Jan and John Maggs Antiques
England - Spring 2008 - Excerpts from a Diary
In the Cotswolds, near Chipping Campden
Thursday, March 27. We awoke in our hotel room in Framingham at 5:00
a.m. and
traveled to the airport on Logan Express. We arrived at Terminal E before 7:15
and were in the air by 9:30. After an uneventful flight, we landed
at Heathrow ahead of schedule. Terminal 4 seemed unusually quiet, which we
assumed resulted from the opening
of the new $8.6 billion Terminal 5 earlier that morning. We privately expressed
disappointment that our flight was not scheduled to land in the new terminal on this
landmark day.
We picked up our Vauxhall Vectra and left immediately for Chippenham, where we
would stay for the next four days. Thankfully, the M4 was dry, and traffic was
moving rapidly. We were in our hotel room shortly after
10:00, in time to drive to The Jolly Huntsman, a favorite local pub, for
a relaxing pint.
Friday, March 28. Since the mid-nineties we've been regular
patrons of England's chain of no-frills Travelodge hotels. A few months ago they
began
offering in-room Wi-Fi for only £20 per week. Having driven miles out of our way
in search of Internet access in past visits, we felt that this was a small price
to pay to stay in touch with our friends and business at home. We signed up, and
when we checked
our e-mail for the first time, we learned that the previous day's opening
of Heathrow Terminal 5 had been a fiasco. Scores of flights had been cancelled,
thousands of suitcases lost, and hundreds of travelers stranded in the airport
because of the failure of the terminal's state-of-the-art
baggage handling system.
Our working day began at at 10:00, in an antiques warehouse in a nearby town.
The purpose of our visit was to inspect an early chest we had
found online. As we had hoped, we found no surprises. We negotiated a price,
and arranged for delivery to our shippers next week.
We spent the remainder of the day on the road. We visited three towns, where several of our
regular contacts have shops. We found that one of them had recently closed, and
only one of the half dozen shops we visited had anything for us. Disappointed
and discouraged, we drove back to Chippenham. That evening we
returned to The Jolly Huntsman for dinner, which helped to lift our
spirits.