I’m supposed to be continuing my virtual journey through France and I was ready to go to Nice.

However the town strikes me as “too flash, too touristy” and I didn’t feel like going there although it’s on my virtual route.

Instead I made a note to find places in Nice where there aren’t too many tourists so I may need to head for the Alps again….on verra! 🤔

However, at the moment I’m enjoying reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day about a butler from Darlington House taking a drive to meet up with Miss Kenton. I’m only 60 pages in and already I’m in love with the writing and the book and the theme of this butler finding himself in-between worlds – the traditional and the modern.

The butler takes a drive through the Salisbury Plains and takes note of the majestic countryside and I thought to myself, “yes, that’s where I’ll go next”.

In fact, he has an epiphany looking over the views.

It was a fine feeling to be standing up there like that, with the sound of summer all around and a light breeze on one’s face. And I believe it was then, looking on that view, that I began for the first time to adopt a frame of mind appropriate for the journey before me.”

So I fired up YouTube and on the big screen I took a walking tour of the town that this butler was staying through his first day of his travels after all, if I can’t travel in person, books, videos and my own imagination can be used.

Argh. I hate this penny pinching. 🤣 (I guess I could go back to work…..but let’s not go there. I. Can’t. Even. Fathom. The. Thought. Of. Returning. To. The. Corporate. World. I’d. Rather. Stick. Knitting. Needles. In. My. Eyes. Or. Just. Go. Without. Stuff!” 🤣🤣

Anyway, Salisbury.

I’ve visited Stonehenge (for real) some years back but we didn’t get to visit its town Salisbury. I had no idea that the cathedral here has the tallest church spire in all of England and the town is where Golding wrote Lord of the Flies on an exercise book. It’s the town where you can see a preserved document of the Magna Carta and a place with 40 pubs too. In one of their pubs The Haunch of Venison, Eisenhower and Salisbury drew up the plans for the D-Day landings in World War 2 (but was it? I also saw that it could have been in Scotland in a remote hunting lodge?)

It looks like a great town to walk around and experience. I’d visit the Cathedral, Magna Carta House and drink a pint at one of its many pubs. I think it’s definitely a place to go back to in the future.

Andrew and I talk about spending our Christmas in the future in Europe when he retires. Our families have all dispersed preferring to use Christmas as a time to go on their own holidays elsewhere so sadly it means that at times, we may never see the entire family again together and enjoy a meal with them.

It’s not ideal but it is what it is. Maybe in some way, this is why I’m feeling that same sense of loss as the butler is in Remains of the Day.

Instead, we may use this time too to travel to places in Europe and the UK and do Christmas together elsewhere instead. If we were to travel for real again soon and see Salisbury, I’d stay at the Red Lion Hotel and maybe even spend a few days over Christmas there.