I’m sitting in our upstairs room by the printer, slowly and methodically printing pages off for my upcoming trip, now one day and one sleep away. Pages of walking directions in an effort to ensure my first day there, an early morning arrival, is as prepared as possible. These walking directions are the product of weeks and weeks of creative planning, piecing together a concoction of priority sites and off-the-beaten path detours based on my shelves of old and newly aquired travelogues, travel books, and guidebooks.
For anyone interested, here are a few of my favorites (also including Rick Steeve’s great travel guide on “England”)
Full disclosure, this is my favorite part of travelling. A quiet mantra I came up with for myself and that I often repeat: being there is the aim, wherever “there” happens to be, but the process of bringing the trip to life is what sustains the journey. In my case, “there” is England, beginning with my eventual arrival in London.
Truth be told, I could describe any trip I take in the same manner. That sense of invigoration and excitment. The anticipation. The act of imagining these places and experiences I am about to encounter first hand. I’ll never outgrow that needed sense of wonder. This trip though is slightly different. Not simply because the trip is marking my official road to turning 50, but because this particular trip has been one I have been planning for a long time now.
With a caveat. Had you asked me a number of years ago, this particular trip commemorating my 50th would have, without a doubt, taken a different shape and a slightly different path. That path being through Ireland, not England. Ireland has been on my life list ever since becoming aware of my family heritage. It was my dad’s side that once found it’s way across those lands to Ontario, Canada, where our more immediate lineage became fairly well documented. It wasn’t all that long ago that those lines were eventually able to be connected across those waters to our family back in Ireland, via pictures that look like they could have been copied straight from our own extended family photo frames.
A slight hesitation, a twinge of concern, ended up redirecting my focus. I knew that Ireland was the kind of place that required an investment in getting a car and heading out into the countryside. I worried about how well my celiac diagnosis was going to cope. This small concern nudged me ever so gently towards the second option topping my life list: England.
Why England? Yes, the reasons could be endless. Why not England!!?? However, for me my particular vested interest was England’s literary past, although I didn’t know just how vested my interest was and would be until I started to dig in to the possiblity. Here, suddenly, I found myself face to face with my childhood, being as I was a veracious reader from a very young age. These were the authors and stories that shaped me as a young kid, forming my worldview, asking the same questions I was asking, teaching me about the power of the imagination and igniting a desire for seeking truth.
Things ran deeper still. For all the attention that had been payed to my Irish roots, it turns out my mom’s side runs straight through England. Here both sides of my family line would eventually meet, largely by way of a shared connection to John Wesley. The Pentecostal roots that would branch off from Methodism and find its way to Canada were seeded in this very soil.
As i said, my vested interest loomed much larger than I initially knew. Someday, as I would come to imagine standing on those high, rocky shores of the Cornish coast, looking out over the waters directly towards Ireland, I would love to officially connect those lines myself. My connection to Ireland grew from my adult years and the stories I have encountered through my interest in history and the celctic past. But it felt fitting to begin here in England, with my childhood, a journey that would come to take on a timely resonance these last few years in my writings in this space as well, before these plans ever became a reality. I had been contemplating for quite some time what it means to understand my life story, spending time on a project in efforts to do just that. Even earlier this year, I was struck by a few voices speaking to this sort of pilgrimage, the idea of returning to your childhood stories, an act one such author called “growing up into our childhood.” And here, then, was the opportunity to put my feet on the literal “literary” ground.
To stand at their gravesides.
To traverse the grounds that shaped their childhood and gave inspiration to their stories.
Even to weave it into a story all its own based on the path I travel.
It all begins in London. As my printer spits out another page, I see the bold lettering on the bottom: Charles Dickens Museum. A route that begins with the traditional English Breakfast of course (shout out to Bill’s), weaves past the infamous Baker Street residence of a certain prominant sleuth, and through the cobblestone streets Dicken’s once would have traversed. From Chancery Lane (Bleak House) to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese to The Old Curiousity Shop and Covent Gardens.
But I am not there yet. More pages continue to churn out. I see walking maps to the Musuem of Methodism, the route to Roald Dahl’s home town, directions to A.A. Milne’s countryside abode and the old Pooh Sticks Bridge that inspired his creation. There’s pages for Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde, Agatha Christie, the legend of King Arthur, Richard Adams and Watership Down, the Bronte sisters and the Yorkshire connections to Robin Hood. There’s Whitby and the famed steps of Bram Stoker. There’s H.G. Wells in the small town of Woking, the richly inspired Cotswolds (including Shakespeare), and of course Oxford for Susan Cooper, Tolkien, Lewis, and the Inklings.
As the voices in my numerous online travel groups would say: that’s a bit much for just over a week. Maybe, but I’m game. You only turn 50 once. Or, you know, the old adage “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” Even if plans go a bit awry (and they will, and they did), this is the process. It’s what will sustain the journey, and, God willing, continue to give inspiration for a return (which will, I promise, include Wales).
Finally, the last of my many pages has printed. I pick up my handful of sheets, very much aware of the questionable looks I am getting from that thing called the digital age. This to me feels right. Phone down, the challenge of piecing together directions page in hand, likely getting lost, finding my way again (hopefully). In any case, it’s time for bed. One more sleep. My bag is packed. Or at least it will be when I make the wise decision to sneak back down and remove one more book.
Speaking of books. Knowing myself in this moment, that stack of books waiting for me beside my bedside is going to be the more likely company for the time being.
The Stories of my Life 