Lyme Regis

Wednesday, November 18th – Thursday, November 19th

Our next stop was a town called Lyme Regis which is also a location in Jane Austen’s Persuasion. And though we had just been pampered at the Spa, we were in for more pampering since we were staying at the ritzy Alexandra Hotel. I was rooming with Kaari and we just about exploded when we saw our room – for its spaciousness alone! In Bath we had stayed in a hostel where everyone was practically on top of each other – and literally too since we had bunk-beds – so the fact that we had more than enough room to open our suitcases was amazing! I had forgotten how healthy it is to have personal space. And Kaari and I actually had two rooms – a bedroom and a sitting room, which was fabulous since I could sit in the sitting room with my laptop as Kaari would sit on her bed in the next room, giving us each plenty of emotional and physical space as we worked on our homework.

Besides the significance of Persuasion, Lyme Regis was meant to be a place for us to relax which was much needed at this point in the trip. The day we arrived Kaari and I hung out in our room for a while and then walked out later, right before the sun set to find something to eat for dinner. The rest of the night was spent “vegging” – which included hot baths with fluffy bath towels – and working on homework, of course.

The following day we had class out on “the Cob” – which is this long, raised, slightly slanted, and winding “walkway” that protrudes out from the harbor and into the ocean. Here we had the opportunity to reenact part of Persuasion to better understand how this place is significant in Persuasion and why Austen might have chosen Lyme Regis in particular. After “class” I went with a few other friends to have cream tea at “The Mad Hatter” which was really yummy – a British specialty I’ll definitely miss. The rest of the day was largely dedicated to working on my travel writing paper, though I did make time to wander down the main street of Lyme Regis, peak in a few shops and send some postcards.

A personal highlight of Lyme Regis that I couldn’t have anticipated happened later that evening when I was sitting with my laptop in the upper floor of the hotel along with a few other students straining for internet. An older gentleman walked (or staggered) up the stairs and began striking up a conversation with us, which had happened before with other guests since this was the only stairwell in the hotel. Out of no where he, almost laughingly, asked us if we were apart of the same group of students that had been here earlier. Slightly confused we said yes or sort of, since we were the only students in the hotel. He then asked us if we had been the students who had spoken with an older gentleman of ‘yeah-high’ and continued to describe him. Maybe, I said, to which he intently responded, “Well, do you know who he was?” At this point we were all a little creeped out to be honest, and dumbfounded we said no. Then this man laughed and burst out, “Charlie Watts! – the drummer of the Rolling Stones!”, which was followed by him chuckling to himself and saying something about us not knowing who we were talking to as he shuffled off to his room down the hall. Eyes wide, all of us students looked at each other trying to comprehend what this gentleman had just said to us. We made a swift consensus that Charlie Watts, the drummer of the Rolling Stones, was staying in our hotel, someone had spoken to him from our group, but none of us had any idea who he was. For some reason this near brush with fame made me slightly hysterical and star-struck, so I took the liberty of bounding around the hotel telling random England Termers that “CHARLIE WATTS!” was staying in our hotel. Haha. If only I could have video taped my excitement. I was determined to figure out if I had seen this guy or not, but that problem was solved at breakfast the next morning when I spotted him and his wife seated near the door. Plus, this “run-in” was capped off by the fact that Charlie and his wife were at reception when we were all leaving the hotel that morning; and in creating an obnoxious entourage clamoring through the doors with our oversized loads of luggage, Charlie came over (to the rescue) and held the door for me as I left. Success.