Devon at 55 - A Difficult Place To Be

[Roslynmuse]

I'm not able to offer any suggestions about Devon, as I've never been there! (Dorset and Cornwall, yes - Devon not. )

How did you get from Somerset to Cornwall without touching Devon?

[Serial_Apologist]

How did you get from Somerset to Cornwall without touching Devon?

Maybe by dinghy...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

How did you get from Somerset to Cornwall without touching Devon?

I stayed in the car.

[Roslynmuse]

I stayed in the car.

Ah, that old trick...

[teamsaint]

Most people at least stop off at Trago ( NA) for a cheap lunch, and to stock up on , er, stuff.

[Lat-Literal]

Hello

Thank you for all the great contributions.

I am just back from my great adventure.

[Lat-Literal]

Day 1 -

Taxi to Clapham Junction because I would not have gone ahead without it. This is the first time in my life I have ever gone away on my own for a week which is incredible given all of the problems like what will happen if my eye blows, urgent dentistry is needed, my previously broken foot fails me or I am called urgently back home. Two weeks ago in a similar taxi journey I was given a history lesson in Pakistani politics and the wonders of trustworthy Imran Khan. Couldn't get a word in edgeways. This time it was what it was like to come from Bangladesh in 1976 and become a successful restauranteur. One mention of George Harrison and the fact that I share a surname was enough to be seen as a lifelong friend who only needed to listen. This I did and while immensely pleasurable and informative it was also agony. Then it was the train leading to the abyss. I just thank the lord I had to change at Reading. I sat outside that station for nearly an hour thinking nice thoughts about a similar halt in past journeys to Glasto and Womad before embarking if not to the end of the earth on the space mission that is darkest Exeter. Crowded trains are not easy but easier than I had thought if capable of zoning. A second taxi avoids the hills up to the University where I announce that I am back because I turned them down. In '81. Then they turned me down in '82 because they had the hump. I am consequently curious. "Well, you are back now and welcome" says the woman at the desk, 15, and good looking enough to have been in television. It dawns on me she wouldn't have been around for Britpop, let alone the Sex Pistols.

As I was later to discover, Holland Hall with its substantial veranda is an uneasily atmospheric place at night. Perched up high, it ranges from eerie silence to the sounds of raucous parties from locations that are impossible to locate while the stars twinkle as if in the Planetarium above the market town which thinks it is a city. I think I liked it. The following morning one would find out who were the other 300 breakfast people in the refectory - new students being given the information on how to make friends, old students who have joined up with the friends they have made to start the term early, the corporate office, the Chinese and the Indian, tree surgeons who talk to each other in cockney accents about their "touchy feely female manager" and old dons who drift across Inspector Morse when there is an unsolved murder. But I went out before all of this to find real ale pubs. Got hopelessly lost. Walked several times across the city until ably directed by Tristran on his bike, recently in from the Caribbean via Nepal but ethereally reticent on saying what he was back for, and ultimately in conversation with a guy who while being the spitting image of Richard in the Mighty Boosh was in national sports television journalism. That, I think, was down the Melbourne Road. Wherever, it was a good chat before the Fat Pig. Yes, it was the Hourglass Inn. That's right. The Fat Pig is a bit more alternative but two women there kindly drew me a map for my future bearings but only because it was clear from my demeanour that they would only be left in peace if they did. All the while, I knew that my personal mission hadn't even started.

[Lat-Literal]

Day 2 -

The teddy bear that I had bought two weeks earlier when being unable to get to the local library is with me but it has not been unearthed. It shall stay hidden unless my eye socket blows or I have a need for immediate dental surgery or my ankle gives out. As it happens, it never sees the light of day and becomes the dividing line in the rucksack between clean and dirty clothes. After breakfast, I ask the new receptionist for bus times to Bow. He is clearly impressed. Bow means something to him. He doesn't say what other than that no one ever goes from the university to Bow. Then I spend an hour and a half waiting for the bus to Bow and it never shows. So I have a look at the cathedral which is more impressive on the outside than the inside and I end up walking forever on that ludicrous lower road again. The map hasn't worked until, that is, the time for my first live football match in over a decade. Then it gets me successfully to the St James's Park area and to a pub where a guy on his own is singing to himself before telling me he is a local celebrity. The patient bar staff appear to accept this account and are also good to me when I say to them that I am a neutral while intending to support the home side. "Look at the shirts", they say. "We have as many blue in here as red" and they do. The celebrity is convinced he knows me that I am Simon. I say that Simon was the name of my best friend in childhood. Then I escape to the match.

It's standing. What a memory that is. It has a demolished end which was exactly how Boothferry Park was when I returned to football after eight years in Hull in 1982. Dare I say it, it has a behind the bike sheds area which people are allowed into at half time - and also Bovril. It has drums and silly songs. It has charm. It has lovely, not especially young, people staffing it. The ground is if anything sweet as well as historical and its people funny and unthreatening. There is little hint of a Chris Martin or a Michael Jackson there. I am tearful because, an Oxlade-Chamberlain aside, it is bliss. I cannot believe that I am back where it all was, whatever the different location, and that I have had the nerve to take myself into it. The match is entertaining and so is the result. 5-1. Tears turn to ecstasy. I will have to add Exeter City to my personal list of clubs now. In contrast, the evening was unmemorable. But what I think was already dawning on me here was that this was 1982-1985 revisited albeit in a different region. I could see why we gravitated towards the locality in York rather than spending very much time on the campus other than as was required. Communities. New areas. These were the things for me. For us. All those years back. Studying we did but not so that it was like school or employment. I wouldn't want to be a student again, sitting in a lecture hall. Especially not in these times. For one thing, they don't have any music to speak of.

[Lat-Literal]

Day 3 -

The long, ludicrous shot for the man who often can't get to Tescos down the road was the day trip to Cornwall and it never looked anything like a fantasy. However, it happened, and on the notoriously awful travelling day that is a Sunday. By sometime in mid morning I was at Liskeard station, aware that I needed to kill some time before the further train to Looe. The entire situation with left eye flickering alarmingly in bright sunlight was now entirely other-worldly. Cornwall is a scary place but only by virtue of its distance from parental security, now diminished anyway, and anything like a National Health Service. There were only nine people outside the station. Eight had gathered as part of a "walking festival" and they were being briefed by the ninth who was a local on the walk from Liskeard to Looe on which they were about to embark. I have seen these groups before. I have been in them on occasions.

With one or two exceptions, the people are neither as overtly sociable or as overly confident as one might imagine. Anyhow, after about ten minutes of this, "any questions?" No one says a word. So I walk over and say "yes......recognise this is a bit of an imposition as I am not joining them although it all sounds wonderful but could I be given information on the Looe to Polperro walk which I intend to do alone". Most frown. One woman looks like she is thinking "thank god, someone who talks : it's a pity he isn't coming with us" and I am given all of the information I need by their El Leader who of course is brimming with leadership skills. He has congratulated the crowd for wearing sensible footwear when some have not so I've already calculated that he would be reasonably positive towards someone in walking boots who proclaims that, on principle, he doesn't own a phone, a map, a compass or a watch. After a mile and a half a mile's saunter into Liskeard and back - it is not at all an unpretty town - the train line to Looe is something of a disappointment as it slowly passes through no scenery at all until the mud banks. Then one is in Looe. It's ok - a working fisheries place and attractive enough in its way - but with no obvious signs on arriving of any footpath. People at the bus stop direct me past the boats to a road. The South West Coast Path should not have to begin here so close to passing traffic where injury could occur unintentionally.

But beyond this point, the walk is lovely. That is, from a pavement along a quiet road to the grass banks far away from the road and then on to the path's ups and downs. Some of the scenery is spectacular. There are some gruelling moments but momentary and then one reaches Polperro, about five miles on. It's every bit the picture postcard place it is known to me and with it comes the touristy. Northern voices are frequently heard. There is a slightly alternative vibe a la Glastonbury or Lewes but alas no evidence of the works of Oskar Kokoschka who a friend had directed me to as one of interest. I only tried one inn. The Blue Peter. It has some pleasant sun traps from which you can listen to Neil Young singing "Heart of Gold" but the service there as in the pasty shop and more was from the males at least just about civil while being miserably brusque. A woman in an arty shop with wonderful Winnie the Pooh blankets in the window had been so kind in giving me directions that I felt that I wanted to return and buy one to thank her. I also felt that she looked like she was suffering from the influence of hard drugs or more likely cancer. There was something about her. I just really liked her. But she laughed when I came back and said the blankets were not on sale. They were just there to bring people in to the shop and anyhow she had been happy to help. It all left me with a strange feeling and the journey back by bus - following chat in a lively queue of various day tourists with timetables, maps and a little unusually plenty of camaraderie and humour - and two trains seemed very long. But when I got to the Pizza Express beside the cathedral green in Exeter knowing it was the only quiet place there and hence the only one I could handle, I was as gobsmacked about what I had achieved as I was knackered.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Great to see that you got there Lat-Lit. And back

[Lat-Literal]

Great to see that you got there Lat-Lit. And back

[Lat-Literal]

Day 4 -

Darren might be my oddest mate of all time. He was always seen as my third or fourth best mate but now I look back on the past 25-30 years I realise that I underestimated his role. He was there at festivals. We did holidays together and with other people. We lose touch for years. We saw each other once between 2010 and 2017, then decided to go holiday last August. We hadn't seen each other since then and this August we went on holiday again. I was determined this year that it would give me impetus. Darren says that I can't say I have done the whole of the Jurassic Coast path if I haven't done the Undercliff. It is all very well of him to say that but I have done more of it than him. It is just that I have never done the Undercliff. This is reckoned to be one of the sections of the English coast that is the toughest. For just five miles, they recommend that anyone allows 3.5 to 4 hours. I'm 55. Time has been felt to be running out. For it to be on the agenda now seemed imperative but at the same time the most ridiculous of aspirations given other things that were scheduled. When Monday came, I walked from Devon into Dorset. That's travelling by train and bus out of Exeter to Seaton and the walk to Lyme Regis. Yes. I have now done the Undercliff and solo.



Exeter is a better base for the Undercliff walk than it is for Looe. The train ride to Axminster and the bus to Seaton is manageable. But what sounds like a low level stride through a grotto is anything but and mainly woody with mere glimpses of the sea it is atypical of the Jurassic. It is lovely but I did find it b----y hard going in places underfoot and there is a lot of steepness. I wouldn't have wanted to have left it any longer. Of course, brief banter with people coming in the opposite direction makes it easier but I am pretty sure that it is more easily walked in the opposite direction. The initial climb up to the golf course is a challenge in itself. I was so lucky with the weather. Sunny again and gently breezy. It is a beautiful walk that has only been made possible because of significant erosion and it does in that regard have a mysterious quality. It must be the longest five miles I've ever walked. It really does feel like twelve. But to have done it was a tremendous feeling and now I can say that.....well, I can't quite say that I have walked the Jurassic because there is just a tiny bit east of Abbotsbury still to do and then I will have done it all. There is a big word to get out on Dorset and preferably before any fracking, the very idea of which appals me. I don't think I ever contemplated it before the late 2000s and this is common. It comes before so many other places in people's minds. And yet is more accessible to London. It is in many respects an equal to the rest of the South West. I was absolutely amazed and enthralled to have discovered it in my 40s just as I have loved in a different way discovering East Anglia in my 50s.

I gave myself quite a relaxing time in Lyme Regis with ice creams and fish and chips on a glorious September afternoon. I was perhaps for the first time in several days concerned about my parents and especially my Dad. I got someone to ring them for me briefly. My mother said all was ok and she was delighted it had gone so well for me. It was music to their ears. The bus arrived early. I still had a Cornish pasty in my mouth and panicked. On trying to ask the driver if she went to Axminster, flakes cascaded inelegantly from my mouth. She laughed her head off and said no but she could take me back to Exeter so that was what I did. On my return, there was a different woman at the university reception desk. Homely. Somewhat overweight. 30 something. Very much like the woman who in work had seen me as the Civil Service's future of voluntary work and, my, was she keen on voluntary work. Colleagues said she had had her eye on me. I spoke about the Undercliff achievement and all the spiel about my history with Exeter and how I had ended up at York as well as the way in which I intended to go to North Devon the following day. Her sidekick glared at the extent of it all. She was lovely. She came from York. She preferred York to Exeter while admitting to bias. She also preferred North Devon to South Devon as I do. There was a definite meeting of coincidences there and I was so grateful for it. I just hope that she still has a job.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh44QPT1mPE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An2a1_Do_fc

[Lat-Literal]

Day 5 -

My mother had first travelled from the Walworth Road in central South London with family and friends aged 14 in 1944. The worst of the bombing was over. There were trains to Devon although they took an age and for safety reasons the window were blackened out. They all ended up in seemingly the middle of nowhere at a 16th century inn called the White Hart in the village of Bow. She had fond memories of the troops in tents in the garden behind it, the welcoming from locals, playing darts in the main bar and even one visit on a bus with a girlfriend, advanced in her years, to Exeter. I was still determined to see it, to enter it, and to have photographs taken with the locals there today which I could send back to her at home. It transpired after extensive questioning that the bus journey I had intended to make on the Saturday was not necessarily the best route. Rather, I had a better option in taking a detour in my train journey from Exeter to Barnstaple by getting off the train at Crediton and then taking a bus beyond it. It wouldn't be straightforward but it was certainly doable.

I felt very motivated towards this aim. Crediton is a strange place. It is not without history or charm but in the high street and the Wetherspoons where I had a coffee few appeared to have heard of Bow even though it was only several miles down the road. One man who had just been diagnosed with diabetes and anaemia was smoking heavily and debating with friends whether he might become more well by going onto Guinness. This was greeted with much laughter and with the statement from his female relatives that "we are all trailer trash here". The Wetherspoon brand of itself led to reflection throughout the week. Tim Martin as a key Brexiteer is now far more influential than any leading figure in UKIP. I sat reading his latest newsletter. It's a very interesting thing that he is doing, whether right or wrong. The very fact that they do coffee and breakfast and are now taking on the burger and pizza joints conveys so many mixed messages. He has conquered the older brigades. Going for youth, he is certainly not in league with America. I still wonder why he is so anti music though.

tbc

[Beef Oven!]

Long time no hear - thought you got eaten by lions

[Lat-Literal]

Long time no hear - thought you got eaten by lions

I'm doin' this following a bus Ilfracombe to Barnstaple; train Barnstaple to Exeter; train Exeter to Reading; train Reading to Redhill; taxi Redhill to Coulsdon in which the taxi driver told me that it takes him half the time to go from Crawley to his second home in Alicante. Nearly nine blimmin' hours of it from the south west to the south east - I should be more asleep.