Dartmoor in 'drought'

Saturday was sunny and even hot. We decided to visit Dartmoor. Jack had been there on a school excursion, so he was going to be our guide. It has been so warm and dry that we did not pack jumpers or raincoats or compasses and maps in case of sudden mists. I thought this was tempting fate, but in fact they were not needed.

We drove through Plymouth to get there. This involves negotiating the nastiest roundabout we have ever seen, Canberra included. Anyway, we got there okay. We overtook several cyclists on the way. Wayne, now an expert cyclist, noted how some were riding with their knees sticking out and needed to raise their seats. I noted how one bloke's shirt had ridden up, ensuring an inch-wide sunburn around his waist in the near future...

We parked in an unexpectedly wooded and shady area. Up on Bodmin it is all rocks and thorn bushes. But here we were close to a reservoir, and had to walk up to get to the moor. We started out through the trees. There was a pine plantation. When we reached the grassy moor I was struck by the number of ferns everywhere. There were soft grasses and tiny flowers. No thorn bushes! This bit of Dartmoor, at least, was very different from Bodmin - but they are reasonably close together so it was a mystery to me. There were patches of dried mud that showed that this is normally very boggy, but we had had two weeks without rain now. There was still a rushing stream on our left. This first picture shows us on a bridge over it. The next shows the path through the woods. The third shows the beginning of the moor. (You will notice we made good use of the little camera tripod here.)

The next picture shows a totally man-made stream. Jack was giving us his geography class spiel, here. This hilly stream fell down to a 'leat', I think the word was, all lined with the abundant local rock. You see Eleanor mucking about with a pipe into it. A few sheep wandered about. This is an English national park for you!

We had just crossed the water, when a herd of ponies galloped down towards us. It was a bit scary actually, but they veered off at the last moment. We walked up to a shady patch and stopped to have an apple. We sat on nice soft grass - like a cushion, yet not mossy and wet, no worries about grass stains on the trousers. Walking here is very civilised, we thought... no prickles, rocks, bull ants, sticks or snake worries! A beautiful foal wandered up to check out Jack's apple, but its mother quickly nudged it away from the dangerous teenager - very wise.

After our rest we trudged uphill towards a tor. This was the only really strenuous part of the day. It was very rocky, as you can see. Here is Jack clambering over one pile of rocks. Annie got a bit fed up and did not go right to the top. The rest of us did, and here is Wayne and Eleanor perched up high. There was a great view of the surrounding countryside and the reservoir.

The rest was all downhill. We walked through a pine plantation, and then a more lightly wooded area. Jack showed where there were bluebells last time. I was just glad that we had left the long grasses of the hedges and fields behind today - I am struggling with hayfever and will not be photographed without sunglasses for a while! Back to the car park. More civilisation - there was an icecream van there too. So, we topped off a pleasant walk with a creamy Devonshire icecream - yum!

St Mawgan walk, through Newquay and on to the Bowgie Inn

"Grey skies gonna clear up. Put on a happy face"...and so they do; figuratively and literally. A couple of weeks or more of someone in the family being quite sick with flu and the car blowing a head gasket leaving us stranded has brightened up with better health and the car back from the wonderful Len Clarke (recommended mechanic if you're ever broken down around Liskeard).
We decided to do one of the pubwalks in the Newquay area, have a look at Newquay and then have lunch at the Bowgie Inn which is perched on a headland near the village of Crantock. Why the Bowgie Inn you ask? Lunch at the Bowgie comes as a 42 years old recommendation from my Mum and Dad who used to have a drink there when they went on surfing odysseys from Brighton down to Cornwall. I am happy to report that the food, the beer and the view over Crantock Beach are all still excellent.
But before we get to that we had to work up an appetite and our pubwalk was around the Mawgan Vale. The Morgul Vale in Lord Of The Rings is a dark, evil place - home of the Witchking Of Angmar Lord Of The Nazgul. Mawgan Vale is a beautiful, wooded place more reminiscent of the hobbits' walk to Bree without the scary bits. The walk started at the Falcon Inn in the village of St Mawgan, where a large, old, stone church is surrounded by a few houses with thatched roofs, a village shop and the pub. We walked around the perimeter of the church, up a hill, through a gate and then we were walking in the countryside overlooking the Mawgan Valley. It was a very civilised walk along a compacted stone pathway. Annie felt disconnected from nature and commented that Little Fur the fairy (Isobelle Carmody books) would not approve of covering the ground in such a manner.
The sky was blue, the sun warm and a refreshing breeze was coming off the ocean that could be seen between hills in the distance. Wildflowers were out in abundance. We saw beautiful wild climbing roses. At the end of the western ridge of the Mawgan Vale we descended into the valley and discovered that this was horse country (...shall I make Rohan analogies to keep the Lord Of The Rings theme going?). Proud steeds captured behind electric fences watched us walking by. There were two miniature horses standing near a gate so we took the time to give their noses a rub before continuing up the other side of the valley to the eastern ridge. Where the western ridge was open grassland with views, the eastern ridge was a walk through a woodland tunnel. The tree branches, thick with foliage, arched over to make a lush, cool, green tunnel. It was actually quite a relief from the sting of the sun. A stream burbled along through the valley and where footbridges crossed it we played the obligatory Pooh-sticks at each one. The walk conveniently ended at the car park where Rover 25 was waiting so then it was on to Newquay.
It was obvious as we drove into Newquay that we weren't in England anymore. We were in Manly or Narooma or the cover of a Beach Boys record. Australia quietly gets on with surfing. The beach is there, the water is there, the surf is there. You go to the beach. It is what Aussies do. Newquay positively SCREAMS surfing. "Surf City here we come" as Jan & Dean said. Maybe it felt like an over-commercialised Bell's Beach. A surfing Mecca. An important place in the consciousness of world surfing. It was surfing concentrated to a few coastal miles of its British home. Surf culture belongs to Fistral Beach and presumably the west coast of the United States with Narrabeen getting an appreciative nod in The Beach Boys' Surfing USA. Needless to say, on a warm, sunny Saturday it was packed! Without a place to park and children complaining from hunger it was through Newquay and on to Crantock and the Bowgie Inn for us.
I pictured Mum and Dad as 18-19 year olds sitting on the balcony of the Bowgie having a drink after a day lying on the beach and surfing respectively. I bet the large car park at the back of the pub wasn't there then and maybe the holiday units across the other headland weren't there but I think the scene would have been pretty much the same. Maybe it was less busy. Maybe it was evening and they watched the sun setting over the sea. We sat and ate for a while looking at the view across Crantock Beach, watching the afternoon surf lifesaver patrol setting up and watching the surfers catching the small waves. Beautiful views on a beautiful day.

Singing at Lanteglos

On Saturday evening I drove down to Lanteglos church with fellow singing neighbours Richard and Jacqui to do a summer concert there. I had not been out and about for a couple of weeks, and really enjoyed the drive through green lanes, often hedged by greenery taller than the lanes were wide. St Wyllows was quite hard to find, all things considered, and Richard and Jacqui have sung there before!

It was a beautiful Norman church, the old tiled roof rippling with age. There was a sundial fixed onto the church porch, horizontally. I have never seen the like. It is set in the middle of a very large graveyard. I had a walk around the back of the church, and thought that the graves there were so overgrown that a couple of goats should be tethered there... then I saw a sign saying that the weeds were deliberate to encourage birds and butterflies. (I might put up a similar sign in my garden back home.)

Inside the church was an arching wooden ceiling, with carved corbels over the joins in the beams. It was rather like being inside an ornate barrel. (Whoops. Just looked up corbels, and these are not they. These were like little wooden clusters carved over the joins.)

The choir's pews were very intricately carved. There was a tomb with a brass etching of a Norman knight on it, very clear, with faint tracings of the fresco that used to be above it on the wall behind. (The Reformation was responsible for so much artistic vandalism, it is to weep.) There was an odd little winding staircase that led to a hole in the wall a bit higher up - some sort of balcony of yore. What I liked best was the set of stocks at the back of the church, on the floor! (For dozing parishioners? Naughty children? It would have just fitted our kids, sitting in a row...)

Anyway, it was a very nice concert. We sang a mixture of secular and sacred pieces, madrigals and so forth. Some was even in English, praise be, although these were mostly of a rather gloomy nature (dying swans, dead lovers etc) for some reason. One cheery one was in praise of Queen Elizabeth the first. This church would have been pretty old even when she was born... A glass of wine was available at half time, so nice for exercised throats. It was a nice Australian red, too!

We drove home past 10 o'clock, as the twilight closed about us. Very beautiful.

June days

Summer is here. Don't let the fact that the Fosters have spent most of the last two weeks fighting the flu one by one disabuse you of this fact...

The Rover 25 has proven not so much a trusty steed at this point by blowing a head gasket. It has been hauled away for an indeterminate time period, forcing Wayne to cycle to school whether he likes it or not, and me to cadge lifts to town to get the groceries. Excursions are out of the question for the time being.

The children are out of the house most of the day, when not at school, untroubled by the lack of car. Emerging from the house for the first time in ages, I decided to find out what they were up to.

The answer is, lots. The netted trampoline in the high field near Mike's garden I knew about, for bouncing, lying in the sun or even kicking a soccer ball in. And Eleanor had shown me a little hidey-hole in the nearby hedge that she'd furbished up as a cubby, often joined by a cat.

Then there is the lane, and various drive-ways off it. The kids tear around them on bikes and scooters with young Will and Sophie next door, using which ever one happens to be lying about. The neighbours don't seem to mind their private drives being used. Kate down the road even took the girls up to one of the barns and showed them some kittens, just at the cute and fluffy stage. A teenage girl showed them how to feed the carp in a little pond behind one of the houses.

Eleanor and Sophie created a new play house with a tarp near the duck pond. I wandered down with Annie this morning to see what they were up to, and found them at the pond looking at fat tadpoles and tiny frogs. I haven't seen these since I was a little 'un myself in Australia. (It's a sad reflection that frogs are getting very rare back home.) A couple of ducks swam over to see what we were up to. There are two wild geese and there three half-grown goslings on the pond as well.

Jack and Will have a hide-out too. They just burst in for some masking tape, and back out again. The kids seem to have free access to all the surrounding houses, and it's not a bad system. Eleanor and Sophie spent a large part of yesterday at the wood down behind the cow pasture, too, although the bluebells are gone now. There's a creek down there as well.

So far Sophie has come a nasty cropper on her bike, and Eleanor has fallen out of a tree. They seem to be happy to be patched up and sent out again. I guess you can't supervise them all the time and perhaps you would be mad to try. At least you don't have to worry about snakes and branches falling down every time there is some wind...

I borrowed the children's classic, "Swallows and Amazons", from the library some weeks ago. The children in it were anxiously awaiting a telegram from their voyaging father to see if they had permission to sail out to a little island on the lake near their farm-holiday place. The answer came : BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN. The mother seemed happy to accept that as a 'yes'. I guess we weren't so precious about children in the old days!