I shall begin the story of our latest trip with its end, specifically the journey home between Edinburgh and Sheffield after two weeks traipsing through beautiful Scotland. An accidental April’s Fools joke, we arrived exactly 24 hours late for our Megabus departure from the Edinburgh bus terminal, which was surprisingly small and unfortunate, due to the poor ticket-reading skills of yours truly. In my defense it was the only blatant travel mistake made after organizing 14 days of trains, buses, failed hitch hikes (OK, so I didn’t really organize that one,) ferry rides, hostels, hotels, bed and breakfasts, and squatting on land presumably owned by a lumber company. With the admittance of my full guilt I can now continue to the haphazard method stumbled upon for getting us home.
After the bus terminal employee explained to me that our tickets were for the day before, in an unnecessarily gloating tone, we sat in bitter disbelief. While I continued to have a mini-freak out, Kevin calmly approached the ticket counter where he was informed that not only was the next bus to Sheffield not until the next day, but that there were in fact no busses going south anywhere near Yorkshire. A quick call to the train station delivered similarly depressing news as the cheapest train tickets ran about 200 pounds. As we sat and I glared at the unhelpful attendant, who, in that same tone, refused to hold our ill-fated Megabus five minutes to allow us to run to the nearest cash point for the on-the-stop demanded further payment, “LEEDS” in large letters reflected on the smudged terminal window. It was a sign, literal not figurative, on a bus pulling into the terminal. I ran to the closest helpful employee pleading our case in desperate hopes to get us on that bus. That bus, as it turned out, was a planned tour.
The terminal employee and I approached the large, bearded bus driver with caution. Planned tours do not offer seats to non-tour passengers. The Santa-like bus driver said no at least a dozen times. However after some skillful negotiation (and/or the batting of some lashes over tear-welled eyes) he relented. Kevin and I waited in anticipation as the driver, Ben, the terminal employee, and the tour guide (a middle aged woman sporting a pursed upper lip and, I sensed, a distaste for the current situation,) held a meeting of minds deciding our fate. The terminal employee broke from the group and walked passed me with a look and nod inviting me to follow. Far away from the bus he informed me, in whispered tones and with twitchy, cautious eyes like a bad TV spy, that we could indeed catch a ride with this planned tour, who’s name I shall not give away to, um, protect our rescuers. However, this was a Scottish tour. We had to remain silent les we be found out as, well, obviously not Scottish. Also this was a singles-only tour. We could sit together, but we shouldn't like it.
We could do this, I thought as Ben loaded our ragged packs and my walking stick under the bus. We’re young, we’re fun, we could totally be mute singles on a planned tour to Yorkshire. As we boarded the bus we saw widows, widowers, spinsters, and playboys…all over 65. That’s right, this was not the young, twenty-something singles tour, or even the middle aged divorcee “Stella Got Her Groove Back” kind of tour, but a hey-could-you-pass-the-Bengay kind of singles tour. They seemed as shocked to see us as we were to see them and we scrambled to sit and melt quietly into the seats, invisible. I’m pretty sure “blending in” was no longer an option.
In order to keep from giving away our Americaness and “keep a low profile” as nervously, and far too often, instructed by our smugglers, we employed an age-old method practiced throughout the Animal Kingdom when threatened. We played dead. Each tea stop brought the curious grandparents from their slumber towards our position behind enemy lines. Each time we feigned sleep. It seems the only way to keep a bus full of potentially inquisitive elderly folk at bay is to literally play dead. Once or twice they did tempt us to abandon our strategy with offers of “sweeties” but to no avail.
Our rescuers, the tour guide and the bus driver, were noticeably on edge the entire six hour trip. Yes, we were on this bus for six hours without talking to others or each other. Each time she passed our hideout the tour guide winked, making the already interested “ladies who bus” even more curious as to our identity. Ben had previously asked us for some money, which turned out was a bribe we were more than willing to pay. The tour guide asked us to slide the cash in a brochure and slip it to her, as if she were living out some long-dead espionage fantasy. If anything we were happy to provide the tour guide and Ben some much deserved drinks in the hotel bar after they spent their Easter weekend on a 65+ singles caravan tour.
As we finally rolled through Leeds I was relieved that we’d would get to break radio silence and relax after an entire day evading conversation and even eye contact with a caravan full of gossiping biddies. But first we had to sit through a lengthy speech by the official hotel welcome wagon as the ladies “ooooh”ed and “ahhhh”ed when informed of their welcome drink and dinner times. (The men taking part of this singles tour kept mainly to themselves at the front of the bus, obviously not what the vixens in the back had in mind for a hot weekend away.)
As we left the bus and retrieved our packs, the entire group of hovering elderly watched us depart as if it were a scene from The Sound of Music (So Long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye, goodbye…goodbye…goodbye!). Running free through the streets of Leeds, speaking to each other for the first time since we re-boarded the bus after lunch at a garden center in northern England, we found the train station and jumped on the next train bound to Sheffield. Over the next hour of travel I almost missed the surprisingly crude talk of “scoring” men at the hotel bar, the constant passing around of unappetizing hard candy, singing along to music from the 1940s, discussions of grandchildren who have not yet reached their full potential (don’t worry woman-sitting-in-front-of-me-with-oxygen-tank, I’m sure he’s just going through a phase,) more frequent bathroom breaks than I’ve experienced in my life (although I’m almost certain that the majority of these were more for tea and cigarettes than to use the facilities,) and the waves of ooooooo’s and ahhhhhh’s as Ben announced factoids such as “To our left as we drive around Newcastle you’ll see the MetroCentre, the largest mall in Europe.”
Every once in a while during wedding planning the little feminist within me, OK let's be honest, the very large feminist, cringes and/or laughs at certain expected customs loaded with unfortunate symbolism (needless to say I shan't throw a bouquet---the fact that that statement rhymes makes it even more awesome.) Don't get me wrong, I love tradition and heritage and for that I am a 
very unique feminist (I'm also a liberal, feminist Catholic, figure that one out.) Yesterday while searching around for vintage wedding ephemera for design elements on bits and pieces of wedding-related things, I came across these old rating charts for husbands and wives. Such a discovery leans more towards the laughing than the cringing reaction and we had fun "rating" each other's potential worthiness as a spouse.