Yesterday was a strange one, Autumn has certainly arrived. The sea temperature and air temperature were equal, both at 14 degrees. The evening bob felt completely fine but we may have stayed in the water too long as we felt the effects of afterdrop for the first time in about 5 months. Afterdrop is the effect of body temperature continuing to drop after leaving the water. Hot drinks, brisk changing and lots of layers help to minimise the effects but we’ve got used to leisurely chats after swimming and not being too fussed about layers or bringing hot drinks. Time to take sensible precautions again. The word Christmas was mentioned!
A Christmas day morning bob is looking likely for this year.
On our walk to the beach we passed this glorious Virginia Creeper and Hop combination on a wall. A sure sign Autumn has arrived and is settling in for a few months.
Another crochet painting emerged from my new painting space in the garage. The paintings are stacking up in the studio ready to have their fine details and finishing done in the warmth of the indoor studio. Such luxury!
You might think that a day spent pondering the interior decoration of two rooms would be a day without incident.
The new house is a few minutes walk from a street filled with repair garages, workshops and Trade Counters for various essential items to the marine and building trades.
Armed with a fair idea of what we needed we went to one of the Trade shops for decorators needs. There was an instant, underlying hum of manliness as we walked in. There were few other customers in the store, all men. Their fleeces told the stories of their masculinity. ‘Babcock’ only needs a small wrinkle of fabric before it looks like Bob cock. Some men wore t-shirts bearing the name Princess Yachts. The word Princess stretched across impossibly toned trapezius, deltoid and pectoral muscles. A sure warning that calling the owner ‘Princess’ might be ill advised.
We were left to our own devices and without too much trouble made our decisions and gathered up our purchases. We waited some time at the counter. Tea was being made for all the customers, not quite all of course. Tea was made for the fleece and t-shirt wearing men! We did not register on anyone’s tea radar. Tea arrived in bright mugs bearing the names of English football clubs. The talk was of standing at football matches and the exact opposite of standing, clearing slime off slipways.
The conversations ranged around and over me. Then one of the men asked my opinion on a product I was buying.
Did I think it was any good, and could he use it to paint body parts. What was I planning to use it for?
Horror flooded my mind, the idea of painting any body part with noxious paint seemed like madness. I suggested that it would be a bad idea. He looked at me as if I was a little crazy, a look that only intensified when I told him I was painting crochet. His mind fixed firmly on the industrial and mine on the creative.
We returned home, made our own tea and started using our various purchases. Then a text message came through for a last minute ‘ bob’ in the sea. A birthday bob for a visiting bobber. Even this simple activity took a turn!
So far so good, a birthday bob achieved.
How to make a birthday bob memorable?
For the moment access to our beach is blocked by essential works. The only access is via the grounds of a rest home and convent. Unknown to us there is a curfew on using this route. Our birthday bob was ended by us being seen off the premises. Being thrown out of a convent is a pretty unusual way to mark a birthday.
This birthday photo was taken with the photographer using a normal word to make us all smile.This photo was taken with the photographer using a word that would make a nun blush.
This was yesterday morning as we left the coàst. Today has started in much the same sunny way.
In between we have been drenched by monster showers in both the home and away locations. The sun is particularly welcome today as we wrestle with wallpaper and paint decisions and generally plan on doing fairly dull stuff. Who needs sun for camping and coastal adventures! We starved ourselves yesterday ready for an afternoon outing with some friends. It is a reflection of our hunger and not the quality of the comestibles that brings the blog to the sorry state of having no pictures. A shocking state of affairs when offered such a pretty range of sweet and savoury treats. Afternoon tea will be represented on this blog only by the left overs that we brought home. How slack is that!
As luck would have it we have a dog whose ears act as a windsock. Thus allowing me to share other pictures that feature wind and you will have an understanding of sense and direction. Lola is staring out to sea looking northward towards Wales.
Yesterdays swim was extraordinary. Exhilarating and epic, the thrill and managed risk of an unknown beach made our morning swim just delicious. The previous day we had met some fellow coast path amblers. The woman expressed an urge to swim in the sea, her male partner was somewhat dismissive of her diligence or ability to do such a thing. We told her we would be at the beach at 11:30 and at 11:30 she strode into the sea to join us with no sign of her doubting man.
The rest of the day was spent ambling and exploring the coastal path.
Somewhat disappointingly the stretch of coastal path did not live up to its designation of scenic. We knew the sea and cliffs were to our left but what we mostly saw were brambles. I observed that the walk was “About as scenic as my arse’ which pretty much describes everyone’s view. A rotating display of four human bums and three dog bums depending on which order we were walking.
Book reading conversations were the high point of our rest stops. Raynor Winn and Simon Armitage have both written books about walking the South West Coast path. Both books were given rigorous reviews in the bramble caves where we found benches to stop. Blackberries were available for refreshment which was a reasonable compensation for not seeing the Bristol Channel.
A View!
Thankfully walking the coastal path had not been the plan so there was no huge disappointment with the lack of views. The reward for doing a challenging and unexpectedly long amble was pints of Doom Bar shandy and smaller measures of Gin and Tonic served with tasty fish and chips at a beachside pub.
Yesterday was a proper English holiday day. It rained all day but we still managed a ‘bob’ on a grey beach. After a hot shower and breakfast we set off on foot to explore the cold wet beauty of the North Devon coast.
I will spare you the monotony of grey seascapes but we did manage to find some local and not so local colour.
Rock formations and tidal pools
Sometimes holidays in England definately need the right clothes because the right weather does not always blow our way. We have the right clothes!
We brought colour and interest to people walking the coastal path by bobbing in the sea when no-one else bothered. I also thoughtfully used my fluorescent bouy so they didnt incorrectly assume I was a seal at play. My natural grace in the water is easily confused with the movements of a marine mammal and it would be cruel to trick people,on the 630 mile hike of the South West Coastal Path, into believing that they had seen Martine the Coombe Martin Seal frolicking with a mackerel.
Although I do sometimes tinker with them.
We located rain forest plants. Although locating a good coffee after 4pm takes an intrepidness we do not possess.
Dicksonia Antarctica
Perhaps most significantly in these Covid times of restricted travel we found a cute Japanese Tea Set in a charity shop. Which helps me to spice up this blog with quite a lot of foreign influence.
Despite all the talk of too much talking over the weekend, the back yard is looking more stylish with Hannahs diligence with a paintbrush and a pot of black paint. The outside toilet has also been rehabilitated as a usable space instead of somewhere where stuff was dumped.
Of course my previous two blogs didn’t lie, there was a lot of nattering. Yesterdays nattering was with a woman we had never met before, although during the 18 months we have exchanged baking and crochet with her. Ruth is a friend of a friend. Our friend in common became a vital go between delivering bakes from us to Ruth. Ruth in turn made vital crochet for us. I can already feel you thinking what is ‘ vital’ about crochet. @theoldmortuary crochet became a conduit of love. During lockdown our toddler granddaughter moved to Hong Kong with her parents. I’m not sure such an occurrence is ever easy to bare but with the complextities of a pandemic and other worries it caused hard to manage grief. Ruth crocheted super hero clothes for our grandchild’s plush pig and the pig also flew off to Hong Kong with a crocheted and enchanted cape for safe travel and a happy return. In sad situations it is sometimes the little things that give comfort.
Recently, after our house move, we were in need of crochet again. Hannah’s mum had made beautiful crochet when she was alive and we have a few pieces of her work. An old house really needs some little touches to link the everyday contemporary world to the past. Once again Ruths nimble brain and fingers created two beautiful runners for us in a similar style to the one Hannahs mum had made. Another meaningful link to love and loss in a way that something mass produced could never be.
And out of all of this we have gained another friend.
A late blog, apologies. Yesterday I went to a real world meeting. It required me to catch a real world train on what turned out to be a not so scenic, Scenic Railway. The Tamar Valley, however, had other ideas about the scenic part and filled itself with a mist so impenetrable that the journey almost past without seeing any landmarks
This is a bridge. Fortunately for the sanity of this blog I have painted it. Not the actual bridge but a painting.
Fortunately a cow loomed out of the mist which brings some level of interest.
Beyond that there was hedgerows, the first one with mist the second a little higher with actual sunshine.
Eventually we got high enough up the valley to be above the mist.
And at long last some countryside.
Before we dropped down again to the river and the village of Calstock viewed from the viaduct.
Before arriving at my destination of Gunnislake.
There are days, like yesterday when I feel pretty confident on the way a blog is going to work. How wrong could I have been! I had bright sunshine as I boarded the train , a gorgeous blog with amazing photos was just going to drop into my lap, I thought. The weather of course had other ideas. For those of you with half an hour to spend, I’ve included a youtube of the journey in good weather.
For everyone else here is some lovely rust at journeys end.
The second day of this weekend with lots of colour and a little bit of anxiety. Coupled with some charity fund raising, this time a swim around Burgh Island just off the South Devon coast. Under normal circumstances Jenna would not be abseiling without full family support or Hannah swimming around an island without the same. Pandemic rescheduling has concentrated so much into the 4 weekends of September that everyone is spread a little too thinly to cover all commitments.
An early start at Bigbury gave us two seasons in the space of half an hour, summer glory then autumnal gloom. Thankfully the summer glory won through for the actual swim.
Hugo and his mum heading to the check in
The land bound support team tucked into scones Devon style.
Whilst the sea swimmers confidently circumnavigated the island and returned to us, very happy with their achievement.
We live on a funny foot-shaped peninsular of land that juts into the sea. We decided early on to only plant things in our yard that flourish in other peoples gardens nearby. The micro climate of such a location is hard for us to predict. There will probably be a flurry of yardening at our home in the autumn. One of the key purchases will be a fig tree. There is rumoured to be a 400 year old one somewhere on the peninsular. The gorgeous thing about fig trees around here is that the fruit actually ripens. A restaurant just down the road from us bases some of their signature dishes on the figs that they harvest in their own garden.
We went there yesterday to celebrate a friends birthday.
I’m not sure how old a fig tree has to be to produce copious ripened fruit so we better get on with planting one if we want to make fig based foods anytime soon.
Back to the usual morning dog walk. In the hours we have been back from the weekend sojourn to Wimbledon, dog walks have been slow paced affairs. We have only lived in our current location for a couple of months. The dogs obviously dont feel that their cachet of news filled wee stops is quite extensive enough to keep in the canine loop while away for three days. Yesterdays home return walks were very sniffy, news gathering, affairs with many replies needing to be sprinkled en route. This morning there was canine disdain when their usual early morning routine was disrupted by a closed footpath. I managed some lovely photos but they are unmoved by such things .
The footpath will be closed for two weeks. This will upset the dogs but it is also the footpath that leads to our regular ‘ bobbing’ beach , our regular haunt for the whole of the pandemic!
While the dogs are sniffingly detained on information gathering I am sometimes left standing around a bit. This morning I noticed two lifting rings on an old manhole cover.
One of them had been quite crumpled. It is really hard to imagine what could possibly have caused such harm, but I am very glad not to have been standing in the same place when the damage occured.
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