Our holiday at Upton on Severn and family visit May 2020

 Our trip to England after Covid  May 2022

  On Thursday 28th  we flew EL AL to Heathrow.  It was very easy as we only took 2 small suitcases and hand luggage so did not have to wait at the counter we walked straight through to security.  An organized taxi took us to Upton on Severn in Worcestershire where we stayed at the White Lion, a Pub and Inn started in Tudor day 1510 and Tudor style with hand hewn beams in the walls and ceiling.  

Our room was an outside room facing the beer garden, unfortunately this is where the smokers were . We were lucky to get this as it was not available when Astrid booked initially at another B and B further away.  Astrid happened to find this cheaper with a full English breakfast. It must have just become available when she looked on Booking.Com.

We got our festival tickets which were kept for us from 2 years ago.  There was a  display of concertina and accordions both as collectors items and for folk musicians mostly of Italian descent.

On the way there our taxi driver was Sri Lanken and he had arrived 20 years ago as a refugee from the civil war which lasted from 1983 to 2009. He is Hindu and  said England has become a mother to him as it adopted him and gave him a home. It strikes him that the wave of economic migrants do not give a loyalty like real refugees, and children of Moslems  immigrants are the ones who become terrorists as they don't know what their parents left behind.

As a taxi in the London East end he gave rides to children who are used as drug mules as the police do not arrest them. However when black criminals are arrested they say the police are racist.

On the way there were extensive yellow fields that I  thought were daffidols but we found out are rape seeds grown for their cooking oil. Fantastic colour sight.

At the Tudor house museum which is run only by volunteer pensioners,there is a collection of hand tools for carpenters, shoemakers, old doctors instruments as well as an extensive collection of Delft crockery.

The most interesting thing here was a private collection lent to them of 100 or more  Barbi dolls starting from the Battle of Hasting 1066 till the present time, showing womens fashion. The older dresses were what the aristocrats and royalty wore. The more recent was everyday women's fashion.This was made as a hobby during the Covid lockdown and shows a lot of research.

There were  concerts put on in halls of the churches, community centres and some of the bigger pubs by professionals.  They were singing and playing everywhere, with sing-alongs and where they could find an appreciative audience. Pleased to be out with company after 2 long Coved years. The window of our room faced onto the pub's beer garden. So a whole afternoon you had impromptu singers and musicians with everyone taking part.  Astrid remarked that women who might have dyed or streaked their hair before Corona had got used to the gray and we only saw grey haired women. They average age of both participants and some singer was older than us.

These small towna attract retired people as homes are cheap and they live they idea of living ine the rural quiet but then they discover that services like public transport, doctors etc are hardly available.

This town on the Severn River was an important barge port and has an important bridge crossing the river. On the other side of the river is Wales. There were 100 ton barges  carrying building gravel along the river that ends up in Bristol bay. 

Upton  supported Cromwell against Charles I, and Admiral William Tenant who was portrayed by Kenneth Branagh in the  Dunkirk movie evacuating the troops in June 1940 came from here.

There was a parade of Morris dancing which I learned started in pagan time like dancing around the Maypole, but more recently it comes from the Industrial revolution when women from the cotton mills marched protests in the streets. They did it as a dance and working class women wore clogs at the time so it comes out as tap dancing. Other groups had men in them but it was during the war years that it was left to  the women to keep up the tradition. From each town or city came different dances and outfits.

There was every type of English music played from choirs , capella groups or individuals. On Sunday there was a choir group that sang old  church hymns, churches appear to have taken on this cultural role rather than a place of worship. Besides concertinas and accordions you had a lot of guitars and violins,hornets, recorders, flutes and penny whistles.

I went on an organised walk of 4 miles with a group of about 25 pensioners and we walked along the river through fields and an old apple orchard. One of the couples brought along their guitar and violin and sang songs while we rested every half hour. This gave an opportunity to meet the people. At one place we stopped, 6 pairs of us were instructed how to  dance a square dance similar to what you see in Jane Austan movies while the musicians played.

When we asked the owner of the White Lion how to get a taxi he had to go to Worster so gave us a ride there. I took a walk around Worester near the station that had obviously been an old neighbourhood and had been turned into a shopping mall. There I crossed the canal that goes to Birmingham.

The rest of the holiday we visited Astrid aunt Brenda in Oxford who is not well. Evan picked us up from the Oxford station, he took us to our B and B to drop off our suitcases and then to see Brenda.  Evan was in Oxford campaigning for the Lib Dems so we were lucky to see a lot of him. His party did well in the municipal elections.

It was in Oxford that we had a chance to do some shopping, and take a walk around the city centre. There are still some shortages in England from the Covid period and it was hard to find mature Cheddar cheese.In London we visited Minne Fry and were able to see her daughter Tessa. Interesting that Lionel Fry's nephew James Fry is now the  Mayor of Oxford and Evan knows him.Coming back to Israel we put our suitcases into the plane's hold as they were now bigger and heavier from our shopping. 

We collected them quite quickly and passport control for Israeli citizens is easy. You stand in front of a camera with your passport photo face down on the glass and it then prints for you a ticket. This ticket you put into the turnstyle while you stand in front of a camera and it lets you through.

But then we had to take Covid tests and far too many planes had arrived at once and the hall was dangerously  crowded. and it took one and a half hours to get through.  Then at the taxi rank there was a long line.

Our taxi home was a Russian speaker who came from Buchara, Uzbekistan. He predicts that after Putin falls Russia will fragment, worse than it did when the Soviet Union collapsed.