Journey via Oxfordshire family
It is a glorious time to travel, the bursting of spring, after all the rain a watery sun and the soil draining out. The trees are that bit further out here, and I am reminded of this manifestation on my first safari around the UK all those years ago: in a Peugeot 505, a tent, no plan but to journey from friend to family up the east coast, until I ran out in Northumberland and on to Scotland, witnessing the spring arriving simultaneous to my journey as I drove north as time passed. My first taste of being on the road, which would become so familiar to me, and to which I return now with hunger. Then I was working out where to go with Bob, so it was I passed his last home, in Syleham, which now had no resonance for me, over 5 years since he died.
Oxfordshire: The recent farmer in my notices the huge fields of monoculture, many bare soil, hedgeless, sloping down the ridgeway. Ah the Ridgeway, and a taste of a chapter of a life, John Phillips, once met on the Ridgeway (In a random way I look him up on Facebook, 40 years later, and realise I cannot remember his face). Ah yes, back on the road. It’s been a while, I know from my indecisive packing.
The Baldons, cousin Berenice, Richard her husband, Tilly and Daisy their daughters – how they grow! Now 14 and 16. Kali barks, I see Berenice wince, but while I feed all 3, the family looks on entertained through sparklingly clean windows of their dining conservatory. Knowing of Berenice’s concern that the chickens make a mess eating the corn out of the food container, Richard has created a no spill system this day, being currently light on work.
Berenice and I walked up to the Ridgeway to stretch ourselves and dogs, climbing a up a hill, with a view over the remains of Didcot power station. It is a while since we met, last time at her mothers funeral, two years ago. The dust now more settled, Ushi’s once home rented out, Dominic with a second child, Berenice content and happy teaching these 13 years in the same school: “I realise I am not ambitious” she smiles as she makes the contented declaration. I know she is a brilliant teacher, no doubt inspiring many, as she does me with her eye for detail and love of literature. Over a delicious dinner, Berenice reminding me of Ushi her mother, the great food provider, we did a speed catch up on family, a cup of mint tea on sofa’s at the end of the meal. She is far more grown up than I, I think.
The dogs in the van disturb Berenice and Richard’s ritual morning yoga, (at 6am!), we retrace the walk of yesterday, bid farewells, and set off along the M4 to South Wales for the holiday.
Wales 2 Oxfordshire to South Wales
Easy drive. Rosillie, where dogs and I headed for the sea on this extraordinary stretch of beach. Isn’t Rosillie a place I first heard about from Leslie Allwood? The beach to ourselves, we walk it, ran it, explore the gifts from the tide line.
Tori and Charlie had arrived earlier. We settle in, and had an evening meal at the pub, to which we do not return again!
Wales 3 Broughton Bay
Wake up on the Gower peninsular. Charlie and I and 4 dogs walked to Broughton Bay, a mile down a road (sheep each side) and through an empty caravan park. On the beach we found a cave, lost Kali, found him, felt the edge of the incoming tide, saw a few star fish and brown slime blogs. Walking back a different way we came across a lone man with whom we exchanged. ‘You will get all you need in Pen, but be careful of the sell by dates on the meat’ ‘It’s wonderful here, no entertainment but nature. I’ve been coming here since a child and now my grandchildren come here’.
A shop tells much of where you are. Here the shop in which we can find everything we need, had 4 alleys of drinks, 2 alleys of sweets and biscuits, and half an alley of fresh veg. No Parmesan. ‘You could get it from Asda, but that’s half an hour away’. At the butchers we bought a shoulder of lamb and a chicken.
Rosillie churchyard, we failed to find the stone of Tori’s friend, but find the story of Edgar Evans, who was with Scott, and died with him on the fateful expedition to the South Pole. Very attractive stain glass window in memory. Walking to the headland we learn of the tides, and vow to return tomorrow, to walk out to the Worm at low tide. We learn from the guide that tomorrow is to be high pressure, which will effect the tides, so it may be earlier. How little physics we know.
Fell asleep on a cushion of grass in the sun. Haven’t done that in a long time. Salt marsh lamb for dinner, over which we have a discussion on good and bad. Tory nails it with ‘ethics’. I am surprised how strongly I feel the view, although find it difficult to articulate. Amoralism claims that good and evil are meaningless, that there is no moral ingredient in nature. Moral relativism holds that standards of good and evil are only products of local culture, custom, or prejudice.
‘Should I make a will? Asks Charlie? Yes, as an owner of a home you should, responded his mother. But I don’t know where I want to be buried.
Wales 4 The Worm
It is a glorious spring sunshine day, as Tori and I arrive 9.30 at the starting point for the Worm crossing (Charlie opted to stay behind to work). All seems in our favour, until we we began our descent. No clear path, no even surface, but ragged, stones over which we must scramble. Torie wisely opted to return to base, while dogs and I met the challenge. The jumping from stone to stone reminded me of doing the same up the Rwanzorie vertical bog! Once on even soil land, we climbed easily to the top then down again to the next stage of the Worm. Kali gave me a shock as he walked blind towards the sheer drop down to the rock and sea below, a person there stopped him. I realised there was no way we could not continue, it was enough for both of us oldies. We rested up content with our progress, admiring a young girl making her way over the next jagged rock formation.
(Wales 5-6 Totness)
Managed to get a woodland fix on the journey back, close to home on the Gower, is the Parc-Le-Breos. It was an ancient hunting park of the Breos family, the more recent Vivian family fortune founded on copper and were widely accredited with the industrialisation of the lower Swansea valley 1880’s. The company slowly declined end 1900’s bought out in 1927 by ICI. Great victorian planting, mix of tall pines with beeches. A cave and a burial chamber to boot.
Wales 7 – Whiteford Lighthouse
Packed in, 4 dogs 3 people, ready to go, our last day on the Gower peninsular, last outing: no van keys. Searched high low, retraced steps. It was Charlie who found them, dangling on a coat hock by the door, such a sensible place. This is how it is these days in a life: first forgetting and unable to trace back the footsteps to that recent moment, and then the doubting of putting the thing in a sensible place.
Our mission, an easy 2.5 hour walk on the flat to the last remaining caste-iron lighthouse in the UK, across the Whiteford beach sands. Arriving on the sands seeing the stump of a lighthouse in the distance, we laughed. Could it be that small, like the stumpy churches here? An hour later, we still seemed no closer, it still seemed squat.
It was huge! (Meeting a swath of uneven pebbles, Torie and Charlie opted to stay on the sand, the dogs and I walked on, finding a shelf of blue cockles that pathed the way to the giant). Built in 1865, it is a remarkable feet of engineering. The base materials (88 wooden piles linked horizontally, using 500 cast-iron plants and bolts, excavated and partially filled with concrete) were delivered by boat and work undertaken during low tide. The shell, impressive to see now, is formed from 105 bent and tapered cast-iron plates, and had to be reinforced later by a local blacksmith with wrought-iron straps which were bolted to the flanges on each side of the cracked plates.
Today wave and wind bashed, it’s rigorous skeleton stands strong, home to thousands of cockles and other sea life, a testament to the work of men from another time.
We walked back through the edge of the marsh, still very swampy, dogs on leads as sheep near by. Ended with an unexpected gourmet meal at the Britannia of pigeon on a bed or beetroot cooked pearl barley.
Kalikellett 