AN ENGLISH ODYSSEY, PART 1

If you wondered whether I was alive and still writing blogs, I'll explain that my wife and I have been away with friends from the London area for a five-day tour by car of East Anglia, a part of England with which we are not familiar. We covered 500 miles, which is like driving double that in America.

I won't bore you with every stop or place but give you some of the highlights. First, some background. I have to say my friend John, who is the youngest and spryest 86 I've ever seen, did all the driving---and he is a superb driver whose relexes are still keen. John and wife Joan have a Honda Accord, two years old, which he keeps immaculately. Joan does not drive but excels as a backseat driver with lots of unneeded and unheeded advice. John also has a GPS in the car, whom we dubbed "Susie", with a refined and quiet voice as she instructs us on our route. John loves to wander on the back roads or take some deviations from the established route, so every now and then we turn Susie off, and I, in the front seat, help John as navigator with very detailed maps of which the Brits have many. Joan any my wife are obviously in the back where my wife occasionally gets a word in.

As for the highlights, in chronological order, the first stop was at Ightham Mote, a magnificent manor house in northern Kent, which is part of the National Trust, an organization that is a multi-million pound corporation, owning and maintaining many of the stately homes of Great Britain, charging admission to view these homes. I might add, some of these homes are castles or the equivalent. Ightham Mote, interestingly enough, was owned by an American who restored it to its fifteenth century glory days. Harold Robinson was a manufacturer of top-quality paper in Portland, Maine. As a young man, after college, he did a bicycle tour of England, spied this manor from the road--and fell in love with it. Years later, after he had amassed his fortune, he bought it and restored it beautifully. After his death, he bequeathed it to the National Trust. You can spend a day there, wandering through the maze of rooms and walking the beautiful gardens. All of us had seen it before, so we did not spend the day there but still put in two hours. One of the highlights was the master bedroom, painted in a light grey with white trimming of the panels, a perfect combination of colors to accent a collection of paintings on the walls. Robinson brought over from America a stunning oval Federal mirror, which hangs over the fireplace, and it is great to see a bit of Americana in this English setting. and it fits in well.

I'll continue this in future blogs so that I don't overdose you with our travelogue!