Sunday, May 15^th, 2016

Day -8

Today we be departed London for Exmouth in Devon, to start, in 8 days time, my coastal journey.  After a beautiful stroll in Hyde Park we caught a train from Paddington Station and being a Sunday, there is (of course) extensive work being carried out on the rail lines so that the normally 2 hours journey will take 4 hours.  Generally I enjoy train journeys and the ride down to Devon is one of my most favourites, so perhaps I ought to be thankful that I was able to experience it for twice as long as normal.  We did not follow the normal route, which I much prefer.  This cuts across Berkshire and Wiltshire to south Somerset and then down to Exeter.  Our route took us across north Wiltshire through Swindon, Bath and Bristol and then joins with the other route above Taunton.  We basically took two sides of a triangle. with our preferred route being down the hypotenuse. Either route shows off the the rurality of southern England and its glorious countryside. The scene is one of newborn spring lambs running and playing in the fields and calves jostling each other and chasing their tails.  Bright new grass is all around, with many different shades of green, dependent on whether it is lush on low fields by the water or darker and drier higher up on the hillside.  The emergence of the shoots of the wheat and barley that will be harvested in August adds further shades of green and as you get closer to Devon, this is contrasted by the rich red soil in which it is grown.  The dazzling yellow fields of mustard light up the countryside and with the red ploughed fields and the green meadows, they make for a glorious patchwork, especially as you see them more prominently rising up among the low hills.  An English national treasure is the hedgerows, some hundreds of years old.  Not only do they separate the fields but they are the homes of countless wildlife.  Along with the deciduous woodland they support the abundance of the wildlife.  The woodland and the hedgerows are currently glorious with lots of white and pink May blossom.  At their base and on the railway embankments is the yellow of the wild primroses contrasting with the bright blue of the bluebells, which are now beginning to fade. 

Cattle both dairy and beef are very prominent in the West Country, but farmers remain concerned about TB getting into their cattle.  If it is detected than the animals have to be slaughtered.  The government have organized culls of the wild badgers, which are thought to harbour the disease which is spread to the cattle.  There is a public outcry over the badger cull, which has been vocally supported by the RSPCA.  However, when you see a herd of beautiful guernsey cows that are being sent off to the slaughter house, as an animal lover you are terribly torn as to which animals should die.  If it were possible, perhaps a program of catching and vaccinating the badgers might have some effect. 

Early into our journey we crossed the River Thames at Maidenhead, close to Wargrave, where we used to live and from where two of my journey companions will come from.   This is also where I, at one time, shared an aeroplane with a friend, and the railway line and adjacent M4 motorway, were always reliable markers of where you were in relation to locating the grass runways at White Waltham aerodrome.  Flying was something that I thoroughly enjoyed and flying in the UK is a real pleasure and easy to do.  

(Wargrave from the air - with our house)

Britain has numerous airfields, a legacy of World War 2 and though many are no longer in service, those that remain provide ideal opportunities for short day trips to almost anywhere in Britain.  Towns, many of them quite small and some only villages, would never have had an airfield built if it were not for the war.  These give you access to almost all of the British Isles; places to explore without the hassle of traffic to contend with.  We would often fly to the Isle of White (my intended first night destination on my coastal trip next week) just for a lunch and a walk on the beach.  France was just over an hour away; different language and culture and excellent food of course.  We greatly miss the opportunity of easy getaways and access to so many different places.  British Columbia is spectacular of course, but flying is much more restricted in its options.  You have mountains on one side that are high and formidable to fly into.  The vast Pacific Ocean is on another side and apart from Vancouver Island, offer a pilot very little options to land.  To the south is the United States, but this requires a landing and customs clearance, just across the border in Bellingham, before flying on to somewhere.  It was partly for these reasons that when my wife and I moved to Vancouver we took up boating and gave up flying.  Boating though in BC is said to be the best in the world with hundreds, indeed thousands, of small islands to visit in mainly very protected waters with a climate that allows for year round boating.

Back to our rail journey!  The railway on both routes, follows beside a number of canals, now used purely for pleasure by small boats and barges.  It was the construction of the canals that gave a lot of impetus to the industrial revolution allowing easy delivery of goods from the midland and northern towns to London and various ports.  Indeed china ware from Stoke On Trent, where factories such as Spode are located, could be transported more securely on a slow moving, gentle, barge rather than by cart along a bumpy road, with much more chance of breakages.  However, ironically, by opening up easier transport of goods and speeding up industrial growth the canals contributed to their own demise and the subsequent arrival of the railways, which would often be located right alongside the canals.  After falling into decades of decline with many silting up, in the 1970s changes in working practices brought about longer and more flexible holiday times for workers. This spurred a renewed interest in the canal networks with people forming societies to work together to restore them and provide highly relaxing new leisure destinations.  It is wonderful to now see the many coloured barges, some of which people live on full time, plying up and down the restored canals.

Wiltshire leads on to Somerset, which is a county almost entirely given over to farming.  Of course it has the world famous city of Bath, but Cheddar Gorge with its deep cave system and Glastonbury with its large and eerie church tower on the Tor are places that tourists love to visit.  Glastonbury in June, in a farmer’s fields, becomes the site of the famous music festival to which the worlds best musicians perform on a number of stages, seemingly set in fields of mud.  I have not yet been to the Glastonbury Music Festival, but the photos in the newspapers are usually revelers caked in wet sticky mud, as no matter that this is high summer, it always seems to rain during festival week.  But the music must be good for people to put up with such conditions, or is that part of the reason why they go there?

The Somerset levels are flat drained areas providing very rich arable soil.  In the winter of 2013/14 the canals and ditches, which are essential to draining the land, were overpowered by record rainfall.  Villages were either marooned as islands or, under feet of water.  Hundreds of homes were wrecked by the water, which stayed for weeks.  The government were accused of not having provided enough money and resources for the maintenance of the waterways which allowed the silt to build up and make them too shallow to carry the excess volumes of water that fell that summer.  I have huge sympathy for the people whose homes were damaged, but at the same time natural disasters cannot always be completely forecast or allowed for.  Money is certainly often spent on seemingly crazy projects where politicians look for public acclamation.  However governments rightly have to take criticism also.  It is not always about the new big thing, or even pandering to public whims from vocal minorities, but thought and planning has to go into maintaining those things that are important to everyone, like the countryside.  Determining where moneys should be spent, especially on things that are extremely rare occurrences, are a hard thing for a politician to do as they are often not obvious or bring any immediate benefit which can be seen. The temptation is to do the big newsy new thing and take money away from the equally necessary maintenance and preservation, which is unlikely to be newsy.   One result of this severe flooding, which also has occurred along many other rivers as well, including the Thames, the Severn, the Avon, the Ouse, to name but a few, is that many householders now find it difficult to get affordable insurance in areas where flooding may occur.  This then makes it harder to get a mortgage on a property, which in turn hits the value of the property.  However, memories are short  and people continue to want to live in idyllic places close to water and thus these properties remain in high demand.  I suppose it is the optimistic spirit of the British, or maybe it’s just the belief that it surely can’t happen again!

As the train entered Devon the red soil becomes even more prominent.  Here it is hillier with low, gently sloping hills and woodland valleys.  The final approach into Exeter is always glorious as we entered through fields with Devon Red cattle lying down (a sign of good weather) or standing with their feet in the water of one of the many tributaries that drain into the River Exe.  Arriving at Exeter we had to change trains to complete our journey.  Normally this is just going to another platform, but today (being a Sunday) we had to do that and then take a train one stop to another station where we had to change platforms once again,  Not easy on a very hot day with four bags (and a bad wrist).We then got on one of Britain’s most glorious branch lines for the final leg of our journey.

(The river Exe at Topsham)

The Avocet Line runs along the northern bank of the River Exe, which is tidal at this point.  When the tide is out, which often seems to be the case when I go there, it leaves huge expanses of mud flats that are a haven for birds of all types. But the black and white Avocet, with its long curved beak for digging in the mud, was selected to give its name to the line.  A couple of years ago a footpath and cycling path was completed that runs all the way from Exmouth, close to the Avocet line and on into Exeter.  It is made up of tarmaced paths along wth numerous boardwalks and wooden bridge.  The path crosses the River at Countess Weir to the East of Exeter and then continues on the opposite bank past Powderham Castle and on to Starcross, where you can catch a ferry back to Exmouth.  I have not yet walked or cycled much of it.  We frequently though like to walk about two miles along it to the village of Lympstone and have lunch at the Swan Inn before walking back again.  Perhaps one day I might follow it all the way.

Across on the opposite bank of the river the main line to Cornwall continues on from Exeter.  This is part of Brunel’s famous Atmospheric Railway.  He designed the line to have long tubes, filled with compressed air delivered from a series of pumping stations, which would be used to drive forward locomotives, thus removing the need for coal fired engines that needed to refuel.  A great idea, but in practice it failed due to the common brown rat.  Where the tubes were joined together and sealed with cloth, grease was applied to make them air tight, which was much enjoyed as a free meal by the rats!  They quickly ate what had been applied and the tubes then could not hold the air, so the trains would not run.  So they had to go back to coal, but today the line only operates diesel or electric trains.  The line is constructed for a number of miles right on the edge of the ocean and is an extremely pretty journey with red cliffs or small towns on one side and the sweep of Torbay on the other.  Unfortunately the extreme weather of recent years impacted this also and just across from the Avocet Line and Exmouth, severe storms in February 2014 washed a way a large segment of the foundations of the line at the opposite seaside town of Dawlish.  The rail track was left hanging in the air with just the sea beneath it.  Trains were halted for about 3 months, as the seawall was rebuilt and strengthened and new tracks laid.  Travellers had to take to buses for a number of miles to circumvent this area of the track and continue their journeys down into Cornwall.  

(The Dart Valley Steam Railway)

We arrived in Exmouth in time for tea with my Mother-In-Law, who I look upon as more of my Mother than my Mother-In-Law.  This month, like the Queen she is celebrating her 90^th birthday.  My children and the grand children will all be travelling across to England in July for a big family celebration.  I think she will have 9 great-grandchildren in total at her party.

The remainder of this week will be spent in gathering my essentials for my trip.  Importantly a small stove and kettle so I can be assured of a cup of tea in the afternoon, along with a bottle of HP sauce so that I can treat myself on occasions to a very English pork pie for a snack lunch! 

Two events at the end of this week have influenced the starting date of my coastal journey.  The first is the Devon County Show, which is one of the finest and largest agricultural shows in England.  It has displays of everything country.  The livestock shows for best in breeds of cattle, sheep, goats, shire horses, chickens, pheasants etc are colourful and highly competitive.  There are special sections just for young people to nurture their interest in and encourage them to make a career in farming.  There are multiple marquees with entrants for the best flower arrangements, the best cakes, photography etc., all with a message that says – this is the country.  Other marquees have stall traders selling Devon pasties, cheese, ice cream, biscuits, cakes, pies, meat products and anything that can be home made and eaten.  This is very much a foodies paradise.  There are dog shows, horse shows and displays of huge pieces of farming equipment. This is truly a wonderful place to be, with something for everyone and I am glad to report, no funfare rides that somehow would not seem right in such a setting.

My other event, on Saturday will be the rugby semi final match between the Exeter Chiefs and Wasps, in the Aviva Premiership.  The Chiefs are currently second in the Premiership league table and the champion will be decided in a final at Wembley stadium in a couple of weeks. This is remarkable in that just six years ago Exeter were in a much lower division.  The fact that they are now a leading Premiership team is possibly actually down to me!  A few years ago my cousin Wesley invited me to a match which Exeter won by 50 points.  Every time from then on, when I came to Devon, Wes and I would go to a game.  Even if they had been trounced the week before, if I was there, they won by a handsome score!  Clearly I was having an effect.  Wes said that he had spoken to the owner of the team who was considering flying me over from Canada on a regular basis just to help them get promoted!  In the end this did not happen and they got promoted anyway, but its good to know that I made the difference (at least I’d like to think so).

Finally, I have to go back to comments on London.  On Friday Marilyn and I walked to view the Wallace Collection.  This was of course fantastic, but the walk there, though less than a mile from Oxford Street, reminded us again of just how lovely London is and it was such a contrast to my experience of Thursday.  (Perhaps I was jet lagged and feeling grumpy?!). The side streets are full of the most incredible architecture, which once were homes of very wealthy people who spared no expense in building them.  There are numerous squares with oases of green gardens (but with access only to key holders) in the middle of them.  

(Connaught Square - where Tony Blair lives)

The streets also seemed to be filled with the Londoners who were elusive on Oxford Street and clearly knew to stay away from the hubbub there.  There were numerous cafes and restaurants and boutique shops.  We even stopped and had afternoon tea at a tea shop which had a piece of grass approximately 8 feet by 4 feet in front of it, on which there were two deck chairs and a small table.  Despite being right on the street it was delightful – tea in the sunshine in an English garden!

At the Wallace Collection we were surprised to find it being used as a venue for the shooting of an episode of a TV program aimed at finding the Portrait Artist of the Year.  Three celebrities sat as models for amateur artists to draw or paint their likeness.  Though they were celebrities the only model we recognised was James Norton, who is currently appearing in the TV program, Grantchester.

We got our shot of London theatre on Friday evening by going to the Aldwych to see Beautiful the life and songs of Carole King.  It was fantastic and we can highly recommend it.

After this rather long blog today (thanks for reading to the end) I will probably not write another one until my coastal journey commences.  (The blog is only supposed to be about that anyway!)

Please feel free to comment or send me a message via the blog comment section below.