"Jen, just look at this. Is it another hobbit moment or what?" Sue and I contemplate the twisted and polished tree trunks overhanging the River Teign, crystal water racing over emerald moss and gray rock. All around, dappled light is sifting through the leaves which arch above our heads. It's the Shire and we are looking at the Withywindle.
Of course, I don't know that J. R. R. Tolkien actually used Dogmarsh, below Castle Drogo, as his model for the Old Forest, but he certainly could have. All day, we have been having hobbit moments. The West Ford footbridge below Hill Farm was lacy with cow parsley, reminding us of Goldberry's garden. Helmoors Down, louring above the Two Moors Way, was as grim and forbidding as the Barrow-downs. West Walton Farm, thatched and well-tended, smoke pouring out of its two chimneys, recalled Farmer Maggot's place, though we couldn't see if they were growing mushrooms. From greenways to buttercup-stewn pastures, wherever we turned our heads or came upon a break in a hedge, we found an archtypical English scene. If it wasn't Tolkein, it was Constable.
Coming home to Chagford in the summer evening, the lights in the valley below just beginning to prick the dusk, I could hear Frodo saying softly in my ear, "Shall I ever see the lights of Hobbiton again?" There's just no question. I shall.
Friday 28 May 2010
Thursday 27 May 2010
Terra Incognita
We have contoured, typographical maps. We have a booklet explaining the byways and turnings of the Two Moors Way in exquisite detail. We have a compass. Both Sue and I know how to use all of these aids. Yet every day, we have gotten lost.
On Tuesday, for example, we missed the crossroad of Two Moors and Abbots Ways. Not until we ended up at Venford Reservoir--nowhere on our guidebook--did we realize that we were astray. After retracing our steps, we found Huntingdon cross, our marker, but we still couldn't find the path! We ended up tracing the edge of a fenced barrow and picking up a disused tin mining road which eventually intersected the Two Moors Way. Relieved, we continued onward only to lose the completely unmarked trail on the steep slope down to Scorriton. We stumbled onto the Way again at the Chalkford footbridge. Thank goodness the walk paralleled the paved road to Holne, where our lodging was booked, from that point onward!
How could it be so difficult to stay on the path? First of all, unlike Hadrian's Wall Walk, the Two Moors Way is not very well marked. "After the stile, walk across the moor," say the directions. When you do so, however, you are confronted with a vast heath with unnumerable pony tracks or perhaps just a greensward. And then there are the misleading sign posts, some of which point away from their destinations. Today, we completely failed to find the Moorgate, in spite of the fact that we followed the sign clearly labeled "Moorgate" until the track petered out in someone's field of cattle.
I'm not saying that these missteps haven't lead interest and variety to our holiday. Sue and I, however, have taken matters into our own hands. After the Moorgate debacle, we backtracked to the country road (in the oppocite direction, mind you) and happily ambled along a stunningly beautiful lane with views of the heather-covered moors and enclosed pastures of sheep or horses or cows or alpacas (yes, alpacas). We arrived at Chagford to our lovely B & B, Farleigh Cottage, just in time for our hostess, Lynn, to serve us tea and lemon cake in the sunny garden.
By great good fortune, one of the other guests staying at Farleigh Cottage, Ann, has been able to tell us from her own experience how to find the Two Moors Way from Chagford for tomorrow's walk. Unsurprisingly, both the map and the directions are quite misleading. We have also found a road to shorten the back end of the journey, avoiding a long diversion up and over another moor, to arrive at Colebrooke at a reasonable hour.
Wish us luck.
On Tuesday, for example, we missed the crossroad of Two Moors and Abbots Ways. Not until we ended up at Venford Reservoir--nowhere on our guidebook--did we realize that we were astray. After retracing our steps, we found Huntingdon cross, our marker, but we still couldn't find the path! We ended up tracing the edge of a fenced barrow and picking up a disused tin mining road which eventually intersected the Two Moors Way. Relieved, we continued onward only to lose the completely unmarked trail on the steep slope down to Scorriton. We stumbled onto the Way again at the Chalkford footbridge. Thank goodness the walk paralleled the paved road to Holne, where our lodging was booked, from that point onward!
How could it be so difficult to stay on the path? First of all, unlike Hadrian's Wall Walk, the Two Moors Way is not very well marked. "After the stile, walk across the moor," say the directions. When you do so, however, you are confronted with a vast heath with unnumerable pony tracks or perhaps just a greensward. And then there are the misleading sign posts, some of which point away from their destinations. Today, we completely failed to find the Moorgate, in spite of the fact that we followed the sign clearly labeled "Moorgate" until the track petered out in someone's field of cattle.
I'm not saying that these missteps haven't lead interest and variety to our holiday. Sue and I, however, have taken matters into our own hands. After the Moorgate debacle, we backtracked to the country road (in the oppocite direction, mind you) and happily ambled along a stunningly beautiful lane with views of the heather-covered moors and enclosed pastures of sheep or horses or cows or alpacas (yes, alpacas). We arrived at Chagford to our lovely B & B, Farleigh Cottage, just in time for our hostess, Lynn, to serve us tea and lemon cake in the sunny garden.
By great good fortune, one of the other guests staying at Farleigh Cottage, Ann, has been able to tell us from her own experience how to find the Two Moors Way from Chagford for tomorrow's walk. Unsurprisingly, both the map and the directions are quite misleading. We have also found a road to shorten the back end of the journey, avoiding a long diversion up and over another moor, to arrive at Colebrooke at a reasonable hour.
Wish us luck.
Wednesday 26 May 2010
Dartmoor Ponies
When I was nine-years-old and the dearest wish of my heart was to own a pony, this was the creature I imagined. I met an animal yesterday high on the moors who looked almost exactly like my childhood dream, a wild, handsome animal sheparding a small harem of mares and foals. Sue and I had stopped for lunch beside a lake, once a tin quarry, and were resting in the shade of a stone bridge. Suddenly, they were there: dappled gray, white, pinto and the gorgeous bay stallion with thick, wavy mane and long tail. They moved like dancers, picking their way through the grass and gorse, grazing and occasionally whinnying to stay in contact.
We froze, almost afraid to breathe for fear of dispelling the magic. Carefully, Sue pulled out her camera. Slowly, she advanced the film for the first shot. At the mechanical click, the stallion whirled and lead the entire troop off to safety.
That evening, twelve miles further on in Holne, we heard more about the Dartmoor ponies in the pub below our rooms at the Church Inn. While they seemed so feral and completely free, it turns out that all of them belong to local people. Dartmoor is not only a national park, but a local commons. The ponies are turned loose to graze over the spring and summer where they grow shy and skittish, behaving more like mustangs than farm animals. In September, Devonshire holds the Pony Drift where all the animals are rounded up and run through the narrow lanes. One inhabitant described it as sea of heaving backs between hedges. They are sorted out and returned to their owners.
While it was a little sad to have the illustion dispelled, I could so clearly see the Drift, smell the animals' sweat and the dust rising from over two hundred ponies' hooves. It was ritual, pagentry, husbandry and tradition wrapped into one day. It made us want to come back in September to watch a custom that goes back centuries.
We froze, almost afraid to breathe for fear of dispelling the magic. Carefully, Sue pulled out her camera. Slowly, she advanced the film for the first shot. At the mechanical click, the stallion whirled and lead the entire troop off to safety.
That evening, twelve miles further on in Holne, we heard more about the Dartmoor ponies in the pub below our rooms at the Church Inn. While they seemed so feral and completely free, it turns out that all of them belong to local people. Dartmoor is not only a national park, but a local commons. The ponies are turned loose to graze over the spring and summer where they grow shy and skittish, behaving more like mustangs than farm animals. In September, Devonshire holds the Pony Drift where all the animals are rounded up and run through the narrow lanes. One inhabitant described it as sea of heaving backs between hedges. They are sorted out and returned to their owners.
While it was a little sad to have the illustion dispelled, I could so clearly see the Drift, smell the animals' sweat and the dust rising from over two hundred ponies' hooves. It was ritual, pagentry, husbandry and tradition wrapped into one day. It made us want to come back in September to watch a custom that goes back centuries.
Monday 24 May 2010
Ulysses
It started with my Jubilee year. Turning sixty seemed to call for something other than birthday cake so incendiary it would require a standby fire extinguisher. Five years ago, I walked the center section of Hadrian's Wall. I wanted something as dramatic, something that would signal my resolution to continue adventuring as long as my spirit and body hold out.
This is where Ulysses comes in. My friend, Sue, is also celebrating this milestone and it was she who gave him to me. We are both Tigers, born in the Chinese year of that fierce creature, making him the perfect traveling companion. It also seems only fitting that she share this 89 mile walk across both Dartmoor and Exmoor.
At the moment, we are lounging in the pub at the Sportsmans Inn in Ivybridge, listening to a bizarre mix of 50's through 70's pop music. (Andy Williams is crooning "Paris Skies" right now.) Tomorrow morning, we start the hike. We walked as far as the Dartmoor boundary just after arriving by train from London, to be certain that we can find our way. It's stunningly beautiful, but a cold front is forecast for later in the week. We don't care. We have our waterproofs. We have our maps.
I'm not sure that Ulysses will make the entire walk. He may turn out to be more of a hotel potato. We'll just have to see. At the moment, we are drinking Guiness on tap and enjoying life, the universe and everything.
This is where Ulysses comes in. My friend, Sue, is also celebrating this milestone and it was she who gave him to me. We are both Tigers, born in the Chinese year of that fierce creature, making him the perfect traveling companion. It also seems only fitting that she share this 89 mile walk across both Dartmoor and Exmoor.
At the moment, we are lounging in the pub at the Sportsmans Inn in Ivybridge, listening to a bizarre mix of 50's through 70's pop music. (Andy Williams is crooning "Paris Skies" right now.) Tomorrow morning, we start the hike. We walked as far as the Dartmoor boundary just after arriving by train from London, to be certain that we can find our way. It's stunningly beautiful, but a cold front is forecast for later in the week. We don't care. We have our waterproofs. We have our maps.
I'm not sure that Ulysses will make the entire walk. He may turn out to be more of a hotel potato. We'll just have to see. At the moment, we are drinking Guiness on tap and enjoying life, the universe and everything.
Sunday 23 May 2010
Abbey Road Forever
Pilgrimages are not limited to cathedrals or cities. All of us have somewhere we long to visit, a place with purely personal meaning. We made just such a journey this morning to see the famous crosswalk where John, Paul, George and Ringo walked from the EMI studio into pop history. Sue and I got off the Underground at St. John's Wood station and stood for a minute, blinking in the sun and wondering which direction to take to reach the Abbey Road on our map.
True to form, a thirty-something Londoner stopped almost immediately with his family, including an infant in a stroller and asked, "Are you looking for Abbey Road?"
"Yes," we replied, somewhat sheepishly, thinking that our age and gender had betrayed this guilty pleasure. Both of us came of age with the Beatles. Despite our years, we retain real affection for that long-ago time and incredible music. Just as half-forgotten smells, like the scent of new-mown grass, can bring back a childhood summer, "Yesterday" or "Michelle" or "Norweigan Wood" all have the ability to transport me to another era and another, younger self.
We needn't have worred. The iconic, zebra-striped crossing is a shrine for more than two, aging Beatlemaniacs. Almost as soon as we had repeated the Fab Four's Album cover pose, snapping photos of each other in turn to memorialize the occasion, other communicants arrived. A Japanese man strod across, holding his hands stiffly out as though doing a version of the dance performed by Little Egypt, giggling wildly. When we smiled widely at him, he nodded vigorously, saying in strongly accented English, "I know, I know."
During the next forty-five minutes, we watched a dozen people perform this act of homage in nearly as many languages. A Frenchman broke out into a heary, "Vive le quatre!" A mother patiently photographed her peace-symbol bedecked pre-teen daughter for nearly twenty minutes, directing her in an eastern European language as the girl tried to express her vision of the event.
A shy college student from Indiana, studying abroad, diffidently handed me his camera to film his somewhat stilted walk. "I hope it comes out all right," I said afterward.
"I'm sure it will be," he replied, a grin splitting his somewhat pudgy face. "It's my first weekend in England," he confided. For just a moment, happiness made him look quite handsome. Four boisterous Brazilians arrived, including a psuedo-McMartney with bare feet and holding an unlit cigarette for verisimilitude. None of them were born when "Abbey Road" first came out. Old and young, fat and thin, hip and hopeless, the pilgrims came.
Other supplicants had been there before us. The walls outside the recording studio had been whitewashed and were covered with graffitti. Most of the writing was composed of lyrics, more or less correctly quoted, with a few personal comments thrown in.
"Ringo Starr is more snoggable than Stephen Hawkiing," read one.
"Gracias por me nombre--thanks for my name," was signed by "Michelle".
Sauntering back to the Tube, I pondered the phenomenon of four, working-class musicians, who had touched so many lives, forty years after they had disbanded. A verse from Abbey Road came back to me:
"And in the end, the love you take,
is equal to the love you make."
"Gracias por mi nombre --thanks for my name," wrote "Michelle".
True to form, a thirty-something Londoner stopped almost immediately with his family, including an infant in a stroller and asked, "Are you looking for Abbey Road?"
"Yes," we replied, somewhat sheepishly, thinking that our age and gender had betrayed this guilty pleasure. Both of us came of age with the Beatles. Despite our years, we retain real affection for that long-ago time and incredible music. Just as half-forgotten smells, like the scent of new-mown grass, can bring back a childhood summer, "Yesterday" or "Michelle" or "Norweigan Wood" all have the ability to transport me to another era and another, younger self.
We needn't have worred. The iconic, zebra-striped crossing is a shrine for more than two, aging Beatlemaniacs. Almost as soon as we had repeated the Fab Four's Album cover pose, snapping photos of each other in turn to memorialize the occasion, other communicants arrived. A Japanese man strod across, holding his hands stiffly out as though doing a version of the dance performed by Little Egypt, giggling wildly. When we smiled widely at him, he nodded vigorously, saying in strongly accented English, "I know, I know."
During the next forty-five minutes, we watched a dozen people perform this act of homage in nearly as many languages. A Frenchman broke out into a heary, "Vive le quatre!" A mother patiently photographed her peace-symbol bedecked pre-teen daughter for nearly twenty minutes, directing her in an eastern European language as the girl tried to express her vision of the event.
A shy college student from Indiana, studying abroad, diffidently handed me his camera to film his somewhat stilted walk. "I hope it comes out all right," I said afterward.
"I'm sure it will be," he replied, a grin splitting his somewhat pudgy face. "It's my first weekend in England," he confided. For just a moment, happiness made him look quite handsome. Four boisterous Brazilians arrived, including a psuedo-McMartney with bare feet and holding an unlit cigarette for verisimilitude. None of them were born when "Abbey Road" first came out. Old and young, fat and thin, hip and hopeless, the pilgrims came.
Other supplicants had been there before us. The walls outside the recording studio had been whitewashed and were covered with graffitti. Most of the writing was composed of lyrics, more or less correctly quoted, with a few personal comments thrown in.
"Ringo Starr is more snoggable than Stephen Hawkiing," read one.
"Gracias por me nombre--thanks for my name," was signed by "Michelle".
Sauntering back to the Tube, I pondered the phenomenon of four, working-class musicians, who had touched so many lives, forty years after they had disbanded. A verse from Abbey Road came back to me:
"And in the end, the love you take,
is equal to the love you make."
"Gracias por mi nombre --thanks for my name," wrote "Michelle".
Saturday 22 May 2010
Regent's Park
Tourists don't go to Regent's Park, except perhaps to see the Zoo. There is nothing much for a tourist to do but walk along the flowered lanes, row sedately on the canal, feed the greedy ducks or play soccor. Londoners go to Regent's Park. Today, the will-o'-the-wisp sunny weather--on a Saturday, no less--lured them out in droves with picnic baskets on blankets, bathing dress, sun dress, wedding dress and practically no dress at all. The appearance of all that expanse of white skin was reminiscent of Moby Dick, in more ways than one, and just as rare. The famous English complexion was all too exposed and, come sundown, would be redder than raw beef.
Of course, Londoners come in all colors and all ethnicities. Everyone was soaking up the sun, whether in skimpy bikinis or swathed in decorous cloth. Asians, Africans, Middle Easterners: there were representatives from every former colony England had ever ruled. Families lay on the lawns or in the long, unmown grass underneath the trees dotted with white daisies, buttercups and a few, late bluebells. It was amazing how quiet it was. No children screamed, although there were infants, toddlers, tykes and teens. People conversed in low tones or laughed quietly. There was virtually no trash, either. While the sight of so many polite Britishers lolling on the grass--actually on the grass!--was slightly shocking, nothing could have been more proper than their public behavior.
Everyone was universally friendly and chatty, too, something I have always found to be the case in Great Britain. Really, you have only to stand still for thirty seconds with your map open and a puzzled look on your face before someone will stop and ask if they can direct you. They may address you in a Caribbean lilt or a Scottish burr, but they will be Londoners all. On my first trip to London forty years ago, also with my companion on this journey, Sue, an elderly Brit not only helped us to find the British Museum, but thanked us "yanks" for pitching in during World War II. Neither Sue nor I had been born yet and were flabbergasted by good will that lasted so long.
This time, fresh from a 9:00 a.m. Heathrow landing, Sue and I walked to Regent's Park to stay awake and beat our jet lag. We were too loopy from lack of sleep to take in a museum or an art gallery, but could appreciate watching the grand parade. It turned out to be a treat that I would recommend for any first day in London, barring truly terrible weather. Even in the rain, there are cozy tea shops in the gardens and rarely is the downpour so torrential that you can't enjoy a stroll under an umbrella. So saunter through Queen Mary's Rose Garden or appreciare the many herbaceous borders. Most of all, enjoy that unique breed at play, Londoners.
Of course, Londoners come in all colors and all ethnicities. Everyone was soaking up the sun, whether in skimpy bikinis or swathed in decorous cloth. Asians, Africans, Middle Easterners: there were representatives from every former colony England had ever ruled. Families lay on the lawns or in the long, unmown grass underneath the trees dotted with white daisies, buttercups and a few, late bluebells. It was amazing how quiet it was. No children screamed, although there were infants, toddlers, tykes and teens. People conversed in low tones or laughed quietly. There was virtually no trash, either. While the sight of so many polite Britishers lolling on the grass--actually on the grass!--was slightly shocking, nothing could have been more proper than their public behavior.
Everyone was universally friendly and chatty, too, something I have always found to be the case in Great Britain. Really, you have only to stand still for thirty seconds with your map open and a puzzled look on your face before someone will stop and ask if they can direct you. They may address you in a Caribbean lilt or a Scottish burr, but they will be Londoners all. On my first trip to London forty years ago, also with my companion on this journey, Sue, an elderly Brit not only helped us to find the British Museum, but thanked us "yanks" for pitching in during World War II. Neither Sue nor I had been born yet and were flabbergasted by good will that lasted so long.
This time, fresh from a 9:00 a.m. Heathrow landing, Sue and I walked to Regent's Park to stay awake and beat our jet lag. We were too loopy from lack of sleep to take in a museum or an art gallery, but could appreciate watching the grand parade. It turned out to be a treat that I would recommend for any first day in London, barring truly terrible weather. Even in the rain, there are cozy tea shops in the gardens and rarely is the downpour so torrential that you can't enjoy a stroll under an umbrella. So saunter through Queen Mary's Rose Garden or appreciare the many herbaceous borders. Most of all, enjoy that unique breed at play, Londoners.
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