| [ email | About W.H.Scholten | Travelling » Trip to London/Pulborough/Oxford, UK, Mar. 2019 | ] |
Finally in progress. Currently writing down my experiences on 2024-2-24.
The purpose of this trip was to visit a manufacturer in Bury, a small settlement near Pulborough, for whom I had done some work, and then decide what to do else. I would also go to Oxford and explored a bit more in London. I met there also a friend whom I met originally in Ukraine but who later went to go live in Russia...
I stayed in a different hostel than the previous trip, one that my friend didn't like. Hmm, to me it all doesn't matter much.
What already stood out the previous year in London was that there are notices on the street to watch to the right when you want to cross the street. This was very useful as was obvious from just looking the wrong direction, seeing the notice on the road surface, then seeing traffic from the right that I might have overlooked or noticed too late, which is the result of coming from a right hand drive country, so when seeing these notices on the road I start glancing left to cross the road as teh main direction to watch, then right for the 2nd part of the road. Other interesting points are that traffic lights are set very badly w.r.t. timing in London. They are so long on red that pedestrians mostly ignore them and cross whenever they feel like it.
There are some channels on youtube about Dutch infrastructure explaining that that infrastructure but also the programming for timing of traffic lights makes cycling but also riding in cars better, clearer, safer. In London they need to look at not just adding bike lanes but changing traffic lights!
What I further found interesting were the stores selling candy. From videos on youtube these seem to be a sort of scam, letting you pay a high price for ordinary stuff, such as with not displaying prices. I don't recall exactly how it was in the ones I had a brief look, in any case it doesn't matter much to me, as I don't buy when I don't see prices and I didn't see anything I fancied anyway. What I did get in supermarkets were a few things such as Kellog's oatmeal in ready to go packets. These were available in NL but since I tried them a few times the ones I liked were gone, esp. the flavour of 'golden syrup', but I liked the ones with berries, apple/cinnamon etc. too.
I also got some soft drinks that I liked the previous time, orange tange, or what was the name? Problem is that most soft drinks were switched to having artificial sweeteners as the previous year a sugar tax was introduced. That was moronic! People won't lose weight from less sugar in drinks, they need to eat less and move more. In that orange drink it was acceptable but generally I hate these for the godawful aftertaste.
A lot of older buildings in London are very colourful, which reminds me of various old style buildings in Ukraine that are very colourful (pre-soviet, often painted in pastel yellow, green, blue). There are also shops with flowers and other decorations that I've not seen in NL.
On a walk with my friend we saw a 'Dutch pancake house'. Oh, interesting, are the owners Dutch, do they speak Dutch I wondered? We went in to ask. The person I asked didn't know about the owners (he may have said that they are not Dutch, not sure) and nobody there spoke Dutch. Hmm. What is Dutch about it?
On this trip that I noticed again as on the previous trip that women were often part of a group that were working on roads or roadside maintenance (curbs, sidewalks), whereas in NL I've only seen men do this...
More to come, in progress as of 2024-2-24.
I went by train and bought a ticket to Pulborough for after the morning rush, but when exactly was that? I wanted to go on the train, but then it was stated by someone working there that this was too early so I waited half an hour or so (if I recall correctly).
On the train trip I saw a sign at one of the train stations called 'Christ's hospital", below that: "A school like no other". I wondered about that. It's a school but also a train station named after it but the name indicates a hospital, strange. Curiously I had an encounter on the way back that was very interesting, related to this.
Getting off at the train station of Pulborough, someone from the company that I was going to visit (which makes bicycle lighting among other things), picked me up and drove me to Bury, where the company has their premises in farm land.
On the way there I asked what riding in the UK as a cyclist is like, whether riding is considered problematic by cyclists as I had read in many comments that cyclists are seen as a nuisance by motorists. He stated that this may be the case for riding side by side, which doesn't work on the rather narrow roads in the UK (which is worse than in NL), but otherwise he felt there was no problem and a lot of such stories are not really about reality.
I had seen a bit of the roads in the UK in videos on youtube, and they often seemed very narrow along with windy which is a bad combination for being able to see others and being seen. This is problematic for motorists who need to pass oncoming traffic, which means having to slow down a lot or even stop for a bit on the side of the road. There are situations like this in the Netherlands but rarely, on some roads through farm land where at some spots there are wider sections so that overtaking can happen there.
After a while we went to have lunch at a cafe I think it is called. I had tea and a burger with blue cheese which was excellent.
Returning to London by train again I was thinking about some castle to visit that was mentioned as being interesting place to visit. Well, it was closed at that time and would only be open in a few weeks or so, and I didn't plan to stay that long. Perhaps another time.
At the train station "Christ's hospital" I saw some people on the platform who were all very smartly dressed. Perhaps lawyers? I got to know more as they went to sit with me. There were 2 men and 1 woman, or girl. I asked if this was normal for them to wear, for work perhaps, as lawyers? One made a joke that yes that was normal :) The woman looked cool in her attire. So what was it? Well, it turned out they were the headmaster (I think he was the one originally from South Africa), a guy who was responsible for finances and developments at the school, and the head girl from this school. I had been curious about this school when I saw the train station name with the subtitle "a school like no other"! What a coincidence! They told me about the history of the school, such as that it was moved from London long ago, said they were dressed for a fundraiser to which they were going where together with a sponsor they wanted to collect money for the school, which gives children that come from very poor environments a nearly free education. The headmaster told me about being from South Africa, but who had been living in the UK for a long time, and that when people asked when he was going back home, he said "today" (as of course his home is since a long time in the UK) :). What was interesting, and what I liked in some sense was their way of talking which sounded very neat, though the accent and pronunciation are obviously artificial.
More to come on this encounter, in progress as of 2024-2-24.
I took the train to Oxford and it was interesting that the first part was electric, the 2nd part the train switched to diesel power and went slower... I suppose that area didn't have overhead power lines for the trains? Weird. In NL I don't recall seeing/hearing any diesel trains any more for many years.
I went to go see if there was some map but the place indicated as being some sort of tourist information centre didn't offer any tourist advice any more, I think they transferred responsibility to commercial places.
At the train station there were buses going around for tours of the city but I wasn't interested in that. Walking is the best way to see everything.
So I started walking and looked on my map to see which route to take to see as much as possible in one go without walking any road twice if possible. A woman asked me if I needed help and I stated that I was simply looking at the map deciding where to walk :) I came to the university, which I read somewhere was used for filming Harry potter movies, that could be, I never watched any of these films so I don't know. There was a paid entry but as I only had a little bit of cash (10 gbp or so) I didn't go in. [ I pay almost everything with my credit card as converting money one way (from pounds to euros?) is very expensive, you lose so much that paying by credit card is just less hassle and cheaper. I will get back to this point later in Oxford. ] Not a problem, perhaps I should have done it but there was enough to do an see for 1 day so I think it's ok, this leaves something to see for another time if I return to the UK :) I walked around and saw for example the entry to an athletics track where there was a sign at the road stating that this was the track where Roger Bannister was the first to break 4 minutes running a mile.
There was something curious: Despite that in the UK driving is on the left, at that track the entry inside was with an arrow on the right hand side, the exit the other side so right hand. I presume this is mainly for cycling/walking. I had been wondering about whether in this left hand drive country, it also means that people walk on the left hand side rather than the right hand side? In the Netherlands people walk on the right hand side of the pavement, and riding bicycle and driving a car is also done on the right hand side of cycle paths and roads. In the UK I had seen people mostly walk on the right hand side, however, a lot of that observation was from London, where there are obviously a lot of tourists and in most countries people drive, and presumably then also walk on the right hand side. So it could be mostly tourists.
I walked quite a bit all across the city. I found some interesting parks and a scene that made me realise the issues here are the same as in many places in western Europe: People who don't fit in. Some guy was shouting to another guy on a bicycle, and it wasn't in English, Arabic I think. I felt that was absolutely disgraceful. If you live in a country, these men were obviously not tourists, you should talk in the local language.
The second thing was I came across a fairly young guy begging for money. I said that I don't have money. He said something like "Come on, you have a camera, are a tourist you have money". Well, actually I had very little in cash, and I told him that I use a credit card to pay for anything. I wasn't going to give him anything in any case, that guy should get a job. Further if I give to charity then I would do that in Ukraine where there are actually poor people, not in western Europe.
Then there was a guy walking in women's clothes or something, and I thought: "Aha, so this is what gender confused looks like".
I saw this kind of idiocy in 2023 in NL as well in the university city of Leiden where I once studied. I went there to drop off my old hiking shoes at a travel shop to get the soles replaced. Before going in I saw a guy walking in women's clothes or partial women's clothes, and later again when leaving the shop, who looked similarly gender confused.
An issue in the UK for cyclists and motorists are bad roads, narrow roads and traffic lights which are not optimally set at all.
More to come, in progress as of 2024-2-24.
Last modified: 2024-2-24