Living the Journey: Sliver of Time: London & Salisbury

We finally made it to the UK together after a decade of travels!

We'd seen Nikki only once, on a video call from our house in Mexico to hers in England. But when she stepped out of her car, she gave us hugs--and so did her two girls, ages 8 and 5. Their greeting made me feel less like a housesitter and more like a long-lost auntie.

I was glad to sink into the car and the girls' happy chatter after 12 hours of travel--a red-eye from Denver to London, followed by three subway trains that took us in circles while I texted Nikki to finally figure out where to get off.

We pulled up to a brick suburban house with a bright green door. After hauling our suitcases up the narrow stairs, we took a walk with Nikki, the girls, and Sully, their black-and-white cocker spaniel to nearby Epping Forest, an area of ancient woodlands. We followed paths through towers of trees to a grassy field with a playground and coffee shop.

Squirrels scuttled around, and swans with cygnets floated on the water. Nikki instructed us to keep the dog out of area of the lake where the swans congregated because they were known to drown small dogs. So it's not just in mythology that swans are violent. Sully was obsessed with his ball and would follow it anywhere, while always keeping us in his sight.

Sully in Epping

That night Nikki made us dinner and we fell into bed before her husband returned home from work. In the morning, they left for their trip to France. Disembodied from jet lag, we stumbled back to the park with Sully. Sipping coffees on a bench, we threw his ball and watched him zig and zag in coordinated patterns like a search party to retrieve it. I thought about how as travelers to England we would never have this experience living on the edge of the city without housesitting.

In Epping, we met a woman walking a dog who turned out to be a housesitter, too. It was her first time using Trusted Housesitters (we've been using it for years)--and as a Brit she was starting locally to build up good reviews. That's always my advice to people: do sits in your area first.

Usually we do longer sits, but when we'd seen this four-day one, we thought it would a good UK starting point and a chance for a low-key time to get over jet lag. We lucked out with perfect weather: sunny, cool mornings and warm, breezy afternoons.

with Kelly & Terry in London

And more luck: turned out our longtime California friends Kelly and Terry were in England and met up with us one day. We enjoyed a park walk followed by a pub meal. It was wild and comforting to be on another continent with old friends--even though by now this kind of thing isn't rare in our lives. (An aside: I've been pleased to find alcohol-free beers everywhere in the UK!)

One day, we took the train into the city. There was a lot of activity in Trafalgar Square, large groups carrying Union Jack flags and, to our horror, a couple of Trump signs. We learned it was a far-right gathering led by Tommy Robinson, a British anti-immigration campaigner. (In a few weeks, many of these people or those like them would be arrested and imprisoned for violent riots, fueled in part by online disinformation, after three young girls were knifed to death by a 17-year-old in Southport.)

Nationalist Rally

Later, we'd have a number of people, from taxi drivers to those who struck up conversations in restaurants, expressing their concerns about that presidential candidate's hateful effect on the world. They always wanted to know who we politically supported and received nothing but kudos when we assured them we did not support him.

the Lyceum Theater

Also happening that day in London was an even larger anti-hate demonstration, as well as a transgendered and drag queen street celebration. We'd unknowingly landed in London in the middle of a cultural clash that we briefly escaped by ducking into the Lyceum Theatre to see the Lion King.

Visually, the show was spectacular, and the singing sent bolts of lightning through me. But I was disappointed at the lack of a full orchestra. A few people hidden in the shadows of the orchestra pit created music from some kind of machine. I mourned the fullness of real instruments and learned that many orchestras were stripped back during the pandemic and never restored. What a loss.

When the family returned, seeing how happy Sully was to be reunited with his pack made it easier to say goodbye. Our next stop was Salisbury, a couple of hours south by train. In the States, we'd bought BritRail passes, which--after we figured out the confusing way to activate them--provided us with a discount.

We stayed a few nights in a glass-and-light filled Airbnb with a queen bed in the upstairs loft. When we arrived it was hot, so we opened up the windows and turned on the standing fan. I have not seen a ceiling fan in three months in the UK and Europe--and I miss sleeping under a swirl of moving air.

Salisbury Cathedral and sheep in a sunset glow

We were in the area to see some things on Dave's list, starting with the cathedral built in the 1200s that has the tallest spire in all of Britain at 404 feet. Inside, it's a cavern of intricacies and buried bodies. I was fascinated by the monument in a candlelit corner of Lady Gorges, who came to England from Sweden in 1565 at age 15 to be a handmaid to Queen Elizabeth I. She married twice and died at age 86 with 92 descendants. I fantasized about getting lost of the rabbit hole of her life to write a historical novel.

We also viewed one of the four surviving copies of the Magna Carta. It was stirring to see the handwritten document that is a forerunner to democracy, especially given the authoritarian threats we'd just been reminded of in London.

Stonehenge

Our main reason, however, for coming to this region was to experience Stonehenge, that iconic, prehistoric structure that I was sure would be a tourist trap but that, instead, moved me with its eerie grandiosity. Whoever erected it out on that vast plain had their human reasons more than 5,000 years ago--and I felt the echoes of their voices.

Afterward, we hiked around the Roman hill fort of Old Sarum, the ghosts of ancient people floating by us on the breeze. My life felt like a microscopic sliver of time.