Stroll from UK to USA

[bohemian]

Yesterday I had a gentle stroll from the UK to the USA, sat down on a log in America, before taking a gentle walk back to England!

How, I hear you ask, could I possibly have done that?

My wife and I, along with our daughter and two granddaughters went to Runnymede - the place where the Magna Carta was signed in 1215.

It is an interesting place to stroll through lush meadows to the memorial to the foundation of Western democracy.

Website

Next to the Magna Carta memorial is a memorial to JFK! (I have no idea why.) When this memorial was made, the Queen gave about an acre of land on which it stands to the USA, so when you pass through the gate you are officially on American soil!

It was too steep for me to walk up to the memorial itself, so I sat down on a log just inside 'America' and waited for the family to return.

Memorials at Runnymede

[sweetwillow58]

So, if you straddle the boundary, you will be in two countries at once? lol

[bohemian]

That's what our 10year-old granddaughter did!

[retroHelen]

We hadn't had a holiday for 10 years so we saved and went, in 2007, on a Heritage of America tour of the Capitol region. It was bizarre but nice walking into buildings that people from my hometown helped build/ worked in, that look just like buildings back home. Our town used to be the 3rd largest port in England 250 years ago. It was one of the biggest importers of tobacco from Virginia and among the first to re-export to Holland and France.Merchants lived both here and Williamsburg, Philadeplhia, Fredricksburg and Alexandria where they had plantations or trading posts. As well as a couple of other signatories of the "Declaration of Independence", the Washingtons lived here and George's Grandmother is buried here . It was almost uncanny walking round old Alexandria, Washington DC as the oldest streets have the same names and are set out in a similar grid-plan to our town. When I got home I researched and found that it was planned by the Washington's, originally called Bellhaven,perhaps remembering our town, and Mr Piper, a Scottish Merchant whose family lived here and built streets and homes in our town, also helped build it and traded from there. So many links, I felt at home - apart from the heat, Phew!!

The 'father of the American navy' John Paul Jones( who trained as a sailor in our town) raided here during the War of Independence (April 1778), as did the French and the town lost a lot of shipping and the American lands of Whitehaven Merchants trading in America were sequestered after the American Revolution and the Merchants either went bankrupt or moved to London, Bristol or Liverpool to trade elsewhere and the town almost immediatley declined to just a small mining/fishing town. So the town is just a quiet little harbour town now.

[boodles]

That's neat!

I wonder, if a baby were born would it be considered American?

Oh, and was there a McDonald's?

[loginphp]

That's neat!

I wonder, if a baby were born would it be considered American?

Oh, and was there a McDonald's?

Or what if a baby is born directly on the boundary line? Is he considered born in America or born in London? If he was born exactly with one leg in London and one leg in America and his body is half and half on the line, would he be considered an American-London baby? Hah, I'm just entertaining myself with interesting thoughts lol

[Precision]

Or what if a baby is born directly on the boundary line? Is he considered born in America or born in London? If he was born exactly with one leg in London and one leg in America and his body is half and half on the line, would he be considered an American-London baby? Hah, I'm just entertaining myself with interesting thoughts lol

Hah an Anglo-American dual-power baby

[bohemian]

If you saw where the boundary is - in the meadows on the edge of a wooded area - you wouldn't be going there if you were about to have a baby!

[stuagu]

Or what if a baby is born directly on the boundary line? Is he considered born in America or born in London? If he was born exactly with one leg in London and one leg in America and his body is half and half on the line, would he be considered an American-London baby? Hah, I'm just entertaining myself with interesting thoughts lol

Hah an Anglo-American dual-power baby

now that made me chuckle:D