Living the Journey: Connecting in England

This is the fourth installment on our 8-month trip, following:

With Brendan & Cathy in front of their house
in Marple, England (photos by Dave Rhine).

Leaving our housesit in Sidmouth, I experienced familiar mixed feelings: excited to be moving on, sad to say goodbye to the dogs and area I loved.

Boarding the train, though, I felt that "I'm traveling" high, boosted by knowing I would soon be seeing my former colleague and dear friend, Cathy Miller. In 2018, Cathy was awarded a Fulbright as Distinguished Chair of the Humanities at the University of Manchester. While in England, she met Brendan, and they eventually married.

During the pandemic, when loneliness profoundly stung, Cathy and I started Zooming every-other-week with two other friends--and we've continued to do so to this day. Also, for a year, Cathy and I exchanged writing pages, which resulted in her historical novel and my memoir, Wanderland.

Cathy and Brendan picked us up at the train station around the corner from their house. Built in 1908, it's an exquisite Edwardian that they've been remodeling. We benefitted from the new guest en suite. The house has so many stairs and rooms and twists and turns that once I couldn't find our room--which gave Brendan a hardy laugh.

Breakfast in Cathy & Brendan's garden.

We lucked out with sunny days and enjoyed walks in their sweet village with its pretty gardens, gingerbread houses, and Britain's highest stone aqueduct and impressive Victorian arched bridge. Narrowboats floated down the canals and through the locks. Now used for recreation and habitation, narrowboats were originally built in the 18th-20th centuries for carrying goods on the narrow canals of British inland waterways.

A narrowboat squeezing through the locks.

Our friends were fantastic hosts, plying us with food and offering the perfect balance of relaxation and activity. One day we drove for miles down narrow lanes (that sometimes required us to pull over or back up for someone to pass) to Biddulph Grange Garden. A National Trust property, Biddulph is a magnum opus of international flora, pagodas, and statues. It felt like floating through a storybook.

Brendan, Cathy & me on a Chinese bridge in Biddulph.

This was not the first time we'd hung out with Cathy and Brendan. A few years back, they were traveling in California and stayed with us at our housesit in San Diego. Over the years, we've met up with Cathy other times in the SF Bay Area, Palm Springs, and once in Mexico City.

Walking in Marple.

I'm happy that we've shared these times and places together. This has been an unexpected part of being nomads and Mexico expats: how many of our friendships have been enriched by meeting up at places all over the world.

Sometimes these gatherings are with longtime friends--such as recently in Colorado and London. Other times they are the hosts we've befriended as housesitters or other travelers we've gotten to know in online nomad groups. Given that we also have a community back in Baja, I feel embraced by a global network of beloveds. This is a far cry from worries about feeling lonely or isolated as traveling retirees.

with Paul and John

On our next stop we had another friend to see: Paul Robert Mullen. Paul and I both taught at Guangxi University in Nanning, China and convened regularly to share our writing. He's also a musician, and you can blame or praise him for getting me into the ukulele. We did some traveling together in S.E. Asia, including seeing orangutans in Borneo and Komodo dragons in Flores, Indonesia. (I write about all of this in Wanderland.)

It had been seven years, but when he walked through the cafe door in Liverpool, it felt like we'd been hanging out together last week. He was glad to hear we'd already been on a Beatles Magical Mystery (bus) Tour. (We'd arrived the previous day to spend two nights in a teensy, inexpensive, convenient hotel room overlooking a square boasting a statue of Queen Victoria.) I was thrilled to hear he has a new book coming out titled it's all come down to this: a retrospective, poems & writings (1999-2024).

The Beatles tour was a wonderful bus excursion. We saw the childhood houses of Paul and John, and their schools and the places they met Ringo and George. Hearing clips of their music through the speakers--especially Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields as we headed to those iconic spots--made me a little weepy. We even ID'd the barbershop mentioned in Penny Lane. I loved knowing that these seminal places of their childhood influenced their great songs. It made me wonder in what other neighborhoods in the world a merging of friends was sparking creative brilliance.

...is in my ears and in my eyes...

I was struck by the contrast between John's difficult upbringing--an absent father and distracted mother--versus Paul's happy childhood surrounded by parents who loved music, and extended family and neighbors who often popped in. The upbeat, nostalgic Penny Lane and the skewed wistfulness of Strawberry Fields reflect that contrast in their lives.

Liverpool has an expansive waterfront area downhill from the city center, which is an eclectic mix of crusty characters and hip, young people. Amid the bookstores, cafes, and music venues, I noticed a lot of welcoming pride flags.

Liverpool waterfront; that's a ferry going across the Mersey.

Of course the most famous music venue in the city is The Cavern Club, where the Beatles first played publicly, and its sister venue down the alley, The Cavern Pub. That's where Paul played guitar and sang one evening with a rocking band. When they played "Ferry Cross the Mersey," Dave and I touched hands. This electrifying, Uber-English musical moment was shot through with affectionate memories of the Ukulele Cafe in Nanning. That was where Paul played many evenings with international musicians, a boost and a refuge for us while living in a Chinese city of 8 million people.

Biggie Smalls

At this point, we'd been in England for over a month. We were enroute to Wales, and along the way we spent three days housesitting in Sandbach, a market town--meaning a small town in a rural setting that was given a historic legal right to hold a weekly market. Our hosts, both professional musicians, picked us up at the train station.

We enjoyed their company while they showed us around and introduced us to their chill dogs, Biggie Smalls and Louie. They needed only one easy walk a day to the park down the street. That suited us fine because after so much travel and socializing, we were ready to take it easy. Laid-back Sandbach was a good place to do so.

Saxon crosses in center of town.

The house--which prominently displayed a large harp in the dining room--was a couple of blocks from the historical downtown. On the cobbled market square, two Saxon crosses, built around the 7th-9th centuries, stood tall.

Another feature of the town is the medieval parish church that stands on a low hill above Dingle Brook, the "sandy beck" that gave Sandbach its name.

St Mary's seen in the distance past the graveyard.

I read that, amazingly, the church is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 (a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and part of Wales).

I wandered through the church's graveyard, peering at the headstones and pondering all those lives, and all this history that is just the passage of time. One day, we will be someone else's history.

If you're interested in our life of housesitting, budget travel and living in Mexico, check out my books Wanderland: Living the Traveling Life and Call It Wonder: An Odyssey of Love, Sex, Spirit & Travel.