Spent "the Summer of Love" (1968) hitchhiking around the British Isles with my bride. Stayed in homes recommended by the local fuzz (mainly their old mums and aunties) and in "commercial travelers'" hotels.
I'm not entirely sure that I actually met an "English" person, in all that time, although I met folks with roots in Man, Orkney, Ulster, Malta, Jamaica, Poland, and others I've forgotten.
We DID run across some people who were so polite and mumbled so softly that we were never actually able to identify them....Possibly natives of the Islas Malvinas taking a break from their flocks?
I remember the beer as not worth much, but then we were used to the well-named "frozen gnat piss" that passed for US beer in them days. The cider you could get in any pub was more like it. I spent a lot of time walking backward with my thumb draggin the air, and the cider seemed to help that orientation. It also helped me stay on the correct side of the road, which no normal person can actually do "clean and sober."
In general we were treated like rather strange and dim-witted relatives who had dropped in from a far county and needed to be fed up and coddled. The commercial travelers had lots of mouldy jokes about Yanks left over from The Big One which they generously shared at breakfast (actually quite hilarious to someone who missed It).
I saw lots of doubles and LOTS OF GAME, which quite surprised me.
Then we got to Ireland and the first thing I heard was some old cat cussing me out about US Vietnam policy in an entirely audible volume. "Back to reality" says I.
