Memories of a week's family holiday in Devon where we are camping just outside Sidmouth. There were six of us with 3 generations of family and a friend of our daughter. Come with us as we visit Sidmouth, Lyme Regis, Morwellham Quay, Torquay, Paignton and Beer.
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Friday 13 (eek!) August 1993. We have travelled from our campsite to Beer, just a few miles to the east of Sidmouth and on the edge of the Jurassic Heritage Coast.
It is a very old village. At the time of the Domesday Book survey in 1086 it had 28 households. It now numbers over a thousand inhabitants. Tourism is its main source of inclome these days but lace making, quarrying of its chalk and flint cliffs and smuggling were all local industries at one time or another.
It is a delightful little village. I was kicking myself for forgetting to pick up the sketch pad which was still in the tent back at Sidmouth. The name of Beer incidentally is nothing to do with the drink, but derives from the Old English word Bearu which means a grove (a group of trees standing so close as to allow only the bare minimum of shrubbery or other growth between them).
A small stream flows down the main street, channelled into an open stone conduit that is far too modern looking due to the extension of the modern footpath to its edges. Here and there are stone structures housing a pump that could be used for washing or drinking. It would have been a risky thing to do perhaps. Before the conduit, the stream used to run down the middle of the street, spread wide and shallow, yet joined by each household's effluent and the guts of fish that the village women would sit outside, cutting out of the fish and flinging into the stream in the hope that rain would soon swell the stream making it strong enough to carry them down into the sea. The street smells much better these days I should imagine.
The village today is extremely lovely. In fact almost no matter which way you turn, whatever direction you look, you could take a pleasing photograph. The buildings are mostly made of local stone and faced with the glassy flints that are found within the chalk caves of the quarry.
The road becomes steeper as you approach the beach, which is shingle. A part of the cliff at the side of the road and fronting onto the beach has been turned into a large platform, now a great place to sit on the benches provided to gaze out to sea.
It looks so innocent, yet during World War II when invasion was thought to be likely, it disguised the entrance to a gun emplacement, given away by the broad slit in the cliff face below it which allowed a wide field of fire cover the beach on which enemy troops would have been likely to land if an invasion had gone ahead.
The shingle beach looking east. The limestone cliffs were quarried from at least Roman times and perhaps even earlier. A thirty foot (9.14 metres) layer contains fewer flints and is the main seam for quarrying. The stone can be easily cut in any direction when first quarried but exposure to the air makes it go extremely hard. Stonemasons would therefore work within the caves to shape the stone before it became harder and more difficult to saw and sculpt. Windsor Castle, Westminster Abbey and St Pauls are just some of the buildings that are built of it.
The beach looking west. There is no harbour here. Boats are dragged up the steep shingle slope, now by chains connected to engines and in the past by a capstan high on the beach which could be turned by up to 20 people so presumably was capable of hauling quite large fishing boats up the beach. The shingle makes for uncomfortable walking but here and there are long strips of rubber forming paths. They turned out to be old converyor belts that had become too worn for their original purpose, when I enquired.
We had lunch in a tea rooms. Is there anything as satisfying as taking a break in a traditional tea rooms rather than a common cafe? Perhaps there is no difference but a tea room always seems a bit more refined somehow. This one was licensed too, so we went for a refined booze...
A series of articles covering a short break in Devon and Dorset, taking in Sidmouth and Seaton, Beer, Lyme Regis, Wareham, Weymouth and the Cerne Abbas Giant.
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Tuesday 24 June 2014. What could be better than a beer in Devon? Right! Beer in Devon. It's a fishing village. The name derives from the Saxon word bearu meaning "grove" and refers to the forest on the hills each side of the village. They do sell the drink here and there in the village though...
The car was parked near the B&B and we had gotten into the last remaining space so we decided to leave it where it was and get a bus from the Promenade a hundred yards walk away.
This dropped us off without incident at Beer Cross which is halfway up a long and at times steep hill that goes down to the beach in one direction and up to an attraction called Pecorama, which has gardens and model trains from toy scales up to ride-on sizes. With reluctance I followed Fran down the hill...
Beer Brook flows through the village in a culvert. Fed by three springs, it originally just flowed sluggishly over the cobbles, but the locals used to sit outside their cottages gutting fish and throwing the guts into the stream. The smell upset the local manor lord's wife who ordered the culvert to be cut and diverted the water into it where it flowed much faster and took the fish guts (and the smell) away.
It is now such an attractive feature of the village that you wish your own town (for almost every town has underground streams that once were open) had done the same. Even better, the locals don't throw fish guts about any more either!
At the end of the street the land drops steeply to the beach, creating headlands on both sides of the beach approach. On the eastern side is a small playground and garden.
Looking across the street from the playground there is a row of cottages, climbing up the hill to the west. Chalk limestone was mined locally, from as early as Roman times and then right through to the 1920s. Beer stone can be found in Exeter Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral, in London, as well as in the Tower of London. It is said that the stone was used in 26 English cathedrals altogether. Many of the local buildings are faced with flint from the cliffs.
On the western side on the edge of the beach with the street is a flagstaff and a small seating area, underneath which is a very well-disguised World War Two pillbox. One machine gun slit is visible from the corner of the beach and road. On the beach there are three snack bars and numerous working fishing boats and boats for hire for your own fishing or for pleasure. I've been fishing in my past and it wasn't a great deal of pleasure to be honest...
The beach is very steep close to the sea. Boats are launched off the beach and are winched back up the pebbles on return. With the electrical winches near the cliff and roadway this means that the beach hides a series of chains that lead down towards the sea. Despite notices we saw one man trip and fall headlong over one of them. To make it easier to walk on the beach, long strips of rubber - re-cycled conveyor belts - have been laid over the pebbles.
Beer Brook, very fast flowing on the final slope to the beach, finally disappears down a grating and I presume is either piped down to a lower level through the pebbles to the sea or diverted for some other use.
We got ice creams from Ducky's beach snack bar and took them onto the seating area over the pillbox to sit and enjoy the view of people falling over winch chains.
Then after another spell of sitting we ventured into the Bay View tea rooms for a strawberry milk shake!
We made our way back up the hill to Beer Cross, intending to get on a bus back to Seaton to spend the afternoon on Seaton's tramway. However a bus bound for Sidmouth turned up and impulsively we jumped onto that. What a great choice! This, a full size single deck bus like the one in the first photo, went via some tiny leafy country lanes, no wider than the bus itself. For much of the journey the hedges were scraping down both sides of the bus at the same time! It was full of ladies who all seemed to know each other and who, when we screeched to a halt on a blind corner because a van was coming the other way, all said to each other "Well! That was close!" in an amused we-expect-one-of-these-every-trip kind of way... At some point the bus made what seemed to be an unscheduled stop next to a pub and all the ladies got off for a booze-up, or possibly lunch, or more likely both...
Will we make it to Sidmouth? Will we ever get to go on the Seaton trams? All will be revealed in the next thrilling instalment!
Saturday 23 March 2013. I wasn't due to touch the guitar for a few hours yet, but as we left the hotel bedroom to go for breakfast I gave it a reassuring pat.
Breakfast was buffet style interspersed with grunts as various Billy weekenders staggered bleary eyed into the dining room and exchanged early morning coughs and greetings. The Hind at Wellingborough puts on a good breakfast and the staff were kept busy refilling tea and coffee jugs which we used to sustain ourselves whilst the teaspoons were put to good use propping eyelids back...
The hotel car park as seen from our bedroom. It would once have been stables and Peter and Shelagh had a room onto the courtyard and had to trot (sorry couldn't resist that!) through the snow to get to breakfast. We got oats (coats!!! Stop it with the horse thing!!!) and ventured out, the women doing boring things like shopping whilst we chaps trudged through the snow to have a look at the church.
All Hallows, Wellingborough, dates from the late 1200s though almost everything in sight is from the 1500s. Following the Restoration of King Charles II the minister, Thomas Andrews, was forced to leave presumably for refusing to take the oath after the Act of Uniformity. Soldiers in the town would often plague him and there was even a (foiled) plot to stab him in his bed and local Quakers would heckle him during sermons. Altogether not a happy time.
Statue of the Madonna with child in a niche over the south door. The porch contains some nice carvings.
We met up with Fran, Jeannie and Shelagh in Costa Coffee. I used to enjoy having coffee served in cups with saucers - it meant you could rest more than once in a morning but current portion sizes make that a hazardous undertaking following the disappearance of so many public conveniences...
Then we braved the shopping precinct for a while. Here's a sign of the times. We were a little too late to catch many bargains as there wasn't much left that was worth spending money on. Set that against the fact that the only place where a bomb fell on Wellingborough was the future site of MacDonalds - if we were too late, Hitler should have left it another 65 years or so... Sorry MacDonalds, but I still think fondly of Wimpy - and even more fondly of burgers stacked on a griddle surrounded by fried onions, where the only things to go with them on the bun were tomato sauce or mustard. Salad, pah...
We braved the shops for as long as was decent and proper, then went off to look for somewhere to go for an early evening meal before the evening gigfest started back at the Hind Hotel. It quickly became obvious that no one eats before 6:00pm in Wellingborough and if they do then they do it at the Hind Hotel...
However we did find Ye Golden Lion where Ye Ancient David had Peter and I stand for a photograph, ignoring our plaintive cries of the need for sustenance and the coldness of the nethers due to draughts up the trousers...
There is something immensely reassuring and calming about an old pub with dark low ceilings and wooden beams - even more so if it has a pretty barmaid!
"Are you CAMRA members?" she asked as we made individual choices from the row of pumps. No... drinking should never be taken too seriously!
David is perhaps a CAMERA member - he took this one of Peter and my good self even before taking a sip...
I waited a good few slurps before returning the favour! Mine is the darker beer on the left - another thing I bemoan is the loss of dark mild beers to the 70s giddy rush towards lager. Bass Charrington's Best Mild was a thing of beauty, almost as dark as Guinness and with a creamy head that graced many a moustache...
We complimented the landlady and the pretty barmaid as we left and the landlady showed us the minstrel's gallery in another part of the pub. As minstrels ourselves we appreciate things like that, but now we must get back to the Hind and sort out some food before it's time to minst ourselves at the Billy Fury weekend's main event. Next!
Taking further the thoughts I expressed yesterday (see Blackpool South Shore Station Demolition) about not taking photographs of things that change a lot but instead taking views of lakes, stone circles, major public buildings etc., I never the less find that the background detail of many of my 1980s photos often has reminders of the past. As a few examples, here's a selection taken over a period of just half an hour at the most.
In this photo of Blackpool double decker bus 355 traveling along the Golden Mile in April 1985 are reminders of Mr B's amusements arcade, the old corner of Coral Island before the present large sculpture of pirates and skull and as a bonus I've identified a Mini Clubman and Datsun Sunny amongst the cars. Datsun were soon to rename themselves Nissan, the company's Japanese name.
OMO (One Man Only) tram No.8 taken from the same spot but looking south. On the corner of the Promenade and Chapel Street, opposite the Central Pier, is the Talk of the Town pub. It would become a MacDonald's restaurant and then later a market which it remains today. On the side of the pub is a large notice quoting an advert that immediately brought the advert tune into my mind - Smile, you're in Greenall Whitley Land. Greenall Whitley... whatever became of them?
Balloon tram 724 in front of Pricebusters which had taken over the old Woolworth's building. Woolworths would not have a presence in Blackpool until Lewis's had vacated their store which would be gutted and transformed into a new Woolworth's, lasting until the company's demise, now Poundland.
Demonstrating that traffic queues along the southern route on the Promenade are nothing new, although forcing all traffic into a single lane cannot have helped! Double deck buses 323 and 338 are followed by a single deck bus and an Austin Princess in the taxi rank on the Promenade opposite makes me wonder... I've met people who almost worshipped this (to me) hideous wedge shaped car.
My Dad had one and driving it made me hate it even more - finding gears was awful. You could literally grasp the gear stick and move your hand in a wide circle, it was such a loose gearbox.
