Sunshine & Showers

Today

Raining hard in Brighton today after a beautiful weekend. Looking at the forecast I see that the weather this week is day on/day off with regard to rain and sun.

"I remember my holiday in Devon & Cornwall with Ann Bryant", I said to Paul "That's exactly what we had."

In My Day

When I was in my teens the best way to have an affordable holiday was to join the Youth Hostels Association. It was very cheap and offered accommodation throughout Europe where you were likely to be pretty safe, if not always comfortable. In England at that time there were fairly strict rules about getting to the hostels under your own steam and driving or hitch-hiking was much frowned upon. I wasn't a sporty girl but I did like my holidays to be active.

In 1965 I and my friend Ann Bryant decided that a cycling holiday around Devon and Cornwall would be just the thing. We booked accommodation in advance, staying at each coastal hostel between Plymouth and Exeter, heading westwards. We caught the train from Paddington to Plymouth where our adventures began.

Our bikes weren't especially top of the range; my bike had no gears and Ann's was a little Moulton. Given the hilly nature of the terrain, you can see that we spent a fair bit of time walking.

The hostels were extremely varied from elegant houses to tumbledown cottages that appeared to get their water from the well. Some of them offered breakfasts (a very few even offered supper) and we took advantage of this when we could. But often we found ourselves heating up beans over ancient stoves that ought to have been condemned and wrestling with recalcitrant toasters.

Our decision to stay at each hostel meant a very varied programme of distances to travel. Ideally, in an ideal summer, this should have given us some easy days during which we could potter about, take a scenic detour or catch up on our tans.

Unfortunately, the weather opted for a day on-day off approach to sunshine and showers. There were days when we seemed to make no headway against the Atlantic gales, peddling frantically and apparently staying still.

When you had fifty miles to go, this was rather discouraging. On one occasion - between Newquay and Padstow, the going was so rough and our headway was so slow that we gave in and caught a train which creaked its was across the moors taking probably longer that we would have done by bike, but at least we were dry. Between Tintagel (a rickety stony hostel clinging to the cliff edge and Boscastle was only six miles and we were looking forward to a day scrambling over rocks and exploring the coastline. Instead, force ten gales kept us indoors where we were probably the record holders for spending time at the Boscastle witch museum.

We did have some lovely days too - discovering the Minack Theatre by accident and watching a rehearsal for King Lear as the sun set over the sea, and cycling in sparkling weather from Minehead to Exeter along the beautiful Exe valley.

It was on this holiday that Ann shocked the locals by wearing very short shorts and causing one ancient to call out as we went by:"Yoo'm better pull yoom skirrt down; yooom paaants is showin!" as he cackled with laughter.

What the holiday taught me was to be self reliant and that the weather is not all that makes a holiday. And I remember just about every detail after over forty years.