The Eden Project was well worth a visit. Perhaps we were just lucky, but we were there on a day when there were no warring platoons of commando schoolkids to deal with. Just other fat old gits like me.
All the car-parks are named after fruits. We found ourselves in the Plum car-park. On the courtesy bus at the end of the day, there was a lot of confusion among the other oldies about where we were whenever the bus stopped, hence the chanting of "Banana!" and "Strawberry!" alluded to in the previous entry. It was kind of surreal.
Padstow was full of culinary highlights, though I couldn’t make my mind up between the gourmet 5-course Rick Stein meal on Friday night, and the chocolate & banana pasty on Saturday morning.
We meandered up the west coast of Cornwall and before cutting inland through the north of Dartmoor. I wanted to dip down to North Tawton to visit the grave of a friend of mine. After finding the church I was mystified by the absence of the gravestone I was looking for. Had her family really forgotten her? We eventually left, rather sadly, and were heading out of the area when M spotted another church up on a remote hillside. We decided to investigate — and there we found the grave. How did I get that wrong?
What an atmospheric place. St James’s at Bondleigh. For some reason it reminded me of that scene in Shawshank Redemption where Red goes off to look for the oak tree in Buxton, marking the spot where Andy Dufresne has buried the box.
I could almost hear that Tim Robbins voiceover: Dear Red. If you’re reading this, you’ve gotten out. And if you’ve come this far, maybe you’re willing to come a little further. You remember the name of the town, don’t you? I could use a good man to help me get my project on wheels. I’ll keep an eye out for you and the chessboard ready. Remember, Red. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. I will be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds you well. Your friend. Andy.
It was a baking hot afternoon. There was no one around. How quiet and peaceful it was. Anyone who’s been reading this stuff for a while may remember that I had an "Adlestrop moment" when running through the Gloucestershire countryside in February of last year. Here’s the link.
Last time, a couple of people mailed me to ask what an Adlestrop moment was. Hard to explain exactly. Best to start with the Edward Thomas poem, written about an afternoon in June 1914:
Yes, I remember Adlestrop —
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop – only the name
And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
Thomas was killed in Flanders in 1917, and wrote the poem in the trenches. What a remote and cruel memory it must have been to him.
Sometimes just a few lines like this can wrap up a whole load of complex things. Not by explaining anything, but by omitting everything. It’s the absence of information that gives so much away. Does that explain it? Perhaps not, but I had my version of one of those experiences on Saturday afternoon, a sweltering July day, standing alone by Amanda’s grave, on a remote hillside in Devon. No good thing ever dies.
And another Shawshank catchphrase. Get busy living or get busy dying.
The Royal Oak at Luxborough, in the middle of Exmoor. This is one of those places that you happen across one time, and find yourself going back to. Plenty of tasty carbohydrate on offer in a variety of forms. We spent the night there, and on Sunday went off for a paddle at Blue Anchor (a rather rude-sounding place if you don’t see it written down), before I went for a nostalgic meander along the coast to Minehead, Selworthy and Allerford. I worked here briefly in my late teens.
There was just time to squeeze in another National Trust visit so we headed down to Knighthayes near Tiverton, before reluctantly driving off to find the M5.
Just time for one more minor adventure. Traffic was at a standstill on the M4 east of Bristol so we decided to thread our way through North Bristol and Wiltshire, rejoining the M4 at Swindon. The detour took us through Yate, where we lived for a few months in late 2001/early 2002. It was here that I did the training for the London Marathon, and I decided to take a quick look up the lanes where I used to run, and where Griff (who posts occasionally on the forum) still runs. Past the familiar old forge and the riding school and the barking dogs and the pink cadillac…
The pink cadillac? Gulp. Some things are new.
