Shopping in Great Britain #1of2

We visited the flea market in London’s “Petticote Lane,” but it was in such a poor looking neighborhood, we were afraid to park and leave the RV for very long. The goods for sale were mostly clothing, a lot was new and cheap, but much was used.

In Greenwich, just outside London, we found an antique market/flea market—Emmy likes that better than eating—and bought several brass door handles that were supposed to have come from some Georgian homes, houses built in the 1700’s. Whatever they are, they are nice, and very low cost. The brass is rather pink, and we were assured it's old brass. They looked great when we installed them on the front door of our house.

At the Jubilee Market (flea market) at Covent Gardens. Emmy bought a Sheffield mint spoon and a set of small brass bowls, and some more of Mrs. Thornton’s English Toffee.

One store, in Arundel, had a very interesting set of copper door handles (12 to 14 inches high, complete with a three inch wide copper plate), but at $115, a little too expensive. The Irish and Scottish beef available in stores in Arundel, and elsewhere in England, looked a lot better to us than the beef we have been buying on the mainland, and it was delicious.

The handle on the camper’s sliding door broke one day, so I went to the Dodge dealer to try and find a replacement. In England the sliding doors are on the other side of the vehicle, so their parts didn’t fit our door. Using some scraps of metal, I designed a replacement part for the broken door handle, and helped them build one that did work fine. They were so interested in what I designed, they charged very little for all the cutting and welding they had to do.

Chester is one of the more interesting cities we have seen in England. There’s a wall and gates, and inside the town, the shopping streets are lined with unusual half-timbered houses and buildings. On some shopping streets the stores have two floors of shopping, the second level has an outdoor balcony that goes from store to store. At a town hall near the Cathedral, they had an indoor antique market, and Emmy found a berry spoon for $10. But when is the last time she ate berries?

At a drug store in Fishguard we found a hot water bottle for Emmy’s neck. It's getting better, the neck that is, not the water bottle, but it, the neck, not the water bottle, still bothers her.