Scotland 2023 Day 2: Landing in London and Driving to Newport Pagnell

One of the first things to take care of upon landing was to get some pocket money. I’d (of course!) done some research before leaving the US on the best strategy for exchanging USD for GBP. I could have had money delivered to the house by either Wells Fargo or BofA before leaving. WF had the best exchange rate, but required a minimum conversion of USD200, which was well more than the GBP40 that I wanted to have. BofA was OK with delivering only the smaller amount, but their flat delivery fee was $7.50. So, ultimately, it would be less expensive to withdraw money at an ATM at Heathrow than to get it ahead of time.

The key is to avoid a Travelex ATM (far and away the most common ATM found throughout LHR) and instead use one of the less-common local bank ATMs. This would avoid both Travelex’s conversion fees as well as their flat GBP 2.50 surcharge for using one of their ATMs. So by using our WF ATM card at the ATM at the end of T3’s baggage claim hall (near the Virgin Atlantic baggage office) we’ll be able to withdraw GBP 40 with (hopefully) minimal surcharges. If for some reason the ATM in baggage claim isn’t available there’s another one post-Customs, near the Help Point, that we’ll pass while walking to the rental car bus stop. I figure it will also make sense to pop into an airport store post-ATM to buy something tiny – maybe a newspaper? – so we can get some coins back.

Once we clear Customs we’ll be off to get our rental car. Alamo doesn’t appear to have a desk at the terminal (actually, they do – it is the Enterprise desk, since Enterprise owns Alamo). As per our confirmation email from them we’ll proceed to Bus Stop 17 and 18 outside to board a shuttle which will take us to the offsite facility about 2 miles away. From there we’ll pick up our car.

We deplaned and made the LONG walk from the T3 gate to T3 passport control, which is automated for (among others) US passport holders. You place your passport photo-down on a scanner and then look at a camera and if everything matches up the gates unlock and you pass through. From there you go downstairs to baggage claim (on level 0). As PE, our bags were tagged for priority unload and, in fact, our two suitcases were within the first 10 placed on the belt so we grabbed them and exited through the “Customs – Nothing to Declare” doors. There’s nothing that happens at Customs – it was just a door and there was no inspection, no forms – not even anyone watching you. Unexpected.

Once in the public arrivals area we stopped at an ATM to withdraw GPB 50 (at a Travelex ATM, sadly) and then went into a shop to buy a Diet Coke (but mostly to get some small change made). Then out the terminal doors to the bus stops where the rental car company shuttles are – just a few steps out the terminal door. An Alamo/Enterprise/National shuttle was just driving away as we stepped outside (of course!) so we had to wait 7-10 minutes for the next one, but we soon found ourselves at the rental facility.

This turned out to be a bit of a cluster because they were out of automatic transmission cars…but it wasn’t clear that they were OUT – it was represented to us that they just needed to do a bit of juggling and they’d get us one. However, after an hour of nothing being communicated to us the girl who had been “helping” us directed us to go the “Emerald Customer” kiosk. Essentially, she punted us to a more experienced rep. She was very honest about them not having any AT cars but offered us a nicer/newer manual transmission car at the same price and also threw in the perk that we could return it at any gas level and they’d cover the gas charges. Driving stick wasn’t high on my list of choices, but we were tired and we needed to get this show on the road, so we took it!

Our Vauxhaul Mokka.  The front seats were a bit tight to get into because the dashboard was kinda in the way, but it was pretty comfy to drive and very quiet on the road.  The modern-day displays, including backup camera, lane change warnings, shift advisories, and Android Auto (which allowed us to use our phone's Waze app on the car) made driving so much easier than on previous trips.

Biggest challenge of MT turned out to be remembering the stick was under my left hand, not my right. I kept moving my right hand to find the gear knob before correcting myself. Otherwise, Waze demonstrated right away how much easier nav has become with modern phones. Of course, we (I) still managed to make the wrong lane choices when we exited the motorway at Newport Pagnell and accidentally got back onto the motorway…which meant having to go another ELEVEN MILES to the next exit in order to turn around and come back to where we should have gone. Ugh.

A couple of pre-trip resources I marked prior to our trip were aboutroad signage and parking in the UK.

I’d selected Milton Keynes as our stop over point on the first day on the presumption that, upon landing at LHR I’d still have enough energy left to drive about an hour, even after a long flight. The idea was to get to the outskirts of London before the start of our first “real” day in-country and launch our activities from there. At some point I learned that Bletchley Park was in Milton Keynes and I’d tried to find some tour configuration that would allow us to visit the exhibits there. I couldn’t find a reasonable configuration, however and, given that Bletchley was likely to appeal to me much more than Eileen, I didn’t see any reason to force it into the schedule. (We’d also seen an Enigma-related exhibit somewhere previously – I don’t recall where that was. I don’t think it was during our 1998 UK trip, but maybe?) Therefore, Milton Keynes existed only as a layover location.

The hotel I found was the Swan Revived Hotel, a hotel inside a 15th century coaching inn. During planning I managed to misread the hotel’s name so for the better part of two years I kept typing “Swan REVISED Hotel” into Google and didn’t notice that Google was finding it despite my misspelling. It had both an attached restaurant (in case we were running late or lazy around dinner time) as well as on-site parking, which was an ongoing necessity since we were bringing a rental car along the whole way. We were going to have to await our visit to see whether we felt they had earned their 2021 and 2022 Hotel of the Year Award from the Milton Keynes Food and Leisure Awards. Update: I’m not sure they have any serious competition – at least there’s none in Newport Pagnell. Hard to judge them objectively given our exhaustion and the high that normal temperatures making our visit so uncomfortable.

As part of our strategy to acclimatize to a new time schedule the idea was that, post landing, we’d power on through the remainder of the day before turning in for an early night’s sleep. Since our plan put us into Milton Keynes right around lunch time we needed to find some simple activity to keep us awake and occupied for a few hours before we could check in to the hotel and relax a bit pre-dinner. I finally settled on visiting Willen Lake Park, a popular outdoor family destination. Of course, the amusement park and water activities held no interest for us, but there were walking paths (of which the Peace Pagoda Walk seemed to be the perfect choice since it circles the lake and includes the option to see the Willen Labyrinth. There was also a local shopping center we could stop at before hitting the park that offered several eating options, including Eat Your Heart Out, a sandwich shop. This was all within a 5-10 minute drive of our hotel, so the routing was quite simple and natural.

The selection of Willen Lake Park as a time killer is an example of how my long planning process pays off. I didn’t come up with this option until (my version of) really late in the process. That means I added this part about a month before the trip, when a lot of my trip planning was of the “what small little details can I worry about now?” variety. Having already selected the major features of the trip I could start to think of the small details (like this one). It was during this same period that I did stuff like map out parking details at various locations, updated attraction pricing, and confirmed current operating hours. Obviously, this kind of detailed planning is My Kinda Thing and gives me tremendous peace of mind when we travel.

That was the plan. The reality was that the car snafu set our timeline back considerably. That, combined with the missed roundabout exit, put us into Newport Pagnell around 3P rather than 1P, and we were DONE! So we went straight to the hotel.

Ironically, the Swan Revised in undergoing revision! The building frontage was covered with scaffolding when we arrived. Fortunately, found a very convenient parking spot on the street to allow us to check in, and they then directed is around the corner and behind the hotel to a public car park that (essentially) offers free parking from 3P to 11A the next day, which is perfect for overnight guests. So we stashed the car there and took a leisurely stroll back to the Swan. On the way we discovered that the Thai restaurant I had planned on us going to (Pin Petch) did a buffet on Monday rather than normal menu service, and that didn’t appeal to either of us. A lot of stuff was closed on Monday, and what was in walking distance didn’t much appear to us – so we punted and ate at the hotel’s restaurant as it was convenient.

The restaurant we'd intended to eat at (but ultimately didn't).  Note E standing next to the doorway of the Grade 1 Listed church by the restaurant.  Ho hum...another historic building in the middle of everything.  The restaurant itself was a Grade 2 Listed building.

Dinner for our first night was going to be at Pin Petch, a Thai restaurant that, like all our choices, was just a short walk from our hotel. In this specific case, only about 250 feet away. In one of those “ho hum” moments that mark being surrounded by so much history, the restaurant was located in a Grade 2 listed Victorian building from around 1850, formerly known as Odell’s Ironmongers – and was itself next door to St Peter and St Paul’s Church, a Grade 1 building with parts – including the entry door visible next to Pin Petch - dating back to about 1350. However, the discovery of the buffet plus our exhaustion had us staying in at the hotel where we dined instead.

We got back to our room around 730P and tried our best to stay awake, watching several panel game shows on BBC2 – but by 930P we were toast and crawled into bed. The room was very hot, having only a portable fan on the desk to cool things down, and that was inadequate, but we were both so tired it didn’t matter initially. However, we both woke a couple of times, including at 130A. In my case, I didn’t get back to sleep until around 4A.