Every County in England - Part 4: Devon

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Every County in England - Part 4: Devon

A pigsty seemed an intriguing place to stay. Smack bang in the centre of Devon a converted pigsty was being offered on AirBnb, I couldn’t resist this, quirky places like this are one of the reasons I love this method of travel. I had a few friends to visit in the county so a central place seemed very appealing.

Devon is a large and sparse county. Dominated by the jagged & windswept Dartmoor and ringed by rocky and wave battered coasts it is an outdoors lovers paradise. The pigsty provided a wonderful base to experience a bit of the great outdoors. Nestled behind an old thatched farmhouse it shared the grounds with hens and ducks, a stream flowed through a small copse of trees out back and the rocky hills of Dartmoor dominated the horizon. The only thing missing was phone signal, but who needs that when you are in a place like this? Well actually I needed it as I’d stupidly forgotten to make any plans with my friends before arriving. I’d go in search of signal later, but first I had a complimentary hamper of local farm eggs, butter, bread & muffins to feast on.

My first destination in Devon was the seaside town of Ilfracombe. On the map it seemed only a short drive, but with the narrow lanes and improbable numbers of tractors it took nearly two hours. Dipping down the hill into town the view was completely obscured by a thick swirling mist. I’d have to wait for another time to see the glorious views of the town’s theatre which resembles a nuclear power station, or the towering statue of a pregnant woman gorily cut in half. Yet again I was to view a seaside town from the warmth of a restraint with a plate of food and some good company.

No sooner had I left town than the fog lifted, so to at least see the coast I forked back down the hill to the next town along, Westward Ho! The town does indeed have an exclamation mark in its name, I wondered if the town was dramatic enough to warrant the exclamation.

It didn’t.

It was a very pleasant but inoffensive and anonymous place, sat along a wide bay being pummelled by a frothy sea. A row of amusement arcades were being drained of sea water and dried out. The flooding and pummelling from winter storms clearly hadn’t perturbed the developers. Large swanky apartments were being build all along the bay, seemingly with no regard to the waved splashing over the sea wall. When I win the lottery I’ll buy a house up on the hill thank you.

Back inland I had a less modern and swanky building to see. I arranged to meet with a friend who took me to a relic of Devon’s industrial past.

Hidden in the depths of the countryside the hulking remains of an old wool mill sit slowly being reclaimed by nature. The region was once bustling with industry, textile factories, mills, mines dotting the landscape. Today the county is largely rural but the industrial past can still be found rotting away in the fields and woods.

Despite being blanketed in a thick layer of ivy the mill buildings were largely intact after many years of dereliction. The engines, hoists & now empty halls gave an eerie reminder that this quiet backwater was once brimming with activity. It was easy to imagine the halls of this rambling complex filled with busy workers. The work bell now sits in silence and the only inhabitants now are the diverse range of wildlife. It was humbling to take in the speed at which nature can reclaim a sturdy industrial fort such as this, one designed to keep nature at bay.

Topping off the day, and the brief visit to Devon, we settled down for a hearty lunch of fish & chips. There is a lot of debate about where this national dish originated but it has become a staple take away treat the length and breadth of the country. Whilst on the road I suspected this’d become a very familiar meal, but the one in Devon would take some beating. A perfect way to end my stay in the county before heading east tomorrow.

Westward Ho promenade

Colourful homes

Reclaimed by nature

Beach front homes

Don't look down

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Every County in England - Part 3: Somerset & Cornwall

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Every County in England - Part 3: Somerset & Cornwall

Three counties in one day yesterday felt rushed so I booked a few nights in a cheap hotel in Wookey Hole to explore Somerset.

Wookey Hole is home to a vast cave system which handily is right next to the hotel. It also appears to be home to a vast array of animatronics witches, dinosaurs and swarms of feral children. The caves have been turned into an exciting attraction for young families, but less exciting for grumpy solo travelers. I may give in and go to the caves eventually but for today I was heading back to the coast.

Leaving the rolling Mendip Hills I set out into the flat interior of the county. The Somerset Levels saw some of the worst flooding in living memory in 2014. A series of storms overwhelmed these low-lying lands and left them submerged for months. The council reassured the residents that the problem would be resolved but driving through today I felt that perhaps they hadn’t done quite enough as yet again the surrounding countryside had been transformed into a large lake and a team was busy trying to manoeuvre a giant pump to divert some of the deluge.

It didn’t take long until I was at Weston-Super-Mare where I’d meet a friend. Somerset has some magnificent coastlines, I was not at one of these! The coast at Weston-Super-Mare is not the first choice for a beach resort. Its promenade faces the Bristol Channel whose cold waters have one of the highest tidal ranges in the world, a full 43ft between high & low tides. The result is a complete absence of beach for part of the day, the remainder of the time a wide expanse of cloying mud & quicksand is revealed. Warning signs on the beach rattled in the bracing Atlantic breeze and I wondered why on earth the town was here.

The answer lays just a few blocks back from the sea. The arrival of the railway in the 1800s allowed the area to develop as a resort for the working classes of Bristol who were keen to escape the city for a seaside break. The arrival of nearby Bristol Airport spelled the end to Weston’s appeal. With extremely cheap flights to the Mediterranean why would anyone stay in a bleak windswept resort here? Well a few people clearly still do, we weren’t the only fools bumbling down the promenade. Despite its bleak appearance there were actually a fair few people still mingling about, although admittedly they did all resembled shell shocked zombies.

After an afternoon chatting and eating copious amounts of sticky ribs and wings with my friend the light had gone, in my opinion vastly improving the view from the promenade where now a vast stretch of lights twinkled on the horizon marking the Welsh coast opposite. By the time I got back to the hotel the swarms of children had gone but their parents were busy getting inebriated in the hotel bar. I retreated to my room for some relative peace and spread out the map to plan the next stage. Once again I’d barely scratched the surface of the county but it was time to move on again.

Jutting out like an extended trotter, Devon & Cornwall are the remaining counties of the far south-west of England to tick off before my route turns the corner and starts heading east.

Devon would be the logical next stop but for today I decided to leapfrog the county and go straight to Cornwall. Knowing I lacked enthusiasm for delving too far into Cornwall I decided to rush down there to just tick it off before returning to Devon for the night.

There is no denying that Cornwall is a beautiful place. Rugged hills, villages of stone cottages tumbling down towards the dazzling white beaches & turquoise sea. The county has a unique Celtic culture unlike anywhere else in England. It is a prime holiday destination for huge numbers of people, perhaps I should be showing more enthusiasm. My issue was one of convenience, everything about the place was designed to hamper a lengthy road trip. It is isolated, expensive and filled with narrow, slow roads. The Cornish have a word ‘Dreckly’ which sums up the locals attitude to life. It roughly means that something will get done without hurry, in its own time, kind of like the word ‘Mañana.’ Everything seems to operate under this principle, in a slow and bumbling way, everything that is except for driving. The locals seem to use the narrow lanes like their own personal race track, God help anyone driving on the correct side of the road at a low speed! My compromise was to nip over the border and find a supermarket. That way I could tick off the county without spending hours lost in the claustrophobic lanes.

Just a few miles over the border the former capitol Launceston fit the bill. The small town is perched on a hill overlooking the River Tamar, topped with a ruined Norman castle. I parked up opposite the castle gates and set out to explore. In typical British fashion the car next to me contained a happy family having a picnic. I wanted to see something more scenic than the car park wall so I left the car and walked up to the castle, unsurprisingly it was shut until March. Outside a group of teenagers had assembled to stare in silence at their phones, one was vigorously brushing his teeth using the water from a puddle. I can’t explain this, perhaps it’s a Cornish tradition, perhaps I’m just getting old and had lost touch with the youth. Either way I left. Spreading out from the castle the town has an unmistakable Cornish character. The tumbling buildings clinging to the hillside, jostling for space along the narrow cobblestone lanes. I imagine in the summer this town is packed with people but today I had it nearly to myself. Everything was shut and there were very few signs of life.

I was satisfied that I’d seen enough of Cornwall for one day. Despite having not actually seen much Devon was calling and I needed to pick up the pace. It was clear that Cornwall is closed in January, would Devon be any better?

Weston-Super-Mare beach

Flooding on the Somerset Levels

Launceston town centre

Launceston Castle

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Every County in England - Part 2: Gloucestershire, Bristol & Somerset

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Every County in England - Part 2: Gloucestershire, Bristol & Somerset

Gloucestershire may not seem like the obvious starting point for a round England tour but looking up from where I stood the reason became clear. 150ft above my head the rumble of cars speeding along the suspended deck of the Severn Bridge carrying a constant stream of vehicles over the border from Wales into England, and Gloucestershire, the first county of the 48 in England I was just setting out to visit.

The hulking bridge looming above me was built in 1966 to span the mighty Severn Estuary which cleaves a huge wedge out of Gloucestershire. The River Severn is the longest river in the UK and was an important shipping route, but a treacherous one. The estuary in front of me swirled with muddy water, shifting quicksand & clashing currents. Now two bridges span this dangerous channel, but previously the only way to avoid the 60mile detour via the first bridge upstream was to catch a small ferry to the far side. I was stood on the now disused

ferry slip, a sad relic to this town’s past bustling atmosphere. Next to me sat the old pub, at one time bustling with people waiting for the ferry, now the car park sat empty.

This forgotten town didn’t really do the county justice but I had to move on. I’d be returning this way to complete the journey so I’ll return to explore what the rest of Gloucestershire has to offer then. For now I had to join the traffic above my head and make my way through Bristol, not an easy task on a busy Friday lunchtime.

Arriving in Bristol I felt quite pleased that I’d ticked off a second
county in the first day of travelling (although whether Gloucestershire really counts from
that fleeting visit is debatable). Bristol is an anomaly, most counties in England have a fairly large area with a selection of towns & cities, Bristol (County) however is just a micro-county housing the docks & core of the city of Bristol, whose 1million inhabitants sprawl out in unwieldy suburbs draped across the hillsides and narrow valleys in all directions.

Bristol has been inhabited since the Iron Age and grew rapidly thanks to its docks, which were a starting port for manyvessels heading to the New World. Today the city has also gained some of the worst traffic in the country thanks to its narrow valleys and gorges funnelling busy routes into bottlenecks. My journey from the west allowed for a slow approach to the city past the grim industrial splurge of Avonmouth and into the Avon Gorge. The destination I’d chosen was soon to come into view. Yet again I found myself looking up at another bridge, but this time a much older one. A few hairpins past some colourful terraced houses & large palatial homes and I was up at the viewing area where I could have a better look.

The bridge ahead of me was the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Spanning the gorge and river 350ft below the bridge as been an iconic sight since it was opened in 1864. The view was spectacular with the murky River Avon making its way between the steep wooded slopes of the gorge. The area had a lot of attractions, a viewing tower, some caves cut into the cliff face, a modern museum and of course the bridge itself.

I was dreading the possibility of getting stuck in the city’s rush hour so I didn’t linger. Heading into Somerset, the third county of the day, I had a very important mission to accomplish before retiring to a hotel for the night. I had some cheese to buy!

Nearby was the village of Cheddar, the birthplace of Cheddar cheese, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to get the real deal whilst I was in the area. The village sits at the foot of the impressive Cheddar Gorge whose many caves provided the ideal temperatures for maturing cheese. Today only a single cheese manufacturer remains. Walking into the shop the sales assistant jumped into action, I have a feeling that I may have been one of the only customers she’s seen today. The range of cheddars was quite startling and as the only customer I got sample after sample thrust in my direction. I felt I better just buy something and leave before I fell into a cheese coma, for some reason I plumped for the strongest on offer. Offering it to me the enthusiastic clerk proclaimed “This is well strong, it’ll melt your face’” she then screwed up her face into a contorted gurn to demonstrate its power. Perhaps this facial manoeuvre hypnotised me or perhaps I had just eaten too much but for whatever reason I found myself walking into the Somerset with a block of the smelliest cheese I could have hoped to find. What a perfect item to put in the car at the start of a road trip! We’ll see tomorrow how much I regret this purchase!

The Severn Bridge

Bristol

Clifton Suspension Bridge

Cheddar Village

Cheddar Cheese in Cheddar!

Some cheesy snacks for the journey

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Every County in England - Part 1: Introduction

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Every County in England - Part 1: Introduction

When I get the chance to head off on a new adventure my head usually fills with a wanderlust for distant oversees experiences. I rarely stop to appreciate some of the attractions slightly closer to home. It was with this though lingering in my mind that I found myself flicking through the pages of a road atlas to Great Britain. It occurred to me that although I've been to most corners of my home country, there are still a lot of places missing or that I've only seen whilst whizzing past on the motorway. Perhaps it was time for a new challenge, a challenge that didn't involve a passport this time! Let's go and see England, time to find some new things on my own front door!

I settled fairly fast on the idea of counting counties, visiting each on seemed a good way to see each corner of England, but there was just a slight confusion here, what exactly counts as a county?

This may seem like a simple question to answer but there are a number of different ways of defining a county in England, depending on what you count the number ranges from 39 to 83 counties. There's Ceremonial, Postal, Historic, Ancient, Administrative counties, the list goes on.... who would have though it'd be so complicated! I thought I better see what other folk had done. It turns out I am not alone in this challenge, many have gone before me and there's even a world record for visiting them in the fastest time. Although I'm not in a rush to get a world record (they completed the circuit in 23hrs 34mins, I'd have nearly 4 weeks), it made sense to me to define a county in the way the Guinness World Record holders define them - Ceremonial Counties. Helpfully these are clearly marked in my road atlas so that may have swayed things slightly! So that's 48 Ceremonial Counties to visit, that sounds like a plan!

The only thing left to do was deciding what counts as a 'visit'. Staying any length of time in each county would mean I'd run out of time very fast, so I settled for the rather vague definition that I could tick the county off if I did something or saw something worth taking a photo of whilst there. This felt open enough to be able to linger or pick up the pace as needed. 

The plan is in place, car packed, blank map printed ready to be coloured in, all that's left to do is hit the road. It's time to visit England - all of it!

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