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Published: September 15th 2008
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Day 3 - Wednesday 27th August
The wonderfully bizarre experience that is the Glebe hotel continued when one of the biggest men I’ve ever seen, think 6 foot 6 inch WWE wrestler, served breakfast and poured cups of tea - hysterical.
By now it’s just a ritual, breakfast, load bus, get on bus, count off. Yes we have our own numbers and have to call out in numerical order to ensure everyone is on board. This happens any time we get off and on the bus. Talk about an interactive experience.
Having down the count ….38 …tick ….let’s go!! We’re off to Stratford-Upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare. First stop is Anne Hathoways house. She’s the girl Bill married and they had a miracle birth 6 months later - you know how it works. The house was great, built in 1540 and lived in continuously by the family until 1911 (371 years of residence) it’s just boggles the mind when you compare it to Australian History.
We did have a funny incident there. One of our travellers, Geoff sat on the edge of a table and the top flipped up. The funny part wasn’t the look on
his face when he thought he’d broken it but when he found out it was 300 years old - GOLD!
After visiting the birthplace of Shakespeare (snore………) and Harvard House, this belonged to the guy who died at 31 and left all his money to a university that was then named after him - Harvard University (snore ………) we settled n for a 4 hour drive to York. The excitement of this drive was just too much for some and our Tour Director could hardley contain himself. When I come back in my next life it will be as tour director - it's a tough job but someone has to do it.
It was at this time we realised we needed beer on the bus and went in search of an esky. Forget the search for the Holy Grail try finding an esky in Stratford. They think esky is a word followed by MO living in Alaska. (
You want to put your beer on ice ...... wierd....)
Necessity being the mother of invention we decided to improvise. We begged, borrowed and stole (literally) to get the makings (cardboard boxes, gaffa tape and plastic bags) for the
esky. It worked a treat and serviced us well on the bus providing icy cold beers and wine to the thirsty hoards.
We arrived in York to be met by our walking guide Wendy, a little old white haired lady who we were soon to discover has a touch of the madness upon her - I love it!!
With Wendy as our leader we were off to check out York. Wendy led us straight across the road against the lights nearly getting half the tour group wiped out by the speeding traffic - we were off to a great start. Wendy took us to the town gates where she stood in the middle of the street pointing up at the statues on the gates and screaming regarding their history at us.
I’d now gone from Fawlty Towers to a full blown Monty Python sketch - I’m loving it. (
Bring out your dead, Bring out your dead)
The rest of the tour did not disappoint as Wendy proceeded to scream and point at any opportunity oblivious to, or maybe because of, the looks of the people in the street. As she walked she would step over
drunks lying in the street as though they were simple ornaments to our experience and proceeed on regardless in her manic, yet dignified, manner. If you ever go to York I recommend finding Wendy the tour guide and experiencing the madness first hand. Well worth it
Then again maybe the whole place is mad. Whilst being shown a wall statue of a devil a small child chose that moment to let out a loud blood curdling scream next to Buddy. I thought Buddy was going to have a cardiac arrest. It scared the living daylights out of him. Honestly, I thought his head was going to explode. It was all he could do to stop from beating the living daylights out of the kid. It took me 15 minutes walking through York to stop crying with laughter, I’m crying laughing now as I recall this. Jeez that was funny.
On the tour we were taken to York Minster - I don’t know what minster means, I can only assume it’s "BIG CHURCH" because that’s what it was. This place is big. It took 250 years to build - imaging trying to get that project off the ground these
days - buckley’s. The site was once a Roman Palace and Emperor Constantine was there in 306 ad - he’s the bloke that converted to Christianity and imposed it on everyone else. Onya Constantine. Personally I'm a fan of old school paganism. What was wrong with a good old ritual sacrafice followed by an orgy I ask? It keeps down the goat population and deals with all those rejection issues at the same time. Better than all that clean living and sexual repression. I can see the conversations now
"The people are sexually repressed sire, It's driving them mad, what shall we do?" - "Let's build a church... a big church .... one that will take 250 years to complete ... that will keep their mind off it." My option sounds like more fun.
From there we went to the Shambles - butchers district - to step over drunks and listen to Wendy scream some more about Dick Turpin - the highwayman being hung between races on race day. That’s what they used to do back then for inbetween race entertainment, hang people. I wonder if you could have a punt on that also, you know, number of
attempts, wiggles, time to die, that sort of stuff. Brings a new meaning to winning by a long neck. Boom tish … I’m here all week, don’t forget to tip your waitress.
After checking into our hotel we all made our own way to dinner and refreshments at various spots around the city. Upon our return it was a joy to find the bar at the hotel is open 24 hours and the late night music channel shows music clips that are basically soft porn. Let’s just say some of our older members are now converts to the latest dance music and late night video clips - I see a rush to get Foxtel on when they get back home.
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