My decision to spend a few days in England before returning
home to the U .S. from Spain was mostly to see a couple friends from my long
Dragoman overland trips in the previous two years. Alistair was on my Silk Road trip from the
U.K. to China for most of the distance in 2006, so we got to know each other
quite well over nearly three and a half months. Alistair works for some kind of
a management consultancy but has a Ph.D. in Physics, so what he actually does
for work is probably well beyond what my reasonably well-educated is likely to
be able to understand.

Alistair lives in a small village in Surrey, one of the
so-called “home counties” that surround London and probably the poshest one of
all. From London’s Victoria Station I took the train to Guildford, the county’s
biggest town. The weekend was apparently Gay Pride in Brighton, the beach
resort on the England’s south coast, because the train station scene was like
something out of a gay Mardi Gras with so queens on the move.

Guildford was quiet and tidy, though. A spent a night with
Alistair and his wife and daughter, less than two years old still because his
wife was pregnant with her while Alistair was on the Silk Road in 2006. If I
recall correctly, it was during the early weeks on the road that he found out
he was going to be a daddy. A spent a night with them in their rather small
house and couldn’t help but think, “Wow, housing in England must be expensive
if this is the kind of place a rich consultant with a Ph .D. in physics lives!”
We went for a short drive to a few viewpoints in the pretty South Downs, but
the reality is the views in England just aren’t that grandiose. It’s quite hard
to have great vistas when there’s relatively little relief to the topography.

As it clouded over and then got showery, Alistair took me
into Guildford to show me around. I guess it’s a pretty typical small English
city, something many of my English friends tell me is synonymous with boring.
The High Street (pedestrian shopping street that we in America would call Main
Street) is cute enough, but nowadays in England like America most of the stores
and even many of the pubs are part of chains. Picturesque Guildford Castle,
built shortly after the Norman Conquest in 1066, is the city’s main site.
Actually, it’s probably Guildford’s only significant attraction.