The Holiday

"I think 10 days in a row are enough," I thought as I trudged through the verdant English countryside last Tuesday. 

It wasn't as much a complaint about my circumstances--though I was indeed homesick for Benedict Ambrose--as it was the grasp of a useful piece of information. After all, I work for an American company, and our vacation days (though generous for both the USA and Canada) are much fewer than those of most British and European employees. 

Moreover, studies of happiness like Time and How to Spend It recommend multiple short holidays over one long holiday. Factoring in weekends and Canadian federal holidays (for which I have opted over British), I could (if careful not to squander my days off) manage three short holidays, plus Christmas week. That's not possible this year, but it's something to think about. 

Happiness guides also observe that what remains of a holiday once it is over are the memories, and these are usually of the highest point and of the last day. 

Sussex, Devon, Somerset

My highest point was Monday (Day 10), after I laced on my boots, grasped my walking poles, and strode out for a solo walk from Holnicote House (Selworthy) over hills and around the coast to Minehead, Somerset.  

"Weren't you scared?" I was asked at supper that evening. 

Yes, I was, at first. Since an unfortunate encounter with a book that ought not to have been in a primary school library, I have always been frightened of being alone in wooded areas. "Wooded areas" is (or was) a Toronto newspaper expression for where local girls and women are (or were) attacked by sexual predators. Fears of getting lost on the hill or falling into the sea or being trampled by wild Exmoor ponies were quite secondary to fears of Earth's most dangerous animal. However, I am now middle-aged, the chances of meeting other innocent walkers were high, and my poles have spikes on their ends. I felt the fear and went alone anyway. 

It was absolutely marvellous. (When I get next month's data allowance on my phone, I will post photographs.) Although I initially went the wrong way up, I soon found a landmark I recognized and eventually got myself near the top. I was rewarded with the brilliant blue of the Bristol Channel and the dull blue signposts for the South West Coastal Path. The sun shone, the water sparkled, the wild ponies kept their distance, and I was as free as only a solitary walker can be. 

Every once in a while I exchanged other middle-aged or elderly women on my way; they had dogs. And the only scary moment was when I saw enormous cows or bullocks lying on or around my path. However, they barely registered me, and a friendly farming truck came driving along as I skirted them. 

I reached the end of the South West Coastal Way in three hours and fifteen minutes and ate my lunch beside its monument, looking at the Bristol Channel and Wales. I then went on a walk through Minehead to buy a supply of dried fruit and shelled raw nuts and, ultimately, a pint of milk for my mother. I took the bus back to our country house hotel. 

My mother greatly enjoys high class walking holidays, which combine days of hikes led by knowledgable guides with stays in well-staffed country houses that provide delicious hot and cold meals and paper bag lunches. (My father, like B.A., although not as seriously, has restricted mobility and stays at home when Mum sallies forth on her luxury countryside jaunts.) These holidays are arranged by a Canadian company that caters to senior citizens, and indeed it bent its rules to let me join my mother. I was thus the youngest person among the guests, whereas the oldest person we walked with was 93. 

My holiday companions were certainly an inspiration, for although elderly, they were as fit as fiddles and, relative to their generation, as thin as pins. Some were quite astonishingly athletic. The 93-year-old who joined us in Somerset opted wisely for the shortest walks (e.g. 8 - 11 km), but some 60-somethings chose to walk 14-19 km every day. 

I noticed that the fittest of the group tended to choose soup for their first course and fruit salad as their pudding. This struck me as most sensible, as the dining-room meals were enormous and delicious, and we had our choice of fatty, sugary snacks for our lunch sacks. (I stuck to boiled eggs, apples, seeds, nuts, and dried fruit.)

They were also, for the most part, Baby Boomers, with Canadian Baby Boomer opinions, and after listening to breakfast conversation about how the Catholic Church had kept the Quebeckers down, and thus Catholicism was dead as a doornail in la belle province, I longed for some lovely Gen Z boys and girls to talk to. However, I admired the Boomers' (and the World War II survivor's) excellent health and grit, which gave me hope for my own future--and B.A.'s, if and when he is able to walk again. 

Brighton and London

The group spent its last two days in and around Brighton, where we had much free time. I sallied forth through the buzzing neo-hippy shopping district to George IV's orientalist Pavilion and enjoyed its mad, maximalist, chinoiserie interiors very much. (Photos to be posted eventually.) The next day, a Sunday, all the Canadians but me had to rise early for their drives to Heathrow Airport. Lucky Dorothy got to sleep in, finish packing, breakfast alone and cross the street to the railway station. There I took a £10 train to London's Victoria Station, parked my rucksack, changed into a dress, and went to the 11 AM High Mass at Brompton Oratory. 

To my pleased surprise, after Mass I was greeted by a friend down from Aberdeen and his youngest son, my youngest godson. We had coffee together in the hall, and then I went to Ognisko Polskie for delicious sorrel soup, confit duck with cherries and red cabbage, and kremówka. After I paid up, I went to the Sir John Soames Museum--shaking off the grip of a panhandler on the way, incidentally (Holborn is no joke, I observed)--which was so packed with classical antiquities, books, paintings and supercilious young men in tweed that I felt quite claustrophobic. 

After only a half an hour at the Museum, I walked around Lincoln's Inn Field, keeping a wary distance from a ragged, wild-eyed band, and got back on the Tube for Kensington and the Design Museum. Kensington Church Street and High Street were livelier and more interesting to me than the actual Design Museum, but I passed a pleasant enough stretch of time contemplating exhibits before I left for Victoria Station. At Victoria I exchanged £15 for my rucksack, changed out of my nice dress, and headed for King's Cross, whence I took the 19:24  LUMO train to Edinburgh. 

Total cost of travelling the London Tube for the day was £8.50, and I am very, very grateful that I can now just slap my debit card down on the turnstiles without worry or fuss. First, the technology is incredibly convenient, and second, my job means I don't feel a financial pinch. And after two weeks away, I was well-rested and ready to get back to work. And, metaphorically speaking, I hit the ground running.