad weather Britannia during and after the Renaissance ruled the waves and spread English thoughts and ideas to North America, India, Australia etc. as a result to where English is now the Business language of the world.

It is possible that 100 years from now the Business language of the world might be Chinese or some other language, but for right now at least it is still English as the business language still best to do international business with  around the world.

As we boarded the train we were very grateful because the Traffic from The Bear Hotel  in Devizes (established I think in 1559) was heavier than we expected. However, since we left at 8 am on a Wednesday in October I suppose we should have expected business traffic.When we reached the Auto rental place in Bristol I was concerned that we didn't have enough time to go and fill the rented Mercedes up with Diesel. But since we had used very little since we filled it up the night before on our way back from Glastonbury it wasn't very expensive to have them fill it up. Then the next problem was how to get us to the train on time since we were supposed to board by 10:15 Am and it was already 9:45 and the Cab wasn't there. I felt there was something else wrong about all this that I wasn't sure of so I walked out to the sidewalk to pray and to watch for the cab. The Pakistani Driver appeared behind me telling me and the group that his was the only cab that could have taken all 5 of us and our luggage in one vehicle in the group that the rental car company called for us. We began to talk about his family and kids (he had 5) and he was saying that money wasn't the most important thing, family and children were. I had to agree with him. He said he had married at 22 and I told him I married at 26 and had my first son then also. We had a friendly chat since I had been to Nepal and India and understood what people are generally like in the Himalayan region having lived 4 months in India and Nepal there in 1985 and 1986. When we got to the train station we knew we were being somewhat overcharged but my wife had enjoyed the conversation and tipped him on top of that and said, "This is for your kids". Later, my daughter's boyfriend said he thought it wasn't right that that guy had ripped us off. I said to him, "Have you ever been to India?" I said, "There was an American Girl who had money and who went there and paid whatever price was asked and was walking the himalayas with 20 to 30 donkeys carrying her goods with 10 men there with her. The problem was she wasn't used to bargaining for whatever she wanted. There are no set prices in India, Nepal or pakistan generally speaking for anything (At least that was the way it was when I was there in 1985-6). So eventually she just started
crying because she had no knowledge of the culture to protect her in any way.

I said to my daughter's boyfriend, "What the Pakistani and I were doing wasn't a western way of doing things. What was happening there was by mutual agreement. My wife  and I had made a connection with this man and his stories about his wife and children and we wanted to help him and his family. We gave him more than the standard because we were perceiving this Himalayan style and he and I and Janet all knew that. I said, "It is important to bring integrity to every international situation. However, cultures are different all over the world and so what is useful in one situation is not useful in another. Knowing how to survive internationally in any culture if you are going to travel internationally is very important and helpful. My daughter's boyfriend looked sort of stunned. His international traveling was just beginning the last year or two so he still had a lot to learn but since he loves meeting new people and  being useful and helpful I'm sure he will learn all this fairly quickly over the next few years.

We met several interesting people there in first class on the express train to Edinburgh, Scotland. A couple from Australia sat next to us and my wife got to talking to a couple of ladies from Scotland that had boarded the wrong train at 5 am the same morning and had to take the next train north after missing the first one. Since there were in their 60s or 70s we tried to help them make their next train connection heading North towards Inverness. As we got closer to the Scottish Border I hadn't realized that the train goes along the North Sea for awhile before arriving at Edinburgh and then later Glasgow. Unfortunately, I missed seeing Hadrian's wall erected by the Romans when they couldn't defeat the ancient Scots sort of for the same reason that the Chinese erected the Wall of China to try to  keep the Mongols out of China. To have more of an understanding of those times you should see "The Eagle" which is a Roman times depiction of an actual story modified for a movie.

It began raining and got windy as we neared Edinburgh. It was kind of a relief to have somewhat normal weather for Edinburgh for this time of year. Our friends who live in Scotland said they were worried that they would see snow in late October this year the way the weather was going. So, we are trying to prepare should we see snow as we drive to northern Scotland later this week.