Lucky Breaks: Navigating Bristol, England

As a relatively new faculty member at Northern Kentucky University, I took the opportunity to teach a course during a five-week tour of England and Scotland. My students and those of my colleagues from Western Kentucky University met at the airport in Atlanta. As our flight had been delayed, we had only a few minutes to race to British Airways. We literally ran to catch our jet. Panting from the exertion, we sank into our seats. I was immediately impressed with the decorum of the staff, as well as the English accents!

After the longest flight in my life, the aircraft finally landed at Gatwick Airport. Eventually, our group rode a bus (a coach) to Bristol. There, we met the host families that would be housing us and providing many of our meals for the next several days. I was assigned to a gracious couple. He was an insurance agent; she was a nurse. They drove me to their home in the suburbs.

River Avon, Bristol, from Balloon

Courtesy Adrian Pingstone Through Wikimedia

 

That evening, while my inner clock struggled to catch up, the three of us visited the Llandoger Trow, a public house, or pub. Tradition says that Daniel Defoe met Alexander Selkirk, who inspired Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe. The pub inspired Robert Louis Stevenson when he described the Admiral Benbow Inn in Treasure Island. We sat in settles by a fireplace and talked at length.

I slept like a rock that night but wanted to sleep more when my host awakened me. He dropped me off at the city college, where I was to attend an early morning orientation before the first day of touring. He said, “We will see you at our home this evening.” Drowsy, I said my goodbyes, turned, and entered the college. Almost immediately, I realized that I had no last name, no address, and no telephone number for my host. I flew back to the sidewalk, but my host had driven off. When I found the head of our tour, I was astounded to learn that he had no list of our hosts!

Throughout the day, I tried to pay attention to the sites we visited, but my brain was churning. How was I to find my way to my host’s house that evening?

In the late afternoon, we returned to the college. I stood on the sidewalk and considered my options. I felt I had only one choice: namely, to board one of the buses that lined up every few minutes across the street. I stepped onto the first one, which soon pulled away from the curb. Like a hawk, I watched the buildings that passed by, and they looked familiar from my half-asleep morning trip in my host’s automobile. The bus circled a roundabout, and it looked familiar, too. On and on I rode. After several miles, we approached another roundabout, and I thought I remembered entering the same roundabout from a different direction. At the first stop beyond the circle, I disembarked.

I strode back to the roundabout, and, taking my life in my hands, I ran across the center to find my way down the street that I thought I remembered. I walked a few blocks and believed that I was remembering an intersection. I turned left and walked another block or two.

I stood for a long time while I looked at three houses, one of which I thought might belong to my host. Eventually, I persuaded myself that I recognized the car in front of one of them. Gathering my courage in the evening gloom, I rang the doorbell. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when my host appeared at the door.

“You’re just in time for dinner,” he smiled, welcoming me inside. Immediately, I wrote down his name, address, and phone number. He could hardly believe that I had found my way to his house, and he said he never would have imagined that the head of our tour would not have his contact information.

My first experience in another country was finding my way “home.”