Memories of a week's family holiday based in Nequay, Cornwall where we are camping just north of the town in Porth. 'We' are my parents, Miss Franny and I and our own daughter, Gillian plus my brother Frank and his son, also called John. Join us as we frolic through sights and sites both familiar and less well-known.
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Monday 7 September 2020. Agh... the dark days of Covid. The lockdown had been lifted and we wanted to get out of the house for a few days and motored down to spend a weekend at an ex-colleague's B&B in Dulcote just outside Wells in Somerset.
We had spent a similar long weekend there in 2015 and were looking forward to a nice relaxing time, not rushing about, but staying fairly close with Weston-Super-Mare being the farthest we would wander away from our base. Here is a sketch of the White House. It was good to be back here and we knew that Mary and her family would look after us well.
Bob the dog was a new (to us) member of Mary's household and soon got used to me and even Maggie the timid cat came onto my knee. "It's like having Dr Doolittle here!" Mary said in surprise as Bob replaced Maggie and started stroking my face with his paw.
We headed out to Cheddar, where we found a little cafe to have lunch in and I filled in the foliage around the side of the sketch. The waitress thought it "very pretty!".
The caves were all closed, as were many of the small shops. Fran had a wander as I started another sketch of a row of tiny cottages. It started to rain as I was doing this, gently at first but after Fran had come back to me it came down in earnest and we upped sticks and found refuge under the awning of a pub beer garden where a Guinness helped me complete the sketch!
On our way down to Dulcote we had passed the Rock of Ages a huge cleft rock face set into the hills near Burrington and Blagdon. I had seen signs for it many times whilst driving to and from Blagdon when visiting the software house EMIS who produced our college software in the early days, but had never cut down the road to see it.
An inscription from the 1950s tells how the Reverend A.M. Toplady sheltered here from a storm and was inspired to write the famous hymn, Rock of Ages in the mid 1700s.
Tuesday 8 September 2020. The morning started a bit weird as I had found a tyre going down last night and booked the car in to have it looked at in Wells. What would have been a 15 to 20 minute job at our usual garage turned out to be a 2 hour job in Wells as the place was extremely busy. No matter, we looked round the shops and Fran found a sewing shop that Mary had been raving about.
Then once we had the car back we went into Weston-Super-Mare and had lunch there. It took a while to find a place as all cafes were having to ensure social distancing due to the Covid 19 epidemic and smaller cafes were just not open. Needless to say the ones that were open were very full. Once fed we had a walk along the pier - they still charge for this and were insisting that people wore face masks in the fresh open air along it...(?) Ah well. Then a walk along the Promenade and then a hop in the car to Burnham on Sea before heading back to Wells, filling the car with petrol and buying a sandwich in Morrisons.
On our way home we stopped in a forestry car park on the road from the Rock of Ages as I had seen this field that looked like a barrow field. It was misty and a bit cool and I left Fran sitting in the car to find the field looking more like a naturally lumpy field. However it did have a short row of stones marking the border with the road and forming a gateway for the path leading into the field.
I was really in two minds. It had too many humps and lumps to be both a barrowfield or a natural occuring feature.
This one looked promising, but sadly isn't included in maps of Somerset tumuli that I looked at once back at home.
Wednesday 9 September 2020. We went back into Wells for some lunch and then a sit in the Bishop's Garden, where I drew the gatehouse whilst Fran went back around the shops and a market. A woman braved the transfer of any plague-like germs to have a look at what I was doing and said she'd come back later as she wanted to see how I'd cope with the archway. In the event I coped alright with the archway, though the two sides to the gatehouse should really be the same width as each other...
Then it was back to Mary's to spend our final afternoon relaxing in the garden.
Bob comes to sit with me for a bit but then goes off to lie down near the kitchen door when I stop paying him constant attention!
In May 2024 we took a coach trip, staying in Torquay and visiting surrounding places. I was just a month after having radiotherapy and probably at the peak of a horrendous throat and cough that made me feel as though I should apologise to everyone.
Sunday 19 May 2024. We arrive at our hotel, the Livermead Hotel just down the hill from central Torquay. This is the view from our window, looking south west towards Paignton on the far coast over the bay.
These days, what with a bad back, walking with a stick, cancer and side effects from half the pharmacy's stock to take every day, I've ditched taking the camera on holiday with me and make do with just a few snaps on the phone. I still take my trusty A4 sketch pad with me and there will be a couple of sketches to come.
Monday's excursion takes us to Powderham Castle, a little way up the River Exe towards Exeter, though Ian, our coach driver, wisely stayed on the roads. As we all walked under the gatehouse to be greeted by the guide and curator of the castle, a tall (well look, I'm 5 ft 4 inches.... everybody's tall...) man came out of the castle and got into a car which immediately signalled its reluctance to start. As a group we gave a sympathetic groan of support as the chap threw a rueful glance at us before going back indoors. "That was the current Earl of Devon..." the guide told us.
The fortified manor house was built c1390, not named as a castle until the 18th century. It certainly has no moat or keep, but a portion of curtain wall today contains the Rose Garden. It was the seat of the Earls of Devon, the Courtenay family, from the mid 1500s when one branch of the family, based at Tiverton, ran out of heirs and the earldom passed to their cousins at Powderham. We had a tour of the ground floor, then were released to go find somewhere to sit with relief.
After some lunch in the Courtyard Cafe, we made an early start back towards the coach park as I didn't want to be holding anyone up. On the way we spotted some picnic tables and I was able to sit and do this sketch of the Victorian gatehouse to the castle. We also saw several deer wandering about.
Our dinner was scheduled quite late for us, but that turned out well as it meant that I could have a couple of hours sleep before going down to the dining room every day. Exhaustion being another of the side effects of the radiotherapy. It did make some of the coach travelling a lot shorter than it may have actually been... Anyway once up and waiting at a table in the hotel garden whilst Miss Franny went to the bar for a bottle of Pinot (and an orange squash for me...) a loud clattering chug-chug announced the passing of three large military helicopters, two of which are seen here.
Tuesday, 21 May 2024. We leave Ian and the coach in Paignton, clutching tickets for the steam train to Dartmouth, the pedestrian ferry from the station at Kingswear to Dartmouth and then a later river cruise from Dartmouth.
Taken from the train, this is the River Dart. Our coach is coach G, right behind the engine, which is Lydham Manor, No. 7827, built at Swindon in 1950 and in use at the Dartmouth Steam Railway since 1973.
I didn't manage to get any photos of the train itself, but here's an old sketch from 2013 which gives the general idea. It added to the fun quite a bit as we passed the grounds of a secondary school where a score or more teenage girls were doing a cross country run and charged as one towards us, waving their hands. By gum, I came over all nostalgic. "Take that stupid grin off your face - they weren't just waving at you!" came Miss Franny's sobering whisper of reality...
We reached the end of the line at Kingswear and got the ferry over to Dartmouth. Failing to find our designated meeting place "The Station Cafe", we wondered agonisingly whether we had been too quick to jump on the ferry, should we have stayed on the station? No, the cafe in question was now "The Embankment Cafe". A fellow passenger, plucked us from the returning ferry queue just in time.
The usual problems with finding a public loo. Cancers and their treatments can sometimes leave you with very little warning that a loo is required. Luckily we found one shortly before I was forced to walk bent double, but then they turned out to be showers... "Toilets around the other side" said a notice so, by now slightly cross-legged, I shuffled as fast as possible around the large building to see "Toilets closed for cleaning - use toilet in the showers"... Crisis narrowly averted.
We met up with the others at the appointed time for a river cruise up the River Dart. I'm told it was very good. I went to sleep more or less as soon as we left the landing stage and only woke up on the returning journey when the sun was going to be in my eyes if I looked out over the side at the passing scenery.
Wednesday 22 May 2024. It was a free day. There was an optional visit to the indoor and outdoor markets at Newton Abbott, but we thought that might not have the sort of appeal that it might have had say in the 1950s and we opted to stay and walk into Torquay itself. The walk was inevitably a stop and start effort from one bench to another with short or long rests depending on the roughness of terrain, or wind, (yes - yet another side effect...) or degree of gradient.
We had been warned of thunder and heavy rain throughout the afternoon and evening, though in the event the rain stayed away until evening and the thunder never made itself heard. We had a cream tea in a cafe, looking out onto a tangled mess of railings and snarled traffic as the area around the harbour was being "modernised" - which usually means that any character will be drained away and a new marina full of boats that seldom move will take over...
Thursday 23 May 2024. Today's outing was to Dawlish in the morning and then to Teignmouth for lunch and the afternoon. Dawlish is where the coastal train tracks were left hanging a few years ago during heavy seas smashing their way through the supporting wall under the lines. It is also famous for its black swans along the riverside which has a very nice park alongside.
Teignmouth had a pleasant, but rather breezy promenade to walk along. The pier looked a little as though it should be visited as soon as possible before it collapsed - there was no one on the length of it at all and we presumed it must be closed, though an arcade at the entrance was open. We sat in a little triangular square (work that one out...!) near a Greggs that supplied us with a warm sausage roll apiece, then made our way along the shopping street back to the Promeade meeting place where an ice cream stall provided us with something to lick whilst we waited for Ian to return.
Friday 24 May 2024. As we prepare to leave the Liversmead Hotel, the owner, his son and staff representatives gather to wave off our coach in a traditional and quite nostalgic way. Ian let the owner's son sit in the driver's seat and hoot the horn. He was made up for the day at that!
The year is 2002 and we are staying at a B&B in Great Yarmouth, using it as a base for touring around various places in Norfolk and Suffolk.
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Friday 23 August 2002. It was our last night in Great Yarmouth. Tomorrow would see us leave after breakfast and a morning coffee in our favourite beach hut cafe.
There was still a long row of amusement arcades along the seafront road, but sadly gone were the days when you caould find half a dozen or more pinball machines in every arcade. I think we only found two such machine the whole week and predictably one of them wasn't working all that well.
Instead the arcades were full of video games which simply required a good memory for the sequence of challenges rather than the skills to aim balls at various targets through an understanding of the laws of physics. Crane machines full of overweight stuffed toys and pushers with far too much weight of coins to be pushed forwards made up most of the other machines. Miss Franny armed herself with coins and spent the night trying to increase her haul of Winnie the Pooh keyrings. She came home with five...
Our childhood was spent playing the pinballs of the 1950s and 60s, the earlier ones with wooden rails before steel began to be used. They had weak 2-inch flippers that often didn't have the power to send the ball further than halfway up the playfield. The earliest had no flippers at all and targets were just a nail with a surrounding coiled spring that completed the circuit with the nail when pressed against it. The early machines also had gobble holes which scored - but you lost your ball down them for good.
The 1960s were a heyday for pinball players. Rows and rows of them would fill an entire wall of amusement arcades. Spinning score reels replaced the system where bulbs would light in different places on the scorefield to show your score - rows of ten bulbs for millions, 100 thousands, 10 thousands... You had to add them up to get your score. The space created on the back boxes (backflashes) of pinballs by score reels allowed animated features to be added - a lift door opening to reveal the passengers, or a small bagatelle firing tiny balls to signify the launch of a space rocket...
It would be another decade before pinballs became computer controlled, two decades before Gorgar became the first pinball to talk. Elvira - Scared Stiff was the pinball to go to this week and was a good game.
