January is the longest month, but this one seemed to whizz by. As you can tell the weather has been mild enough for Camellias to start flowering in the sunnier and wind sheltered spots. They really are such a treat if they manage to show off this early. This one was at East Portlemouth where I ventured on the tidal road. What a fool I am.
The tidal road starts up in the air once you pass through South Pool, so no tide up here, but you dip down two or three times on the route to drive across the lower gaps where the water reaches at high tide. This means you need tide tables in advance if you want to do this. Even then you still have the narrow road, with its blind bends to negotiate, even without the sea invading the road intermittently.
As far as I was concerned the road I was on was definitely unsuitable for wide vehicles, but this sign, below, is for the road that turns off the tidal road, but I'm not going there. Actually I am literally not going there. I just say that because "I'm not going there" is now an idiom which means that this is a subject I am not going to discuss further. Which I am also not going to do. So I'm not going there in two different ways, which are two ways I would rather travel in than going down that road. I don't know what is in Holset and I don't want to find out, unless there is a wider road going there from somewhere else. That could be another trip on another day and will involve more research. I'll let you know.
As I was saying, what a fool I am. The number of warning signs around here tend to be in inverse proportion to the size of the road. I am not going there again in just the one sense as I am not going to tell you what is down that road for the moment, there will be another post for that tale. But I did actually go there this time and I have photographic evidence. I also have two, yes two, one on each side, chipped rear wheel trims. The people who live down this road delight in placing large boulders at the side of what is a very narrow road, just to make it narrower. It is so much fun when you meet a large more than 13 ton truck driven by a driver who didn't read this sign. Guess who is forced to do all the reversing around the boulder decorated blind bends, I'll give you a clue, it's not the truck driver.
Back on top of the hill, and looking inland and not out to sea is this small ancient church. It doesn't look as ancient as it actually is because it has had church Botox. In other words, its ancient lime render has been replaced with Portland cement. This makes it look like a 1950's council house rather than a church that they started building in the years 1160 to 1180. We know this because it gets its first known mention in history in 1181 when Pope Alexander III published a Bull. A Papal Bull is a document or letter and is known as such because of the lead seal attached to such documents which was called a bulla.
Pope Alexander's given name was Roland. It was Alexander who canonised Thomas à Becket while admonishing Henry II the English King who had him murdered. Alexander lived in very turbulent times, this was Europe after all and the Germans were not playing cricket even back in 1181. They had their own Pope, Victor IV, who was known by the real Pope as the Antipope. Some things never change. Today they just have Ursula von der Leyen the Antidemocrat.
Churches are modified and extended and improved over the centuries so these granite columns are new. They are only about 500 years old.
The church is called St. Winwaloe and that is the reason I had to go and see it. I had never heard of St. Winwaloe. Winwaloe is even older than the oldest bits of the church. He was born in a year that didn't even have four figures, AD 462. He was born in Brittany, although his father was from Wales. Given that some Bretons and some Welsh can still communicate with each other today through their closely related ancient languages, that is no surprise. This is Winwaloe below painted on the wooden screen which is 15th century. He is carrying a model church, maybe the original church. Several Saints are depicted like this, presumably as they are associated with founding churches and the spread of Christianity.
I will be doing a separate post about St Winwaloe's church in East Portlemouth.
It is said that this mansion on Dartmoor, below, was built by a millionaire for his wife. When he brought his wife to see it, she didn't like it and never returned. It is Bovey Castle, now a hotel, which anyone can enjoy if they want to pay up for some 5 star luxury in a Grade 2* listed heritage building.
Western Morning News - Tuesday 15 October 1907
Hon. W. F. D. SMITH’S NEW MANSION.
The mansion which has been in course of erection for over two years for the Hon. W. F. D. Smith, MP, near North Bovey, is approaching completion. It is a very imposing granite building in the Elizabethan style of architecture, with Darley Dale dressings, and the roof is of stone. The site is an exceedingly beautiful one, being close to the edge of the moor, with North Bovey village and its church nestling in the distance. The formation and laying out of the rock gardens and lakes in the extensive grounds are also nearly finished. The house, which is to be lighted by electricity, will be ready for occupation early next year. It is approached by a drive nearly a mile long, and there are two entrances with lodges, one from North Bovey and the other from the Princetown road.
No expense was spared in either the scale of the project or the detail inside. It has to be seen to be believed. More on this building in a later post.
Our visit to Newquay in Cornwall was a lucky, summer-like day and there were surfers out there to prove it. Those are mussels on that there rock.
This grand edifice is the Headland Hotel which I have already written about here in The Tale of Mr Trevail.
There is something about hard to get to places that makes a certain type of person want to build on them. Also in Newquay is this island that needs its own suspension bridge if you want to get home.
Here's another one in Cornwall, this is turning into a theme. Roche Rock, and I wonder if that is a tautology. This rock is in Roche, was the village name originally derived from rock? That would make it a tautology or saying the same thing twice, like saying River Avon, where the name of the river means river.
This time we haven't got a 1930's bungalow but a 15th century chapel, or at least, what remains of it.
These are the bridges of Saltash and there is a time span of 102 years between them. In 1961 when the road bridge opened, the 1000 year old ferry service came to an end. More on this spot in a seperate post coming soon.
This is Brunel, who designed the first bridge, the one that still carries the rail network to Cornwall.
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