Eastward Bound - Ashburton

 

14 East Street, Ashburton.

In my family tree research, I discovered a whole branch of the family that lived in Ashburton, the little town just over the hill from our little Devon bolthole. We hadn't visited Ashburton during our last trip, so faced with a few spare hours we made our way to the little town on the River Dart.

Asburton is an historic Stannary town that has links with the mining industry, namely Tin, Umber, and Ball Clay, as well as the more traditional agricultural pursuits of sheep, wool, and weaving. My family links are with men working in the Umber and Clay mines, and some of the women working in wool-related trades.

From census records going back to 1841, I can trace family to Cad Lane, Heavyhead Lane, East Street, and Ladwell. Not all the original dwellings remain, but the streets do, albeit that Heavyhead Lane now goes by the name of Woodland Road*. We were able to spend a happy hour or so walking the same streets that my ancestors lived on. One family group lived in an Inn at 14 East Street, and the building still remains. It's a private dwelling now, but after the Inn closed, it became a tea room, and remained so for many years. It was nice to see the building in the flesh, so to speak, and to touch it, just as my relatives would have.

The streets of Ashburton are narrow, and quite unsuited to modern car traffic, but even with the traffic movement, the place still holds a fair chunk of charm.

As part of our walk, we found the old station, formerly the terminus of the Totnes to Ashburton Great Western Railway branch line. The station closed in the late 1960s, although the buildings remain and are home to some car repair facilities. The branch line still runs, though, terminating now at Buckfastleigh a few miles to the south of Ashburton. It was bought by the then Dart Valley Railway (now the South Devon Railway), and since the early 1970s has operated as a hertitage railway running regular steam services to and from Totnes.

Being in this part of Devon, I can barely walk any street that at least one of my ancestors has walked upon. I have links with the villages of Caton and Staverton close to Ashburton, and many, many more links with places slightly further afield including Teigngrace, Teignbridge, and Newton Abbot. Those other places we will explore in due course, but for now I am more than content to have walked the streets of Ashburton, knowing that my family had walked those same streets 150 years before me.

*Old place names have been garnered from the National Library of Scotland's Georeferenced Historic Maps.

Ashburton on Wikipedia

14 East Street

Blighty Bound - A Conclusion

To conclude the blog posts for our England trip, I thought I'd just do a little summary.

We allowed far too much time for our drive up the 401 to the airport, although I wouldn't be saying that if we'd been significantly held up. 

We experienced the magic of the Valet service at Park N Fly again, so good and yet relatively well priced, at least in comparison to parking at a UK airport.

Flying from Toronto to London and back with British Airways was pretty good. Flights were on time, seats were good, as were the cabin crew. The return flight upgrade was a nice bonus, I guess that's what can happen on a Saturday during the day when the expensive seats are not in demand by businesses. BA continues to be very competitive on price, and they fly in to Heathrow's Terminal 5, the best of the bunch by a long way, if any airport terminal can be considered the best of anything. Terminal 5 is also the home of SIXT car rental, the only reasonably priced car hire company at the airport that doesn't require you to clamber aboard a minibus to get to their lot. 

This is the third time we've used SIXT, and they were as good as ever. They did a brilliant upsell job on us, doubling the cost of the rental, but the car was very nice. The people that work there are second to none, personable and attentive and worth the money in my view.

Returning the car to SIXT was also a breeze, and given that it was at the Heathrow Sofitel hotel, our bed for our last night in England, it was all wonderfully convenient. The Sofitel isn't cheap, but the rooms are comfortable (another upgrade), and it suited us to be virtually in the airport terminal ready for our morning flight.

The accommodation we'd booked for the three weeks was one of the best we've rented. A barn conversion on a farm (full of racehorses, the farm not the cottage), it was well appointed and very comfortable. The heating was oil-fired and the owners kept a fairly tight reign on it so renters don't splurge, and given that the price of heating oil doubled overnight as we arrived, we were OK with the way things were handled. It was chilly in the cottage sometimes, but there was a super wood burner, a bucket of logs, and backup electric heater, which would have been way cheaper to use than oil.

We had a list of things we wanted to do, and they were all achieved, bar perhaps visiting the town of Ashburton, but that was OK because we drove past it most days, and that counts. We had fish and chips, we had pasties (some quite exquisite), and the occasional pub meal. Offerings for the vegan were patchy, not as good as in previous visits, but still streets ahead of Ontario

We also did the family tree things we'd intended to by visiting Weston Mill Cemetery in Plymouth, as well as seeing Truro, South Brent, Appledore, Bideford, Bishops Lydeard, and Bridport. There was nothing very specific about any of it, bar eyeballing a few houses mentioned in census records, but it was something special to tread the same streets, go through the same doorways, and see the same sights, as our distant relatives did.

The extravagant car, the Volvo XC-60 Hybrid, was OK, although it did break one of my own rules in that it was a bit big for barrelling around the narrow lanes of rural Devon. I know people drive bigger vehicles around those tiny roads, but it would have been a wee bit easier with a car that was a bit narrower. Still, it was comfortable.

I didn't get out to walk as much as I should have, and I'll blame the weather and the hectic schedule. When I did get out, I was blown away by the greenness of everything. To understand that, you have to know that the interior of Canada stays stubbornly grey and brown until at least the end of March, so that vivid green (and red) in Devon was quite the shock.

Of course we achieved our primary aim, and that was to visit family. I don't write much about them, obviously, but I will say that it was wonderful to be in their company again, albeit only for a few weeks.

This is a link to some photos.

Blighty Bound - Passports

 

One of the issues around this trip has been passports.

We found out just a few weeks ago that British nationals who hold dual nationality with another country have to present a British passport, or an expensive alternative certificate, to gain entry to the country. We're dual nationals, holding both British and Canadian passports, but since Brexit we've travelled on our Canadian documents. Indeed, for last year's trip we even paid for an ETA, an advance authorisation that all Canadians and most other nationalities, require to visit the UK, even though we obviously have the right of abode in Britain.

The rules have changed to such an extent that we now have to present our British passports just to board the aircraft in Toronto.

Because we both have passports, we had all the correct documentation, although I did tweak the airline booking to show our British passport details rather than our default Canadian information for the outward flight from Toronto to London. I do that because airlines are required to log passenger manifests and passport details with the destination airport, and immigration authorities, under the Advanced Passenger Information System (APIS). This allows some measure of pre-screening, and it's a check for residency status; you are expected when you arrive, too. Because of APIS, when we arrived at Heathrow, we were able to use the automatic border gates without issue.

For the return trip, I went into the airline's online booking pages and switched our British passport details for our Canadian passport details to allow APIS to make the Canadian authorities aware of our status before we arrived home. Like at Heathrow, we used the automatic border system at Toronto without any problems.

I'm told that this change for British dual nationals just brings the UK into line with other countries. I've never travelled as a dual national without both passports, and as a dual national I've always presented a Canadian passport to enter Canada, so perhaps that correct. It makes sense, I suppose, for us to travel to London on one passport, and back to Toronto on another. If anyone keeps track of people leaving and entering a country, then dual nationals will always show up as only ever making one-way trips, but then that's a quirk of their systems.

We could actually travel to London on our Canadian passports, and just present a British passport as well when getting on the aircraft, and again when going through the UK border; you only have to prove right of abode after all. However, travelling out on one and back on the other seems to be the path of least resistance, assuming that you have the means of changing your passport details in your airline's booking system. I'd imagine that if you don't, then a phone call would probably do the trick.

The effect of the rule change is hardest for dual nationals who have let their original UK passports expire, and have never renewed. Now they are going to have to obtain and maintain both passports if they wish to travel to their country of origin. It may be bringing the UK into line with other countries, but it's still a backwards step for many Canadians who were born in Britain.

Blighy Bound - Mobiles and Cells, a tale of hand-held devices

 

Before we set off on this trip, we'd been informed that the usual CDN$18 a day charge, each, to use our Canadian phones in the UK had been subsumed into a new Travel Plan, and that for the much smaller sum of CDN$80 (+ tax) we could use our phones with our normal calling and data plan, for a full 30 days. That was all fine and dandy, and not really too different from the myriad e-SIMS you can buy for travel. As we were going need those Canadian numbers while away, we signed up immediately.

But there are times in the UK that you need a UK phone number, for things like store loyalty cards (with their attendant store discounts) and parking apps. We had toyed with buying a cheap smartphone with a Pay As You Go (PAYG) SIM or e-SIM, but a quick look in our desk drawers revealed a perfectly good, unlocked Huawei smartphone that would take a physical SIM card. I had no way of testing a SIM card in it because all our SIMs are e-SIMS, but I did a factory reset on the device and loaded up everything I thought I'd need, then packed it away for travel.

There are a number of very competitive resellers of airtime in the UK, and perhaps none so cheap as retail giant, Tesco. For GBP10, less than CDN$20, I could get a 30-day physical SIM that allowed unlimited text and calling within the UK, and 10Gb of data. Most important of all, it gave me a UK mobile number.

It was quite exciting to pop the SIM in the old phone and have it come to life again. I had to activate the GBP10 airtime, but then set about registering for the Tesco loyalty card, and downloading the app to operate it. Yes, I had a few issues doing that, but I didn't realise how poor the phone signal was in the Tesco Café, and when I went outside, suddenly all the correct e-mails and access codes appeared.

I've subsequently loaded the Sainsbury's loyalty card, the Marks and Spencer loyalty card, and four parking apps, all of which work seamlessly once they they have access to that UK phone number. All of this also seamlessly linked to my Google account and Google Pay, which to me is pure science fiction.

I have also handed the phone number out so that we can be contacted without people having to call an overseas number, which is old hat I know, but it's still a phone.

Then there was the ever so small point that where we stayed, there was no cell phone signal. The cottage's Wi-Fi covered most things, but not all, so when anyone called or texted the UK number, we couldn't receive the message. 

Now back in Canada, I wanted to keep the Tesco Mobile number active, and to make use of their cheapest calling and data plan. To do that I had to give them my UK debit card number, which I was happy to do, only their system works on the cardholder's address and my UK account is registered with my Canadian address. Unfortunately the computer (or App) said no. Applying my immense brain to the problem, I was struggling a bit, until I found an online Tesco Mobile Voucher reseller who accepted PayPal. I bought a voucher online, feeling a wee bit like it may have been a scam, but no, said voucher arrived by e-mail, I entered it into the Tesco Mobile app and Bingo! One topped up account. I had to pay a $4 service charge, but my GBP20 top up will last four months, so I'm OK with that. I could top up with a larger amount and it would still only be a $4 service charge, so maybe I'll do that next time.

To keep the number active, all I have to do is use it occasionally. Texting it from my Canadian phone occasionally will work, and won't dent the Tesco Mobile top up balance. Top bananas.

If push came to shove, though, I could always get a new SIM for our next visit, They're as cheap as chips. But if I was forced to do that then I'd have to load all those friggin' apps again. Nope, I think this will work.

Blighty Bound - Day Twenty-Three, To London

We finished up the packing, re-weighed the cases, re-jigged the packing, weighed the cases again, and then had a quick run though the cottage to make sure all was as we'd found it. The cases had gained weight thanks to wash bags and dirty laundry, but we were still underweight on all of them, which was a relief.

The car loaded, we waved goodbye to Little Orchard and set off down the lanes the last time, at least for this trip. We'd not had breakfast so that we didn't dirty any clean crockery, and stopped at the Haldon service centre on the A38, just opposite the racecourse where my dad had been an occasional steward, or marshal, or something. It's not a full-on motorway service station so the prices weren't too scary, but we hit Greggs Bakery for some crumbly fare, and a drink. Then it was north along the A38 to Exeter, M5 to Bristol, and M4 to London.

I'm always banging on about the differences in driving styles between here and Canada, and this busy Friday morning highlighted them. Traffic on the motorway was moving largely below the speed limit, because it was busy, and because speed limits in the UK are rigidly enforced. Average speed cameras, fixed cameras, and Police patrols operate everywhere. I'm sure that Ontarians would say that was a hindrance to personal freedom, but the already low traffic fatalities in the UK have been dropping, and dropping further still, since the enforcement was applied. In these current times, a saving on fuel, almost twice the price in the UK as it is in Canada, is also uppermost in people's minds. Whatever the reasons, it's reasonably relaxing to drive when the road isn't being treated like a race track.

It was slow around Bristol, as anticipated, and as we headed west along the M4, we called in at Leigh Delamare Services for a P&T stop (pee and tea for the uninitiated). It's not the most inviting place, but the range of shops and eating places puts the 400 series service centres in Ontario to shame. Lunch was taken, at a price of course, then we were ready for the run into London. I set the navigation system to locate a petrol station close to the airport as I'd need to fill up before returning the car, but before leaving the service station, I noticed that the cost of petrol was fully thirty pence more per litre as it was at the Haldon service centre we stopped at earlier. Seriously, where's the justification for that?

Heathrow Airport is on the west side of the city so we didn't need to go much beyond the M25 orbital motorway before we turned off and found the petrol station. I was right, it was a thirty pence per litre difference in the price. I knew it would be wise to use the navigation system to get to Terminal 5, and so it proved as the roads around the airport are labyrinthine. When we'd located the Sofitel Hotel, the car's drop off point and our bed for the night, I was very pleased to remember how to get to the car rental drop-off area, as it required a complete circuit of the hotel and a sharp right into the parking area. Sixt has a damage camera system; you drive through a lighted tunnel that is equipped with many cameras, then you drive though another one when you arrive back, and their system compares the images. Our car was unmarked, if a little mud-caked.

Having dropped the keys at the office, all that remained was for us to stagger off to the hotel with our cases, about twenty yards away, and check-in. Before we'd got there, I had a text from Sixt to say the car was fine, and minutes later an invoice. We'd been dicked for GPB12 for a three hour late return, but it was that or another day's rental, so I was happy enough. The bill was about twice what I'd originally estimated, but we did fall into the up-selling trap when we'd arrived so that's on us.

Checking into the hotel was easy enough, and we spoke to a very nice Canadian receptionist who I hope we didn't make too homesick. The rooms at the Sofitel are not cheap, but they are well appointed, and our nice Canadian at the desk told us we'd been upgraded to a better room, at no extra cost. A slightly bigger room with a small complimentary mini-bar and a coffee maker - small things but welcome.

An hour or two of lazing around not doing much was followed by a pricey meal in one of the hotel's restaurants, and a walk around the departures hall of the airport terminal, a short walk through some long passages from the hotel. Back in the restaurant, the hotel added a "discretionary" 12.5% service charge to the bill. Discretionary in that if you didn't want to pay it had to tell them so, which is a bit chintzy. We'd have paid about that in a tip, so we left it on the bill, but it didn't stop one of the serving people lingering for another tip. I'm always happy to pay for service, but not twice.

We both crashed quite early, happy that we'd not have a journey to the airport immediately before the flight, although I did set my alarm just in case I overslept. The flight was at 1140 the next day, but that meant being at the airport at least two hours before, so getting up, washed, and finally packed, was always going to a rush. At least I'd already checked in online, so it was just about dropping our bags off when we arrived in the terminal. It's all about easing our way, and the Sofitel certainly did that.

Blighty Bound - Day Thirteen, off to Kernow

 

It has been a family day, and a family tree day. DW determined that a line of her dad's family hailed from Cornwall, or Kernow, England's most south-westerly county, so we decided to head down there to see some old family haunts. We took DW's dad and stepmum for the day out, too.

Cornwall is where I spent a lot of childhood holidays. Being an extremity in England, the place always seemed a bit remote, and because it sticks out into the Atlantic Ocean, it always seemed windswept. We have been back in recent years, but I haven't driven beyond Liskeard and Looe for nigh on thirty years, so the first thing I noticed was some vast improvements to the road system. It was a bit squirrelly for the first twenty miles, up hill and down dale, but once on the main A30, it was all plain sailing. That said, this was a Tuesday in March, not a summer Saturday, so we were seeing traffic at its lightest, thank goodness. Speed enforcement is a serious business in Cornwall, because the accident statistics were horrible, so we kept our speed down, not wishing to get caught by the myriad fixed cameras and the mile-upon-mile of average speed cameras. Not that it mattered, we were in no rush.

We were heading to Truro, Cornwall's largest city, its only city, and its administrative capital. But first we were stopping short of our destination, at the village of Tresillian, conveniently on the road to Truro. There was a house there listed in one of DW's census records and we knew it was still standing from looking at Google StreetView. It had been a smithy, a blacksmith's shop, and was marked on the 1892 historic map. Well, we drove past the house, but couldn't stop thanks to the busy road, but we'd seen it, which was the aim. About half a mile further on we did stop, only this time to visit Marys Pastys (sic), a purveyor of locally made Cornish Pasties. If you've never had a Cornish Pasty then I can genuinely say that you've missed a treat. It's a melange of potato, Swede (Rutabaga), onion, and a little meat (usually beef skirt), seasoned with ground black pepper and wrapped up in pastry. In my view it's best served hot, but it doesn't have to be, and can be eaten from the hands. There are many variations on the theme, but a good traditional pasty is very hard to beat, even though it tends to be flaky pastry and not shortcrust these days, and they put far too much meat in. I say that because the original pasties were supposed to be meals for working men, who would wrap the newly baked pasty in a cloth, pop it into their shirt and keep it there until it was time to eat; at the tin mine, or in the fields, wherever. Meat was expensive so there was usually very little in the pasty, but I suppose modern times require modern solutions. That may be an apocryphal tale, but it sounds plausible to me.

Anyway, Mary came good with the traditional pasties, but had no vegan offerings left in the oven. That was a triple shame because one, they didn't normally sell out of vegan pasties, two, there was nothing for DW, and three, these vegan pasties were the best, apparently, because they weren't gussied up in any way, just a regular pasty without the meat. No peas, no sweetcorn, no curry powder, just the original ingredients. Mary (it wasn't really Mary, just the woman working in the shop) suggested we drive up to their production facility in Grampound Road, about ten minutes away, because they were sure to have vegan pasties. She was right, because a quick ten minute diversion (past the aforementioned smithy again) to a little industrial estate, and DW came out of Mary's workshop armed with a couple of vegan pasties. We devoured them in the car, there and then, and they were very, very good.

Then it was on to Truro (past the smithy for a third time), which is an 'andsome town indeed, with a fabulous little cathedral right in the centre of the city. We parked up and had a wander around. Leaving the folks to finish their coffee in Waterstone's book shop, DW and I legged it up to Andrew Place, a short walk away, to look a a house once occupied by her 3 x great grandmother. The census of 1911 had listed the house as number eight, but there wasn't a number eight. We put our detective hats on and decided that number seven was actually numbers seven and eight knocked together. The houses had once been a part of the Truro Union Workhouse and were very small, all in a terrace, so I can well see how two could have been made into one, especially as number eight had been on the end of the terrace. Whether we were right or not didn't matter because we were there treading on the streets of DW's direct relations.

Truro is a lovely little city, and we decided that if we were ever forced to return to England we'd like it there, not least because some of the houses looked to be affordable. That's often the case in extremities. We're not planning on fleeing Canada, but you can never be certain of these things.

Before heading home, we went for a drive to Old Kea, another place mentioned in the Census. The drive, just a mile or two south of Truro, took us through some tiny, tiny lanes, all worthy of Devon. We were unfortunate enough to have to pass Kea School at kicking-out time, and those tiny lanes were lined with the parked cars of parents picking their kids up. If ever there was a case for a school bus, this was it, because the roads were all but impassable. Old Kea was a collection of ramshackle farm buildings and an old church tower, not particularly exciting in itself, but exciting to think of the rellies living right there in times past.

We had to negotiate the school again on the way back, with open car doors blocking the lane, people walking in front of our moving car, and a massive dump truck insisting on coming up the narrow lane when there were cars coming down it. I had to effectively park in the muddy bank to let that bugger by. Thankfully, the rest of the run back to Plymouth was uneventful. The weather had been dull and overcast all day in Cornwall, and had moved to low cloud and drizzle by the time we were on the road, but as we approached Saltash, the Tamar Bridge, and Devon, the clouds melted away and the sun shone beautifully. DW's stepmum had predicted exactly that, too. 

So nice was the evening that after we'd dropped the folks home, we decided to head for Ashburton by going across Dartmoor. The view from atop the moors was just stunning, and although the navigation system took us along some narrow lanes, even by Devon standards, some steep hills and even a ford, the run was lovely. Lots of sheep and semi-wild ponies all over the place, including in the road, and very few other vehicles. Dartmoor is a beautiful place, especially when the sun shines, and we were feeling very content as we came down off the heights to our little cottage.

That had been a lovely day in the extreme south west. This may be a small country, but there's so much to see, and we are very lucky to be able to explore, even just small parts of it.

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 Bound - Day Seven, An Unusual Pub

 

It was a nice slow start for us as we were expecting family guests, followed by an excursion into Buckfastleigh to the Valiant Soldier pub. 

The Valiant Soldier isn't a regular pub, it's actually a museum.

The museum's website sums it up well:

The Valiant Soldier was an active pub in Buckfastleigh which closed in the late 1960′s and never re-opened. Everything was literally left as it was and today, it’s open as a museum, giving visitors a glimpse into the past.

The current building which houses the Valiant Soldier dates from the 1700′s and the earliest mention of it as a pub is in 1813.

It had various landlords through the 19th and early 20th centuries and in 1939 its last landlord, Mark Roberts, became the tenant. In 1965 the brewery withdrew the license and Mr and Mrs Roberts promptly downed tools as the last customers left the premises, leaving everything just as it was.  The doors remained closed even after the family purchased the property from the brewery. After Mr Roberts died his wife, Alice carried on living in the upper part of the property until the mid-90′s.

When the family left the area, the pub remained untouched – the living quarters with its furniture, the bar with the optics, glasses, and brewery ephemera – even the change in the till! Also a huge number of bills, invoices, letters and photographs were left behind giving an insight into the workings of a small mid-20th century town pub.

Website here. 

DW had contacted the museum to see if they would be open in March, and while normally they would have been open one day a week, various difficulties had prevented the staff there from keeping their regular hours. However, after a bit of e-mail traffic, we did manage to secure a tour of the Valiant Soldier on an irregular day.

Buckfastleigh is a cosy little town lying in the steep folds of the Dart Valley, and has a long industrial history, despite it's agricultural surroundings. Mining, of tin and other local minerals, wool milling, and textile production were predominant. You'd hardly believe it now as the town very is quiet, largely I suspect because the main trade now is tourism, built up around the local Benedictine abbey and the heritage steam railway, both on the edge of town. It being a couple of weeks before Easter, the tourists had yet to arrive, except us of course. 

There are only a couple of working pubs left in Buckfastleigh now, but the Valiant Soldier stands as a testimony to a once thriving pub trade that saw dozens of drinking establishments, serving the workers from the mines, the mill and the railway.

The Valiant Soldier has been left pretty much as it was found. Old furniture, old flooring, old bottles, old barrels, you name it. It really is like stepping back to the 1950s. Obviously there has been some modern work to deal with the maintenance of the building (it struggles with damp, unsurprisingly), but the bar, the Snug, the kitchen, and the living accommodation have been preserved, and it's quite the experience to stand in among it.

The tour also took us into the tiny Buckfastleigh Museum, which managed to have a staggering amount of interesting artifacts crammed into a couple of rooms. As all good museums do, it informed me of a load of stuff about the area that I didn't know about. All for GBP6, too, which was quite excellent value.

If all goes to plan then we'll be heading, unusually, eastwards tomorrow, although the the weather doesn't look too promising. It'll be what it'll be I suppose.

Blighty Bound - Day Six, Tavvy

 

Today we motored over to Plymouth, picked up the family, and proceeded to Tavistock, known as Tavvy to the locals.

Tavvy is also known as "The Gateway to Dartmoor", and is an ancient Stannary town. If you have never heard of a Stannary Town, here is Wikipedia's take on it;

"A stannary was an administrative division established under stannary law in the English counties of Cornwall and Devon to manage the collection of tin coinage, which was the duty payable on the metal tin smelted from cassiterite ore mined in the region. In Cornwall, the duty was passed to the Duchy of Cornwall; in Devon to the Crown.

With the abolition of tin coinage in 1838 (following extensive petitioning by the Cornish tin industry for simplification of the taxation rules), the principal purpose of the stannaries ceased. In Cornwall, however, they retained certain historic rights to appoint stannators to the Cornish Stannary Parliament."

I'm not sure why I included that, other than the facts are mildly interesting. Next time you're in Tavistock you can proudly tell people what Stannery means.

We had come to visit Tavvy's Pannier Market, the indoor market that has different themes for each day of the week. Today we were visiting Bob's Trains' stall to see what second-hand model trains we could pick up.

But first we parked the car. It's a busy little town is Tavvy, and parking is at a premium. However, we found a place in the main car park and I set about adding another parking app to my UK phone so that I could pay remotely. Apart from the longish process, it all went well and soon I was poorer to the tune GBP3.20, but allowed to park my car for four hours without penalty. That was a result.

In the market, which was busy as usual, we consulted Bob the train man and came away with a small haul of excellent stuff. Bob and his friend (who's name I didn't catch) remembered us from our visit two years ago, which was a turn up. I suspect that we'll be back in two week's time to pick up more things that we should have bought today.

After a swift drink in a little, cramped, café run by two women who appeared not be on this planet a lot of the time, we headed back to the car and made the drive up on to the moors, and to the highest village in Devon, Princetown.

Princetown was once home to a maximum security prison, built from Dartmoor granite atop the inhospitable moors, in 1806. It's first prisoners were men captured in the Napoleonic wars. It remained in use until 2024, when major repairs, concerns about sanitation, and with the build up of Radon gas in the structure, forced its temporary closure. The buildings that form the prison are Grade II Listed, and the closure is supposed to be temporary, but I guess that time will reveal its fate.

The pub we were aiming for was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, so we drove down off the moor in and found a pub that was open, the Rock Inn in Yelverton, and enjoyed a meal and a drink.

Apart from a quick stop at a Marks and Spencer Food Hall on the way home, that was pretty much that. The weather behaved until we were on our way back, and we achieved what we had set out to achieve, so that was good.

Tomorrow sees us at Buckfastleigh, and another pub, although a pub with a difference. Stay tuned, dear reader.

Blighty 2025 - Some British Reflections

Almost a month in the UK, and while family dominated, we did get around a bit. Here are a few observations on the trip.

England is a busy place. We arrived on the Friday that the school's half-term holiday started, and the M25, London's orbital motorway, was jammed solid at noon. Fortunately my local knowledge allowed us to take the scenic route to our accommodation in Oxfordshire. I was then forcibly reacquainted with the narrowness of the roads, the ones with no shoulder, but with hedges, trees and assorted greenery growing right up to the road's edge. Add the readjustment required to drive a stick-shift car again after a long lay off, and it was a challenging trip. A tip for would be visitors to the UK from Canada; make sure you get a small rental car. You'll find out why soon enough.

We were staying in the central England area known as the Cotswolds. Pretty, charming and very, very monied. The clear choice of cars for the people now living there is the Range Rover or the Land Rover. Wealthy Londoners out in the country, imagining that they really do need a four-wheel-drive monster just because they have to drive past fields on the asphalted roads. Goodness how those Chelsea tractors came unstuck on the single-track roads that link some of the villages. There is an almost constant traffic jam in the pretty town of Burford, and it's not an exaggeration to to say that 25% of the cars in the line ups were of the Rover SUV type. Numpties.

Never, ever, visit Bourton-on-the-Water on a bank holiday.

English grocery stores are a trial. They're small but have twice as many people in them as those at home. The people shopping in them all know what they want and rush around, and that makes browsing in an unfamiliar shop all the more difficult. Most of the big stores operate loyalty cards, and offer lower prices to the holders of such cards. Sadly, people not resident in the UK can't have a card, so we were reduced to asking other people at the checkout if we could borrow theirs. It's all to the good because they get the points, while we get the discount, but it's still a pain having to ask. We half cracked it by getting my nephew's girlfriend to send us a screenshot of her card, but she only had the Sainsbury's Nectar Card and not the Tesco Clubcard - see, only half cracked it.

Parking anywhere other than big grocery stores and it costs an arm and leg to leave your car in a parking lot. £8 here, £7.50 there, it all mounts up. I reckon we paid out hundreds of GBP. To add insult to injury, I was accused of not paying at Charlbury Station, although my credit card says otherwise. The fine is £100, but I'm not paying it. I did have to pay the car rental company an admin charge of £40 for handling the paperwork, as agreed in the contract, but I'll try to get that back from the parking people as well. I haven't heard from the same parking company about overstaying on a paid parking ticket at Didcot Parkway train station. I'm not sure, but I may have underpaid, possibly because I misunderstood the instructions on the machine. If they get me for that then I'll pay. At least nearly all of the paid parking was done with a contactless card this time; nowhere forced a phone app on me.

I may have picked a speeding fine, too. Speed limits are strictly policed in the UK, and as I was coming out of Stow-on-the-Wold doing perhaps 35mph in the 30mph zone, when I noticed I was driving straight at a camera van. I slowed quickly and may not have triggered the camera at all, but you never know. I'd been particularly careful about not speeding, so if I do get a fine then I'll be royally pissed.

When you pay for gas in the UK, you nearly always have to go into the little shop, there being no "pay at the pump" option. The UK is no slouch when it comes to retail technology, it was years ahead of Canada with Chip and Pin, and contactless, but this gas pump thing was a mystery. Or was it? The little shops are actually convenience stores that sell everything from coffee, to newspapers, to bread, to lightbulbs. If you pay at the pump then you don't go into the shop and you don't get tempted by that discount bag of Wine Gums. Going into the shop to pay is clearly a ruse to get you to spend more money. Don't fall for it!

Talking of gas, when people in Canada say they are the most highly taxed nation in the world, they're wrong. Additional UK taxes make gas there about 70% more expensive than in Canada. Another reason to get a small rental car.

In the UK, people don't generally tip wait staff. Most Point of Sale terminals don't include a tipping facility, and most servers look quite surprised when you do offer them a tip. While a goodly proportion of establishments take only card payments these days, if you wish to tip, have a bit of cash handy. British wait staff, while surprised, will always be happy to accept any reward for good service. Some places will make a mandatory service charge for large parties, but they're rare.

This may be a well worn bit of advice, but in British pubs, whether you stand at the bar or sit at a table, you have to order your drinks at the bar and take them to wherever you're sitting or standing. No one will come to your table to take your order. Things are changing a bit, and there's a bit of crossover between restaurants and pubs. If you're in any doubt, order at the bar. People still like to queue in the UK, that is stand in line and wait for their turn. If you're at the bar, don't jump the queue, even if there isn't an obvious queue. There are only a few things worse than jumping a queue in Britain; no, scratch that, there is NOTHING worse than jumping a queue.

Public transport is pretty good in the UK, with trains and buses being fast, frequent and generally affordable. Big cities like London are bringing all their transport providers under a single authority and controlling prices and services, which makes for excellent fares. The UK's trains are good across the country, even with the alarming rise of cancelled trains, often with no notice. The fares are labyrinthine, but if you research and you travel outside of the morning and evening rush, then it's all quite reasonable. We were paying £19 for a day return from Didcot to London, which for an hour's trip on fast train is pretty good. If you're young or old, you can get special discount cards, as well. Kids under 5 travel free on trains, and in London kids under 12 travel free on all buses, trains and underground, which we took advantage of extensively.

There are a lot of cars in the UK, and on certain days and at certain times it can seem like they're all out on the roads at the same time. It takes very little to gum up the road system, and it can be something as simple as a some traffic lights not phased properly, as we found out in Weymouth on a Friday afternoon. It's a fairly small seaside town, but it was gridlocked, all because there were three sets of traffic lights quite close together, but their phasing was out of wack.

I was reminded once again that the drivers in England are usually a very cooperative bunch. They'll let you out onto a busy road, yield when they don't have to, and generally don't behave like entitled dicks. Because speed limits are enforced, you don't get tailgaters, not often anyway, trying to push slower cars onwards, and you don't hear too much grumbling when people are running at below the speed limit. Not everyone plays the game, of course, but driving in England, even with the heavier traffic, can be a far more pleasant experience than driving in Ontario.

...and that was it, that was Blighty 2025. I'm sure there's a lot more that I could write, but this post is far too long already. It must surely be time to revert to the Airstream Annals.

Blighty 2025 - All aboard the Skylark!

Today was Dear Wife's birthday and she elected to hire a small "Day Boat" on the southern section of the Stratford Canal in Warwickshire. What a capital idea, we all thought.

Weather is important on a canal boat, not least because someone has to stand out in the open and steer the thing, so it wasn't looking good as we headed north to Chipping Norton, and beyond, in rain and blustery winds. But, as we booked months ago, we couldn't really do much about it.

English "A" roads are rarely dull for the North American driver. There is always plenty to look at, including the twists, turns, ups, and downs that you encounter, and the sheer amount of other vehicles using them. It's all good as they wend their way through the countryside and through pretty little villages, but it can get frustrating when you get caught behind someone who doesn't like to get above 40mph. We did this wet morning, and given the lack of straightness in these roads, unless you're willing to take risks, you get stuck. I do understand why people drive slowly, especially in the bad weather, but as I said, when there are miles to be eaten up, it can get frustrating.

For all that, we arrived at the boatyard in Wootton Wawen only ten minutes behind schedule. Anglo-Welsh Cruisers has been around for years and hire out some very nice boats that you can stay on for weeks at a time. The English and Welsh canal system is extensive and you can, given time, explore some amazing scenery in the heart of the country. Because the canal system is well in excess of 200 years old in most places, these canals do not take big craft. On this canal, the maximum width of a boat is seven feet, and the maximum length is seventy feet, so that locks could be kept small for cost and water usage reasons. They're long and narrow, which is why they're called Narrow Boats (as opposed to barges). Our narrow boat for the day was only thirty feet long, and wasn't equipped with beds and the like. It did have a toilet, a sink and a stove, but it was designed for just day use, and that was what we were doing. Our boat was called Charlie.

Driving a canal boat has its challenges, but it's not too difficult. A nice young man called Luke gave us the lowdown on how things worked, including locks, and prised it out from a plethora of other boats in the basin, He then let me steer it up the canal for a few hundred yards, just to get the feel of it, before we turned around in a "Winding Hole", a specially cut, wide section in the canal to allow boats to turn, then back to the yard to drop him off, and away we chugged, very slowly, towards our destination, Wilmslow, about two hours cruising time to the south. 

I've driven narrow boats before, so it was more a case of remembering how to do things than learning new. You stand on the stern and operate a tiller, which means you push the tiller to the left and the bow goes right, and vice-versa. It's actually quite intuitive, and when you realise that the boat pivots in the middle, it's really quite easy. What's not quite so intuitive is the time that it takes for the bow to respond to tiller movement, it's quite a heavy beast, and the fact that you have to counter any any inputs with a counter-input. That means that if you straighten the tiller after a turn, the boat will keep turning for some time, so you have to counter that by pushing the tiller the opposite way. Still, it didn't take long to get back into the swing of it. 

There's a speed limit of 4mph on English and Welsh canals, to prevent the banks being washed away. Even when I'd cranked the throttle up a bit, we were still going more slowly than people walking on the bank, which is how it should be. That is the way to enjoy the scenery. If you can't hack that leisurely pace then canals are not for you.

The first few yards of the canal were on an aqueduct over a road. Just eight feet wide, it was odd to be on water above the cars below. Then the canal opened up and we were into the lush Warwickshire countryside, in among the sheep and the wildlife. Sadly, it was pouring with rain.

Dear Wife stood out with me on the stern, holding an umbrella we'd borrowed, and we got wet together. The life-jacketed Charlie was whizzing about all over the place, and it was quite the trauma trying to stop him from going overboard. It's not that he'd drown, although the propeller of the boat isn't something you want to come into contact with; the canal is usually only about four feet deep, but we didn't want a soggy child to deal with. 

As the rain died down, Dear Wife took the tiller, but didn't find the steering at all intuitive, so it was back to me. Where there are bridges over the canal, the channel is narrowed down to 7'6", so in a 7' wide boat, that gives you 3" either side, so inevitably you do come into contact with the brick pillars at some point. The trick is to take it slowly and avoid a direct hit. Standing at the tiller, the front of the boat wasn't visible, so it was a case of lining up the cleat in the centre of the boat's roof with the centre of the bridge. It worked reasonably well.

Our first obstacle was a lock, with a drop of about eight feet. The lock was full and the top gate open as we approached, which was handy as I could drive straight in (the lock chamber is 75' long and 7'6" wide). My crew got off to operate the lock (shut the gate, operate the gate paddle on the lower gate, then open the gate when the water level was the same as the lower canal and close it behind the boat as I drove out). Getting the crew to do all the hard work is the Skipper's privilege.

Before long, we were on to the Edstone Aqueduct, a 475' long cast iron trough that carries the canal over a road, a river and railway line, albeit that the aqueduct was there before the railway. It's the longest cast iron canal trough in England, so that's a fun fact to store away. My crew had been a bit nervous about crossing the valley in a boat, but actually they all enjoyed the experience.

After the aqueduct, we had a long chug down to Wilmslow and lunch. My First Mate, Emma, took the tiller and drove for much of the time, which was nice. Charlie was the chief distraction, but we neither crashed into the bank, or lost the little shaver overboard. We saw many sheep, ducks and Moorhens, and just the one Coote. We also saw an enormous Heron sat on the towpath, and he/she obligingly took to the air as we approached. It was also curious on this trip that we hadn't encountered any other craft on water, at least not moving craft, but more about that later.

At Wilmslow, our destination, I went past the winding hole, which turned out to be an error on my part. We tied up against the towpath and broke out the extensive lunch that Dear Wife had prepared the day before. The weather had perked up and it was quite nice just sat there on the water munching our way through a very large lunch. I was mulling over how to turn the boat around and thought I might do it right there, but then I made my second mistake by consulting Google Maps about how far down the canal the next turning point might be. Thinking it'd be a simple matter, we set off southwards again, but came up short when we found that not only was there a flight of locks between us and the winding hole, but the top lock was closed for a gate replacement. Bugger, I thought, and it dawned on me then why we'd not seen any other boats. I don't remember anyone at the boatyard mentioning that the lock was closed, and the people on their moored boat failed to mention it as we drove by. Ho hum.

Given the flight of locks, I'd have had to turned the boat around above the lock anyway as we'd not have enough time to go down five locks and come back up them again as the boat was due back at four pm. So with Emma at the helm, I secured the bow rope to a bollard on the bank and she used the propeller to swing the boat around. The canal was just wide enough to allow us to do that, thank goodness. Then with me fretting about getting the boat back on time, we struck north again.

Emma did manage to ground the boat on the shallow side of the canal after Charlie had attempted to navigate, but some deft use of the pole that was provided for that very job, I pushed her off the mud and we were off again. A thankfully largely uneventful run back to Wotton Wawen was made with ten minutes to spare, although we did slow down a bit after negotiating the lock again. We did have a bit of bother with the bottom gate on the lock, though, as it kept swing open after we'd driven the boat into the chamber. You can't open the top paddles unless the bottom gate is at least partially closed (the inflow water into the lock will close it if it's part closed already), so I jumped off the boat and held the gate closed as Emma lifted one of the top paddles. Meanwhile, the deck hand, Dear Wife, took the engine controls and switched the propeller forward and astern as needed, in order to keep the boat central in the lock chamber as the water rushed in from the top culvert. When we'd opened the top gate and nosed the boat out of the lock, Emma closed the gate after us and while I held the boat up against the now closed top gate, she stepped aboard. A real team effort I felt.

If you're after an introduction to a canal holiday, the Day Boat is good fun, and cost us a round £100, which was bad for a day's entertainment for up to six people. It wasn't the best appointed vessel on the canal, but it did the job, and we all had a fabulous time in the Warwickshire countryside. If I had any complaint at all it was the noise of the engine, and the smell of the diesel fumes, but these are trifling matters in the grand scheme of things.

After the boating expedition, we drove into Stratford-upon-Avon for some supper and a mooch around Shakespeare's birthplace. It was a nice walking around as most of the tourists had gone home for the night, and despite it being quite cool, it was good to spend some time there. I doubt Charlie will remember the trip, but we have the photos.

As a kind of postscript is that I was so tired after the day standing up that I went to bed before 10pm, which is almost unheard of.

Blighty 2025 - Full Steam Ahead, and other silly sayings

Today we made the fairly short trip to the Cotswold village of Broadway, and the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Steam Railway, better known as the GWSR. For my North American readers that's the "Glostershure and Worrickshure Steam Railway".

Broadway is better known for it's idyllic main street, broad and lined with Cotswold Stone buildings, albeit that it's all gone a bit high-priced and touristy these days. But at the bottom of that street is the old Cheltenham to Stratford-Upon-Avon railway line, raised from the dead by a dedicated band of volunteers and now running regular jaunts between Broadway and Cheltenham Racecourse, with trains normally hauled by steam locomotives. Heritage railways are on the up in the UK, and the GWSR is an excellent example of how to do it correctly.

There is a good history of the line on the GWSR website, from it's original inception in 1899, to the present day, and you can read about it here.

Our drive over there through the pretty, if twisty, roads of the Cotswolds was easy, and the weather was set fair as well. There's a car park next to Broadway Station, operated by the local council, and it was there that we pulled in and I went to pay. Now parking in the UK is expensive, and these days dominated by parking apps for mobile phones; witness the parking at British Rail stations. But here it was either coins, of which I had none, or a parking app that I didn't have on my phone. I loaded the app using the data only e-sim I've been using to avoid the scandalous charges by my Canadian cell phone provider, but of course the app wanted to confirm the phone number by sending me an SMS message. OK, I switched e-sims and fired up Rogers Canada, only to find no signal. Bugger, I thought.

Dear Wife legged it on up to the station to buy our GWSR train tickets, while I nipped into a little petrol station on the roadside and bought a chocolate bar with a £10 note, asking for my change in £1 coins. Oh my goodness, you'd have thought I'd have asked him to sign his daughter into slavery! What a face on the man! Still, he did cough up the requisite coins. Back at the car park, I shovelled five coins into the machine and received two tickets, one to go on the dashboard of the car, and one to exchange at the station ticket office for a £3 discount on the train fare. Result. I was a wee bit crestfallen when Dear Wife and Emma expressed surprised that I'd had the gumption to read the tickets and bring one up to the station, how nice it is that people have confidence in my abilities.

The train was standing in the station, big green Merchant Navy Class locomotive at the front, Peninsular and Oriental (P&O for the ordinary folks), number 35006, ready to haul us down to Cheltenham Racecourse. The carriages, or cars, were not new but were considerably newer than the loco, and took myself and Dear Wife back in time to when we were taken on train trips as kids ourselves. Charlie of course was ecstatic.

The loco huffed and puffed and we set off south through the lush, and I mean lush, Cotswold countryside. The rail line has a lot of infrastructure that has to be maintained, stations, bridges, viaducts and tunnels, and everything looked so well cared for. The stations on the line had more or less been demolished when British Rail closed the line, but the GWSR has brought them back, from rebuilt signal boxes, to new platforms and old station buildings, and right down to some period signage and posters. For a train nerd, it is absolute heaven, and for us oldies, it really stirred some memories.

We had traditional card tickets, which were duly "clipped" by the train's guard part way through the trip. The sound and smell of the steam loco was magical and our stately progress allowed us to soak up the Vale of Evesham and the Severn Valley views, and the hills of Malvern and beyond. The weather was bright and sunny, and that added to the enjoyment.

At the Racecourse we alighted and watched the loco uncouple from the front of the train and trundle around to the back, to be coupled on there and be ready for the return trip to Broadway. We availed ourselves of snacks from the outlet on the station, which bore more than a passing resemblance to a garden shed, and boarded the train once again for the slow run north.

Back at Broadway, we watched the loco get relocated from one end of the train to the other again, only this time, when the loco was ready and they were waiting for the signal, the driver let Charlie, and a couple of other kids, up onto the footplate. You can imagine how delighted the little fellow was to be standing on a real, fired up and working steam engine. That was such a nice touch at the end of a day when everyone associated with the railway had been so lovely.

Heading home, we climbed (in the car) the very steep Fish Hill, and paused at the top to visit Broadway Tower, a folly built right on the edge of the escarpment and commanding amazing views. Of course it was just closing up for the day, but we stopped for a few minutes in the car park and took in the view, which was breathtaking, at least in a bucolic, English way. We were actually chivvied out of the car park by an anxious worker there, keen to lock the gates, so we climbed back into the Carrot and headed home. 

When the the lady in the Satnav became unexpectedly quiet at a key intersection, I naturally took the wrong road of the two available, but we enjoyed a short and pretty diversion through the tiny village of Upper Oddington which, apart from having the narrowest roads in the UK, was really nice.

A quiet evening in was capped by watching our beloved Chelsea Football Club win the UEFA Europa Conference League final, streamed for free through Discovery+, and shown through a nice TV in the cottage using a "borrowed" HDMI cable (I put it back when the game was over). A good day, I think.