Choose England It Could Be The Last Choice You’ll Have To Make, If You Travel By Packaged Tour

Can a fiercely independent traveler find happiness on a packaged tour? Can he, this hypothetical voyager, give up the right to pick destinations, accommodations and traveling companions? Can he subordinate the urge to control his own destiny in order to avoid the petty nuisances and inconveniences that inevitably arise when negotiating foreign terrain? There was only one way to find out.

My sole responsibility was to present myself at 8:45 a.m. at the London hotel where the tour began. After that I would be fed, housed and driven for the next six days through southwest England on a “Best of Britain” tour that was conceived, designed, and executed by someone I had never met.

That someone was a tour company chosen from a pile of brochures that I picked up at the British Travel Authority in New York. It described a luxury tour “to the furthest point of mainland England, discovering rugged coastline, wild moorland, picturesque villages and splendid towns, which should not be missed by the discerning traveler.”

It was the adjectives that did it, especially the last.

8:30, Monday morning. I am early. Manhandled by a bed with more lumps than a bowl of cold oatmeal, I wake with time to spare. The bed is in a London hotel I selected myself. It will be the last such decision for several days. Let’s see if they do better.

” ‘Ello. You goin’ with me on my noombah one tooah? Name’s Ken.”

“I’m Bob,” I answer, and shake hands with the tour driver/guide.

On the bus, he introduces himself again. “Ken,” he says. “Kenneth on Sundays.” A joke.

We are ten, in a bus designed for forty. An Indian couple with a little girl. A young woman with an Italian accent who takes the rear seat. “What you doin’ back there?” Ken asks. “I like it,” she replies. Two elderly ladies whom Ken addresses as “my luv.” A ruddy-faced man, around 50, sits in the first seat, intently studying the map open on his lap. An English couple named Smith. And me: American, writer, explorer, snoop.

The bus feels empty. We disappear into the thickly padded seats, those on the aisle a few inches advanced so that all have an unobstructed view. We drive through London, Ken pointing out the sights, across Hammersmith Bridge and within minutes we see our first thatched-roof house.

Ken has us write our names and addresses. The English couple turn out to be Australian, as are the single man and woman. The other is Canadian. The Italian woman is French. The Indians are still Indian, from Bombay.

Begun 1079, completed 1404, Ken says about the cathedral, as we enter Winchester. And residing in a vast hall which is all that remains of a medieval castle, no less than King Arthur’s round table. He says that.

And I see it. Or at least what some people would have us believe is The Table. It’s round, it’s huge, and it has a painting of King Arthur and the names of all his knights, done in 1522 for a visit by Henry the Eighth. As for its authenticity - well, it makes a good story.

There is nothing non-authentic about Winchester Cathedral. Everywhere beneath its great vault are monuments and tombs and carvings and other relics from the last 1,200 years. And everywhere are wonderful women with round, red badges to explain their significance.

An hour’s drive through movie set English country: round, deep green hills, manicured to perfection, then the broad, vast Salisbury Plain. Above hang thick, dark clouds through which spots of sunlight fall and glide across the fields.

Over a hill and Stonehenge appears. The grey, upright stones dwarf a line of tiny figures moving on the crest, silhouetted against the sky like the last scene of Ingmar Bergman’s “Seventh Seal.”

An hour later we’re in Salisbury, being given a tour by a local expert. Its highlights only, then we’re on our own until dinner. I check my room. I don’t know if it dates from medieval times, when the south wing of the Red Lion Inn was a hostelry, but it’s pretty and neat and the bed doesn’t have lumps.

Outside it rains, stops, rains, stops - typically English. I find shelter in the cathedral and listen, with perhaps 10 others in the vast, empty space, to a church service featuring a marvelous boy soprano choir.

Day two. Ken stands at the front of the bus. “Mornin’,” he says.

“Morning,” we all reply.

“Anybody escape?” We all laugh. We’ve become a group, except for the French woman, who is still in the back of the bus.

As we enter Dorset, Ken tells a very long joke about the Dorset three-legged chicken. If he weren’t driving, we would throw him off the bus.

Dorset is a country of distant views. The fields and roads are stitched with tall hedge rows. We can see over them from the bus, but I realize that if I were in a car, it would be like driving through an endless tunnel.

We zip past landscapes, breeze through villages where I would love to stop and spend time. Lyme Regis is a famous seaside town of pastel houses overlooking the English Channel. Five minutes and it’s gone.

The B3212 threads its way through the Dartmoor National Park. A vast wasteland, I thought, where escaped prisoners lose their lives in treacherous bogs and quicksands. Not a bit of it, at least not on the B3212. We drive the little two lane road up forested mountains, past farms with ancient stone walls, through tiny, isolated villages. It’s rough and rugged country with spectacular views at every turn.

Then, suddenly, we cross a ridge and the Dartmoor of myth appears. The trees have vanished, replaced by miles of heather and peat. Water sits in rocky depressions, and the only signs of life are wild sheep and the famous Dartmoor ponies. Later, the hills turn green again, but trees remain scarce until we near the coast.

In Plymouth, we stay in a Holiday Inn. The Pilgrims would be ashamed of me. I feel as though I’m letting my ancestors down. (Actually, my ancestors came from Italy, but the Pilgrims belong to me, too.) The hotel is huge, modern and the room is terrific. Not, of course, what I would have chosen.

But one of the best things, I have discovered to my amazement, is not to have to make choices. No matter where you go in England, just around the corner is something wonderful that you will inevitably miss.

Wednesday, the third day. The Cornish Pasty, a hand-held meal contained in a pastry crust, was, Ken says, invented in the 1850’s - “bygone days” - by miners’ wives for their husbands. The original production was a long affair with potatoes at one end, meat and vegetables in the middle, and dessert at the other. He doesn’t say how they knew which end was which.

Cornwall is a variation on the English theme of hedge rows and pasture land, until the hills tumble suddenly to a fishing village named Megavissey. We arrive at low tide, and I see for myself what I’ve only seen before in photographs: a waterless harbor with boats resting on the mud.

Megavissey is a fishing town. Men on the wharf mend nets with quick, deft motions. Houses are clearly built for shelter, not for show. I can feel the Cornish independence in the polite, but aloof attitudes of the local folk.

The journey to St. Ives is the first dull drive on the trip: flat, textureless countryside with towns to match. Equally dull is a visit to a sheepskin factory and shop to which Ken allots 45 minutes. But there is a minirebellion, the stop is cut short, and we have enough time to take an offshore look at St. Michael’s Mount.

I roam the narrow streets, along the promenade with its fearless seagulls, up steep hills to baywindowed row houses facing the horizon. Every other house, it seems, is a bed and breakfast, yet despite its fame as a summer resort, there’s a heaviness about St. Ives. The grey stone houses speak of the harshness of the weather. Perhaps it’s the time of year. Perhaps I’m feeling the effects of traveling alone. Whichever, I don’t feel the buoyancy of spirit I expected.

We stay two days in St. Ives. The weather is glorious and in the summer it must be wonderful to stretch out on the beach and take a break from the bus. But it’s too cold for that now, in May, and there’s not enough for me to do. I need a cathedral!

Friday. To Tintagel, legendary castle of King Arthur. No matter that it was built 600 years after his death. On the way we drive past Perranporth and Fraddon and St. Tudy on roads described as “scenic” on my Michelin map. Michelin has never let me down, and this is no exception. There are mossy woods carpeted with purple wildflowers, high hills whose grazing cows stare down at us, long green vistas to the sea.

But it doesn’t matter. The castle ruins are spread on the top of an island hill, and overlook fantastic, slate headlands that jut into the ocean. It takes the legs of a billygoat and the heart of a bull to cover it all, and still leaves you wanting more.

However, just when I’ve got my breath back, we pull into Clovelly.

Clovelly is built at the bottom of a cliff. Cars are not allowed in Clovelly. The street leading down is embedded with small cobblestones, edges up. Going down to Clovelly is a test. Coming back up is an ordeal.

Saturday, final day. I have my cathedral! Vital statistics: across the West Front are 293 pieces of medieval sculpture, an array unique in Europe. The nave is one of the earliest in completely Gothic design. Above the cloister is the largest medieval library in England. Every quarter hour, a clockwork knight is knocked off his horse as he has been since 1390. And outside are buildings surrounded by a moat where autocratic swans ring a bell whenever they are hungry.

An hour and a half is not nearly enough to see the Wells Cathedral and the medieval remains scattered throughout town. I give the church 30 minutes, then set off on a mad dash to get a glimpse of the rest, arriving last, as usual, at the bus.

Suddenly we’re on the M4 to London, our first highway of the tour. Then we’re saying goodbye, and it’s over. The group of strangers who have become family for a week disperses and disappears.