Off to Our Second Home

No, we didn't strike it rich and buy a vacation home. I'm referring to the UK where we've spent so much time in the last few years. We took Virgin Atlantic out of SeaTac as we always do, but this year VA has changed the time of the flight to a late afternoon departure. This meant that we could make our way to the airport in leisurely fashion, taking the Link light rail. Good thing we weren't in a hurry because the trip from Shoreline to SeaTac takes almost 90 minutes. We arrived in plenty of time and relaxed in the Delta Lounge beforehand. It's nice to have a fairly quiet place to relax before the flight but Delta could really learn a thing or two about hospitality from Virgin Airlines. The VA lounge at Heathrow is so much more comfortable and welcoming and there's actually table service, not a limited buffet line. No matter, we killed the requisite time and made our way to the International Terminal in plenty of time for boarding.

VA has switched from the Boeing plane we usually fly to an Airbus A330 which I found far more comfortable. The video screen is slightly smaller and the Upper Class bathroom is half the size of the Boeing, but each seat has its own privacy screen and the seat reclines to a bed at the touch of a button. I have a dairy allergy so I ordered a vegan meal which turned out to be very tasty, if quite salty. We arrived at Heathrow the next morning, picked up our bags and breezed through passport control and customs. We hopped on the Elizabeth line, made a switch at Tottenham Court Road and arrived at Euston Station with buckets of time to spare. We killed some time at the Avanti lounge where the very nice man at the reception desk helped us get onto a slightly earlier train bound for Rainhill. We sped through the beautiful English country side

and arrived at Manchester Piccadilly where we switched to a Northern train which played against type this time by being on time. I really love British adverts and though I have no idea what this was advertising, I liked it.

I liked this one, too.

We made it to our destination with no issues, unlike last year, and were soon settled in to our digs for the next 10 days. Our friends Paul and David are always such great hosts. As I said in a previous post, I am terribly old fashioned in that I don't like to share a lot of info about people in this blog as I consider it an invasion of privacy. Suffice it to say, their house is lovely, their cats are gorgeous and they're terribly handsome and charming.

Our first big day out was a trip with my cousin Audrey and her husband, Steve, to Hoghton Tower. It's an historic manor house in Lancashire which was built by the de Hoghton's in 1565 but previous structures here date back to 1109.

Hoghton Tower is built of sandstone, quarried locally, with slate roofs. It was a lovely day when we visited which was handy because we had to wait almost an hour for our guided tour. We spent the time wandering the garden with its commanding views of the area.

I found the remnant of an outing still hanging from the fence.

Once inside the house we were told that no photography was allowed, so I'm afraid there are no nice shots to share. Suffice it to say that the interior is decorated in many different styles. One of the rooms our guide showed us was the bedroom that King James I chose when he visited in 1617. Another more opulent room had been set aside for the king, but because he was wary of assassins, he moved to a room with only one window and one door. When a king visited an estate, he would bring his entire retinue with him which could number in the hundreds, and all of them had to be fed. Our guide said that the visit virtually bankrupted the de Hoghton family.

Another interesting thing about the house is that it contains three priest holes. A priest hole is a place where Catholic priests would hide when Protestant "priest hunters" searched houses looking for them during the reign of Elizabeth I. They wouldn't just have a quick look-around, they would stay for several days, listening for sounds of snoring at night. While they were in the house the owners were required to feed them. The hunters would sometimes destroy walls looking for their quarry and were not required to repair or pay for any damage.

We were told that there is an extensive collection of doll houses and their associated miniatures in the house, but visitors have to book a special tour to access the room in which they're kept. Perhaps next time.