Bournemouth to Poole

Wednesday 21 Feb 1996. We have reached Bournemouth after a day circumnavigating the Isle of Wight yesterday in snow and a howling wind.

Just as a small contrast, this is what Bournemouth looks like once we wake, have breakfast and leave the hotel.

Though it appears sunny and gorgeous, it hides a fierce temperature. I'm not talking about heat!

Bournemouth is a hilly town with an attractive seafront and pier. The shopping centre up the hill nearby awaited us. And, oh yum! - a Wimpy burger bar! Actually the temperature was so horrendously cold that, even after a full breakfast, we found ourselves having a Wimpy burger at 10:00am and only an hour later had hot apple pie with cream to warm up again!

It was so cold in Bournemouth that by lunchtime we had decided we couldn't just spend the day walking about and we returned to the car and drove along the coast to Poole.

After finding somewhere to park we wandered around the pottery. I got into conversation with a glassblower who was so grateful at being spoken to by someone in the large but hitherto silent crowd that he kept bringing his work over to show me at every stage, pointing out bits and pieces and explaining exactly what he was doing. He was making small coloured scent bottles and they were beautiful.

I'm not sure whether it is because of the abundance of sailors wanting to get drunk whilst on dry land, or whether it is just that Devon's seaside harbour towns catered for families gathering to wave off their drunken menfolk being stretchered back onto ships deleriously happy, but these towns always seem to have built their pubs with special care for architectural attractiveness and a unique presentation that pubs from the mid 20th century onwards had almost lost entirely.

At the time these pubs were built they may well have been brewing their own ale I suppose and thus not subject to the standardisation that large breweries were to bring to the publican trade in later years. Anyway, the gable end of the Poole Arms was entirely tiled in green and I couldn't help wondering how many poor souls had staggered out after a night's drinking and thought they were in the Gents...

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Falmouth At Last

Friday 18 September 2015. After yesterday's wrong turning I made sure I knew which direction to take and we set off for Falmouth for the second time, arriving there for the first time! This is the first reason for my title "Falmouth At Last". The second reason is that our visit to Falmouth comes on our last full day in Cornwall.

We parked up a horrendously steep hill and walked down to the shopping streets, knees complaining loudly at the stress. "This will be fun to walk back up later!" went through my mind...

We had a coffee in a cafe near the main pier but they had no toilets and I was advised to go round to the ones on the pier just round the corner. Doing this and in some haste, I burst in upon the scene of a drugs transaction... Being in no position to retire gracefully and come back later, I ignored them in all but every single sense apart from sight... The seller nipped off smartly but the buyer went straight into one of the stalls to get his fix. I made sure I was well out of the way before he came out!

This is Fish Strand Quay where, on 4 November 1805, Lt. John Richards Lapenotiere, Captain of HM Schooner Pickle arrived with the news of the victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, tempered by the news of the death of Lord Nelson. He reached London in 38 hours to report to the Admiralty, the journey by coach usually taking a week.

We found Falmouth a little strange. I don't know what I had been expecting or whether we just stayed in the wrong bit, but the riverside was quite built up and there were numerous little harbours and jetties to be found by walking between buildings from the street to the river. You couldn't walk all the way along a river path but kept having to come back to the street, along for a few buildings and then down again.

A ship's figurehead in the alley at the side of The Wheelhouse pub. It is well known for its seafood apparently. We both hate the stuff so we avoided it! Fish I don't mind and prawns providing they are already in their pink state and don't need any bits removing before eating, but things that live in shells I definitely do not want to pass my lips! So oysters, mussels, cockles, winkles, and things like crabs and lobster - you can keep them!

One of the alleys we went down led to a car park and another to this view of a couple of pilot boats. One was moored up but the other had been out on a job, helping a boat or ship in or out of the estuary and was coming slowly back into harbour.

The Harbour Master's Office is the stone building in the centre of the photo. As with Plymouth we found plenty of public houses dotted liberally around the waterfront. From the left there is The Stable (in the singular - I would have expected "The Stables"), The Quayside Inn" and on the right we'll have a closer look in the next photo.

There is actually two pubs here next door to each other. In the two-storey building is The Shipwrights and next door with three storeys, The Chainlocker which opened its doors to Falmouth's thirsty folk and visitors in 1660. It is Falmouth's second oldest pub (after The Seven Stars) missing out on first place by mere weeks.

Falmouth gave us some great views but in bits, rather than being able to walk alongside the river uninterrupted. We also found and looked round a few fascinating antiques shops, stopping short in one as a large dog bounded in through the open door and squeezed past me to get behind the counter. Its owner came in a second later and said, "Don't mind him - he comes here for biscuits!" Sure enough the owner of the shop brought out a packet and gave the dog a couple upon which it allowed him to pat it for a second or two then it was off and out the door, followed rapidly by its owner.

"He comes in for two biscuits and knows that once he's had those there won't be any more until tomorrow!" said the shop owner cheerfully. We had dinner near the main pier in a tea room. I had a milk shake, but sadly most of these have some sort of thickening these days and you need suction like a Dyson vacuum cleaner to get the stuff up the straw. Besides if you eat thickening, what do you suppose that does to you in the end... Milk, Crusha strawberry syrup and a small blob of ice cream and I'm happy. Straining at a drinking straw full of pig fat like swamp muck and I'm not...

The hill to the car park was every bit as exciting to climb as I had thought it might be. Thigh muscles screaming we got to the car and left for the return journey to Newquay.

Having parked the car back at the B&B, we walked down into the town and around the beaches. I decided to have a go at sketching Towan Beach which has an island with an art gallery, joined to the mainland with a short suspension bridge. Fran left me for a look round the shops whilst I sat, huddled in the wind on a balcony overlooking the beach, totally on my own. No one else was braving the wind except the seagulls, one of which landed near me and eyed me hopefully.

About 45 minutes later my phone went. I had moved from where Fran left me and the balcony I was sitting on (and that far-too-optimistic seagull was still standing on) was halfway down the cliff, reached via some narrow steps and then a ramp. I had more or less finished apart from working over some bits to darken them and we made our way back to The Griffin pub for a drink before repeating the success of the first night's helping of steak in ale pie.

The barman was passing our table and did a double take at the sketch that I was finishing off. "Have you drawn that?" he asked... Then he had to nip back off behind the bar as a stag party came in. Miss Franny was not amused at the groom-to-be's trousers being yanked to his ankles and for a moment I had a flashback to my father's frantic efforts to hush my mother in the 1960s as she would get incensed because one of a gang of teddy boys had said "bloody" and she would screech in a loud voice, "I'll tell him about his language in a minute!", no doubt raising visions in Dad's head of him having to step into insurmountable odds to protect her.

They were loud but they weren't all that bad and the only other incident was an almost full pint knocked over which they all roared their amusement at. We went into the dining room for our meal, leaving them behind. The steak in ale pie was just as large as it had been at the start of the week...

And that brings us to the end of this holiday. Unless we decide to nip off for another short break, the next trip will have to wait until 2016. And then we will be in the company of the EGGs. Son-in-law Edward, daughter Gillian and our darling granddaughter Grace. And may well meet up with someone with the initials MM...

Post Script

Phew! This post marks one thousand, five hundred posts on the blog! PARTY!!!

Cornwall Holiday Index

Pilgrims and Pubs, Cannon and Lighthouses in Plymouth

Thursday 17 September 2016. We had originally set off to go to Falmouth but, instead of looking at the map, I remembered seeing signs on the way to Polperro so headed 90 degrees in the wrong direction and subsequently the wrong direction by 180 degrees on joining the A30 and we ended up deciding to carry on to Plymouth once we realised we had gone irreparably wrong!

So we crossed the Tamar Bridge with Brunel's famous Royal Albert Bridge to our side and found ourselves in Devon. Plymouth has one of those approaches that confuses the hell out of any drivers not from around those parts. You seem to describe several figures of eight before you get to where you want to be. In our case I had to do a nifty U-turn to avoid entering the Naval Dockyard...

We parked under a rather dubious sky near the Barbican and walked down to the waterside to this view of the Mayflower Steps. A boat trip was just waiting to go out with a party off a Shearings coach. There seemed to be a bit of a flap on because there were two people fewer on the boat than there had been on the coach...

The Mayflower was a 3-masted square rigger and by no means new by the year 1620. Whilst Plymouth has traditionally been thought of as her last port before setting out (she first picked up passengers in both London and Southampton), it is now thought that she called into Newlyn in Cornwall to replace water casks, the water loaded in Plymouth having found to have been responsible for illness in the city.

The Mayflower Steps, where those first brave pilgrims, 102 in number, embarked for the voyage. "Are we on the all-inclusive?" came a voice from the back. "Look at the size of that ship! God preserve us, it must be three decks at least!"

Whilst the other passengers argued as to who had booked the best excursions, the Purser checked in the hold to ensure the cask of Milk of Magnesia was safely stowed. He knew that they might have to settle the New World...

The Barbican these days plays host to a modern marina. There are a few empty places evident against the nearest jetty. Either no one has yet bought a boat to go there or the owners of the boats that moor there are unaware of the rule that boats in a marina should never ever move...

There are a couple of modern buildings on the wharf. One is the Mayflower Museum, another has shops. Thankfully though many of Plymouth's old buildings still stand and add character to the Barbican.

Many of them, it has to be said, are pubs. In the days when Plymouth was a busy port those sailors off the many ships that came in were a thirsty bunch. And a motley one too - there would have been a few different languages adding to the noise of the area. The French would be demandez-ing vin blanc et vin rouge; the Danes would be snatching off their horned helmets to be filled with lager ("Lager, ye swab?" What the heineken is that?"). Even our own brave Jack Tars would be given a swift kick for ordering beer ("That's for childer ye lubbers! We serves good English ale here!")

The Three Crowns pub sits on the opposite side of the harbour to most of the other pubs. I'm not sure how old it is - there was quite a bit of bombing here in the Second World War and certainly Wikipedia ignores this pub which is usually a sign that it's not that old. If anyone knows better, please do tell.

Similarly the Navy Inn, despite the great name seems to boast no history on either Wikipedia or its own website. It does have live music though - yay!

Sigh... And it's more of the same at the Maritime too. All these pubs do look the business though. I was driving so couldn't really afford to go for a pint in each one. In fact, had I not been driving I'm still no good at pub crawling. I enjoy a pint - dark mild is a favourite tipple but rather hard to find these days - but two pints is enough to make me feel slightly bloated and queasy. Three and you would be carrying me home... I have to say I've never thought of this as a handicap...

As well as all the drinking places, there are a good number of eating places. The big difference about these in the South West that we noticed from previous visits is that the small traditional tea rooms seem to be a dying breed. All the cafes want you to buy a huge cooked dinner no matter what the time of day and regardless of whether you might prefer to eat your main meal in the evening.

We did find a great tea room though behind a tiny area with benches set back from the waterfront. It had lots of framed prints of the Royals of England from the Middle Ages onwards and in the background Bing Crosby was crooning from a tape or CD recorded from his old radio shows of the 1930s and 40s. An American man in his 40s was sitting alone at a table, happily immersed in the sounds of his own country's past. He was enthusiastic in complimenting the owner about the music as he left.

The tea rooms was at the back of the little square behind and to the right of the green umbrella. When we came out the sun had made an appearance and we sat for a while here with three Frenchmen chattering away on the next bench.

We had a look round the shop of the Mayflower Museum without going into the museum itself and then a walk around the headland to Plymouth Hoe...

...where preparations are still in place should those rascals the Spanish decide to have another go.

We had an ice cream from the van - 80p each and they tasted wonderful. The woman in front of me ordered a tub with a big dollop of clotted cream on the side. That looked as though it would have tasted wonderful too...

The walls are those of the Royal Citadel, constructed by Charles II after his restoration to the throne. Nominally to protect the port in case the Spanish or anyone else did come for another go, King Charles was also giving a warning to the people of Plymouth who had veered towards the Roundhead side of the tiff between the Royals and Parliament. The fort remains in military use even today. I know... I almost drove into it by mistake...

The lighthouse tower on Plymouth Hoe is known as Smeaton's Tower. It is in fact the upper portion of John Smeaton's lighthouse that was the third lighthouse to be built on the Eddystone Rocks. It was built there in 1759 and was replaced by the current Eddystone Lighthouse in 1877 and the people of Plymouth paid for it to be moved stone by stone to this spot.

We returned to Newquay for our evening meal which repast was served up in grand traditional style in a typical seaside cafe called Bunter's.

It was very windy and therefore not all that warm in Newquay and we decided to take to the car once again and head north along the coast for a little run out. This is Watergate Bay,

Tomorrow we'll have another attempt to get to Falmouth. It's an early night back at the B&B - I need to consult a map...

Cornwall Holiday Index

Glasson Dock and The Stork at Condor Green

The other week on my way back from viewing the remains of the Space Tower ride at Morecambe, I stopped at a pub that I must have passed over a hundred times without ever stepping inside.

The Stork at Condor Green sits on a bend, thus enabling it to face the oncoming traffic over the humpbacked bridge over the River Condor. It places an obstacle in the road as far as drivers are concerned, for the road bends to the right in front of it and then sharply to the left to bypass it and carry on into Lancaster just three and a half miles away.

The pub and B&B haven't changed in appearance, certainly since the 1970s which is when I took my earliest photo of it in glorious monochrome and I suspect it has looked the same for a good many years prior to that. The old coaching inn dates back to the time of Charles II - I'm sure he must have popped up all the time to get away from Great Fires and the constant pestering of Sammy Pepys for "any juicy tit-bits for the diary, your majesty...?" The wrought iron figure of a stork with outspread wings sits now as it did then (the 1970s not the 1660s...) over the doorway to the pub.

I didn't have anything more exciting than a tuna sandwich but my eye caught various bits on the menu like "Bobotie" and signs hung on walls showing the way to the "Braii / BBQ" and asking the young barman confirmed that it is owned by a South African. Not sure about the bobotie and if I'm ever offered Rooibos tea I run a mile I'm afraid, but the sandwich was excellent as was the beer that I ordered with it and I think a second visit must be undertaken at some near point!

Not visited on this occasion, but a regular afternoon out haunt of the late 1970s was the nearby Glasson Dock. I suspect it doesn't get as busy as I remember it in those days and the floating cafe, the Ba-Ba-Gee, on the side of the marina is long gone.

Glasson Dock is not as old as it might appear. It didn't exist at all until the 1780s when the River Lune up to Lancaster started to silt up and they built this dock here just a short distance from the river mouth and the Irish Sea. A set of lock gates against the river ensured that ships could stay afloat in the dock when the tide went out and when the canal was built ten years later a branch was built with more locks allowing the passing of ships from sea into the canal system. Here we see the lock between the dock itself and the canal basin and marina.

You would normally expect to see a sizeable town grow up around a dock, but the fact that schooners could enter the dock and then sail along the canals to Lancaster or even Preston meant that there were no vast requirements for employment of men and Glasson Dock remains a small village.

And amongst my photos of 1977, here is Miss Franny standing guard over the MacLaren buggy which holds our baby, Gillian.

Remembering Sunnyside - Intermission

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!