​      Last Sunday, several hours away from unexpectedly booking a one-way ticket to London, was one of those days when I was inexplicably in a Scottish mood.  That usually consists of going through my drawers in search of the tartan wool scarf I purchased during my first trip to Edinburgh and listening to the Scottish Bagpipes Highland Pipes on Spotify on my way to work, thinking, “Scotland is just so great, why are bagpipes not ubiquitous?” Actually, that morning I was in the mood for American fall.  After finding some imported canned pumpkin and baking pumpkin baked oatmeal, my flat smelled very much like American fall and I was thinking, “American fall is just so great, why do European countries not care about pumpkins and fall as much as we do in America?”  And then, fifteen minutes later, I was in a Scottish mood.  So I decided to fly out of Scotland and spend the latter part of my week venturing through the north of England and Scotland.  

            After Dent, I went up to Carlisle for the sole reason of briefly seeing Hadrian’s Wall.  I knew I wouldn’t be able to do a proper hike, but I dressed the part anyway, complete with my travel backpack (simply because I nowhere to store my luggage in Carlisle.)  I hiked about twenty minutes from the city center, along the river Eden, until I was just a bridge crossing away from the wall.  Except the bridge was out and the closest crossing was a twelve mile-hike away, which I didn’t have time for since I needed to catch the train to Glasgow.  Foiled! (Guess who is starting fencing next week!?)
            I still went to the Tullie House Museum, which discusses Roman history in the region and had artifacts from Hadrian’s Wall so it wasn’t a wasted stopover.  Even better, there was a “How to Train Your Dragon” theme going on throughout the exhibit!  Like London, Carlisle must have known I was coming.  The lady working was very helpful and tried to figure out a city bus route that I could take to at least see the wall, which didn’t end up working out, but I appreciated her effort.

​             The annual Carlisle Pageant (what Americans would call a festival or carnival) was on and my visit coincided with the International Market so I spent the rest of my visit exploring that.  The most puzzling thing started to happen: every single time I said something, people started looking at me as if I was speaking Icelandic instead of English.  I do sometimes accidentally speak the wrong language, so I took a moment to make sure I wasn’t actually speaking Icelandic.  I wasn’t, but everyone still just looked at me blankly.  I stopped at a café to charge my phone and it took three workers and me actually showing them my phone charger for them to understand that I was asking if there was a wall plug.  They said, “Sorry, we can’t understand your accent.”  I was so amused by that, since I’ve never really had that happen before.
            This accent confusion continued in Glasgow.  I had been warned that Glasgow accents were hard to understand, but I usually consider myself good at understanding other accents.  Most of the time, I could understand them, but there were a few times when neither one of us could understand the other, despite us both being native English-speakers speaking English!  Until I reached the Edinburgh airport when I was about to fly back to Iceland, I did not encounter another American, for 60 hours in an English-speaking country!  I was on a train in Glasgow, talking with the elderly woman across the seat from me.  She said, “Are you really American!?”  She seemed very surprised.  I guess in some parts of Scotland, American sightings are rarer than Loch Ness Monster sightings.  Who would have thought!?

​           A couple of times in both London and Glasgow people asked where I was from and I said, “Reykjavik” and they said, “Oh, you’re Icelandic?  With your accent, I would have thought you were…Australian.” I have been mistaken for everything from Canadian to French to Czech, but never before Australian and then it happened twice in a couple of days!  When in Dent, heard on the radio something about “pretending to be Icelandic,” and I remarked to my friend that just a day prior I too pretended to be Icelandic.  Someone said, “Oh, but you speak English.” I said, “Yes, Icelanders have to learn English in schools.” Then he asked me how to say “thank you” in Icelandic, I said, “Takk fyrir.” And then he asked me to just say something else in Icelandic so I said, “Eg tala ekki islensku,” which if he understood, would mean that I am not actually Icelandic at all!
            Speaking of Icelandic, I was on the bus in Reykjavik recently when a few German-speaking tourists asked me if I spoke English.  I thought it was funny since I ONLY speak English (fluently at least).  They asked all these follow-up questions about the culture festival that was going on and I don’t think they ever suspected that I wasn’t actually Icelandic. 

       ​I might like Glasgow better than Edinburgh.  Glasgow has all the same offerings that make Edinburgh so incredible: the history, the stone buildings, and the distinctly Scottish culture, but with far less tourists.  I visited the Glasgow Botanic Gardens and aside from that, mostly just explored the area, watched seven consecutive episodes of Reign (when in Scotland!), and got engaged to the attractive Scot working at my hotel reception (okay kidding, but he was the only Glasgow resident who actually understood my accent!)
      I left Glasgow Sunday morning, taking an Uber to the bus station, a bus from Glasgow to Edinburgh, a flight in to Reykjavik, a bus to the Reykjavik bus terminal, and then a friend took me back to my flat, with a full three hours to spare before I started work for the day! 

On Sunday night, I unexpectedly discovered that I had an entire week off of work so I did what any reasonable person would do and promptly booked a one-way flight to London with vague ideas of travelling elsewhere in the UK until I needed to come back to Reykjavik.  One of my ideas was to track down an inn that I had discovered from a postcard, stating that one of my far-off ancestors was the innkeeper in the 1800s.  So I decided to track down that inn, having no idea what sort of adventure I was in for!

But before venturing north, I had a couple of days to explore more of London.  Monday afternoon, I walked around the familiar streets of London, sleep-deprived from pulling an all-nighter, still not entirely sure if I was really back in London or if I was just dreaming.  Thirty-six hours earlier, I had no idea that I’d be in London that day!  However, those sorts of things happen when you have been suffering from British withdrawals and have no idea what to do with yourself now that the Olympics are over.  Actually, London seemed to know I was coming before I did and got its priorities in line for my visit.
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For example, my least favourite juice store in all of London closed and instead an ice cream shop serving matcha soft serve opened up in its place!  The Brits seemed to care about the Olympics just as much as I did, resulting in me reading the free evening papers three days in a row for the first time ever. The first night, one of the workers staffed outside tube stations to distribute the papers offered me one, I declined as I always do, then I saw that the double Olympic champion in gymnastics, Max Whitlock was on the cover, and changed my mind about not wanting to read the paper!

I was hoping to visit London before the 2 October end of the “Fashioning a Reign” exhibition at Buckingham Palace, which featured the Queen’s clothing from the ninety years of her life, including her wedding and coronation dresses!  I had visited Buckingham Palace before, but it was lovely to see the other rooms again as well.  One of my favourite parts of the exhibit were the medals displayed for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games, one in each colour!

After seeing some friends and re-visiting a few of my favourite London places, I set off for a crazy adventure to Dent, chasing down the land of my ancestors.  I tracked down the Sun Inn Dent from the postcard and called them, making a booking for two nights and booking a Virgin East Coast train ticket from London to Dent, changing at Leeds.  That was about the extent of my preparation. 
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The train travel woes continued, as the train out of London was delayed due to signal failure, so we knew we were going to miss our train connection in Leeds, which was the last train to Dent of the evening. The on-train worker told us not to worry, that it was her obligation to get us to our destination.  (Trenitalia, take note!!!!  You are not supposed to leave your passengers stranded!!!!) Then, our train was terminated three stations early, so we had to get off and get back on a different train to get to Leeds.  At this point, they also told us how to go online to get a FULL refund for the one hour delay.  (This is what a train company ought to do.  I’m still talking to you, Trenitalia.)  We got on a different train and I tried to plug in my phone, only to discover my charger was broken.  (This time it was thankfully not catching fire, shutting off all the electricity in the flat, and ruining my phone broken, but broken enough that my phone would not charge.)  Then, the attractive British redhead sitting across from me kindly offered his charger, at which point I stopped caring at all about train delays and began plotting how soon was too soon to propose marriage.  (Trenitalia, take note: providing passengers with an attractive British redhead with a phone charger will calm your customers’ rage in the event of a train delay).  Unfortunately, a half hour was not enough time to get engaged, but I am confident that if we’d had another few hours on the train, the end result might have been different.  (Actually, I am confident he only offered his charger so he could stop hearing my annoying American accent complain about my charger not working! haha) 

Missing the last train to Dent actually worked out really, really in our favour!  It turns out that the train station in Dent is five miles from the inn and there are virtually zero cabs in Dent.  We would have been in a bad way had we ended up at the train station!  Luckily, Virgin Trains provided us with a taxi to take us the whole way from Leeds to Dent, a journey of over two hours!  It was one of the most beautiful drives in my life!  Leeds itself looks like a lovely city that I need to explore sometime. 

We drove through little medieval towns like Skipton around sunset and it was absolutely gorgeous!  We drove past farms and the rolling green hills of the countryside.  When we got closer to Dent, the road became a tiny narrow path, with stonewalls on the side and a cliff to the right (no guardrails!)  It was somewhat reminiscent of Hoosier or Independence Pass in Colorado! We actually had to stop the taxi for sheep to cross the road!  There were a few gates where the taxi driver had to stop and open them to drive though and then get back out and close them so sheep couldn’t escape.  The little lights from the town started to light up the valley in the distance, but other than that it was an isolated, windy, and steep drive.  When the elderly gentleman who lived at the inn heard that we arrived from Dent on that road, he exclaimed, “You went that bloody way!?  Many people have died going that way.  It is quite dangerous in the winter.”  But, as a Coloradan, I didn’t think it was supremely terrible and instead enjoyed the magical scenery. 
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For those of you who have driven through Kansas, this is like the English equivalent of one of those teeny tiny farm towns (comparative in size, but much more charming and British).  As soon as we rounded the corner for the inn, I recognized it immediately!  

I was surprised that we were the only two people on our train from London trying to get to Dent until I saw how tiny the town was!  The town claims 785 residents, but you can walk from one end to the other in less than five minutes! I can’t thank Virgin Trains enough for providing us with a two-hour taxi so we wouldn’t be stranded.  That’s really superior customer service (unlike you, Trenitalia!)

The inn was charming and just wonderful.  It has been there for over three centuries and has always functioned as a pub and inn.  There are many historical photos and artifacts on the wall and the pub/restaurant part of the inn is frequented by locals.  We arrived after they had stopped serving food for the night, but they turned the grills back on to make us veggie burgers when they heard we hadn’t had time for dinner. 

The next day, we visited St. Andrew’s 12th century Norman-style church, the Dent Heritage Center, and Sofia’s knit store.  And that was exactly everything there was to do in Dent and we were finished by 1 PM!  Most people who visit Dent do so on a hillwalking holiday, stopping at little towns for the night and carrying on the next day.  One of these days, I really need to embark on a hillwalking holiday of my own!  That would be a dream trip!  ​

​There was a bit of struggle trying to find a way to the train station, as the lone taxi company serving Dent was somehow fully booked for the weekend!  Luckily, the elderly man who lived at the inn was able to drive my friend to the train station in the evening and repeat the journey for me the following morning!  At 1150 feet above sea level, Dent is the highest train station in all of England.  The Coloradan in me was not impressed with the elevation, since the lowest point in Colorado is 3,000 feet, Colorado Springs is 6,000 feet, and we have dozens of peaks above 14,000 feet, but I was definitely impressed with the historic charm on the station and the gorgeous view.  

​So who wants to go on a hillwalking holiday with me?