Blighty Bound - Day Eleven, a Down Day by the Sea

 It was mothering Sunday, and as the family were concentrating on other mothers, we decided to go for a holiday down day.

A down day for us is not having anything planned, and quite possibly just sitting around catching up with ourselves. It being March, there wasn't much possibility of sitting out on the patio, but it wasn't so bad that I couldn't don my walking boots and head off for some exercise. 

We'd bought a couple of the very excellent Ordnance Survey 1:250,000 scale Land Ranger maps and I was delighted to see a marked national footpath, or trail, going pretty much past our front door.  I put some layers on, sweatshirt, rain jacket, neck warmer, gloves and hat, and headed off through Lower Whiddon Farm and the trail. Well, it's a good job that my boots are waterproof. It's barely stopped raining here since Christmas and it was certainly wet underfoot. This section of the trail was what's known as a Green Lane, a pathway that has historical vehicular rights. It's a public right of way, and it's technically possible to drive your car along it, only it's very narrow and pretty much just a muddy track, not least because it's used by tractors to access fields, and by horses. Obviously tractors can make a mess with their mighty tyres, but horses can be particularly destructive because their hooves cut up the track's surface and rain sits in the resultant cuts, turning everything to sloppy mud. So it was that I ended up picking my way along ankle deep mud and similarly deep puddles of water that stretched across the track. There's no escape, either, because this being Devon the track was bounded by eight-feet high hedgerows. Still, that's what I came for.

The pathway led down into a steep-sided, wooded valley with a gurgling stream in its base. I could have carried on down the track as it followed the stream, and very fetching it looked, if a tad muddy. But Opted to cross the stream and gain some height using the road on the other side. Because the path I'd just come down is, theoretically at least, a road, it had a ford across the stream. If you don't know what a ford is, you've never lived in Devon. It's a road that goes through a stream or river, not over or under it. There used to lots of them on little back roads here, but they're mostly gone now, but it was nice to see this one.

I headed north up the proper road, asphalt at least, if not much wider than the pathway I'd just come down. This is a feature of roads in Devon, they can be just wide enough to drive a tractor along, but it'll be all but touching both sides of the road, bounded as it will be by a bank, low stone wall, or hedgerow. There are the occasional passing places, but if you try these roads, the chances are you'll end up backing to a passing place, on many occasions. As a pedestrian, I had to flatten myself against the bank, and face the oncoming vehicle to make sure I was not going to get swiped by a wing mirror. The speed limit on these roads is the default 60mph, but you'll be lucky if you can do 20mph. The marker of these "Devon Motorways" is the strip of dirt, moss, and even grass, down the middle of the asphalt. I have to say that driving these roads is not fun.

The road certainly gained some height, and was in the 10% region for much of the time. Still, while the going was slow and I was puffing like an ancient steam locomotive, it was great to climb out of the wooded valley, through the incredibly green fields and the occasional farm yard. At the point where I was to head home, I could look down on our cottage and it's surrounding buildings from the other side of the valley, and very fetching it was, too.

The home leg was on a slightly wider road (no green strip down the middle and mostly wide enough for two cars to pass), and as was downhill, my legs felt like springs after the climb. Of course the rain caught me the, but I was prepared, even though all my warming clothes were proving a bit too warming with all the exercise. It was on the road back into the farm, back on the national trail, that I saw an early middle-aged couple dressed in expensive hiking Lycra, or Spandex, and I thought I must have looked quite amateurish next to them. That said, you can keep your Lycra, I just don't have the legs for it.

Back at the cottage, I clocked my walk statistics; only an hour and a tad over 4Km, but the uphill section had been way more exercise that I'm used to.

Back to the down day, and as the weather had looked like it was brightening up we decided to go for a walk along the sea wall at Teignmouth. I have history with that South Devon resort at the mouth of the River Teign as it's where I started school, way back in September 1963. My brother escorted me daily on the bus from Dawlish, and I have some quite vivid memories of the school, and the town. The best place to park for the walk was right opposite the site of the school, which had been the church hall attached to the Catholic Church of Our Lady and St. Patrick. The church is still there, the terrace where the school was is still there, but the school itself is not. Indeed, it's been left to re-wild itself, I suppose waiting for someone to build on it. To access the school, we used a little doorway in the retaining wall of the terrace, but it opened straight onto the busy road between Dawlish and Teignmouth, and while you can still see it, it's long been bricked up. As we made our way from the car towards the sea wall, I took in the view that I'd enjoyed from my school, oh so long ago.

The car park was Pay and Display, and payment was through the RingGo smartphone app that I'd installed a last week. Time was bought and paid for while sitting in the car, which was handy. 

We walked towards the sea, over the railway, and down past the Coastguard station. The slope down afforded great views of Teignmouth beach, looking south west across the river mouth and over to Shaldon, and the Ness, a great red sandstone cliff that guards the entrance to the estuary and the harbour.

Teignmouth's beach has very coarse, dull, red sand that will stain absolutely anything that comes into contact with it, which is why it's not a great place for a beach holiday, albeit that the green, grassy area immediately behind the beach is full of interesting diversions like Mini-golf, and other exciting things. The town's famous Grand Pier, a Victorian cast iron structure jutting a fair way out into the sea, is a very sad shadow of its former self. When I was a kid there was a pavilion thing at the end of the pier, but fire and the intervening sixty years of English Channel storms has reduced it to a few forlorn iron posts, at least where the pavilion was. The remaining structure attached to the seafront is still functioning, as an amusement arcade of course, and it pretty much mirrors the fate of so many of those Victorian piers England's south coast.

Back to the sea wall, Brunel's Great Western Railway runs right along the edge of the sea from Teignmouth, where we stood, to Dawlish Warren, and is one the England's great railway journeys. On one side are towering red sandstone cliffs, and on the other Lyme Bay and the English Channel. The railway goes through a series of short tunnels and runs on a built up terrace just above the beach. Every year that terrace gets pounded by stormy seas, and there have been some major collapses of both the cliffs and the terrace. But, this is now the main line between London, Plymouth, and Cornwall, so vast amounts of money have been spent to rebuild and shore up the railway corridor. As we walked along the wall towards Dawlish, feet from the railway, but fifteen feet above the beach, we were crunching through a layer of red sand, lifted from the beach by the sea.

It's a great walk, with views along to Exmouth in the east and Brixham in the west. The railway, even on this Sunday, had a constant stream of trains; seven heading west and three heading east. We took photos because the grand baby will be very keen to see them. I don't know how long we walked, but we went beyond Sprey Point before the rain came rushing in and forced us to turn around. There were lots of other people about, and with their dogs, which was nice too. Beaches tend to send dogs into a delirium, and those we saw all seemed to be madly dashing about. Dogs are not allowed on the beaches in the summer, so I guess they like to make the best of their time.

As we were about to turn for the car park, we had a look in the open snack bar, and what a great selection of stiff they had, not least for the vegans. We weren't in the market for snacks, but top marks to the enterprising owners who opened up on a cold March day, and were rewarded with lots of customers who were, like us, out for a stroll.

With my morning exertions, and now the walk along the sea wall, I felt I had done some good exercise.

Just to close this episode, I had remarked to Dear Wife that I always thought of Teignmouth as a rusty looking town. As we walked past the seafront buildings I realised that the pervading colour was not rust at all, but the red of the sandstone that gives the beach its distinctive hue. Teignmouth is washed in the stuff and it's only taken me sixty-odd years to realise it. 

Blighty 2025 - Travel

Yesterday was our third and final trip into London. We drove to Didcot Parkway railway station again, paid the nearly £8 parking fee and walked into the station concourse, as we had previously, although this time I had our travel tickets, printed when I collected the previous trip's tickets.

There had been an "Incident" somewhere between Didcot and London that was messing up the train schedule, but we managed to board a packed train that was stopping only at Reading and London. The rail network in and around London is amazing, so complex and heavily used, and it runs fairly well on any given day. Incidents, though, do mess things up and I doubt that the 1320hrs to London would have been that busy otherwise. But we all had seats, and the train was fast, and we emerged from it into the vast cavern that is Paddington Station, and I hit the noise filter on my hearing aids. London is such a noisy place.

We had to make a quick run to an Argos store, the reason isn't important. I divined that there was one some fifteen minutes walk from the station, but why walk when you have a Transport for London (TfL) Oyster card in your pocket? After the mandatory loo break, we stood on Eastbourne Terrace, curiously on the west side of the station, and waited for a bus. Now the TfL phone app is a thing of wondrous beauty, and while I had already worked out that we could get a Number 7 bus, the app said we could get a 36 as an alternative. Sure enough, a 36 lurched around the corner and we boarded it for the short trip to George Street, on the Edgeware Road.

Then it was off to Portobello Road, also on a Number 7 bus, only this time going west, not east. The app said there was "Disruption" on the route, so it was an unusual ten minute wait, but the bus wasn't too busy and we made our way up to the top deck for the fifteen minute ride. 

I have a social comment to make here, and it's about mobile phones. I have one, yes, so I don't eschew the whole rationale behind them, but boy are they ever intrusive? There was a man at the bus stop, walking around and talking loudly into his phone. He got on the bus of course, and continued to talk loudly into his phone. He got off the bus and he was still talking loudly into his phone. Everyone else was treated to half his call, which was nice. That was just one, though. All day we encountered people talking loudly into their phones while riding the bus, or the tube, or walking down the street, or whatever. Are these people so important that they can't wait to hold their long conversations until they find somewhere quieter and more private? I guess it's me getting old, but it doesn't seem too difficult to me to keep phone calls to less public places. I mean, what did these folks do before the invention of the shouting machine? 

Dear Wife made another social comment. She said she liked getting away from the tourist-dominated parts of Central London and mingle with some of the people who live in the great Metropolis. West of Paddington you're into Ladbroke Grove, where the people are more likely to be residents. The ethnic mix of Londoners is wonderful to see, and to hear, and I don't care what the current obsession with right-wing politicians is about, diversity IS strength. 

In Portobello Road is a market. There's a different one every day, for six days a week. I'm not sure what Monday's theme was but the road was closed to traffic and it was lined on both sides by stalls selling all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff, including what's known these days as "Street Food", which smelled divine. The street is also home to masses of interesting little shops, cafes and restaurants, and I'd imagine that you could happily spend many hours there. Unfortunately for us, Charlie was tired and was hankering for a ride on the Underground, so we fairly whisked along through the market, to our destination which was a shop used as a filming location in the second Paddington Bear movie. Sadly, Charlie wasn't much interested in the shop, but we did get the photos before moving off to the Underground Station at Notting Hill Gate. There are a lot of terraced houses in that part of Town, gentrified for sure, very expensive to buy, but very nice to observe as we walked. Many were brightly painted, but the presence of so many Banham door locks and burglar alarms told us these were wealthy people's homes in what was once a poor part of London. There were some bulky, brick built, 1920s London County Council apartment blocks, but even those looked to have been sold off. Margaret Thatcher is responsible for a lot of bad stuff, I can tell you.

We were making for Waterloo Station and a rendezvous with family. Charlie enjoyed his Tube ride, and we enjoyed another loo break and a snack, while people watching in that other huge cavern of a railway station. Unfortunately there was a very loud busker giving it some welly close by, and that added to the general level of the noise.

Heading home from Waterloo, we rode the Tube again, straight to Paddington this time. As we approached Paddington, though, the train's guard came onto the PA system and said that there was no rail service westbound out of Paddington. What? I had visions of trying to get hotel rooms in London for the night because there is no real alternative to getting to Didcot and the car other than by train. As we came up into the mainline station, though, I was mightily relieved to see the departure boards all functioning as they should, and trains apparently running normally. The guard on the Tube train clearly had old information and, as our arch-researcher, DW, discovered, the cause of the rail disruption was in fact the "incident" that had occurred in the morning and was long resolved. Although not specifically labelled as such, it looked like someone had decided to end it all on the tracks at Hanwell Station. The language of the reports suggested suicide, and the reference to The Samaritans kind of sealed it. I can't imagine being moved to do such a thing, and while lots of people were delayed earlier in the day, that's as nothing compared to the poor person at Hanwell.

We ran to catch a fast train back to Didcot, which was packed, of course. I upset everyone when I said to a young woman that she shouldn't have her shopping bags on the train seat when it's so busy, and she gave up her shopping bags' seat, and her sitting seat, and left the car entirely! Maybe I shouldn't have said that bit out loud, but it pisses me off when people use seats for their bags, very clearly in the hope that no one will sit next to them. I saw it on the morning train, too, and some people are just so polite that they won't ask, nay demand, that people leave the seats for people, and not for bags. I guess years of commuting frustration got to me.

Despite all my grumbles, the public transport network actually functions really well in and around London, and the fact that just about every train we caught was packed full tends to speak of its success. I am not a fan of privatised trains and their labyrinthine ticketing, but with tighter Government control, things are getting better. TfL's Oyster Card is great, as is its control of public transport within the Capital. I'm not saying it's as cheap as chips to use TfL's services, but the cost of getting around in London these days is acceptable. Kids who are eleven and under travel free in London, too, although five and over have to have their own, free, Oyster Card. Isn't that great?

We're done travelling to London now, at least for this trip. I will be reporting on the fun and games in Andy Burnham's Greater Manchester travel systems next week. Watch this space.

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.