Visit Plymouth for Thanksgiving....the REAL Plymouth

November 11, 3:52 PMDC Ireland & UK Travel ExaminerLaura Harrison McBride

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Elizabethan Gardens, Plymouth, England

You could spend a bundle this Thanksgiving visiting Plymouth, Massachusetts, and looking at a dumb rock where people in boring gray clothing invaded the Indians’ pristine fields and forests, bringing with them measles and firewater and all other sorts of stuff the “New World” (actually exactly the same age as the Old World) hadn’t suffered from before.

Or, better yet and more entertaining to those of us descended from the invaders, you could spend even more brass visiting Plymouth, England, in the county of Devon. Indeed, Devon is worth a grand tour on its own.

Click here for a short video about Devon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykO15JnhyZ8

However, sticking to Plymouth, you can see a well-cut piece of beige stone placed where they think the Pilgrims might have set forth in the Mayflower. By the way, that ship, small though it was for its 44 hardy souls, was hardly a Renaissance rust-bucket, but rather a state-of-the-art vessel specially constructed up the Devon coast in Westward Ho. 

At the Pilgrim Steps in Plymouth, you can hear a dude dressed up in 17^th century duds (usually a black coat and daring beige breeches) hawking tours of the harbor on a well-equipped, climate-controlled tourist boat, day in and day out, hour after hour after hour…

You can take a plaque tour, as well, and see the Pilgrim Commemorative plaque  installed in 1891.  In 1970, Ambassador Walter Annenberg installed another one, commemorating the first one. (Well, actually, commemorating the 350 years since the Pilgrims sailed.)

In this open-air plaque alley, there are others commemorating the sailings to and subjugations of—that is, settling of—such other English-speaking landmasses as Australia and New Zealand. One specifically mentions prisoners shipped to the Antipodes. Not memorialized is the fact that at least two members of the canine race went off on the Mayflower, an English mastiff and a Springer spaniel, if accounts are to be believed.  And yes, the boat had a poop deck.

Also not much memorialized is the Mayflower Compact, the expedition’s rule of life, so to speak, and regarded as the first democratic document of the New World.  Perhaps we should bring it back; the Constitution has suffered significant hits of late, but no one has bothered about circumventing the Mayflower Compact.

I can quite imagine changing these initial lines to reflect current realities:

    Having undertaken, for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith and Honour of our King and Country, we whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith….”

Back on track… 

A short walk up the Barbican, the oldest part of the city thankfully spared by German bombing in World War II (probably not on purpose; the Brits were very good with their blackouts), are two things worth visiting, the Elizabethan Garden and the Tudor Rose Tea Rooms.

The Elizabethan Garden is a recreation of…an Elizabethan garden. It’s on Southside Street, but the best way to get there from Sutton Harbour and the Mayflower stuff is by visiting the Tudor Rose Tea Room on and older and lower street, New Street.  There, you’ll have first-class tea and a cake and savory assortment second to none. You can have your tea in a little garden below the Elizabethan Garden if the weather is fine.  Last time I was there, I met a juvenile seagull that had been stranded there, being kept in comfort and fed on tasty morsels by the tearoom’s proprietress until it was big enough to fly away.

When you’ve had your tea, turn left out the front door and walk up an alleyway between buildings.  Pass through, climb the steps, and voila!  The Elizabethan Garden, with green things, splashing things spitting water into pools, and a charming view down into the tearoom garden, and also the garden of the Elizabethan House. 

Walk back down, pass the tearoom, and pay the freight to tour inside the Elizabethan House. Once a sea captain’s home, it lures me every time I visit. Wandering freely inside, ghosts of another time, hints of simpler but more greatly felt comforts and sorrows, seem to flow over and through you.  It’s seductive to those of us with serious tugs out of this more sterile time of ours.

All right, then. Enough of that.  Trot on up the street to the Blackfriar’s Distillery, where Plymouth Gin is made, and find out what really made those sea captains tick. Recently, Plymouth Gins has brought back the old version, too—Navy Strength! AARRRR…..matey, get some of that down yer gullet before trekking off to your hotel…or another feed at any number of waterfront restaurants.

PS Yes, you can eat turkey for dinner.  Just look on the restaurant signboards. The English are quite fond of turkey, even though they are probably at least partly responsible for misnaming the American bird.