Ruth Doan MacDougall

Travelogue: The Doan Sisters Go to England

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Epilogue
Saturday, October 20, 1990

And the next day we did get the Metro safely back to Cheltenham, where we took a bus to London. We spent the night at the Heathrow Park Hotel (joy—an American-style showerhead in the tub), and the next day, Sunday, we took the hotel coach to the airport.

There, I recorded in my journal, “our hand luggage and pocketbooks were screened, as had been done in Portland and Boston. We had been warned by a friend who travels a lot that the security at Heathrow was very tight, so we wondered if there would be more screening. Yes indeed. A woman security officer asked Penny to raise her arms and frisked her, and two other women went through her pocketbook. When they didn’t bother with me, I was somewhat insulted, but we decided that it wasn’t just because I looked too ordinary; it was because I was dressed in a tailored blazer and short denim wraparound skirt, while Penny’s clothes were more fashionably flowing, long skirt, loose blazer, in which she could have hidden a band of terrorists.”

Ah, pre-2001 comments . . .

And so off we flew. When I realized that I was thinking the clouds looked like cream, I knew I had been in England too long. From Boston we got a small plane to Portland. I concluded in my journal, “We went into the airport building, and as we climbed the stairs I looked up at the faces above and didn’t see—Penny said, ‘There he is!’ and I saw Don.”

Introduction
Part I: Rose Cottage, Purton
Part II: Mill Cottage, Evesham
Part III: Rose Cottage, Chipping Campden
Epilogue