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Category: UK

Balkans Trip Day 2 – Walking Towards Luton Airport Ibis

After a little sojourn in Luton Wetherspoons, which is obviously where all the best trips start from, I had a walk to the airport hotel. Some travellers prefer private transfers, but they risk missing several miles of dual carriageway and an abandoned vehicle factory.

This is what was the Arndale Shopping Centre, then renamed the Mall Luton, then Luton Point and since earlier this year, it’s now Frasers Plus which is effectively Sports Direct. This is perhaps one of the nicer areas in Luton, but the shopping centre’s construction in the 1970s destroyed a lot of heritage and has messed up the town’s street lines.

I made a quick stop at Lidl in the Frasers Plus shopping centre because I urgently needed fruit suspended in sugar. I’m not sure I have ever craved fruit so intensely that I felt compelled to rush into Lidl for it, but there we are, life is an exploration.

This is the entrance to Kimpton Road, formerly known as Gallows Road, and I’ve never thought enough about that former bridge crossing there. The mainline railway (formerly known as the Midland Railway) is just behind it, but this separate line was once the Luton & Dunstable branch of the Great Northern Railway. This line ran to Dunstable and beyond, but it was closed down in 1965 which as usual was a sub-optimal decision as Dunstable really could have done with a railway line. That bus in the photo is relevant to this story.

I was standing where the ‘smithy’ is on the map.

That’s where the bus was heading, the former line is now the Luton to Dunstable Busway which opened in 2013 and is apparently the second longest in the world. It’s 13.4 kilometres (8.3 miles) and the guided track is 7.7 kilometres (4.8 miles) of that. I like railways, but there was a good reason not to rebuild this one as the expense was high and it would be difficult to connect it into the main rail network, which is always an optimal aim. It means Dunstable doesn’t have a railway station, but at least they have a guided busway station and that will have to suffice.

The war memorial outside the former Vauxhall Motors works. The factory was bombed in 1940, killing 39 workers and injuring over 40 others, and this memorial was redesigned here when the former buildings were demolished and converted to housing in 2022. Vauxhall car production came to an end in 2002 and those buildings were the ones taken down, with only commercial vehicles made here after that. Although more of that in a moment.

Some of the names from the Great War and I might well come back to this at some point….

For anyone who would like to see the memorial, it’s located opposite Luton Airport Parkway railway station. This is the station I complain about quite regularly, so my loyal readers may already feel they know it personally.

I mentioned that cars were made in Luton until 2002, but commercial vehicle production also came to an end in 2025. The final vehicle made here was a Vauxhall Vivaro completed on 28 March 2025, marking the end of 120 years of production on the site. There is now extensive security to stop the site from being taken over, this was one of the main entrances.

And this was another entrance and I remember the workers piling into these buildings when I was off walking to the airport, it all feels a little sad now.

There is at least still a Vauxhall dealership here.

And this little plaque was put up recently to mark just how many people used to work at the site.

After a little more walking and crossing busy roads I was nearly at the Ibis hotel and this is the Ibis Budget that has been closed for years.

And safely at the Ibis hotel ready for my early morning flight.

I accept that a trip supposedly involving the Balkans has so far featured Luton Wetherspoons, Lidl, a guided busway, an abandoned Vauxhall factory and two Luton hotels. It is perhaps not the most conventional introduction to the delights of the wider Balkans region, but international travel involves a certain amount of administrative build-up.

I am now writing this from Belgrade, though, so we are very nearly at the point where the Balkans finally enter this Balkans trip. The anticipation is almost unbearable. Although, after Luton’s second-longest-in-the-world guided busway, Belgrade has a great deal to live up to.

September 2, 2026
Balkans Trip Day 2 – Walking Towards Luton Wetherspoons

I decided this morning to walk the three miles or so from Luton Travelodge into the beating heart of Bedfordshire, namely Luton town centre. The Balkans would have to wait a little longer while I completed some important preliminary research into roundabouts, pavement parking and budget fruit salad.

As an aside, I hate this road crossing which is where Dunstable Road meets Chaul End Lane. A driver kindly waved me across, but it’s a roundabout with an unmarked pedestrian crossing just off it. A quick Google search shows that there have been accidents here before, including when a car ploughed into a mother with her pushchair. Is it really too much to ask that pedestrians should be able to cross safely?

The pavements through the Bury Park area presented a different challenge. Cars and vans obstructed numerous sections of the route, making progress difficult for anyone using a wheelchair, mobility scooter or pushchair. I have blurred the number plate of this particular car, although its parking position was making no comparable effort to preserve anyone else’s privacy, dignity or indeed access to the pavement. Anyone without restricted mobility could squeeze past most of the obstructions by stepping into the road or turning sideways. This is apparently considered an adequate local accessibility strategy and it’s perhaps all a bit sub-optimal.

Anyway, today is not a day for complaining, despite what appearances might suggest and I think that’s the limit of today’s drama.

And there’s the White House, which is Luton’s JD Wetherspoon outlet that I don’t need to write about again, it’s been recorded on numerous locations on this blog including at https://www.julianwhite.uk/luton-the-white-house/. There are limits to how many times one building can be presented to readers as a fresh discovery, even on this blog.

I think it’s fair to say that ordering fruit salad for breakfast isn’t usual for me, but sometimes the body craves this sort of cuisine. I mean, mine never has before, but variety is the spice of life and all that. After a brief stay of five hours drinking the unlimited coffee costing just £1.49, I felt sufficiently rested.

Properly nourished, extensively caffeinated and still some distance from the Balkans, I was finally ready to walk towards the airport hotel. I accept that this series is approaching its stated geographical subject with no great sense of urgency, but travel is all about the journey and all that. Unfortunately, quite a lot of this particular journey still involved Luton, but there we go.

September 1, 2026
Balkans Trip Day 2 – Luton Travelodge Update

Although I didn’t ask for this, thank you to Travelodge for offering me a free breakfast at a location of my choice (well, at a Travelodge hotel obviously and that’s not an unreasonable limitation) after I excited and delighted them about my experiences at Luton Travelodge. I am now disproportionately pleased by the prospect of a complimentary budget hotel breakfast, which is perhaps the clearest evidence yet that I need to get out more.

September 1, 2026
Balkans Trip Day 1 – Luton Travelodge

The morning after the night before. I accept that, for a series of posts labelled “The Balkans”, a detailed account of one night at the Travelodge in Luton might not immediately excite and delight. However, two loyal blog readers want regular progress and perhaps an occasional third reader has finally tired of bar billiards, so some variety is required. And for me to start complaining about things…

I arrived shortly before midnight and found nobody at reception, despite pressing the call bell twice. I’ve stayed here numerous times and had a fairly good idea which team member was working. He is always friendly, although I have developed an entirely unsupported theory that he relaxes in the staff room watching Jet Lag: The Game, the finest YouTube series currently available, and occasionally needs a moment to return to the reality of a Travelodge reception. He eventually appeared and was as welcoming as ever. I rather like things remaining the same, so even the short wait had a reassuring familiarity to it.

There’s no bloody KitKat. I’ve emailed Travelodge to complain. The upgraded room was supposed to include one, so its absence represented an early setback for Travelodge’s move into luxury hospitality. I had intended to eat it as dessert following the McDonald’s melon balls, although I accept that this was not an evening meal demanding a carefully considered final course.

I have genuinely emailed Travelodge to complain, although not specifically about the KitKat. Travelodge has upgraded a number of rooms by adding a coffee machine, a chocolate bar and a few decorative touches (I stress the word ‘few’ here and suspect they cost less than a fiver) before charging a little more for them. In fairness, this was the only room type available and it was still very reasonably priced. I therefore had no objection to paying for it, but once a company starts promising decadence, even budget decadence, it needs to keep a firm grip on chocolate provision. My friend Richard, who thrives on decadence, would have been displeased as well.

The more legitimate problem was that the soap dispenser contained only water, while the other dispenser was empty. There were also a few minor cleanliness issues. None of this constituted a hospitality emergency, but functioning soap feels like a reasonable expectation even before the hotel begins exploring the outer reaches of capsule coffee.

And, there’s perhaps a serious point here which is that Travelodge really have piled pressure on team members and given them more do so, whilst investing heavily in things that will annoy customers, like charging them to pick their room and forcing them to upgrade to luxury rooms without KitKats. They’ve perhaps forgotten issues such as security, cleanliness and basic functions. If a customer books with Travelodge now they get four emails, which is evidently in my mind as they’ve thought of new ways to get customers to pay more, whether it’s breakfast, evening meals, wifi, late checkout, room placement and so on. Individually, these are perfectly reasonable. Collectively, they create the impression that a considerable amount of corporate energy has been devoted to discovering further things that can be sold.

I’m an advocate of Wizz Air, which also charges separately for almost everything it can identify. The difference, in my experience, is that it generally gets the basic operation right. The aircraft arrives, the flight takes place and I am deposited somewhere that broadly corresponds with the destination on the ticket. If an airline can maintain that level of organisational discipline, a hotel should be able to provide soap.

But, back to positivity, the room was cheap, there were no noise issues internally or externally, there was a fan and since I’ve pro-active enough to have a back-up mini bottle of liquid soap, all was well. However, if Travelodge want to start selling decadence, they need to deliver, or just scrap decadence and focus on being consistently average.

September 1, 2026
Balkans Trip Day 1 – Getting to Luton

I’ve had a slightly less productive weekend than I would have liked, which has meant I didn’t complete some blog posts that I had intended so they’ll have to wait for a few weeks as I’m now off on my next little research trip. Good intentions and all that. It’s the trip I mentioned some weeks ago to explore some of the Balkans, mainly by train, with my friend Jonathan which will let me visit a couple of European countries that I haven’t visited before. Much as I like exciting content, I’m hoping for not too much railway or border related drama.

My ever helpful friend Liam drove me to Luton Travelodge and we stopped off at the nearby McDonald’s. For reasons unknown I decided that I needed melon balls, which Liam seemed to be quite confused by, alongside a hamburger. I never knew that McDonald’s did melon balls, but they were rather delicious.

There was exciting drama, and I say drama as I haven’t been out much for the last few weeks, when the McDonald’s crew member told Liam that he had driven to the wrong window. It was the window he was told to drive to, so there’s nothing like a little internal confusion to pass the time with. Poor Liam had to deal with both that, as well as why I had ordered melon balls….. Incidentally, I’m impressed at how busy McDonald’s was at just before midnight on a Bank Holiday Monday and there seemed to be little prospect of peace for the crew members, particularly while customers were being circulated between windows under conflicting instructions.

But with that, I was safely in Luton. I would add that I accept this isn’t a riveting blog post, but it’s part of the story of the trip and so it’s going in. If every travel account began beside the Adriatic in glorious sunshine (in the shade obviously), nobody would fully appreciate the considerable administrative effort required to reach it.

September 1, 2026
Warham : The Three Horseshoes

The next pub on my day out with Jen and Roy was in Warham, a village that I’m not entirely sure that I’d ever heard of before. It seems to be an interesting village, it still has two medieval churches (of which I managed to visit one quickly) and it used to have a third, but that was pulled down. It also has a railway station, well railway stop, as part of the Wells and Walsingham Light Railway, but this is a relatively new innovation from 1982 and there wasn’t historically a station here.

The pub has been a licensed premises since the late eighteenth century and it is now something of a sizeable building. The Three Horseshoes was once part of the Steward & Patteson estate, but has long since been free trade and that might be a reason that it’s actually survived.

As an aside, this traditional pub name is associated with blacksmiths and farriers, whose historic emblem depicts three horseshoes. One explanation for the apparently sub-optimal total is that the fourth shoe was being repaired or replaced while its owner waited nearby drinking a beer. It feels like an early roadside recovery scheme, providing refreshment for horse and owner.

There was some excitement in the Downham Market Gazette in November 1919 when it reported that the landlord, Herbert Barker, was summoned to the court in Fakenham charged with working a mare in an unfit state. There was a long argument about whether there had been cruelty or not, mainly relating to whether the horse had warts or sores, which sounds a glamorous debate but it was decided in the end that Barker was not a troublemaker and the case was dismissed.

I didn’t know what to expect when we entered, but there was a lovely old bar, a choice of real ales and a friendly welcome from the member of bar staff. It’s fair to say that I was surprised and delighted.

The interior is impressive as it hasn’t been knocked about or needlessly opened up, so it feels clean and tidy, but it hasn’t lost its heritage. Looking at the online reviews, the pub is very well reviewed, although one customer was outraged that a high chair was not immediately available. The pub has survived since the eighteenth century, but this was evidently its sternest test yet.

Some tempting sausage rolls, but we had started to debate going to an Indian soon afterwards and so I managed to restrain myself.

There were some other food options which certainly cut across the price range, from a sausage roll costing £4 to curried cod goujons costing £21.50.

And a little bit of history about pub games in the dark days before bar billiards was more commonplace….. Although I managed not to take a photo of the Twister board on the ceiling, this reads:

“TWISTER circa 1830

Twister or Norfolk Wheel is a simple form of village roulette. Before the days of restricted gaming the wheel used to be the jolling centre of a running game at which money, ale, fish, eggs etc. changed hands. Nowadays a quick “spin for a pint” or a “hundred up” is the usual way of playing, but in a group of 7 or 8 it can still be a merry game.

The Twister board is circular and about one foot to eighteen inches across, divided into twelve segments which are coloured white and red alternately. The number of the segments varied from two to ten, but so long as the turning arm is well balanced, the sequence of numbers should be irregular.

In the very old inns it was the invariable practice to fix the Twister board to the ceiling where the turning arm could be clearly seen by the whole room.

Players spin as their fancy takes them, either for the highest score, for red or white, or for different segments of the board; whichever method is used Twister will always provide a quick answer to the question “Whose Round?”

Twisters still exist in a few Norfolk pubs today. At the Blickling Arms, Wroxham Road, Norwich. Another inn this time on the Ipswich–Cromer road is the Three Horseshoes at Alby, nr. Aylsham, and finally at the Three Horseshoes at Warham, nr. Snetterton–Thetford.

Extract from the book “Old English Pub Games”, 1949.”

It’s probably not the Twister game that some kids might be expecting though.

There were numerous outbuildings and those steps up to the lodgings reminded me of how many of the old coaching inns used to look. There is still accommodation available today, which is perhaps what is supporting the pub financially in these trying times.

The beer garden was substantial and there is a large covered area as well. There’s an outside bar and I imagine that this would make a fine space for a wedding or family gathering.

I found a shady spot in the garden as I didn’t want to overdo it. The beer is Pintail from the marvellous Moon Gazer brewery and it was clean, light, hoppy and well kept. There was also Woodforde’s Wherry available and the prices were reasonable.

I very much liked this country pub, it’s doing well to keep going and it is offering food, real ale, accommodation and keeping open for long hours, so this is a proper little community asset. I’m a little surprised that it hasn’t managed to get into the Good Beer Guide, but maybe there’s a lot of competition locally. The pub was quiet when we were there, but I hope the locals support it to ensure that it lasts for at least a few more generations and it’s also one that I’d pro-actively look to return to.

August 29, 2026
Wells-next-the-Sea : Albatros (Historic Sailing Shop and Recent Pub)

Moored alongside the quay at Wells-next-the-Sea, the Albatros is rather more interesting than the average boat parked in the harbour. The Dutch North Sea clipper was built in 1899 at Capelle aan den IJssel, near Rotterdam, and spent much of its working life carrying cargo around northern Europe. Between 1990 and 1996 it became a regular visitor to Wells, bringing more than 100 cargoes of soya bean meal from the Continent. In September 1996 it sailed from Wells after delivering 100 tonnes from Rotterdam, marking the end of its career as a freight carrier and, remarkably, the final commercial voyage of a sail-driven cargo ship in Europe.

The Albatros later returned to Wells and acquired a rather gentler existence, becoming a floating bar, restaurant, music venue and accommodation, particularly known for Dutch pancakes and real ale. It left the town in 2020 for an extensive restoration at Maldon in Essex, finally returning to Wells in July 2023 after three years of work. As I know from Charters in Peterborough, there’s something rather exciting about having a real ale on a floating boat. For some years it was listed in the Good Beer Guide and was known for stocking a selection of beers from Woodfordes brewery.

Quite what’s happening now, I’m not sure. Jen offered to try and go and talk to the people on the boat, but Roy and I recoiled at that ridiculous level of social interaction so we meandered off quickly. It means this post ends without the benefit of investigative journalism, but with considerably less risk of having to introduce ourselves to strangers.

August 24, 2026
Wells-next-the-Sea : The Globe Inn

The next pub on our meanderings around Norfolk was the Globe in Wells-next-the-Sea which is one of a growing number operated by the Chestnut Group. It has been a licensed premises since around the 1830s and was a locally owned venue before Greene King acquired it in the late 1960s, but they sold it in around 2010 which is probably for the best.

In 1947, Graham Cawdron (who I think was the same landlord as Herbert Graham Cawdron) who was a former Flight Lieutenant in the RAF who had won the DFC announced that he planned changes to the venue. His family owned the pub and they proposed demolishing the original bar to give more space for the entrance, adding rooms to the rear and also adding a balcony to the first floor giving access to the billiards room and a lounge. As a side note, the landlord applied for a special licence to open until 23:30 on a Saturday evening to host the annual dinner dance of the Royal Air Forces Association. There doesn’t seem much decadence in the opening hours that were normally allowed if they had to get special permission to open until 23:30, the nightlife of Wells was evidently operating under fairly strict constitutional arrangements.

All nice and clear signage with details of some future events. There’s a front bar to the arrangement, with a restaurant area to the rear and there are also rooms available, priced at a level which suggested I would not be conducting further research.

The interior which all seemed welcoming and comfortable, with a sizeable beer garden outside. The venue was much busier than these images suggest, I took the opportunity to take these photos when customers had just left.

The bar area and there were three real ales, with two from Barsham. The venue is very well reviewed online and although the food prices were towards the higher end of the scale, the drinks prices were reasonable. The team members at the bar were friendly and served us promptly enough despite there being quite a queue when we arrived.

I went for the Eastern Gold from Barsham Brewery which had a fruity edge and was nicely rounded in terms of the flavour. It was also at the appropriate slightly chilled temperature, despite the extremely hot weather outside which I hardly mentioned, so this pleased me. And I also got some free tap water infused with cucumber or something adding an unexpected spa element to proceedings. I’m not sure that’s what actually happens at spas, but I’ve never been so I’m just guessing.

I wanted to take a photo of the cellar but there was a team member working in it when I walked by. Fortunately, Jen took a photo, so I’ve used that one as I rather like seeing open cellars.

I’d note at this stage that there are no Good Beer Guide pubs in the town, which feels a little sub-optimal, but I’d say that this one must have been a close contender. There was a friendly welcome, it had an upbeat atmosphere, the beer was well-kept and there was an air of style about it. All really rather lovely.

August 24, 2026
Wells-next-the-Sea : Eight Ringers (Former Pub)

This was once the Eight Ringers pub in Wells which was a licensed premises between the late eighteenth century and 1971 when it finally closed. It was initially a free trade pub before becoming part of Bullards and then Watney Mann, but they didn’t feel that the venue was viable and it is now split up into flats.

It came up for sale in 1904 and it was advertised as being:

“A fully licensed public house with large yard, good stable and outbuildings, suitable for any trade”.

The landlord between 1905 and 1909 was Frederick Powell and he seems to have been something of a character. He was charged of being drunk in his own licensed premises and then using bad language to a police officer who was investigating the matter, with the fine for the bad language alone being 9 shillings including the costs.

The pub seems to have struggled with their landlords as the long-standing Eleanor Cross was at the premises for over thirty years and was found guilty of adding water to whiskey. The situation seems complex, she claims that the inspector made her open a bottle which she never tried to serve from and she claimed that was her own whiskey as “her heart was bad” but the court didn’t believe it.

The landlord between 1947 and 1961 was Frank Moore and then his wife managed the house between 1961 and 1966. She attracted the interest of the national newspapers in 1962 when her 40 year old cactus bloomed with nine buds. She was so excited that she moved it to the bar and customers could see the buds blooming in front of them. They then all died overnight, so that was the end of that excitement.

There’s a plaque on the building from a local history group, otherwise I would have known that this used to be a pub. As for the name, a traditional English ring of church bells can consist of eight bells, each with its own ringer, which presumably explains the Eight Ringers. There were periods in the pub’s early history when it was instead known as the Six Ringers, so goodness knows what happened to the other two. Perhaps they had been barred.

August 20, 2026
Wells-next-the-Sea : Lifeboat Horse

Shortly after we arrived in Wells I noticed this sculpture before we meandered to our first pub in the town. It transpired to be one of the more distinctive sights in Wells Harbour and it’s known as the Lifeboat Horse, a three-metre-high sculpture standing out on the sandbank opposite the harbour. It was created by Norfolk artist Rachael Long for the Wells Heritage Art Trail in 2018 and commemorates the working horses that once helped launch the town’s lifeboats.

The inspiration for this arrangement came from an old photograph shown to Long by Wells Harbour Master Robert Smith, depicting the lifeboat being hauled by five pairs of heavy horses. During the nineteenth century, the horses could be called upon to pull the 33-foot lifeboat around two and a half miles from the quay to Holkham Gap for launching. The horses weren’t kept solely in reserve for maritime emergencies either, as they normally earned their keep by hauling heavy cargo around the harbour.

The sculpture is made from steel bars and pieces of whisky barrel and is secured to the seabed with substantial metal pins, which seems sensible given that leaving a three-metre metal horse casually unsecured in the North Sea would introduce an unnecessary element of excitement. Its position also means that the appearance changes considerably with the tide. At low water the whole horse stands exposed on the sand, while as the tide rises its legs disappear and it starts to look as though it is standing, or perhaps wading, in the harbour. And fortunately for the increasingly demanding photographic requirements of this riveting blog, by the time we returned later the tide had come in.

I rather liked the whole changing relationship with the water, as it stops the sculpture simply becoming another static piece of public art. I photographed it at different stages of the tide and it looked quite different on both occasions and I hadn’t expected that. And as is visible in the photo, a seagull had also taken up position on its back. The horse wasn’t originally intended to become a permanent feature. It formed part of the 2018 Wells Heritage Art Trail, which included 17 works by 26 Norfolk artists, but it proved sufficiently popular that a campaign was launched to keep it. The local community subsequently raised the £15,000 needed to buy and reinstall the sculpture, with donations coming from businesses, residents and even local children so it returned to the harbour in May 2019.

It isn’t quite permanent in the literal sense, as the Lifeboat Horse is removed during the winter to protect it from the harsher weather and returned in spring. Moving it requires a boat with a crane so it all sounds like a bit of a hassle, although its secondary role as a £15,000 seagull perch should not be underestimated.

August 19, 2026