Last week to Tavistock for our bi-annual visit, a town which used to be very much in the grip of the Russell family, the people who brought you Woburn Abbey, Russell Square and Bertrand Russell.
 |
| Yelverton and Dousland |
 |
| Candles |
Some striking candles, that is to say horse chestnut flowers, over the bonnet of our car in the car park at Yelverton. With the bonnet of the car looking far more smart and shiny that you might think from the appearance of the rest of it, decidedly tatty around the edges.
 |
| Tower |
The tower of the large, 19th century church, built for the then new retirement and commuter village for Plymouth. A much warmer place inside, with a much stronger sense of life, than many of the much older churches in the villages round about.
 |
| Sanctuary light |
On this occasion we did find the sanctuary light, unlit and blue rather than the much more usual red. The loss of focus being the price one seems to have to pay for cropping the original snap, using as it happens the new snip & sketch gadget from Microsoft. A gadget which has its points, but which is, in some ways, more tiresome than the snipping tool it is slated to replace.
 |
| New bell |
Interested to see that the new bell, just a few months older than myself, came from Croydon. One might have thought that they could have found a bell founder a bit nearer than that, given all the metal bashing which must of gone on at Plymouth at that time. We thought it better not to use the bell pull hanging down alongside.
Onto the café a little way up the road to take tea and toasted tea cake and where we got into conversation with a newly retired gent. who had charge of his grandson for the day. A very pleasant and talkative gent. who had worked, mainly overseas, on clinical trials for Johnson & Johnson. Then, coincidentally, I happened to read a few days later in reference 1 that this company had been fined of the order of $1.5 billion in 2012 for the misselling of prescription drugs in the US, something which did not come up on this occasion, not getting much beyond the wonders of baby powders. Sounds a lot, but did not make that much of a dent on their bottom line, which was and is considerable.
While today, I read in Wikipedia that the parade of shops in which the café was to be found had had their upper stories removed to make way for the flight path down to the war time fighter station up the road at Harrowbeer. While the church tower was spared.
 |
| Waterworks |
On to Dousland, where we noticed extensive waterworks behind the place we were visiting. A very large hole in the ground, coupled with some large concrete pipes, these last being the sort of thing used,
inter alia, to line the inspection holes for drains on motorways. No-one we spoke to had any idea what was going on. Their drains worked OK and that was good enough. Swallows out front, small, black and white, rather than the blue and yellow you sometimes get.
Onto Tavistock where we tweeted a grey wagtail. There was also a distinctive, robin sized bird with a long pointed beak; one of the few occasions when the beak question in the RSPB bird identifier might have been useful. And, for the first time ever, we spotted a couple of fish from the bridge over the Tavy, maybe six inches long. Lots of midges to feed the fish.
Shopping next, St. Luke's charity shop followed by the tins already noticed at reference 3. The charity shop being the place which had given me my fine new Dannimac raincoat the year before and which on this occasion gave me two luxury shirts at £5 or so a pop. Bargain.
Next up fish and chips, TJ's & LJ's Fish and Chips of Brook Street. A place which serves to remind one that proper fish and chips from a fish shop are a good deal better than can be managed in a public house, although, to be fair, they manage much better now than they did a few years ago. Food technology is coming on - but not to the point of overtaking the real thing.
From there to a first visit to the old cemetery running along the south eastern side of Dolvin Road, across the Tavy. All rather overgrown, but all kinds of interesting shrubs, trees and funerary structures.
 |
| Lately master of the Union Workhouse |
 |
| Something more substantial |
 |
| Gravediggers' shed |
I think we were told that the shed had been the site of a suicide. Back into town, where I failed to find the butcher where it has been our custom to buy white puddings made with groats. A sad loss if it has gone down, but it had been rather a large shop for the trade that they appeared to have been doing. With the butchers around the pannier market having been long gone - but not before I managed to buy a rolled top rib of beef from one of them. See reference 5. I wonder if all the many butchers in Okehampton last time we were there have been driven to extinction?
But we did find BH's family church, St. Eustacius, where we came across the same clergyman's widow that we had met on the last occasion, Monday being her day.
 |
| Sanctuary light, lit |
Notice the Gills associated with the window adjacent. We seem to have come across a lot of them in this part of Devon, probably nothing to do with the more famous one from Brighton.
 |
| Proper, Roman style stone altar |
Subsequently, we tried to go to the church at Whitchurch. There must have been one, given the name of the village, but we failed to find it, and carried on instead to the hotel at Two Bridges for tea, owned, as it happens, by the same people as own the main hotel in Tavistock, the Bedford Arms. On the way noticing a half moon rising in the bright afternoon sky.
 |
| Unmarked piano |
Unable to score the piano in the function room there as the keyboard was locked by a contraption which reminded me of the steering locks used on cars. But the scone was excellent, the best I remember getting from a commercial establishment, and on the strength of that, booked ourselves in for lunch the following day.
And so back to Holne to take in the late afternoon swallows there.
Reference 1: Saving Normal - Allen Frances - 2013. Page 96 of the Morrow hardback edition.
No comments:
Post a Comment