Haggis: (‘haɡəs’)The national dish of Scotland, a type of pudding composed of the liver, heart, and lungs of a sheep (or other animal), minced and mixed with beef or mutton suet and oatmeal and seasoned with onion, cayenne pepper, and other spices. The mixture is packed into a sheep’s stomach and boiled.

   The above will explain why our first meal in Scotland was Italian, and the closest we ever got to haggis was to quickly dry heave past it whenever it appeared on the menu. Nevertheless, our week or so in Scotland remains one of the fondest of our entire trip to the UK. The word that comes to mind to describe Scotland is: genuine.

   It was when Carol and I were handed menus by the First Class carriage staff that I realized we had achieved a whole new level of British rail travel. I smiled aristocratically at Carol, as I placed my order for the Beef and Yorkshire Pudding and a glass of Cabernet. We had returned triumphantly to the realm of the English Leisure Class, and not a moment too soon. Harumph.

   As I’ve written before, my prime interest in travel is to simply go. The best way I’ve found to go is by rail. Consequently, there is no luxury offered on board a train that is beyond my otherwise pedestrian tastes to wish to avail myself.

We’d hopped aboard the #82 bus near our Liverpool accommodations for a view of the city the way the locals see it. We rode it down a leafy suburban street to the end of the line, where the bus driver told us we had to get off. When I asked where we could catch the same bus to get back, he pointed to another area of the terminal. We walked there, but then saw our driver change his bus to #86A, which I knew would get us down to Liverpool’s dockside area. We got back on his bus, which I think annoyed him. Very strange. But that’s how the magic happened.

   The first to pass us in our carriage was a potentially fractious pair of toddlers, Beanie and Cecil (not their real names). Even were we to plan future excursions not to overlap with national school breaks, I realized there’d still be no guarantee to avoiding the likes of a pair of screaming two-year-olds who believe trains were made for running up and down the aisles, depositing candy floss to armrests along the way.

   Marazion is a ten-minute bus ride south of Penzance that would be a nondescript fishing village were it not for the Mont St. Michel lookalike about a half-mile out in the tidal bay fronting the town. St. Michael’s Mount is smaller, compared to it’s more renowned cousin on the coast of France, but no less impressively salient in its lonely outpost even from as far away as Penzance. These are the kinds of sights I like to see just where they lay, perched on a horizon from a spot on a distant highway devoid of tourists. There would be nothing inside this fortress monastery that would induce me to enter its tourist-clogged arteries, carried along at the shoulders by the suffocating crowds as I was at France’s Mont St. Michel several years ago. I caught some breaks this time.

Carol and I purchased international driver’s licenses in the ill-advised expectation that would be the only way to see the British countryside up close and personal. But after careful observation of driving on the wrong side of roads that were essentially bike paths pressed into service as two-way highways, and roundabouts that were clockwise running circles of death, we decided we’d not be seeing the English countryside quite that up close and personal (as in automobile grille to grille up close and personal).

   My only reason for wanting to go from London to Penzance was for the straight five-hour train ride without changing trains. Just kick back in a first-class carriage, maybe a bottle of wine along the way, and hours of pleasant English countryside on into Cornwall. But add two squally kids and an overbearing, helicoptering mum, and it is a true…

   …nightmare.

   There’s something about code breaking that has always fascinated me. I’ve never solved Rubik’s cube or enjoyed puzzles of any kind. But I’ve always enjoyed reading about espionage and secret codes.

   So it was an easy decision to make a day trip out to the pleasant village of Milton Keynes, a short train trip out of London, and to the museum and exhibits known as Bletchley Park.

On the very day Boris Trump announced he had scored a Brexit deal with the European Union, Carol scored a pair of tickets to the London production of Hamilton. There was irony, of course, in seeing a play on stage partially about America saying goodbye to Great Britain, while Great Britain, on the newspapers’ front pages, was saying (or trying to) goodbye to the EU. I wondered, as Carol and I sat in actor spit shower distance from that stage, whether the largely English audience caught that sense of irony, as the character of King George III sang:

You’ll be back

Time will tell

You’ll remember that I served you well.

   As a travel blogger, I try to avoid dealing in advice, tips, things to see and do and especially revealing hidden gems of any kind. Given my low wattage expectations for travel and adventure (is the train high-speed with a first-class car and a full service bistro?), I can’t imagine any advice or tips I could offer that you wouldn’t have already thought of yourself, such as do I need a ticket for the plane or train and should I pack a suitcase? (To both I would venture to suggest: perhaps.) As far as things to see and do, I try to do as little of both as possible. And for hidden gems, my belief is that they’re that way for a reason and should be respected as such.