Plymouth (The Original One) 2024 - Homeward Bound

We had an interesting trip back to Canada, starting with the very nice taxi driver who hailed, he said, from Czechoslovakia (not the Czech Republic or Slovakia, you will note). Very chatty and with a better command of English than me. He was driving a Toyota Prius, which seems to be the choice of taxi drivers in provincial towns, as that model of car has conveyed us around quite a lot.

On Plymouth Station, waiting for the London train, we watched with interest as an empty five-car Hitachi set rolled in and stopped halfway along the platform, waiting it turned out for a similar five-car set to arrive from Penzance. At Plymouth, they were to be coupled together to make a ten-car train to London. Only they didn't couple together. The fancy self-coupling system failed, and after twenty-five minutes of the railway people trying, we were about to have the whole train cancelled on us, even though there was a perfectly serviceable five-car set right in front of us. Sanity prevailed, though, and the set from Penzance was abandoned while everyone piled onto what should have been the first half of the train. Once again, all seat reservations were cancelled and the train became very busy. Of course, running late were were going to get stuck behind stopping trains, and despite the "Train Manager" asserting otherwise, the slower trains did delay us and our original twenty-five minutes late became forty-five minutes. It wasn't an issue for us because we'd built a big cushion in our plans, but the poor guy across the aisle was chuntering the whole way as he was going to miss his connection at Reading. 

 

Apparently we could have claimed compensation for the late arrival of the train at Paddington, but frankly I couldn't be arsed. 

The Heathrow Express from Paddington to the airport is indeed an express, albeit an expensive one. Fifteen minutes into the airport from Central London is not to be sniffed at, though, if you've ever had to negotiate traffic and transit in that big city. We didn't pay the top fare, though, because we are smart people.

We arrived at the airport with no more issues, checked in and went through security. I had the whole body scan treatment, shoes wiped and everything, because I'm special, and we headed into the huge shopping mall, sorry, departures area, to await our flight. Given this was a Saturday afternoon in October, it was horribly busy in there, so we opted to go out to the departure gate straight away. I say straight away, but we had our sandwiches first. Who wouldn't?

As with the flight two-weeks ago, it pushed back bang on time and we were heading west in our surprisingly uncomfortable Airbus A350 seats. Also like the outbound flight, of the three meal options offered, two were curry. What is this obsession with curry? Naturally they'd run out of the non-curry dish by the time the meal cart arrived at our seats, so I was well and truly buggered. The flight attendant was beside herself that I had no food, and searched the entire aircraft for a non-curry meal but couldn't find one, so I went hungry. Given that I had eaten a month's worth of food in the previous two weeks, it really wasn't a hardship, but why give up a reason to feel aggrieved? Such a crappy choice of meals kind of calls into question the whole idea of having two out of three meals essentially the same. Don't worry, I have let British Airways know my displeasure, as you knew I would.

In Toronto it all went smoothly. I had filled in the ArriveCan app on my phone before departure, so our customs declarations were ready to go when we went through the passport scanner. People of a right-wing bent here in Canada get very upset at the mention of that App, built as it was to ease the COVID limitations. Me, I'm very happy to be able to do stuff on the app and sail through the airport with comparative ease. If you're a Canadian arriving home by air, the ArriveCan app is the mutts nuts.

Another bit of app automation is the Park N Fly airport parking. I logged the fact that we'd arrived in the terminal, agreed the price (already quoted when we dropped the car off) and immediately was issued with a bar code with which to exit the parking lot. The bus from the airport to the parking lot was driven by Michael B, a jovial man of Jamaican heritage who crammed lots of people on, which was a good thing because he wanted to get people home, and talked himself into a load of very good tips. The car was waiting at the lot, so we loaded up, used the app barcode to get out of the lot, and then we were on our way. That's the kind of app that makes me glad I have a smartphone.

We didn't have to go too far, which was good because even though it was only 9pm in Toronto, our bodies thought it was 2am. We had a room booked at a Marriott hotel in Mississauga for the night, about twenty minutes from the airport. When you just want to get your head down, the general state of the place isn't too important, but this hotel could have been a little more on the ball. The poor woman on Reception was on her own and rushed off her feet, our room was decorated in the current hotel room vogue of "Dark", and the single beside light didn't work. DW tried calling reception, but the aforementioned Reception clerk was too busy to answer the phone, so a visit to the desk was required. The maintenance man turned up quite quickly and fiddled with some wires to get the light working, which did at least make the room usuable. While he was doing that, we took stock and decided that the housekeeping at this hotel could have been a wee bit more thorough. It wasn't horrible, but at nearly $200 a night for an out-of-town hotel room, you can expect better. Indeed, the whole room looked tired, although that seems to be the norm these days.

We did get to bed at a sensible (Toronto) time, and I slept through until 2:30am when I was woken by people crashing around in the corridor outside. I went back to sleep, although DW had a similar experience at 3:30am. I guess that's what happens at hotels close to airports. I was wide awake at 5am, though, and while the dawn dawned, listened to an podcast about the rise of Hitler, as you do. It's alarming that the similarities between old Adolph and today's right-wing populists are striking.

We had planned on a vegan breakfast at a local Copper Branch outlet, but it was closed this Sunday morning, so we set off down Highway 401 in glorious sunshine and way more traffic than should be allowed on a Sunday. A word about driving the the Greater Toronto area; it's friggin' crazy. The speed limit is 100kph, but to find anyone else doing less than 110 would be a miracle. The general speed in around 120, with many going much faster, and weaving between the many lanes in order to make progress. They drive feet from the back of other vehicles at this speed, too, and it's no wonder there are so many rear-enders. There's a new High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane on the way out of Toronto, but unless you're doing at least 130, people are trying to drive over the top of you. I don't use that lane unless the main lanes are slow because I don't want to drive that fast, I don't want to use so much fuel, I'm not in that much of a hurry and I don't want a speeding fine. That last one is never going to happen, though, because the Provincial Police have given up enforcing the rules. They won't stop anyone unless they're going fast enough to merit having their car impounded - it's known as Grandstanding I think.

Anyway, apart from the lunatics, the people driving in the middle lane, the trucks using the left-lane and the tailgaters, it was a very pleasant run. The temperature reached 22C (October 20th!), and the red, gold and yellow trees were spectacular in their autumn colours. The traffic did thin out as we went westwards, and we didn't really get held up the the construction zones. We did stop off in London (Ontario) for a different vegan breakfast at Odd Burger, then in was a gentle run home with no other distractions that US plated cars driving significantly over the speed limit as they made their way home. Call me a crusty old git, but I do think visitors to another country really should have a stab at obeying that country's laws. When they know that they're never going to get caught, though, I guess it's a free for all.

 

That was the run home. We've had better travel experiences, but we made it in one piece, which is really the most important thing.

Plymouth (The Original One) 2024 - On the Family Trail Again

Part two of the family trail involved some schlepping around Plymouth to discover places that DW's relatives had lived, with DW's dad both driving the car and giving some rather good commentary of people and places. That was followed, next day, by some schlepping around Devon's county town Exeter, to see where my relatives had lived, with me being the tour guide, but in the company of my my brother and his wife.

In Plymouth we made for Devonport, on the west side of the city, on the Devon bank of the River Tamar. If you know anything about Plymouth beyond the Mayflower, you'll know that Devonport is the Royal Navy's westernmost deep water port and dockyard, and even now it occupies a very large chunk of the city. It's the reason that Plymouth has outgrown Exeter with its requirement for labour and associated industries to supply the Naval Base. You'll not be surprised to hear that DW's relatives were both Navy and Dockyard people.

First we visited the house where DW's dad was born. In a city that was largely flattened in the Second World War, it's a total surprise that the house, and it's adjacent pub, are still standing. Indeed, it's one of the few pre-war buildings left in the area, surrounded as it is by so much post-war redevelopment. The street plans are largely the same, but the buildings most definitely are not. Past the dockyard we headed north to some late nineteenth century streets of workers houses in the district of Keyham, Before we got there, though, we negotiated a kink in the road that skirted a new part of the dockyard, which was quite significant in DW's history. What had been there were streets of Victorian workers' houses, including Moon Street, Mooncove Street and John Street, all of which featured in various census records attached to DW's family. Old maps clearly show the streets but, thanks to bombing and urban renewal, the dockyard absorbed the space, pulled down what remained, and built new Dockyard facilities. We couldn't even see what's there because it's all behind high walls and barbed wire now. 

Devonport Dockyard, Plymouth. The red box is where John Street and Moon street used to be, and the yellow box is the area where Victory and Fleet Streets still are

 

Up at Keyham, more Dockyard housing to be sure, was Victory Street, Fleet Street, Renown Street and sundry other Naval-themed road names, containing rows of those Victorian terraced cottages. We located one significant house, but enjoyed taking in the whole. Yes, many of the houses are now painted in bright colours, and there are parked cars, end to end, lining every street, but the essential structure was plain to see. While the houses were small, these were the Victorian's alternative to the back-to-back houses of the industrial cities of England, strung out on long streets, I think because space wasn't quite so hard to come by in Plymouth. Other big cities also has these streets with somewhat improved housing for the labouring classes, including London and Manchester.

Then it was back to Devonport and the street, if not the house, where DW was born. It's located only a few hundred yards from those streets that had been absorbed into the Dockyard that I mentioned earlier, and fronts onto the north side of Devonport Park. Old maps show the line of houses running right down to the river, but now they've all been swept away, by bombing and urban renewal.We visit this street, Milne Place, every time we come to Plymouth, as a kind of pilgrimage. We had a stroll around the park, not looking its best, it has to be said, because at this time of year the city's re-wilding program tends to look a bit shabby; it's great in the summer, though. While we were there, DW's dad told us some great tales of life during and after the war in that part of Plymouth.

Modern day High Street in Stonehouse, with part of the Naval Hospital on the right

 

The final stop on the tour was High Street in Stonehouse, just west of Devonport, where more addresses appeared on census forms. The houses that had once lined the street are all long gone, and the school that stands there, even though it dates back to 1897, was built after those houses had been pulled down. Just a few yards away, we did get a look at the old Royal Naval Hospital, now a fancy gated community of houses and apartments, where DW's grandfather had died. There is family history on every corner in this city.

At this juncture I will make a comment that relates to how cities ought to be run. In Plymouth, where the bombs and urban renewal rebuilt the old parts of the town, the city fathers erected many thousands of houses and flats, all owned and controlled by the City Council. So many people displaced then had a house with hot and cold water, heating and lighting, with a fair rent, and were not trapped into squalour by private landlords. Despite the best efforts of Margaret Thatcher in the seventies and eighties, many of these houses and flats remain under City control and provide affordable homes for the people of Plymouth. Certainly Plymouth is not perfect, but when you read and see the issues caused by a lack of affordable housing, in the UK and in Canada, Plymouth stands out as a beacon of sensible housing provision.

Some of Plymouth's Social Housing, this in High Street, Stonehouse

In Exeter it was all about my mother's family, although first we had to get there. We took a cab to the station, which put us well ahead of schedule, thank goodness, because the blight of privatized railways hit us again. Both the train from Plymouth to Exeter St, David's, and the train from St.Davids to Exeter Central, were cancelled. Back in the halcyon days of British Rail, it was rare to get trains cancelled like that. Sometimes on or two of the local, five-an-hour commuter trains would get dropped, but longer distance trains would pretty much always run. On our recent trips to the UK, though, we have been hit by longer-distance trains being cancelled, with alarming regularity. Interestingly, I have worked for one of Britain's private train operators so I know how they do things in their quest for ever greater profits, at the expense of the paying customer. They run with absolutely no slack in their systems. Drivers and other staff are poorly paid, so are hard to recruit and retain. If any don't show up for work there is simply no facility to insert alternative staff to run the services. The excuse for the cancellation of the train to Exeter varied, too, which means blame shifting was in operation, as in "it wasn't our fault, it was someone else". The Rail Regulator has proved ineffective at holding the train operating companies to account, so the run of cancelled trains continues. In a country where train travel is becoming more popular than ever as people get fed up of congested roads, this really isn't acceptable. Margaret Thatcher has a lot to answer for. The result of cancelled trains is overcrowding on the trains that do run. Our first available service service was a Cross-Country operated service from Penzance to Edinburgh in Scotland. As is usual with that company, the train was just four cars long, and was quite full when it arrived in Plymouth. Because of the cancelled train, more people than usual crammed onto the Cross-Country and we ended up having to stand by the bicycle storage area because all the seats were taken. Every Cross-Country train I've ever used has been only four or six cars long and has had people standing for long periods of time. That's great for the accountants, more paying customers per train, but not so good for the poor folks who end up in those packed trains. We gave up at Newton Abbot and hopped off to pick up a local stopping train that went to Exeter Central via Exeter St. David's. Slower for sure, but at least we had a seat. Anyway, I digress (a lot).

 

We met up with Bro and Mrs Bro and made our way through historic Exeter, past the wonderful Norman and Gothic cathedral (longest unbroken Gothic church roof in the world!), with me adding a ton of interesting (!) stories about all the places we passed We made our way to the White Hart Hotel in South Street for lunch and a beer or two, and caught up with current family issues. The White Hart is one of those places that was a fixture for me, somewhere I've passed a thousand time, although I couldn't remember ever having been inside. It's an old coaching inn and has a delightful little alleyway between the two Elizabethan buildings it occupies, and thinking back, my dad may have showed me into the alley at some point, because it did feel familiar. I definitely hadn't been in the pub, but then I left Exeter when I was fourteen, so that'd be the reason for that.

 

From the White Hart we set off to explore the square mile that's known as the West Quarter, the land between the Cathedral and the Quay on the River Exe.It's steeped in history, right from Roman times, and it's where a good proportion of my mum's family resided in the nineteenth century, and the first half of the twentieth century. Like the Barbican in Plymouth, this port area was crammed with poor families all trying to eke out a living between the port and the city, and occupations listed in the census forms include Fish Hawker, Hawking Labourer, Charwoman and Laundress. While the street pattern remains, at least in part, two major events changed the West Quarter irrevocably. The first was the bombing of the city in April and May 1942, when German bombers attacked Exeter for its cultural and historical significance rather than any strategic or military importance. The second was the act of civic vandalism in the early 1960s that drove a new road through the West Quarter, cutting streets in two and removing vast swathes of earlier housing. Worse was the removal of large chunks of the city's Roman wall. The only saving grace in any of it was the physical moving of a fifteen century merchant's house, to make way for the road. Urban renewal had actually started in the 1920s, when poor quality housing was replaced with more modern dwellings, but the building of the road, the Western Way, was a terrible time for that part of Exeter. That said, most of the churches survived, as did Stepcote Hill, a place where my ancestors are recorded as having lived, and that ensured that our exploration based on census records was easy to achieve. 

 

We made our way down to the river, past the old medieval Exe Bridge, now landlocked, and the tower of St. Edmund's Church. The river has been much altered over the centuries, from the Roman port right through to the Victorian era. Indeed, we stopped in a pub in an area known locally as Exe Island, yet it's not on an island. Well, it isn't now, but it was in the late 1800s. The pub was in an old Bonded Store, one of the many Victorian buildings that survive on the Quay. I did want to have a drink in a pub called the Bishop Blaize, in Ewing Square. Old maps show the pub being there in 1888, and I had relatives living in Ewing Street and Cricklepit Mill Lane, just yards away. Unfortunately the streets have gone, as have most of the buildings, and the pub was closed. Maybe another day.

Like so many cities and towns in England, there is history on every corner in Exeter, and even as we threaded our way back to the station were were walking past significant historical points, and of course my boyhood memories. DW and Mrs Bro did a sterling job of listening and pretending to be interested, which made my day. Bro was just ten years old when he left Exeter, but we managed to stir some of his memories as well.

The run back to Plymouth was without incident, and without cancelled trains. We opted for the stopping train to Newton Abbot again, although that beautiful run between Exeter and Newton Abbot, taking in the Rivers Exe and Teign, and the run along the narrow gap between high red cliffs and the English Channel, wasn't as good as it could have been because it was getting dark. If you like trains, though, Google "Dawlish Sea Wall Trains".

 

Those runs out have pretty much concluded our family explorations for this trip. It was great to tread where our ancestors had trod (is that a word?), and it's given us an added dimension to our family trees. I think I can say mission accomplished.

Plymouth (The Original One) 2024 - On the Family Trail

 The primary reason for this visit to England is for our family, the one in the here and now. As a secondary mission, though, DW and I were keen to follow up on our families from the past. Knowing where you've come from is important when you're finding out where you're going, so being in Plymouth specifically and Devon more generally, has given us a great opportunity to explore our roots. And the word roots is apt, because although we have moved away, we both have roots firmly in this part of the world.

 

DW was born in Plymouth, and while her father's side hail originally from Birmingham, and before then Herefordshire, that side of her clan is firmly fixed in Devon. On her mother's side, it's pure Plymouth. For myself, I discovered that one of my great-grandmothers was born in Plymouth, but the bulk of my mother's family was from north Devon, and of course Exeter, Newton Abbot and Torquay. But back to Plymouth.

Without being too specific, because unless it's your family, the details are not of much relevance, I can say that a fair old chunk of DW's family lived and worked within the square mile or so that is known today as the Barbican. Barbican of course means gate into a castle, and that's what the area was in medieval times, when the old castle guarded the mouth of Sutton Pool, the city's original port area. Nowadays it means the old port area in general, stretching up and around the hills that lead to the River Plym. Our family records reliably go back to the turn of the nineteenth century (unreliably they go back further), when the Barbican was a bustling port and surrounded by warehouses and homes, densely packed into the ancient streets around the harbour. 

 

Plymouth is world renowned for being the last stopping point of the famous Mayflower, the ship that took the pilgrims, shockingly unprepared as it turned out, to the New World. Plymouth Massachusetts is noted as their stopping point on mainland North America, named with no small nod to England's Plymouth. The city is also known for it's links to Sir Francis Drake, explorer, pirate, slaver and supposed saviour of Elizabethan England when he chased the Spanish Armada away from its shores. The legend goes that Drake himself watched the Spanish fleet sail past Plymouth Sound while he played Bowls on Plymouth Hoe, before he set his own fleet to sea to harass the Spaniards and apparently prevent an invasion. Drake wasn't a Plymouth boy, he's from Tavistock, a little way up the River Tamar, but Plymouth loudly claims him as its own.

More recently, and in the time span that covers our family researches, Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912), Scott of the Antarctic, was a Plymouth lad. All three of his expeditions to Antarctica set off from Plymouth, although Scott himself never made it back to his home town because died where he worked, on the Ross Ice Shelf, during his final expedition. Darwin set sail on at least one of his voyages on The Beagle from Plymouth and is known to have stayed in the city while preparing. You'll gather that Plymouth has quite a history.

 

Not a huge amount of buildings in those teeming streets survive on the Barbican these days. There are some warehouse buildings along the harbour, and dotted around are some fine Elizabethan buildings, beautifully restored and still in some use or other. The old port was superseded to a large extent by the Georgian and Victorian development of the larger deep water port on the western side of the city, on the Devon side of the River Tamar, that came to be known as Devonport. But judging by the railway lines along the old ports quays, it did remain in use for some time alongside Devonport. Urban renewal in the Barbican area had already started prior to the Second World War, but Plymouth took a terrible beating in one single week in 1941 as the Germans took aim at Devonport dockyard, a key Royal Navy base. The Barbican was hit, but not like the centre of the city, which was reduced to rubble in those five raids. After the war, Plymouth necessarily needed to rebuild, and the City Fathers decided to set to work on clearing a lot of the Barbican's older residential streets to build new and modern housing for the people who lived there.

All this background leads up to the fact that while many of DWs family lived and worked around the Barbican, there is precious little left of the nineteenth century warren of streets and ancient houses. Indeed, while much of the original street plan has been retained, so many streets have adopted new names. Thank goodness for the historical projects available through the Internet that document the old against the new.

Our first place to visit was Looe Street, on a hill rising up from the harbour. Records show family living the City's Corporation Dwellings on Looe Street, an early attempt at Urban renewal by the City. One side of the street is stout Corporation buildings, the other still a mix of Elizabethan and Georgian buildings, all of which survived the war. Batter Street, which crosses Looe Street, didn't fare so well and I doubt that members of DW's family who lived and worked there would recognize it now. Indeed, all of the streets on that side of the harbour bear little resemblance to those streets marked out on maps drawn in the late nineteenth century, with the exception of Looe Street.

 

Looe Street past and present

When we ventured into the area on the west side of the harbour, where we're staying, we walked the old street pattern, and saw some wonderful Elizabethan houses, but the streets in which DW's family lived had all been cleared and were now filled with City built post-war flats and houses. We did find what remains of the old castle, and enjoyed some fabulous views over Plymouth Sound, though. 

 

Throughout our research, and wandering the streets, we did find churches. The English Census is organised using ecclesiastical boundaries, and as baptismal, marriage and burial records refer to churches as well, churches tended to jump out at us. In old English towns, there are churches seemingly on every street corner, and our walks around Plymouth have highlighted many churches mentioned in family records. Churches may not have survived German bombs, but they did survive most urban renewal, which is why so many still exist.

My own family, my great-grandmother, was born on the Barbican, was baptised in St. John's church and lived on Stillman Street, before she moved to Exeter with her family. It's an intriguing prospect to think that my family may have known DW's family as they lived just one street away from each other. They would certainly have drunk in the same pubs, one of which still stands and in which we sat and had a drink while we soaked up the atmosphere.

One thing that were able to do was visit the monument to Britain's Royal Navy, situated on The Hoe. On one of the bronze plaques that line the base is the name of one W C Fast, a Petty Officer Stoker who died at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. He's related by marriage to DW's family, people that lived and worked in the Barbican area. There are similar memorials in Portsmouth, and in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and on each of those is listed the names of at least two of my family members. Maybe we'll visit those places in the future.

Further afield, we took a drive with current family out to the North Devon village of Dolton. If I said it was in the boondocks, that would be understating things. Once off the main roads, we were in a maze of tiny lanes, at some point barely wide enough for one vehicle. We twisted and turned for a while, then at probably the narrowest point, met a pair of huge tractors coming towards us, both towing trailers, and both filling the road between the hedgerows to the extent that even on foot you'd have had to go back and find a passing place. I wasn't driving, but we backed up about 400 yards to a point where we and another car could get out of the way of the tractors. Driving in rural Devon is such fun.

Arriving in Dolton, we went into the graveyard of St.Edmund's Church and had a happy half hour perusing the gravestones and looking for my family names. We found a few, too, especially with the handy list of burials and the maps of the burial sites that were inside the church. Baptisms, marriages and burials of my family had all happened here. That said, there were not as many as I had anticipated but I suspect that many of my ancestors were Non-Conformists, that is not Anglican, so had I located a Methodist's chapel I may have found more. It didn't matter, though, because that village and it's environs were the epicentre of the Bater family, one that had spread far and wide in the late nineteenth and early 20th Century. It was from Dolton that people had gone to the New World and settled in Guelph, Ontario, not so far from home in Canada, as well as Alberta and Newfoundland. I have been following in my family's footsteps.

Back in Plymouth, we've discovered yet more of DW's family locales, this time in Devonport on the east side of the city. Like so many other places, pre-war Devonport was largely reduced to rubble by German bombs that were aimed at the adjacent Naval Dockyard. With the help of the National Library of Scotland's free, digital, historic maps we've been able to search out street after street mentioned in Census records that simply don't exist today, but we will take time to run out and visit the area. Similarly, we'll take a run into Exeter next week to have a look at the places my family came from in that fine City, my home in my formative years. But that cam all wait for another entry in this journal.

Plymouth (The Original One) 2024 - The Accommodation

 Here in sunny Devon (very, very wet Devon if I'm truthful), we're staying in a nice little house on Plymouth's historic Barbican, the old port area and point at which the Mayflower sailed for the New World. Allegedly.

We've stayed down on the Barbican before, and because it's so central to the city, you really don't need your own transport while here. Everything you require is quite close by, and there's never anywhere to park anyway. The Barbican also boasts more pubs and fish and chip shops per square mile than anywhere I've ever been. The place is thronging with people, especially at the weekends, and it makes the whole area seem very lively. I have to say that we don't search out lively usually, but this part of the city has always been a hive of activity, so it all fits. In centuries past it was ships and sailors, today it's students and tourists, but either way it's vibrant. I mentioned the pubs, but looking at some 150 year-old maps, there are only a fraction of the number of pubs now compared to then, but the place is still full of them. 

 

Our house is on Stokes Lane, one block back from the quayside, and would have been home to stores and warehouses at some point. The present house dates to the Georgian period, but the stone walls that make up the rear of the house tell of earlier habitation. It's three stories high, four if you include the cellar, an is only about twenty feet across at the front. The door opens straight on to the street, and that itself can't be much more than twenty feet across. According to the little potted history of the house that's in the information folder, the artist Robert Lenkiewicz (1941-2002) lived in the house at some point in his life, and boy does that man have a history. I'm certain that the house also was home to many a salty old sea dog over the years, and if you looked, I'm sure the deeds would show up a "Sea Captain" or two, which seems to be a code for anyone associated with ships. The cellar, off limits to visitors, may have been used to store contraband, smuggled goods, in years gone by, although I'm certain that most houses in these parts would make that claim.

When we looked at the house on Google StreetView, it looked a bit different to the blurb on the VRBO website, but we worked out that it's undergone some significant refurbishment recently. The owner has updated the place without losing it's essential structure, so we are in a narrow, old house, but with all modern conveniences, and very comfortable it is too. I don't think it's on the list of Scheduled Buildings, or Listed in anyway, which would explain the blue frontage and modern windows. That said, there is a bit of a musty smell to the place, which is understandable, and it takes a bit of heating to take the edge off the chill. England can feel damp at the best of times, especially when just yards from the sea, and in an old stone house. Thank goodness for Natural Gas and some nice radiators.

 

The reason we're here at all is family related, not least because this is DW's home town. Family tree research has linked my family to the City as well, one of my Great-Grandmothers being born in a house just on the other side of the harbour, not more than a quarter of a mile from where I'm typing this. Family tree research isn't our reason to visit, but we'll definitely do a little looking around while we're here.

Given that it's raining stair rods out there at the moment, we won't be off exploring the area today, but when the rain does ease off then I'll document our travels.

Plymouth (The Original One) 2024 - The Arriving

 Another trip eastwards and across the ocean for us, this time to DW's ancestral home Plymouth. Not the Plymouth of Massachusetts, but the one in Devon from whence the Mayflower sailed. We haven't brought the Airstream, obviously, but I thought I'd document the trip here, especially given that we might have been camping were we not in Merrie Olde England.

Travelling to England is always expensive, and always a chore. We'd booked the best price seats we could manage given that we wanted a full service airline, Premium Economy seats, and a direct flight (so not cheap), and placed our faith in British Airways from Toronto's Pearson Airport to London Heathrow. That of course meant a drive up the dreaded Highway 401. It's construction season on Canada's roads right now, and we knew that there were around six or seven different construction sites between home and the airport, and because we were travelling on a Friday afternoon we decided to allow ourselves plenty of time. It was a good job that we did.

We were about twenty-five minutes past our target leaving time, and immediately hit a snag when the train crossing lights started flashing on LaCroix Street in town, and we spent five minutes watching one of those never ending freight trains pass by, although the angst was slightly offset watching a couple of drivers ahead of us panic when then realised they'd stopped so close to the tracks that the barriers would likely hit their cars when they came down. I mean, there's half a dozen trains through there daily, so it's not like it's a rare event, but still they stop on the tracks. But I digress.

 

On the 401 it was busy. Wall-to-wall trucks, but at least it was moving. That lasted up until Colonel Talbot Road when we hit the first of many, many slow-downs. On a trip that should take just on three hours door-to-door, it took us over four hours. The Friday afternoon traffic likely made things worse, but that run up was the worst I'd experienced in my fifteen years in Canada. But in this case, we'd left so much slack in the schedule that we were not even mildly late for our flight.

Toronto's Pearson airport isn't the best place to be on a Friday evening, but then it's not the worst, either. The check-in area in Terminal 3 isn't really big enough to accommodate the number of people that use it, but then again, neither is the same space in Terminal 1. We dumped our bags in fairly short order and made our way through security screening without too much of a fuss. Airside, things have changed a little from when I first started travelling regularly through the airport. Firstly you're forced to walk through a big duty-free perfume selling store (which was new), and the long departure gate arm now has many more retail outlets than it used to have. It certainly gives the place a livelier feel, but they are all, without exception, hugely over-priced. London's Heathrow airport has long been known as "Thief-row" thanks to the high prices levied on airside clients, and Pearson Airport is catching up. We were in Terminal 3 last November but things had changed even since then, with most of the regular seating removed and replaced by tables, with a central restaurant and bar in the centre. In T1 there are I-Pads on the tables through which you can order your over-priced food and drink to be delivered to your table. Now it's just a QR code etched on a metal plate on the table and you can order the same over-priced food and drink from your cell phone. I don't think I'd mind too much if the tabled area formed only part of the departures seating, but it doesn't, it's all encompassing. You don't have to make an order when you're sat at the tables, but it's kind of implied. It's not as if any of this is essential for the travelling public because pretty much every flight out of there gives you a meal within an hour of takeoff anyway. My cynical mind tells me it's all about profit, and I'm never in the mood to voluntarily help the GTAA (Greater Toronto Airport Authority) get rich. We, being the ever economical souls that we are, brought home made sandwiches. I did spoil things by going to buy an over-priced cup of coffee from Starbucks, but walked away from the line waiting when the three people serving seemed that talking among themselves was more important than moving the line and actually selling coffee. In my annoyance I bought a bottle of water and KitKat for the eye-watering sum of $9.38, which was three times what I'd have spent at Starbucks. But hey, principles are principles.

Our aircraft for the flight was an Airbus A350, wide-bodied mediocrity and indistinguishable from any other in its class. The Premium Economy cabin is over the wing so my two windows, one slightly behind me and one slightly in front, were not going to be of much use. The two overhead storage bins above us were marked "Crew Only", so I heaved our bags into one on the other side of the aisle, much to the consternation of the people sitting below it. Being English, the woman made a quiet comment about not using "their bins", but made her feelings truly known with the fixed stare she gave me.

Our seats were not the most comfortable I've ever sat in, but were so far from the seat in front that the tray table was mounted in the arm rest of our seats and not on the back of the seats in front. The seats also reclined with a leg support coming up from below. I like to sit up so didn't use that function, and nor did the woman sitting in front of me, which was fortunate. As is normal though, the person sitting in front of DW did recline, fully, so she was forced to recline as well, although as she was intended on a goodly nap, that was OK. Me climbing over DW while the seats were reclined was pure comedy, but when you have to go, you have to go.

The meal served about an hour into the flight was, well, not my thing. The choices were Cod with Polenta, or Curry. I have a feeling it was the same choice on the flight we took to London last year. When it was served, the fish was OK, but the Polenta was horrible and the little bowl of ricey stuff that was on the side looked and smelled like the sort of thing I would pay not to eat. I don't know why British Airways insist on serving food that they think might look a "a bit jazzy", and pretty much always contain a curry option. Air Transat did the same for a while, but reverted to more standard fare when people like me moaned about it. The best meal on a 'plane I ever had was on a charter flight from Kephalonia to London, and it was a beef stew. If the charter people can do it, surely the major airlines can. The "hot snack" served before landing was a "hot mess", and again I ask why? Trying too hard to be too fancy really doesn't work.

I couldn't get comfortable during the flight, even when resorting to the old standard sleep aid of watching Bridget Jones' Diary for the umpteenth time, and as a consequence didn't sleep much. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield had suggested some good Northern Lights viewing that night, but nothing. Curse that Astronaut. It was thick cloud cover as the day dawned and we flew over my other ancestral home, Ireland, and it stayed cloudy pretty much until we popped out of the clouds a few miles from Heathrow. All in all, it was a bit of a manky flight. That said, it left Toronto bang on time, and arrived in London ahead of schedule, so well done BA.

Terminal 5 at Heathrow is a wondrous place, but when you get dropped at a gate far from the terminal you have a choice of a long walk, or get crammed onto and all too infrequent shuttle train that runs to the terminal. Every time we've been presented with the shuttle option it's been overcrowded beyond belief, so we decided on the walk this fine morning. There were a few of those moving sidewalk things, but still a fair bit of walking, although having been sat still for six hours or so, it was not a bad thing.

 

The bags came out quite quickly at the luggage reclaim, and we made our way down to the Heathrow Express train, which was no mean feat with me hauling two big cases. The Heathrow Express is one of three rail-based options to get into London from the airport, is the fastest by far, and the most expensive. The Elizabeth Line is a new rail line across London and would take us into Paddington railway station directly, if a little more slowly. The Underground's Piccadilly Line would get us to Paddington with a change of trains at Gloucester Road, but is a seriously slow way of travelling given that there are many, many stops on the line. While the Express may have been expensive, I bought the tickets online, ahead of time, and with our rail discount card, the price was only around £6 each for the single fare, as opposed to the regular £25 if you buy on the day without a discount card. When the train starts its run into Paddington, you soon realise why it's called the Express, because that thing really flies. It takes fifteen minutes from Terminal 1 & 2 to Paddington, compared to over an hour on the Underground, which is quite impressive.

At Paddington, we had a wait before picking up our train to Plymouth. About a three hour wait. To get a well priced ticket on British trains, you have to plump for a specific train, and book seats. Doing that, and using the discount card, we were able to afford First Class tickets, which in this case worked very well for us as we were able to use the First Class Lounge at Paddington Station. The lounge is three rooms, two with sofas and the like, and one with tables and chairs. Snacks and drinks, non-alcoholic of course, are complimentary, so we hunkered down for the duration, just happy to shake off the rigours of the journey so far. It being Saturday, the station was busy with non-commuters, many heading to football matches. I took a quick walk up onto Praed Street, just outside the station, and surveyed the very familiar scene. A student nurse of my acquaintance worked at St. Mary's Hospital just next door to the station, and while she didn't merit a Blue Plaque on the wall, Sir Alexander Fleming did his groundbreaking work on Penicillin there and has a Blue Plaque, and the royal princes William and Harry were born there. Like so many other streets in London, notable things have happened there. While up on the street, I came across a heap of London Black Cabs, all purring along using electric motors rather than the old chug-chug diesel engines of the past. It turns out that the cabs are hybrids and do have their internal combustion engines, but a lot of the time run noiselessly and smokelessly on battery power. What with the hybrid buses as well, London's air is getting so much more breathable.

 

When it was time to board our train (they notify you of the appropriate platform only minutes before departure), we looked in vain for Coach K, where our booked seats were located. A quick question to one of the train's crew revealed that they were short of a few coaches and there definitely wasn't a Coach K. All seat bookings had been cancelled as a result, so it was sit anywhere. Fortunately the train wasn't terribly full, so we found a couple of seats and settled in for the run down to the Westcountry. Like the aircraft we'd flown in, the seats here were not the most comfortable, but there was plenty of room. And, like the lounge at the station, snacks and drinks were complementary. Similar to the Heathrow Express, this train took off like a scalded rabbit and we were quickly pelting through west London at a serious clip and heading to Reading. The weather was OK and the scenery getting greener as we crossed and recrossed the River Thames. Reading, Taunton, Tiverton, Exeter, Newton Abbot, Totnes and finally Plymouth, took us a little over three hours. The weather closed in, the sea was battering the sea wall at Dawlish, and by the time we reached Plymouth, the rain was coming down, but then this is the Westcountry in October, so nothing unusual about that.

 

A short taxi ride from the station and we were on Plymouth's famous Barbican, and opening up Number One, Stokes Lane, our home for the next two weeks. We were both shattered, but did manage to get out to the Co-Op for some essential supplies, dodge the many young people out in the wet streets, and buy some proper English fish and chip shop chips, which is surely the best way to end what was a long and uncomfortable trip.

I'll write a little about our accommodation in the next instalment, and about the purpose of the trip, but for now, I'll round off this very long post by saying it was very nice to be back in Devon.