Teetotalling in Yorkshire

Being descended of water buffalo, I require great amounts of liquid to thrive. I can survive on a paltry liter or two, but it just isn't a comfortable existence. And here in the UK I have found an unforeseen social discontinuity.

The British apparently do not drink more than 16 ounces daily of water-based liquids.

Oh, they'll have a pint. Or two, or three, of ale or beer or whiskey, but coke, sprite, or the fabulous Scottish beverage Iron-Bru are delivered in tiny little sipping glasses. Glasses for tiny little people. Tiny wretched little people. Sub-human people. Baby people. Not real people.

I'll concede that you can get some beverages bottled in convenience stores in sizes up to a half-liter, but that's still not nearly enough. Especially when you're carting 150 pounds of luggage down narrow cobblestone roads and across ungainly train terminals. It's sweaty work. One must replenish or die.

My wife and I had taken to filling up a bottle with water from the bathroom faucets in the hotels we were in, just to stave off death by dessication, but a little sign discovered above the water spout in our hotel in Leeds stated simply "This Water Not Suitable For Drinking."

Which of course calls into question all the other water we'd been drinking from taps.

Was it just that the Leeds hotel (which was quite a nice one, incidentally) was civic-minded enough to want to protect their guests from the pervasive water-borne pathogens of England? Or is it just that the water in Leeds is known to carry something?

Hard to say.

We did fill up in our hotel in Ilkley, though, which is just a few miles outside of Leeds. So far no cholera.

Possibly some bird flu, but no cholera.