The Commitment

Two of my five cats slept next to our newest adoption, a small white dog. All were in various undignified positions on top of the afghan blanket that covered my legs on the recliner. The winter night had already darkened outside and light snow coated the remnants of faded green in the backyard grass. The latest episode of All Creatures Great and Small ran final credits on the television screen. Sunday nights were my Rocky Mountain PBS night—from 6:00 pm to bedtime. I gently stretched, so no pets were disturbed and reached for the remote.
Then I froze.

“Join us for the All Creatures Tour to England in April, 2025,” a woman’s cheery British accent invited me. I alerted and listened to the tour description but all I heard was, “and see James Herriot country, the Yorkshire Dales, and the museum in his former veterinary office.”

I had every book, video, and VHS of all incarnations of the All Creatures creations dating back to when Alf Wight, DVM (alias James Herriot) first published in the 1970s in the United States. His writing skill, storytelling craft, and mild-mannered personality had been a model for my own writing, as well as my budding dog training career after Miles, my Australian Shepherd muse appeared in my life in 1990.

I had a chance to meet Alf Wight in the early 1990s when a visiting British dog trainer chose Miles and me to participate in a Denver seminar. He knew the retired Wight and offered to introduce me if I came to his English countryside training center. I never made it—international travel was financially beyond my means then. Alf Wight died in 1995, but his legacy lived on, especially for me.

Rudely, I shuffled the cats and dog off my lap and ran for my computer. By 10:30 pm that night in October, 2024, I committed to the trip of a lifetime.

After wading through the Transcendent Travel Agency website, I knew if I did not pop in the credit card payment right then and there, I would wait and find reasons to not take the trip. It was a lot of money. It was scary to make the commitment alone. It was a long flight. London was a huge city to navigate on my own. Yet for every argument my psyche could provide, my emotions overrode the logic. I punched the “Submit Payment” button.

Taking Off into the Dream

At 6:30 pm on April 19, 2025 I sat strapped into my upgraded British airways seat and shook. The plane said goodbye to the dry, wide prairie of Denver International Airport and together we dove into the approaching night, and my adventure.

I had not traveled overseas since I went with a group to Paris in 2000. In my vest pocket were my brand new passport, 100 British pounds currency, my luggage locks keys, and a pounding heart. Fortunately, no one was seated next to me and so I could process my emotions in privacy. Behind me I left thirty-five years of animal welfare work, five published dog books, the latest edit of my sixth book awaiting corrections, and six surviving pets–out of the dozens I had owned, fostered, rehabilitated, and re-homed. Ahead lay a life’s dream. I had been a devoted Anglophile since the Beatles invasion of the US in 1964. My favorite movies, television shows, books, and history studies were British.

There were countless facets of English society that I felt a kinship to. History, architecture, etiquette, and social development from the Druids to the Tories. I loved antique furniture, tapestries, bronze sculpture, doilies, and ornate picture frames. I loved green lawns, flower gardens, rain, and walking. In addition to the Yorkshire/Herriot features, this tour included travels to Chatsworth, Burghley House, Buckingham Palace, and many other historic monuments to human presence on the island of Great Britain.

In my bag I brought a well-worn book called, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. She and her wide ancestry lived at Chatsworth, the country house of the peers of that linage at the time of mad King George III, Marie Antoinette, and the American Revolution. Burghley House was the country seat of Queen Elizabeth I’s top advisor, Sir William Cecil. I had read widely about all the events and characters of British History and decided this tour was the best cross section of all my interests in addition to the animal connection. I decided to re-read the book to transition my mindset to a different (imagined?) society.

I had never owned an umbrella, only snow boots, so I bought the cutest yellow fold-up with a duck handle, which made me remember Mary Poppins’s talking goose flying umbrella. I scotch-guarded my dog-walking wind pants, and purchased a royal blue lightweight rain coat. I ordered water-proof walking shoes, and took a pair of thin gloves for the windy Dales. I loaded copies of the current All Creatures Great and Small episodes on my phone and studied English slang. I had been monitoring the time and weather in London and the Dales for weeks.

Once airborne, I fidgeted in my seat and barely slept. Naturally claustrophobic, one of my concerns had been being confined to a small space for over ten hours. I was lucky no one sat beside me so I had two seats and an aisle space for a buffer. Flying at night with no window view added to the enclosed feeling but I took an anti-anxiety med with dinner and managed to concentrate on a movie and my book. I always had difficulty sleeping sitting up but managed a few cat naps. I removed my sleep mask as a new day’s glow appeared ahead of the plane on the rounded horizon.

I moved to the window seat and descended into my future.

Feet on Holy (?) Ground

My first view of England was the flat, green parcels of land appearing between the clouds. When we landed, I waddled in the departing crowd as we funneled through the jet way. Rejuvenated by the brightness of Heathrow Airport, I retrieved my two smallish bags, wandered through customs, then emerged into the sunny English air and roaring traffic outside Heathrow’s doors.   

In my fist I clenched the instructions to find my hotel. My first goal was to locate the train station. It was at the far side of the airport so I pulled the wheeled bags, one to each arm. In January, just three-and-a-half months prior to the trip, I had my right shoulder replaced. The previous September I had my left shoulder replaced. Pulling my bags was a worry but I had no choice. This trip was timed perfectly as a reward to myself for facing two major surgeries and recoveries so close together.

I had watched umpteen You Tube videos on how to pack light, use compression bags, and keep toiletries to a minimum. I had been faithful to my physical therapy, stretching, and elliptical. Even so, the weight of my two small bags challenged my recovering body. My feet had swollen without a way to elevate them, my tired eyes struggled to focus, and I felt much older than I had when I went to Paris twenty-five years before. On the other hand, I felt like a lost little kid, awed by new scenes, overwhelmed by new sounds, and excited to dive into my new adventure.

The Paddington Bear

I followed a mass of travelers to the train station and found direction signs to Paddington Station. I was again whisked away with a crowd of people who obviously knew what they were doing. Magically sucked into a train car I collapsed next to a woman who greeted me with an American accent. We shared a pleasant chat—she was just in from Portugal to visit friends. She left America and was happy she did. I thought about what a homebody I was and wondered if I could have ever been an anchorless world traveler.

Although I had traveled a great deal when I was younger for business (they paid) and vacations (I paid), I always relished returning to my own home with all my things around me. At her stop, the woman wished me well and departed. All along the route, hordes of people speaking various languages got on and off the train, moved around, sat down, got up, shouldered backpacks, and pulled luggage—like a mighty ant tunnel. Outside the car windows towers of buildings sped by as we burrowed through the half-buried train canal.

My first views of the train yards were definitely not Harry Potter- or Downton Abbey-like. Graffiti, trash, and ugly buildings surrounded our course. Once off the train in Paddington, I stood, stupefied by the hordes of rushing people scattering in all directions. I wanted to see the Paddington Bear statue but had heard it was stolen a few weeks before my arrival. To my amusement, another had been placed and I stumbled across it by sheer luck. As I wandered, lost, looking for the taxi stand, I came upon a huge brass sculpture of assorted Alice-in-Wonderland animals at a tea party on a street corner. Something about the giraffe’s turn of head seemed to encourage me to go back the way I had come.

I was supposed to find the taxi stand and ride to my hotel. After wandering, shoulders aching, up and down sidewalks, lifts (elevators), and from street corner to corner, I tried to look like a Brit on a mission, not a confused  American. When I was a small child I became lost from my mother in a store and I remembered the panic, sixty-five years later. I have always feared being lost and have been numerous times throughout my life—figuratively and literally. The unknown competed with the loss of control. It was not a comfortable mental state for me. I reminded myself this was part of the adventure I had signed up for and kept walking. I had been assaulted years ago as a young woman and walking alone was a trigger for panic as well. I reminded myself I was in England, not New York or Los Angeles. I kept walking. I finally found a long line of taxis on the opposite side of where I had come out of the station. I could finally stop walking.

A smiling Indian man opened the door of a box taxi I had never seen in the US. He escorted me to the back seat, loaded my bags, and expertly handled the chaos of London traffic. A flash of fear clouded my enjoyment of his narration of the sites we passed—I was alone in a car in a strange city with an unknown man. I had no idea where he was taking me. I tried to focus on the things he was pointing out and calm my inner American woman. Surely I was too old to be of interest for anyone with nefarious intent. I fingered my cash and passport through the inner zipped pocket of my vest. I listened in awe at his musical Indian/English combined accents and sat back.

We pulled up to the front of the Claremont Victoria Hotel—the epitome of British old world charm. A uniformed (and gloved!) man descended the stone steps just as I worried about how I was going to manage my bags and shoulders climbing to the gold-plated revolving door several steep steps up from the street sidewalk. I felt uncoordinated because my feet were still swollen from the long flight. As I wobbled on the sidewalk and fished out payment for the taxi driver, he handed my bags to the uniformed man. I was greeted as royalty, with a bow and a smile. I paid the driver, he doffed his cap with a brown finger, wished me a good trip, and off he went.

Yet another uniformed man held a door for me as I limped into the dream.

Entering History

The Claremont Victoria Hotel was in the heart of London, close to Buckingham Palace, attached in the back to Victoria Train Station, and surrounded by ornate buildings of the Victorian age. I had studied the Victorian era extensively and for thirty years I had been transitioning my own Cape Cod house in Colorado into a Victorian manner house. I had filled the non-pet area with Baroque antique furniture, gold and silver lamps, knick-knacks, doilies, and tapestries. My pride and joy were my etched glass globe lamps, formerly oil and now electric. I had always felt mysteriously comfortable with such surroundings. My family called my house, “her museum.”

There, in front of my eyes, at the end of the lobby was a stately marble stairway, with patterned carpet and brass anchors. The thick, wide marble handrails ended in delicately turned newel posts adorned with etched glass lamps atop. The atrium was three stories high with a gigantic, shimmering Chrystal and gold chandelier hanging over the heavy rotund oak entry table on which sat an actual tree decorated with Easter eggs and porcelain rabbits. I had completely forgotten—it was Easter Sunday!

Gaping upwards, my mouth dropped open as two more uniformed men behind the oak check-in desk greeted me with their high-brow accents. At last, I was in the land of the Beatles, Queen Victoria, and classy etiquette. I felt like a rumpled, exhausted three-year-old filled with unsophisticated wonder.

I limped behind yet another gloved man with a box hat and few teeth. He chatted away in yet another accent as he pulled my bags and escorted me to my room. Once off the lift, we trundled down a long hallway filled with wood carvings, lush carpeting, and real lamps on the walls. I collapsed on the king sized bed and slept.

Alone in the Castle

When I awoke, I wandered downstairs and had a light dinner in yet another gloriously decorated room. Spring flower arrangements perched on every ledge, and immense flowered garlands graced tall arches over dark, carved doors to banquet rooms. The bar bottle shelves were back-lit with spring yellows, greens, pinks, and blue glows. Everywhere my eyes feasted as much as my stomach just had.

I returned upstairs, unpacked a bit, showered, and fell asleep again. In the morning I ate, or over-ate, a huge buffet breakfast in yet another stunning hotel restaurant. I mustered my courage, and stepped outside into a sunny London morning and continuous flow of human bodies. I followed the concierge’s directions to a stand on the next street where I bought a bus ticket. The classic double-decker buses loaded right outside my hotel and I found my bus waiting. I climbed to the top level, sat down and plugged in my provided earphones for the narration tour. The ride was called the “Hop on/Hop off” bus but I hopped on and stayed put. It proved a fantastic way to ride around the city for an overview of “The Smoke.”

The nickname had been first used during the extreme pollution years of coal belching smoke stacks from all the buildings. Images of Dick Van Dyke as a chimney sweep in Mary Poppins were real. I rode for hours. Seeing the variety of buildings, art, landmarks, parks, and dense crowds of humans speaking multitudes of languages, and walking everywhere left me in a daze. Was I really there?

The Beatles came to America in February, 1964. They helped youngsters like me see the world in a happier light, especially since President Kennedy’s assassination in November of 1963. We all remembered exactly where and when we heard about the heartbreaking killing even someone as young as I was knew was a new level in violence. Violence became part of my teen years—assassinations, the Viet Nam War, shootings of protesting college students, race riots, gay rights protests, women’s rights marches, and a country at war with itself.

The Beatles brought the “second” British Invasion. The new phenomena of rock-and-roll music, sharp mod fashion, long hairstyles for boys and girls, and bouncy dances that you did not need a partner for, modeled my Baby Boom Generation. We all wore bangs (fringe in Britain), short skirts, bright colors, black eyeliner, white lipstick, go-go boots, tight pants, fringed leather, and fake feather boas. We all wanted to be British. We all wanted to marry a Beatle and live on Abbey Road.

Even as a teenage tomboy, most at home in jeans, tee shirts, and bareback on my horse in the Colorado foothills, I was relieved when the chestless Brit Twiggy became the top world model. All of us skinny, homely, gangly girls saw we had value, if only we could become British.

And now, in 2025, I was finally here. Not chestless, not gangly, definitely not skinny, and certainly older. But that young girl bubbled up into my psyche.

Bus Tour London

Meeting and Greeting

I climbed down out of the bus and had just enough time for a quick lunch at the hotel before it was time to meet Andrew Lannerd, our tour guide. I entered the lobby and found a crowd of people, all from Colorado, and two of our local Channel 6 Public Television employees who were organizers of the trip. It was a bit jarring to mingle with Coloradoans and it pulled me from the immersion I had been feeling when outside on the street surrounded by people of all nationalities, skin and hair colors, and types of dress. I felt unmoored weaving my way through the masses, knowing I would never know or see any individual again. In front of me was a little knot of my next week’s companions—people I would have to remember names to, conversational details, and be nice to!

Andrew introduced himself. Young, wiry, handsome, impeccably dressed in sports coat, slacks, and loafers, Andrew’s voice floated in a honey-smooth radio star quality. I had read his bio on the Transcendent Travel website and was aware of his professionalism and connections in the British travel world. Everyone received their luggage and name tags, and an introduction to our walking tour guide for the rest of the afternoon. She was a bit younger than me, but with a lifetime of knowledge for the sights she led us to.

We headed out for a two-hour walk of the Buckingham Palace Gardens. Part-way, the clouds rolled in and sprinkles started. I forgot my new umbrella and of course it poured. I pulled up my hood, buttoned my new coat, and stuck out my tongue to taste English rain. Around me, my companions bashed each other’s umbrellas as we followed, like ducklings on the way to a pond.

Buckingham Palace Gardens

I felt conflict with being part of a large group, I had never liked crowds. But here I was, just another face in a clump of tourists in a country far from my own, in a society different from my own. I puzzled over the dichotomy—being alone on my own in the initial hours was different from being alone in a group of people I did not know but would be glued to for the next six days. My schedule would be theirs, my eating, resting, sleeping, walking, and learning time would be cemented in this cluster of Coloradans. I felt safe but constrained. I felt excited to learn from someone with Andrew’s experience, but a bit trapped in a herd.

I was grateful that I had booked early and was able to reserve single occupancy rooms in all our travels. I decided to analyze my conflicts at night, away from the others, when I could decompress and think. During the days I determined that I would simplify my inner workings to seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, and absorbing every new sensation on this trip of unknowns. At night I would untangle the emotional culmination of meeting a life-long goal, process the limbic reactions to learned stressors that ruled my life, and sort and store memories.

Single occupancy bookings cost a lot more than double. On that night in October when I decided I would face my anxieties and come on this trip, I knew I would only survive if I had time to myself. I lived alone my entire adult life and being around people was highly stressful for me. Navigating adulthood as a single woman, during an era of restricted rights, I had fought for freedom. I put myself through college, started businesses, changed careers, pursued interests as they arose, and faced the toxic male-dominated society women of my era tried to change. I fought for women’s rights in my lifestyle, fought for personal safety, and slowly built a financial security few woman were allowed to achieve prior to my generation.

England was the beginning of my world awareness when the Beatles came in 1964;

It was my emancipation proclamation in 2025.

I thought I could handle group captivity during the days, especially with the projected physical activities of walking, being outside and not entrapped in small spaces, and with people I did not have to invest much emotion in. My main worry was the confinement to the bus, or coach, during long drives between tour stops. However, as I learned, the coach was not full and each day I was able to sit alone. It had large windows and I never felt imprisoned. The people were of various ages but most were seasoned travelers, retired, and outgoing. Most were in pairs and so single seats were available.

I thought back to my father’s passion for traveling and how he nearly bankrupted my mother and himself by constantly being on the go. I was currently well past the age he flew every domestic coop he could. It was strange thinking of him, when he was my age—what were his thoughts, his fears, his motivations? We were never close, he was an emotionally shut-off person. But just because he was remote did not mean he did not have emotions. When my father became unable to travel internationally, he secretly bought a series of motor homes and my parents took two long trips a year, which my mother hated, one in the summer to sight-see, one in the winter to go south. By the time his dementia became obvious at age 80 and his keys had to be taken away, he had widdled their savings down to $11,000.00. I had to step in and save what they had left, sell their unsafe house, place them in care, and invest proceeds. Although I succeeded in securing financial solvency until their deaths, my father never recovered from his clipped wings.

Consequently, I had been cautious and conservative in my lifestyle. This trip was the first time I had forced myself out of my financial comfort zone, although I knew I could handle it. The ironic rationalization came the year Covid hit and shut the world down. My financial advisor had told me I could spend what I thought was an enormous amount on pleasure travel each year and still keep myself secure into a very old age. All my life I had worked for my “future.” Suddenly that future was all around me and the world shut down. It was a convenient excuse to stay in my safety box—my home with my pets.

I saw more and more of my father in myself as the years rolled by. When would my window of time for travel close? Was I on the track to dementia? How long did I have to set and achieve goals? I had accomplished everything on my main life’s wish list. Was it all right to finally relax and loosen up? Could I do it on this trip?

I flexed my wings and England was my perch.

Next Post: The Tour