So You Want to Go to England: Surviving Heathrow Airport

You made it

Israel’s Ben-Gurion Airport, widely considered to be the safest in the world, uses a sophisticated passenger screening system headed by college graduates who coolly screen travelers for “micro-expressions” which may hint at nefarious intent – by contrast, the U.K. Border Agency (and the TSA in America, for that matter) employs a network of po-faced ungulates still seething over not being invited to prom.  So don’t take it personally when, upon your arrival in England, the U.K. Border Agency treats you like you’ve just arrived from Malawi with several sticks of T.N.T., a pound of cocaine and eight undocumented immigrants concealed somewhere on your person.  Or like you're Madonna.

"You guys still believe I'm English, right?"

So You Want to Go to England: Getting There - Freighter Cruises

Why fly when can you take 20 times longer for three times the price?
Photo by Mike Baird, licensed through Creative Commons

Part 1:  Getting Started

Part 2:  Before You Go 

Part 3:  Getting There - Air Canada

Part 4:  Getting There - Air Transat

Part 5:  Getting There - British Airways

Part 6:  Getting There - Freighter Cruises
Part 7:  Surviving Heathrow Airport

Once upon time, if a young man suffered from wanderlust or a failure to fully comprehend the rhythm method, fleeing his quaint coastal hometown was a simple matter.   All he had to do was run, preferably under cover of darkness, to the dockyard and beg for a job on the first freighter bound for Sheik Yarbouti.  Once onboard he was free to enjoy a lifetime on the open sea, never again to worry about personal responsibility or any kind of basic human comfort.

Over time, the slow encroachment of unions and maritime laws has made it tougher to escape your mistakes by sea.   Now the experience of traveling on a seagoing freighter is limited to those who thoughtfully joined the Seafarers International Union before “forgetting” their prophylactics and independent-minded tourists who have time and money to burn.  

And so, having covered some options for flying the friendly skies, in this installment of "So You Want to Go to England" we takes a look at this considerably less popular alternative to air travel.

So You Want to Go to England: Before You Go

Before booking your flight (or boat - more on both of these in the coming weeks) you'll want to know a little more about the people and what's important to them.  In this week's instalment of "So You Want to Go to England" we help you get to know the people of the British Isles and give you some talking points should you trap one of them in a conversation:

Go to Hell

Here in North America the popular vision of an Englishmen is a slender, foppish man with very bad teeth, dressed in tweed and seducing your wife with his ironed handkerchiefs.  While in some parts of England that may still be true – Knightsbridge, Colin Firth’s house – the Englishman you’re more likely to encounter on your grand adventure is the one approaching you at the bus stop of a night, wearing a hooded sweatshirt and demanding your wallet.  

Go West (of Bristol)

The lovely and talented Nicky Storr has opened her photo blog "West of Bristol" over at www.westofbristol.com.  Click over to check out her galleries, subscribe to future updates and leave a nice comment or two.  Nothing too nice, though - I hear her husband is the jealous type.


See you Wednesday for the low-down on Coronation Street, The Only Way is Essex and other touchstones of British culture in "So You Want to Go to England:  The People"

So You Want to Go to England: Getting Started

In my life I have met people who are natural travelers - the sort who can live for 6 months on whatever they pack into a rucksack the size of a grasshopper's scrotum - but I am not one of them.  While most people come back from a vacation talking about their amazing adventure, the kindness of the locals and how their journey expanded their horizons, making them better people on a spiritual level, I complain about intestinal parasites, sunburn and being mugged by whatever passes for highwaymen in the place I have just visited.  This travel guide is for people like me.

I also take pictures like this while giggling to myself

The Moon Under Water Pub & Brewery | 350B Bay Street | Victoria

Update February 26, 2013:  The Moon Under Water is still open but under new management.  I haven't been in a year and a half so can't say how this has affected the quality of the food and beer.

There is no end of talk here in North America about the “English Pub Experience”.  We imagine quaint little buildings in the country where rumpled men in patched jackets talk about the weather, the footie, and make off-color jokes about their wives.   Where a barman with rolled-up sleeves serves pints of nameless “lager”, “ale” and “bitter” from great brass taps and sets them down on the dark, polished bar.  If a disagreement should arise it can be settled with a game of darts or, if absolutely necessary, a gentlemanly bout of fisticuffs outside after which the winner helps the loser to his feet and then buys him a drink.

Come in, have a laugh, get stabbed.

When I was living in England with Nicky the television liked to remind us that “country pubs” were closing at about the rate of one a day.  In the pubs that remain you are more likely to find teenagers in short skirts screeching football songs than you are anyone who wants to talk about the weather.  The barman is still there but he’s pouring out pints of Budweiser, Carling and Strongbow Cider to ratfaced men with wispy moustaches and the social graces of fire ants.  If he can be bothered to put down his mobile phone long enough to work the taps, that is.  Disagreements, if they arise, are settled with a knife in your back, or if absolutely necessary, a savage kicking outside by a group of hoodied jackals, one of whom will use his mobile phone to record the event for posterity. 

It makes me wonder where The Moon Under Water fits into all this - advertised as an “English-style” pub it doesn’t look or feel particularly English and the menu is caught somewhere between the Old & New Worlds.  It’s neither Coronation Street nor Clockwork Orange but the food is hearty and filling and their session ales are the best English beers I’ve tasted in the three years since coming home.

Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em - The 2010 Highland Games

2010 Highland Games or the
scenes to "2012"?

It's the May long weekend, and that of course means half the city has gone camping.  For those of us left there's no shortage of things to do: there's the Steampunk Convention, the Highland games and, of course, my favourite pastime, wondering how, with half the population hiding in the bushes huddled over portable ranges from MEC, there is still a thirty minute wait to get into the Blue Fox.  Last year was my third in the city and our first attending the Highland Games at Topaz Park.  Under a pitiless sun we drank beer while Nicky and our friend Joline drooled over men that looked and sounded like Shrek.   This year we'd planned on checking out the Steampunk Convention but last weekend's walk on the Lochside had left us a bit tanned and thus no longer pale enough to fit in amongst fans of Victorian England, alternate-reality or no.

Cirque du Agincourt

Recently my wife Nicky informed me that she finds frustrating the Canadian habit of avoiding direct answers.  I’d never given it much thought, nor had I ever considered England, her home, to be a place full of assertive, Type-A personalities shooting from the hip.  As a nation aren’t they collectively known for being ineffective and evasive?  I don’t recall any scenes in “Notting Hill” where Hugh Grant stops stammering, bangs his fist down on a table and says “Dammit Julia, I am sick of being charmingly befuddled.  Get your kit off and bend over that sofa.”  Certainly in times past the British could be counted on to speak their mind; in his 1835 “Minute on Education”, Thomas Macauley expounded “[a] single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia”.  This was about the time that the empire had decided to “help” the Punjab by taking it over.  But in modern Britain?  Aside from Gordon Ramsay, who can be written off as an anomaly, and Simon Cowell, who is most certainly Satan, there was no evidence of this directness.  Then I recalled His Hughness’ 1995 arrest for the solicitation of a Los Angeles prostitute and I realized it had been there all the time!  Instead of making himself miserable by submerging his manly desires, getting a divorce or forcing his lovely wife Elizabeth Hurley to engage in lewd and no doubt un-Christian sexual acts, he found himself a hooker.  Rather than waffle about what to do, or worse, sulk, Hugh took the initiative and made sure that the sun wasn’t the last thing to go down on the British Empire.  That’s shooting from the hip – rule Britannia.