Towns so small, they aren’t even in the Frommer’s book

Mom: One of the benefits, I thought, about choosing to take a narrowboat trip in a rural area like this, was being able to see the small towns, and meet the real people and see how they live. Our guides for this trip have been a couple of narrowboat guidebooks I purchased on Amazon UK (not available in the US), and although they pointed out the towns where supplies could be purchased, and the location of pubs, there wasn’t really a lot of town descriptions. Exploring the towns as they came up was a lot of the fun, for me.

First, we visited Llangollen. The canal route there was challenging and dramatic with great scenery. The town offered a steam train ride, which allowed us to achieve one of C’s goals of the vacation, and he wrote about it in his blog entry. He seemed a bit annoyed that so many young train enthusiasts were so YOUNG (toddlers), but he seemed to get something out of it. The scenery was wonderful, and the conductor was extremely amiable.

The town of Llangollen, however, had the air of a busy tourist village. We visited an attic sale, with a few small treasures, but the bookstore was a tired, stinky, and expensive disappointment. The pub (The Bridge Inn) was a bit rowdy, due to a Rugby game being on, but the food & beer was good and the bartender helpful.

Chirk was a quiet town, not much of a welcome for tourists, with a bakery, butcher, and a couple of pubs on the main drag. Dad & I went in to town alone for a pub date, and stopped at the first one we found. Blaring loud pop music, and a somewhat disinterested bartenders, as well as some noisy drunk local youth. We spent some time walking around the town in the dark, and enjoyed the aquaduct in the moonlight.

[Note: On the way back, we spent another night in Chirk and expanded our view of the town. The Bridge Inn was very accomodating, and we improved our education of ale definitions, thanks to the friendly bartender. And our adventure to Chirk Castle was well documented by the boy in the next post! The walk up to it was a real highlight of the trip for me, through cow and sheep pasture, past old houses, but with views of the cadbury chocolate plant, and the lumber mill.]

I enjoyed Ellesmere. A bit larger than the others, but still a nice feel. We arrived for Market Day, Tuesday, and were able to purchase some nice produce, cheese, and meat pies (pasties & steak pie & sausage roll) from the merchants. The evening before we enjoyed a nice meal at the Lions Hotel, with some vegetarian choices, and decent beer. In the morning we took over the Laundromat and got caught up on clean clothes. These small towns observe traditional hours, most establishments are closed Sundays and evenings, and many often close for lunch as well. So we’d gotten far behind in our laundry duties over the weekend, and some of us were quite desparate.

Ellsemere has THREE charity shops, and all pretty well stocked, so we picked up a few small treasures here as well. Listening to the charity shop ladies interact with each other and the local clientele was a treat as well. After a walk to the Mere and its visitor center, feeding some of the ducks and geese, we had afternoon tea at the Corner House where we had things like Tea Cakes, Lemon Sponge with lemon sauce, hot tea and sandwiches.

Found out what “licensed restaurant” meant (liquor license). “Free House” is a pub that doesn't have a contract with any beer company, and carries many different ales. “Guest Ale” is a rotating ale outside the normal beer contract. “Real Ale” appears to be unadulerated, naturally carbonated ale pumped direct from the cask.

If you are looking for the best meat pies or pasties, skip the bakery, and head to the butcher shop.

The markets in the small towns, unlike in the US, have very reasonable prices on goods, it does not appear that a mark-up is added to take advantage of the "captive" customer base.

Lots of stores have signs reminding people to bring their own bags to save the environment, but we didn't see anyone doing this, and when we brought out our own bags, cashiers seemed to act like it was out of the ordinary.

We didn't spend much time in large cities, but we didn't see any large strip malls or mega-stores at all, with the exception of Tesco, which is like a super-store grocery store selling all sorts of food and dry goods. Evidence of Ikea was apparent all over Paris, and certainly in the apartment we rented and the place we stayed on the coast.

Its hard to get a good cup of coffee in the UK, although there are Starbucks in London & Paris. The kind of coffee we are accustomed to is called "filter coffee". If you order a coffee at most places, you'll get what we call an "Americano". In the hotel rooms (in the UK, we didn't stay at any hotels in France), you'll find an electric water kettle instead of a coffee maker.

We prefer tea, so we did quite well, thank you, however, most all places serve tea for sit-down only, and the few times we were in a hurry, we ended up going without.

Food was very expensive when we ate out, especially in tourist areas. By shopping and cooking for ourselves, we kept the food expenses reasonable. If it wasn't for the exchange rate, prices would be cheaper here than in the Bay Area (considering a 1:1, or even a 1:1.50 exchange, which hasn't been seen in a couple of years).

In the back of an electronics store in Ellesmere, we were able to plug in the laptop and access the internet, as well as have an interesting conversation with the proprietor.

All of these towns have many older brick commercial and residential buildings, and an ageless feel to them. Well tended yards and public areas. Not much litter or blight, which is not the case in the larger cities. And the prices of most goods seems lower. The food in, general, has been good, with lots of fresh choices, if a bit heavy.