Chagford Break: Bridges over troubled waters

Just back from a delightful three night break on the outskirts of Chagford, staying at the very pleasant Mill End Hotel (recommended: very comfortable and with great food). We got out and about and, as might be expected from the recent wet weather, we were never far from the sound of running water. And where there's running water, there's generally a bridge. We came across bridges of all shapes, sizes and ages. Here are the ones that prevented us getting wet feet as we walked.

A  mediaeval clapper bridge over the North Teign River, out on Shovel Down. Two massive slabs resting on a central pier.

Just down stream for the previous bridge is the Teign-e-ever bridge of similar vintage. Two single slabs bound by iron bands.

And just up from the other two but over the Wallabrook, just before it enters the North Teign, is this single slab bridge.

Another single slab bridge, this one was over a stream near Ash/Aish/Aysh, depending on what sign we were looking at.

A few miles lower down the North Teign, but reached by a much more circuitous route, is this bridge down in the woods associated with the Gidleigh Park Hotel.

Another day, another walk and we come across this bridge over the Teign just below Castle Drogo. The river looks deceptively calm here but it wasn't that way as it flowed down the rapids.

The famous Fingle Bridge. The present structure dates from the 1700s although there is good evidence that it incorporates something much older.

Anonymous Lives

In a recent post (here) I mentioned the tragic consequences for the US troops involved in Exercise Tiger off Slapton Sands. In the process of finding a little more about it, I came across a whole batch of photographs, including one that, for some reason, struck me more than the others.

It shows some American troops presumably getting ready for their part in the exercise. I don't know where it was taken, when it was taken or, for that matter, who captured this moment in time. The very anonymity of the image provides the viewer with a sort of freedom to explore - there is no one face you are connected to and there are no known consequences to cloud your investigation.

Whilst trying to enhance the original, I was taken by how cropping can change the context, creating a more focused image. Whilst the first image can be taken to be about wartime logistics, the second is about wartime troops.

And the third, with more cropping still, is about people. People caught in a moment of time. People caught in a moment of war. I wonder what happened to them. I'll never know: they are anonymous.

I do love a nice birthday party..........apart from..

Svmer is icumen in
Lhude sing cuccu

 Yes, summer is certainly coming in and the cuckoos are arriving early in the shape of the frenzy being whipped up by the Queen's 90th Birthday celebrations. It's a time for much frothing at the mouth: from the Royalists, who love this sort of thing and from the Republicans who are booking their Eurostar tickets for June. Going anywhere. Please, anywhere.

The request has gone out on behalf of Mrs Windsor: "Please come to my birthday party. It’s a really big one. My 90th! What a great thing to celebrate. To acknowledge how jolly busy my life has been, I’m inviting along all you special people who work for the hundreds of wonderful charities to which I lend my name. There’s just one thing. It will cost you £150 for the privilege. Each".

You really would have thought that someone at Team Windsor would know that it is terrible bad form to charge people to attend one’s birthday party? It's billed as Britain’s Biggest Street Party, if The Mall can ever be described as a street. Ten thousand people from the 628 national and Commonwealth charities of which the Queen is patron will be invited. Each charity will have to pay £1,500 for a table of 10 people. There will be 1,000 tables. Amazingly, some charities seem slightly lukewarm about shelling out hard-won cash so they can attend their patron’s big day. Ungrateful lot! But there is a silver lining inside that particular cloud, for charities can “sell on” 40 per cent of their tickets. Brilliant! Forget about the volunteers. Enter the open market, where tickets will be flogged to people who won’t blanch at coughing up £150. Even if they have zero connections to the charity. So this “once-in-a-lifetime” event quite probably will not be attended by the kind of people who support the Cornwall Air Ambulance or the Royal Home for Discarded Retainers or whatever charity at all, but by corporate fat cats who would jump at the chance of having a 90th birthday poncho or nodding corgi as a souvenir.

And in case you didn't know, Peter Phillips is organising the event. Yes, the Queen’s grandson is in charge. Phillips admits he is being paid an “undisclosed” fee for organising the do, selling tickets and rustling up money from sponsors. So people who work for Great Ormond Street Hospital, Cancer Research UK, Macmillan Nurses etc will pay a relation of the Queen to organise a party for the Queen. Nice one. I do hope none of the charities I support will get sucked into this charade. Because if they do, they may find themselves one donor short.

It’s almost as daft as the notion of getting everyone to spend their spare time walking around with bin liners, picking up rubbish from the streets in an attempt to make our filthy nation look clean for our Queen’s big day, lucky people that we are. Oh, wait a moment… Yes, another bright idea for we serfs to show our loyalty. As the publicity says "What better way could we show our gratitude to Her Majesty than to clean our country?". As we are told so often by Posh Dave and his mates that "we are all in this together", I'll join in when I see Mrs Windsor setting a good example and putting on one's Marigolds.

Starting at Start Point

I haven't mentioned a walk for a while. Not because we haven't walked, we have, but because those we have done have been wet, wet, wet and my camera stayed in its bag. Yesterday, however, we had a dry walk and the camera came out. We met our friends at Torcross in South Devon and then did an up and downy 5 miler circumnavigating Start Point. It seemed like ages since we'd walked along the coast and it also seemed like ages since we'd walked without the rain pelting down. Lots to see on this walk and a part of the region that we visit infrequently. We ought to try and get down that way more often as it's only 90 minutes from home. So close but so different to Cornwall in many ways.

Start Point is not quite the most southerly point in Devon, that accolade goes to nearby Prawle Point. The name "Start" comes from an Anglo-Saxon word steort, meaning a tail. Bird (and word) lovers will be interested to know that this root also appears in the names of birds with distinctive tails, like the redstart.

Just over the road from our meeting place (but not our starting point for the walk) lies the expanse of Slapton Sands. A great place for sun (?), swimming and fishing. Also a place with a lot of history. During the planning for the D-Day landings in WW2 someone noticed that Utah Beach in Normandy, the designated target for US troops, was very similar to Slapton Sands. This lead to Exercise Tiger in 1944, a full dress rehearsal for the actual landings. Unfortunately things did not go according to plan and this resulted in a tragedy that remained secret until well into the 1980s/1990s.

The Sherman Tank shown above forms the memorial to the almost 700 soldiers lost during Exercise Tiger. On the face of it, it was quite straightforward. All those involved would get on the appropriate Landing Ship Tanks (LSTs) and form one convoy in Lyme Bay. From there they would sail to Slapton Sands, the approximate time it would take to make the crossing to Utah Beach on D-Day, and then have a practice invasion. Unfortunately the convoy’s intended escort, HMS Scimitar, was kept in port for repairs.  The only other British ship with the convoy was the Royal Navy Corvette Azalea.  Also, unknown to the LSTs' communications room, a typographical error was made on the radio frequency for the ships to be informed of enemy activity in the English Channel.

    Suddenly, German E-Boats armed with torpedoes approached the convoy and began firing on the ships, sinking several of the troop-carrying LSTs. Soldiers carrying their heavy gear in backpacks did not receive instructions on the proper use of their life preservers and approximately 700 drowned.  Those who survived were taken to various established and temporary hospitals.  They were told never to speak of what happened under threat of court martial because of the secrecy required for D-Day and the secrecy was kept for many years after the war.

 

 

Looking up the coast northward across Start Bay. You may notice a couple of cottages on the cliffs at Hallsands and think "mmm, they are in a very precarious position". You'd be right but more of the story later on.

Start Point lighthouse, established in 1836, electrified in 1952 and automated in 1992. Just in case anyone is wondering, my book gives the following facts about the mechanics of the light:

Lamp	1 Kw Mercury Halide
Optic	3rd Order Catadioptric Lens
Character	White Group Flashing 3 Times Every 10 Seconds
Intensity	200,000 Candela
Range Of Light	25 nautical miles
Fog Signal Character	Sounds Once Every 60 Seconds

It's a soulless person who gains no pleasure from sunlight shimmering on the sea.

The small beach at Mattiscombe Sands. A good place to swim but not easy to get to. 

I was not sure exactly how the box was reliant on the car parker's honesty. For its existence? If so, this had manifestly failed as there was so sign of any box.

 

Here we are looking down on the remains of the village of Hallsands, which has a uniquely interesting and tragic history. On the viewing platform, which is as close as you can get now, there is a very good set of information boards explaining what happened. In a nutshell: in 1894, the Royal Navy wanted to extend Devonport Dockyard, for which they needed vast quantities of shingle for concrete making. In 1897, they started dredging at Hallsand and so much was taken that the beach level dropped between 7 and 12 feet, undermining the cliffs. The winters of 1902/03 produced major storms which damaged the sea wall and houses and the pub collapsed (the rebuilding of which by the three Trout sisters is a fascinating story). By 1917, the village had been destroyed and virtually abandoned. To make matter worse, it seems that the Government cheated the villagers out of compensation due to them. Which is consistent with the way in which they were duped right from the start with promises that nothing deleterious would be caused by the dredging.

A photograph of one of the information boards shows Hallsands village before the problems started.

Every now and again on our walks along the Coastal Footpath we'll come across isolated stands of trees forming a tunnel. The twisted trucks always form fascinating patterns.

A rather spectacularly wind-sculpted tree, forming an arch over the path.

And back along the coast to our starting point just above the lighthouse.

Lamp

1 Kw Mercury Halide

Optic

3rd Order Catadioptric Lens

Character

White Group Flashing 3 Times Every 10 Seconds

Intensity

200,000 Candela

Range Of Light

25 nautical miles

Fog Signal Character

Sounds Once Every 60 Seconds

A picture is worth a thousand words

Sometimes words aren't necessary.....................

The leaning spire of Chesterfield church

 

The leaning tower of Caerphilly Castle

 

The Leaning Tower of Pisa

The Leaning Spirit Level of Cornwall

The Leaning Woodstore of Higher Downgate

The Leaning George of Formby
 

 

Are these some thespians I see before me?

Recently two of our grandchildren have taken their first steps onto the world of the stage. Bear with me as I indulge in some grandfatherly pride.

Grandchild #4 has been involved in the active modelling of some toys and games. If you look at the Santoys on-line catalogue you'll see how talented he is at playing around.

 

Meanwhile, down here in Cornwall, Grandchild #1 has a few small, but extremely important, parts to play in our village pantomime. This year it's Cinderella and Miss P is trebling up as a villager, page and mouse. I'm down to  advise on her cheese diet and to give her some squeaking practice. Squeak, squeak.

 

And where does their talent come from, I hear you ask? Well (modest coughing), in my student days at Aberystwyth circa 1967 I had my moments on the boards. The photograph above was taken when I had a cameo part as an executioner's assistant in Thomas Kyd's Elizabethan melodrama 'The Spanish Tragedy'. A review in the Cambrian News at the time said "Parsons acting was surely not the tragedy that Kyd had in mind when he wrote his play?". This triumph was followed by a much more challenging role as a wolf in Sleeping Beauty. I slept under the stars naked for a few nights to really get under the wolf's skin and was rewarded by another cracking review in the Cambrian News. This time the theatre critic praised the depth of my acting: "the camp and drunken wolf, clearly modelled on Quasimodo with a faux Somerset accented howl, is the main reason for not going to see this show. Let's hope Parsons' acting becomes as extinct as his subject". And I only had to run across the back of the set in silhouette once at the end to make that impact. No wonder the rest of the cast felt upstaged and never asked me to join their company again.

On this day, 16th January, in 1916, Private John Edwards died

John Edwards was born in Stoke Climsland village in 1891, in a cottage just behind the church. He was baptised in the church on 9th August of that year. His parents were Philip, a boot and shoe maker, and Sarah. John appears to have lived in the village all his life, almost certainly attending the nearby school, and worked locally. His entry in the 1911 Census gives his occupation as a 'labourer' but gives no further details of where he worked. He enlisted into the 2nd/4th Batallion of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry at Cambourne and his regiment sailed for India at the end of 1914 and landed at Karachi on 1st January 1915. The 2nd/4th Batallion remained in India for the duration of the war but many men were drawn from this unit to make up numbers for other regiments at frontlines elsewhere and it is for this reason that John Edwards was drafted to the frontline in Mesopotamia.

India itself was not classed as a 'theatre of war' but Mesopotamia was (Code 5A according to army classification). As any medal entitlement dated from a soldier's actual entry into a theatre of war, it is possible to date John Edwards' arrival in Mesopotamia from his medal roll card as 25th August 1915.

In most accounts, Mesopotamian is regarded as a campaign peripheral to the major battles in France and Belgium. But this view should not detract from the atrocious conditions that soldiers in this arena had to withstand - heat, disease, starvation, thirst were ever-present. We cannot ascertain the exact circumstances of John's death on 16th January 1916 but it is highly probable that he was involved in the fierce fighting around the River Tigris and Kut Al Almara on that date. His death certificate states that he was killed in action but gives no details. His body was never recovered and he is commemmorated on the War Memorial at Basra.

The Basra Memorial commemorates more than 40,500 members of the Commonwealth forces who died in the operations in Mesopotamia from the Autumn of 1914 to the end of August 1921 and whose graves are not known. Until 1997 it was located on the main quay of the naval dockyard at Maqil, on the west bank of the Shatt-al-Arab, about 8 kilometres north of Basra. Because of the sensitivity of the site, the Memorial was moved by presidential decree. The move, carried out by the authorities in Iraq, involved a considerable amount of manpower, transport costs and sheer engineering on their part, and the Memorial has been re-erected in its entirety. It is now located 32 kilometres along the road to Nasiriyah, in the middle of what was a major battleground during the first Gulf War. It is worth noting that whilst the current climate of political instability persists it is extremely challenging for the Commission to manage or maintain its cemeteries and memorials located within Iraq.

Basra Memorial in its new position.

The commemorative plaque on the Memorial.

John Edward's citation on the Memorial.

Mellow Yellow

A yellow theme for today. First, some daft yellow jokes that spring to mind.

What is yellow and swings from cake to cake?
Tarzipan.

What is yellow and dangerous?
Shark infested custard or a canary with a machine gun.

What is yellow and writes?
A ball point banana.

What is yellow on the inside and green on the outside?
A banana dressed up as a cucumber.

What's yellow and flashes?
A banana with a loose connection.

 

What is yellow and white and goes down railway lines at over 100 miles an hour?
The train driver's egg sandwich.

 

Oh, what fun. But now on to something less daft. A couple of walks recently have brought the following question to mind: have you noticed how many species of spring flowers are yellow? And, if you can be bothered, which is the odd one out in the following collection?

Primroses, just about coming out.

Daffodils (I've cheated with this one as I took this photograph last year).

Close up of a dandelion.

Lesser Celandine.

Broom.

Gorse.

Hazel catkins.

So, why so many yellow flowers? And I'm not suggesting that there aren't other colours around, it's just that yellow seems to predominate. I think it's because yellow is a very reflective and bright colour and very attractive to the relatively few pollinating insects that are flying around at this time of year. The flowers need to stand out to attract a pollinator and yellow certainly does this.

 

And the odd one out? It's the hazel: it's not pollinated by insects but by the wind and perhaps that's why the individual florets/flowers on the catkin don’t look that pretty? They don't have to attract the bees or hover flies. They just need to dangle in the wind and let nature take its course.

 

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The Great British Pantomime

Pantomime time: Grinch or Grandfather? Or a mixture of both?

THE GRINCH SPEAKS

It's difficult to think of any other British Christmas tradition that is more difficult to endure as an adult than a pantomime. Every year it adheres to the same ideas, jokes and conventions as in previous years in a mind numbingly predictable way. The scripts are basically reworks of a single hoary story, but with a few current references thrown in to modernise the storyline and mask the total lack of originality. And yet, despite its massive shortcomings, upwards of 3 million people a year will put their common sense to one side and go along to one. The typical pantomime audience is made up of:

* Children: feral children overdosed on festive E numbers fill the theatre and scream, sob and soil themselves with excitement as they are hypnotised by the noise and colours of the show.
* Adults bringing children: obviously there under duress and taking what joy they can from the "adult humour" that will feature intermittently in the script. They will smugly laugh to each other in a "oops, let's hope the children don't understand that joke" cliquey sort of way. When they are not doing that, they are weeping at the thought of the cost of all this joy.

Apart from the odd joke about something contemporary, the only other feature to change in a pantomime every year is the cast. In an attempt to draw in more gullible, sorry, more paying customers, pantomime productions always feature "celebrities". This term is used very loosely and "scraping the barrel" comes to mind when thinking of these Z listers, who you will have either never heard of or had assumed they had been dead for years. These "actors" are nearly always people who have been unable to salvage their career by conventional thespian means but now seek redemption in pantomime. Oh look, it's that bloke who was in Coronation Street, and wasn't that bird in East Enders ....how terribly exciting. These "actors" over-act in a camp "Carry On" old-fashioned sort of way, and ham it up in a desperate attempt to entertain. They work as the puppet masters of the receptive and uncritical crowd, siphoning cheap laughs and audience participation as and when they can. They hold the masses in their hands, who will act as prompted and, in many ways, play as much of a part of this masquerade as these would-be jesters. Oh no, they don't. Oh yes, they do.

THE GRANDFATHER SPEAKS
It's difficult to think of any other British Christmas tradition that is more life-affirming for an adult than a pantomime. Every year it adheres to the same ideas, jokes and conventions as in previous years in a comfortingly predictable way. The scripts are basically reworks of an ageless story, but with a few current jokes thrown in to modernise the storyline and maintain its originality. And due to its massive popularity, upwards of 3 million people jump at the chance to go along to see one. The typical pantomime audience is made up of:

* Children: joyful children, replete with Xmas fare, fill the theatre and scream, sob and shriek with wide-eyed excitement as they are hypnotised by the noise and colours of the show.
* Adults bringing children: there as willing chaperones and taking joy from the "adult humour" that will feature intermittently in the script. They will bond with other adults and laugh with each other as they think "oops, let's hope the children don't understand that joke". And giggle over the nob and boob jokes as they reassure their children that, despite what he said, Prince Charming doesn't really want Cinderella to play with his willy.

And the very best part of every pantomime is the cast. As they are always so popular with the paying customers, pantomime productions always feature "celebrities": stars of popular TV comedies, soaps and reality programmes (we saw Gok Wan in the production of Cinderella in Plymouth a couple of days ago). Proven talent to draw in the crowds and keep the punters rolling in the aisles.These "actors" have perfected a very funny "Carry On" style, and ham it up as they entertain. They act as the puppet masters of the audience, pulling the strings for laughs and audience participation as only they can. They hold the masses in their hands as they willingly play as much of a part in this fantasy as the professional jesters. Oh no, they don't. Oh yes, they do.

And there was absolutely no doubt that these three enjoyed Cinderella.