writing, not drowning

Back on track - and back on the road

My poor blog - a distinct sense of having gone AWOL hovers. Sometimes, however, life just gets in the way and one simply has to get on with it. All things must pass . . . there have been tedious interruptions; minor surgery, for example, (nothing serious but I did have to wait nine dreary months). But there have been welcome and exciting (well, exciting for me) developments, not least the writing workshops I have been running in June and July, which have taken off in a way that I could hardly have dared imagine and of which more in another post. 

For now, however, I am officially on my hols. Not away from home, per se, but with a most welcome guest staying: my Dear Friend in . . . well, what must we call her now, as she is leading a fairly peripatetic existence? I think, for the moment, she must be my Friend On The Road (to which we could legitimately add the words Less Travelled By). We travel well together and have taken lengthy road trips in the past, in India and South Africa, and, while she is here, we slip back easily into On the Road mode. This is England, however, so road trips are inevitably shorter, although Devon's winding lanes make distances and travelling times seem longer. Our destination, yesterday, was only 50 miles away but it felt as if we had driven much further. And we made a point of heading for places that neither of us had visited before.

We were somewhat underwhelmed by our first stopping point, which I won't name because times are hard and visitor income hard won and I'm sure that they'll get it right eventually, but we did see a fine herd of Devon Ruby Red cattle (latest additions to the herd here):

and some enormous roses:

We had been tempted by a website that made the place look welcoming and interesting, which it could have been, but somehow wasn't. A staff member we eventually found (we had to go looking for someone/anyone on arrival) didn't seem to have a clue as to why we might be there or what we should see - as enticingly promoted by the website - and it was only when we were leaving, and spotted a leaflet that would have been handy to have been given on arrival, that we discovered what we had missed. 

Heigh ho. (Oh and, a plea to cafe propietors: a few shreds of lettuce, a sliver of apple - ditto orange, cucumber, onion, and tomato - a single green grape, and no dressing whatsoever do not constitute an enticing or appetising salad garnish. Why do people do this? Why the fruit? Just how long does it take to whip up a vinaigrette or mix some olive oil and lemon juice? Is it a British thing or does it happen in other parts of the world?) 

The moral of this tale is, as my Friend On The Road observed: don't believe everything you read and see on a website. Photos and text can be misleading.

But, enough of the whingeing. It was a glorious day and we still had time on our hands.

'Let's go down to Hartland Point,' I suggested. So we went and were not disappointed, despite the unmistakeable deep fat fried odour of chips, wafting from the nearby hotel. (It is a truth universally acknowledged that an English person on holiday must be in want of chips. Or not.) A dramatic outcrop of rocks jutting into the sea where the Bristol Channel ends and the Atlantic Ocean begins and, its bulk rising from a shimmering horizon where the sky dissolves into the sea, Lundy Island. General all-round, breathtaking Nature at her finest.

And an unspoilt beach that makes you feel as if you had stepped back to the 1950s and into the pages of a book by Enid Blyton:

The day did not end here but what we found next was rather special - and worth a post all of its own.  

Back soon.

This video may not change your life . . .

. . . but it will help to start your week on an uplifting note and offers a reminder, if one were needed, that we are all connected. Including seals.

The video first appeared on the internet at the beginning of this year but then the original was taken down. Now it's back.

A tourist visiting Gold Harbour, South Georgia* is sitting on the beach, watching seals and penguins. And then, one of the elephant seals is drawn to her, snuggles up and appears to flirt with her. (Don't worry, it's not an X-rated video.) The tourist remains remarkably composed, given that an elephant seal can weigh up to 6,000 pounds. Someone, thankfully, managed to capture the whole thing.

*According to the notes that accompanied the video's arrival with this morning's emails - thank you, Friend in New Zealand - Gold Harbour is located in a sub-arctic region, 1,100 miles east of the southern tip of Latin America. it is a small bay, five miles S-SW of Cape Charlotte, with Bertrab Glacier at its head, along the east end of South Georgia Island. The west end of the beach, where a glacial stream flows, is a breeding ground for various types of penguins and large seals. You can read more about South Georgia here. Don't miss the webcams, including this one.

Reunited

Thank you so much for all those supportive comments and for the emails (which I am gradually answering; apologies if I haven't responded to all of them yet. I will . . . )

I took Easter gently; there were guest dogs here on Friday, Saturday and Monday, but Sunday was free and I drove across Exmoor to have lunch with my Dear Old School Friend, who was staying with her family in Ilfracombe, on the North Devon coast.

The weather was glorious: windy, but glorious. Isn't the sight of the sea on a fine day one of life's great pleasures?

 

The Victorians 'discovered' Ilfracombe and put it firmly on the British holidaymakers' map. In the 21st century, Damien Hirst arrived, opened a restaurant, and Ilfracombe started reinventing itself all over again. Not sure if it's there yet but, heck, a day at the seaside is a day at the seaside.

Time was when we would have thought nothing of running up this cliff to the flagpole at the top: 

 

but we settled instead for an appropriately nostalgic 1960s sort of lunch of risotto, followed by Italian ice cream.

In the course of packing, unpacking, and repacking ad infinitum last year, I'd come across the letter my DOSF wrote to me the day my daughter was born. Ten months later, she became a mother for the first time herself. I took the letter with me and reunited it with its writer for the first time in, well, a very long time.

"We were so young," we sighed. And we were. But there was no doubting the strength of the friendship illustrated by that letter. It was all there, in every line and every word. And, almost 51 years since we first met, on our first day as convent schoolgirls, that bond is just as strong.

The 74-mile round trip may be as much as I can manage in my current crock-like state but seeing my oldest friend was absolutely worth the effort. No question about it.

Amid the wreckage

The promise of a thaw on Boxing Day meant that we could escape from the reverse micro-climate of this part of Devon (invariably colder or wetter or icier)  and head to the county's north coast. Like me, my friend M at Random Distractions - who lives there - has had a different sort of Christmas and we make the most of winter sunshine to visit Crow Point. To walk, talk and take photos. 

M is an excellent guide; she knows the geography and history of this unexpected landscape, with its burrows and dykes. She tells me about salt marshes, linhays, Dutch engineers, and about the US soldiers who trained here in World War II.

As the estuary beach at Crow Point curves, two wrecked boats come into view and the Edinburgh Boy is off like a shot. Really, it is like living with a small boy; he is fascinated by things mechanical and vehicles of all kinds: tractors, trucks, lorries - and boats. But he has never seen a wrecked boat. He is off like a shot:

 

and carries out a quick inspection:

  

There is a raw beauty in these wrecks, from whichever angle they are viewed:

 

 

 

 

  

The beauty, as so often, is in the detail - layers of flaking paint, a section of frame revealing echoes of the boat-builder's craft, rusting iron, lichen and splintering, weather-worn wood.

 

I don't know the story behind the wrecks but, driving back home, I invent one and tell it to the Edinburgh Boy, as he licks the sand from his paws. But my seal-black, bright-eyed sea dog has his his own story to tell . . .

 

 Master and commander