Spring road trip with Tori/Charlie and 4 dogs

Such a good time to get out, look out, feel the spring arrive at different moments moving through modest latitudes and longitudes, different greens. To break the long journey to Cornwall I stopped for 2 adventures.

The first was a re-visit to camp beside the Windrush river, the river that gave its name to the Ship that gave it’s name to a generation of West Indians. A modest clear running trout stream. I found it with Michael, on our way back from Hay, I think by chance. I remember the wall, huge and impossing, and we found a story but despite asking at the bar, and finding a stone masson, I found no story this time, ate too much and slept fitfully in the car park.

I’d forgotten about rain. We’d not seen any for a month in Suffolk. Down it came, although not as wet as it sounded on the roof, when we got out 3 times to walk the Kali dog. I doubted this journey with Kali. Was I too ambitious with a deaf blind old dog?

Colombian or Classic. Hello sir can I help, A queue of people head down on their phones, their Wednesday day to begin. Hisssss. Clattttter. Any sauce with that? I’m here in Cafe Nero to charge the phone down to the last bar. My first drawing is of my travel mug. It is a poor drawing, childish.

After a rough night besdie the Windrush, and doubts that I should be doing this journey with an aging dog Kali, I hit paradise. Savernake forest. Dogs off lead, foopaths easy for Kali to follow, few people. Oh and amazing oaks.

What took me here was a book entitled Heritage Oaks, commissioned by Forestry England to celebrate and protect: ….. Published in 2012. I wonder if it was this UK project that inspired Richard Woolnaugh to register the Halesworth Heritage Oaks, which I have inherited.

Story and 60 photographs recorded in Kaliwood HERE

After the Kings Limbs, we motored to Silton and Judge Wymondham Oak a mere 1,000 years old and on a heritage tree roll, on to the 3,000 year old yew at Ashbrittle. Two movies of them became unexpectedly popular on Facebook

Exeter with Ruth

I knew something wrong – in the space between the lines. Her brother, an exceptionally fit and healthy marathon runner and keeled over and died aged 55. Unexpectedly.

All the same she welcomed. ‘I’ll give you the rough scrubby towel’ she was right, I liked it and had the best shower in days and although she provided a delicious looking bed, I could not take it, but slept with the dogs in the van, in Oxford Road, Exeter. Our first town sleep experience, and relatively undisturbed. A science lesson from Gerry: A little known fact that moon rock once exposed to the oxygen of our air, starts to decompose, in face burn, and smells like wood. The motor industry consider there is no future in electric cars – and anyhow not enough power it the grid to support them. Hydrogen is what he is working on, and Ruth quietly looks forward to the day they can both retire rich from selling the start up.

Exeter is well healed. Jerry described how the chancellor was overheard saying “A shame our students are rich and thick”

Portholland – Cornwall

Wet warm rain, single track roads. Portholland is a hamlet of homes, in a Cornish cove. Snails abound on leaves. A dutch woman and her daughter. Joanna our hostess, greets. She has lived here 15 years, renting the property from the Cahalls estate (as all the property is around here) for 25 years. Her long legged short skirted daughter leaves on the school bus each morning.

Evening walk to next beach along a quiet road, becomes our regular morning dog walk. Pink campions, white stitchwort, lithuanian green Alexanders,

Caerhayes

Interesting background to some plant collecting, who i first met with Bob thinking of doing a film on Frank Kingdon-Ward. The Caehayes family, JCWilliams in particlar, needing to diversify the estate to support the local population, started in dafodilles, which made good money in Covent Garden. Then through a partnership with a plant collector/adventurer, Forester, began the love affair with Rhodedendria. Cornwall and china share high numidity and rainfall with China – then an inhospital landmass. Camelias followed, which they hybridised. Today diversity continues to challenge, as they embrace tourism, 15 holiday lets, a plant nursary, 800 acres and opening Cahayes to the public in 1992.

It was the mineral collection however, which took my attention.

Heligan

It was after I left to find the Gunnera that Tori and Charlie happened to pass the banker of Heligan. As they passed this older man he said good morning, to which Charlie gave the hock. If you’d passed 5 minutes before I would say Good mornafter, or some such, and the man looked at his watch to check the time, and so began the conversation which led to his revealing he was the banker and came here many times a year, and thought the cost was too high.

Truro and Trelissick Gardens

Truro for Neo acropolis Waitrose followed by Neo Gothic Cathedral, built around 1900 to establish a cathedral here in Cornwall and not be beholden to Exeter in Devon. However, egos abound. Why no green sward arond we asked the guide: Because the Mayor who owned the land and lived in the house near by did not want the cathedral and church to challenge his power base.” The whole central nave is on the huh. I found myself not enjoying the gothic: too immitation, too busy. I longed for the clear lines of romanesqe. My eye mddled by fancy decoration around the arches, the stain glass a mass of complicated story and colour. Coffee and cake absorbing the Cornwall land and people.

Trelissick Gardens turned out to be a perfect place for us and dogs to walk off lead. Delightful clear paths under dappled light of mature trees, mainly oak and holly but also beech and mountain ash. I picked up some woodland management tips: here is the Rainforest Lichen recovery project. They are coppicing holly to give prejudice to the oak.

Drew the complex head of a seaweed. Cooked mackeral. No drink on the bench. Episode 2 of Poldark.

Charlie’s day: Falmouth

“I shall throw a tantrum if we do not go to Falmouth”. In the face of such honest bluntness, we opted for a quiet(er) life, and took the ferry from St Maws to Falmoth. (having weighed up it would be safe leaving the dogs in the car for a couple of hours). Tori, it turns out knows Cornwall from various moments in her life (with her mother and father as a child to Foy), then later with Peter here to Falmouth, where his ancestor Charles Hemy was a reputed painter, and it was this which drew Charlie to this desire to visit Falmoth art gallery.

We were skeptical, and did not hold up much view on Falmouth. No dogs in the gallery, as they found the paintings I dog sat, and our object done, we made our way back, to find the ferry cancelled due to the exceptional low tide. With unexpected time, I broke away from the two united by a dog that would not go separately, and walked. The high street was quirky with tantalising alleys down to the port or rocking boats in the harbour. Young people, students perhaps from the university, elegant older women with skin of many sun years, trim men with well turned calves, wafty Indian cotton dressed young girls, a magic shop, an old cinema, graffiti, a funky coffee bar. Some 3 Italian women enjoying their explore, were still making their way up as I returned – I admired their style and easy looking. However, my view on Falmouth shifted. Back in the nick of time for the ferry, the Dogs of course, were fine, (the worry, of course, did not help). And with them we celebrated our return with some Oysters in the Black Shack – as featured by Rick Stein we gathered from our fellow ferry travellers. A glass of Sauvignon and 3 oysters. And Charlie and Oyster virgin.

Eating oysters in St Maws
Around us 16 paws,
A virgin eater
Took a shell
said What the hell
And to our what’s it like, he paused.
and had another.

Another Poldark for the evening. “I’ve always liked words, but I could not write as you do, and hatted English composition, that’s why I studied advanced Maths, because it was – what’s the word ? ”

‘As usual, i’m trying to find the off switch, i know it’s somewhere around.”

Wild camp under the chimney

Camp under the tin mine on the road to Zenor in a lay-by dominated by a huge stone built chimney, once with fire and smoke, now home to crows, rocks which greet me in the morning.

As I was deciding to camp here for the night, two women walked down the road beside, one older, my age, looked direct at the dogs and me, the other younger walked on. She had injured herself, she said, so took a rest on the stone near by as her daughter walked on to find the certain path. I am from Canada she said. Ah that independent country, I jested in light of Trumps recent boast to make it the 5th state of America. And long may it remain. You have a good leader, he used to work here, I said, and so we began.

I came here 30 years ago.
She asked where I was in India, I must have said I taught in a buddhist school in Sarnath Varanasi. 

It was because of Buddhism I came here, she said. To Gaia House,
– Christopher Titmus? I asked
Yes, he gave a retreat in Canada, just a 3 day retreat, but that bought me here to Gaia house for a 16 day retreat. It was after that retreat I started walking here 30 years ago, and learned this road was called Tin alley. After walking I went back for a further 8 days. But I realised I’d had no period. I was pregnant. Were it not for that my life would have taken a different course. I returned to Canada and had my daughter here now aged 30.
Christopher was my first teacher too, in Budhgaya, I said, but I do not give my story, feeling there was time again for this.
Her daughter is keen to move on. She is practical, the light diminishes, the progress will be slow.
I offer my van, but they hit the road. They are at the start of their walking holiday and this twist in her knee annoys here. Donna – was that her name?
I watch them make their slow progress over the hill. I see her stop and as if look back at us, marvelling at our connection. It stays with me, that evening and through the light sleep at night.

The next morning I walk with the dogs to find the track they took. The connection and then loss feels profound. It was as if I did not want to pick up any more stuff on my journey, that exchanging contact was not necessary, connection had been made, love exchanged, that was sufficient.

Random photos of that time.