Clevedon and Portishead

The English Seaside?

Everyone delights to spend their summer's holiday 
Down beside the side of the silvery sea. 
I'm no exception to the rule, in fact, if I'd me way, 

I'd reside by the side of the silvery sea.

But when you're just the common or garden Smith or Jones or Brown

at bus'ness up in town, you've got to settle down. 

You save up all the money you can til summer comes around

Then away you go to a place you know, where the cockle shells are found.

Oh! I do like to be beside the seaside! 
I do like to be beside the sea! 

I do like to stroll along the Prom, Prom, Prom! 

Where the brass bands play, "Tiddely-om-pom-pom!"

So just let me be beside the seaside! 
I'll be beside myself with glee 

and there's lots of girls beside, 

I should like to be beside, beside the seaside, 

beside the sea!

Technically, Clevedon, with its wonderful Grade 1 listed Victorian Pier (the only one of its kind - opened in 1869 to receive paddle steamer passengers from Devon and Wales) isn't actually on the sea, as the muddy tidal waters that rise up and down the shore here belong to the Severn Estuary, which starts at the second Severn Bridge and becomes the Bristol Channel between Sand Point, near Weston-super-Mare, and Lavernock Point, south of Cardiff.

But Clevedon is a pretty spot, even if the beach doesn't compare particularly favourably with St Tropez, et al....

And when the song was written, by John A Glover-Kind in 1907, places such as this were thronged with holiday-makers seeking a blast of ozone and a whiff of the sun.  No cheap flights to Majorca in those days, just a bicycle  or charabanc ride down from Pill or Bedminster, or a train ride up from Weston, then maybe a dip in the marine lake and a dose of fish and chips.  

Aaaahhh, Bliss!

Perhaps dad would cast a line off the pier.....

While grandad got ice cream on his nose.....

Sixty years ago, my mother-in-law would drive the Morris Minor down from Henleaze and picnic with her two daughters on the rocks.  It was a treat much enjoyed and fondly remembered by my sister-in-law.  

Nowadays there's a slightly more cosmopolitan air about the place, but there's room for everyone, whatever the headgear....

The pier is fine attraction - not crammed with tacky stalls or fairground rides, but it has a nice little bar in the pagoda, and a neat shop and exhibition at the entrance.

A little up the coast towards the Avon is Portishead, famous for trip-hop, Adge Cutler and Carol Vordeman.  It has (almost) everything - a 250 berth marina, the X3a, X4 and X5 bus services, a boating lake, complete with swan pedalos....

And an open air swimming pool, lovingly saved by the community for the community in 2009....

Which sports a Banksy-style warning about not trying to get in for free....

And has a popular cafe attached with 'sea' views all the way to the Black Mountains in Wales.....  

Oh how we are going to have to learn to treasure all these wonders in the dark post-Brexit world!

The town is a dormitory now for Bristol, and it lacks the fine features of Clevedon, though views of the passing traffic to and from Avonmouth and Royal Portbury docks entertain happy holidaymakers.....

And it does have several benches on Battery Point, near the memorial to seafarers of the West Country who, since the middle ages, on voyages of discovery and in times of peace and war, have passed this point some never to return..... where fresh air can be had for free....

So just let me be beside the seaside

I'll be beside myself with glee

And there's lots of girls beside,

I should like to be beside

Beside the seaside!

Beside the sea!

(Even if it's not actually the sea.....)

The Beauties of Bath - Without thinking of Jane Austen....

Sometimes I wonder what I'm-a gonna do

But there ain't no cure

For the summertime blues....

British Summertime....  It's snowing in Bath.  Mine host wishes me well, and I check out of my temporary lodgings on the hill.  The town lyes Low in a bottom, as Celia Fiennes recorded in 1688.  The baths in my opinon, she wrote, makes the town unpleasant, the air so low, encompassed with high hills and woods....

Not everyone shared Celia's view.  The origin of the town is attributed in legend to Bladud, son of Rud Hud Hudibras, who was cured of leprosy (which he caught in Athens) by bathing in the muddy swamps of the district.  His son later became King Leir (or Lear as some would have it).

Several centuries later, in the time of Agricola, the fiendish Romans got themselves into hot water here (between 37 and 47 degrees Celsius) and founded Aquae Sulis, after Sul, patroness of deep-seated mineral springs. 

Much later on, Royal visitors such as Mrs James I (Anne of Denmark) dipped her toes here, and then, in 1663, Mrs Charles II, Catherine of Braganza, was brought to try and cure her sterility.  Sadly, she had three miscarriages and did not produce an heir to the throne.

In 1702 Queen Anne made the place fashionable, and in her voluminous wake 'Beau' Nash produced a set of rules to follow if you wished to be accepted. As recorded by Oliver Goldsmith, these regulations included No.5 That no gentleman give his ticket for the balls to any but gentlewomen - N.B. Unless he has none of his acquaintance..... No.8 That the elder ladies and children be content with a second bench at the ball, as being past or not come to perfection.... and No.10 That all whisperers of lies and scandals be taken for their authors.....

This was also the time of the Johns Wood (Elder and Younger), Ralph Allen, and Robert Adam who, between them, raided the notebooks of Andrea Palladio to create the bridge in Prior Park (as well as the school behind it) and indeed Pulteney Bridge over the River Avon, 

Which betrays much more of its Italianate design from behind.... (think Florence, Ponte Vecchio...)

Wood the Younger was also responsible for the Royal Crescent, but actually only for its facade and overall design.  Individual householders had to find their own architects for their homes, so all is not necessarily what it seems....

In the meantime, Bath, along with Wells,  had grown itself a Bishop and a fine Abbey to go with it.  Despite Henery VIII's best efforts, the church survived, and, with quite a lot of more recent restoration, it's got some lovely fans....

As has my snowy busker friend outside.....

While, back in the Pump Room, the jolly burghers of Bath and tourists of the world are munching their buns and slurping the waters....

As refreshment after their tour of the remarkable Roman bathing establishment below....

Probably one of the top spots on a world tour for a selfie, though who am I to judge? (and when is a selfie not a selfie....?)

It is a wonderful show. Eerie Romans whisper lies and scandals to each other, while the mobile generation seem electronically absorbed....

And Calpurnia bares all.....

I blush and shy away, and turn to admire the simple pleasures of the city....

And that is without even thinking of Jane Austen, up at Sham Castle....

Summertime....  Who said the living was easy?  And there ain't no cure for the summertime blues....

It was at 4.10 pm on Sunday, 17th April 1960 that 21 year old Eddie Cochran died in St Martin's Hospital, Bath.  He suffered severe head injuries in Chippenham at 11.50 the night before.  A tyre blew out on his speeding taxi and Eddie tried to shield his girlfriend from the impact but was flung out as the door smashed open.

Gene Vincent survived.  The driver, who was called George Martin, was fined £50 and disqualified from driving for fifteen years.  

By Knytshall - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15992986

The Beauties of Bath.  Completely without thinking of Jane Austen.....

Well, well, Wells!

Oh Wells!

Oh Well 

I can't help about the shape I'm in

I can't sing, I ain't pretty and my legs are thin

But don't ask me what I think of you

I might not give the answer that you want me to

Oh well 

Sister morphine made the juddering ambulance comfortable.  I could just see a green paramedic uniform hunched over a clipboard in the dim interior.  I tried to imagine where we were. 

Gurney wheeled into midnight bright A & E unit; lifted to a bed.  Blue nurses, blue doctors, blue curtains: bloods, pressures, pulse, ECG.

Psilocybin would have explained some of it, but this was pain.  Worse than any childbirth, or so my paramedic friend told me…..  Last time I had this pain I was at scout camp the day Marilyn Monroe OD’d and I had cider and cake with my mum and dad then a swim in the coldest river in England…..  Fifty years and counting.

Pills, drips, x-rays, blood pressure standing and lying, echo-graph, etc. 

Morphine wearing off; codeine sulphate and ranitidine; pains abating; deemed well enough to vacate the bed.

Out in the cold and dark at 4.30; taxi home.  Diagnosis, probably acute gastritis.  I disagree, but hey!

Episode over.  In the past.  Finished.  

Oh, well!

Several tender days later, recovering from what I was sure was biliary colic, I woke early in Bristol and saw the sun rise over Clifton Downs.

The Balloon Fiesta was on and eighteen daring balloonists flew

from Ashton Court across Hotwells before the management deemed the wind unsuitable.

As the glowing orbs wafted into the clouds, I set off across the empty city, and up the A37 to Midsomer Norton, then over the Mendips on the A39 to the city of Wells.

It is still early, and the place is quiet, with market traders just setting out their stalls, and the mighty Cathedral just waking up.  In the interests of health and scenery I trek back up the scarp slope above the spring line to the heights of the hills, crossing the Old Bristol Road and following a sunken lane, cut deep into the limestone, 

before reaching the plateau.

From here the view back is fine, across the Cathedral amidst fields, and on to the Somerset levels, and to the sea.

I wander on, along a drover’s road, and then across fields, to the stunning gash that is Ebbor Gorge.  It’s a mini-cheddar, to coin a phrase (sic), though without the crowds, and without a road.  It is designated a National Nature Reserve, owned by the National Trust (in memory of Winston Churchill) but managed by Natural England.  Ash trees, oak, beech, wych-elm and dogwood fill the gorge. 

It’s damp and deep and ancient.  

Psilocybin

Once a watercourse following faults and weaknesses in the limestone, it became a cave, then fell in, tens of thousands of years ago.  

It’s more popular now than when I last visited some tens of years ago, but it is still a wild and awesome place.

From the rocky narrows, its not far to the village of Wookey Hole, where visitors wonder at the vast grottoes and children experiment in the Axe-driven paper mill.

Across the fields I can just see Glastonbury Tor, and then I pass through abandoned Underwood Quarry (where in the 1930s bones of a hippopotamus from 150,000 years ago were uncovered) and back towards the sculpted west front of Wells Cathedral.

Founded near St Andrew’s spring at the foot of the Mendips, there was a minster church here before it was granted cathedral status in 909.  The current building was consecrated in 1239, and it would have looked very different with its painted and gilded statues, though it is still impressive today.

I enter through Martin Stancliffe’s 2008 discreet but beautiful visitor centre and cross the medieval cloister.  

Inside the giant scissor arches seem modern, but these were built in the 1330s to support the central tower which was beginning to crack.  

The play of light over the fair stone is glorious, and, despite my lack of faith, I cannot help but feel uplifted.  The undercroft is gently quiet, 

and then above it rises a worn stairway to heaven, leading to the Chapter House and then to the Vicars’ Close.

The Chapter House is a wonder, lit by clear windows where Cromwell’s men smashed the stained glass. 

A single pier holds up the tierceron vault with thirty-two radiating ribs. On benches around the walls the Canons used to sit to discuss cathedral business every day. As Simon Jenkins says in England’s Cathedrals they saw their great church not just as a place of prayer but as a mirror of the entire community of medieval England. 

Modern government could learn something from this.  Without the defence of heavy tables, to sit in equality in a chamber like this might be good for cabinets and committees of our times.  Nowhere for the narcissists or the wooden to hide!

Outside I watch the swans on the moat of the remains of the Bishop’s Palace, then make my retreat.  Wells is busy now, and I need to return to Bristol.

Up on the Mendips, between the hurdle stack on Priddy’s green and traces of ancient lead workings I pause for bread and cheese and a pint of Cheddar Ales Potholer at the Hunters’ Lodge Inn.  The landlord here has been in charge for nearly fifty years, and, like the great Cathedral, not a lot has changed in recent times…. 

It’s a long way from the Luton and Dunstable Hospital Trust's A & E department. 

And for that I give thanks.

Oh well! 

Now, when I talked to God I knew he'd understand

He said, Stick by my side and I'll be your guiding hand

But don't ask me what I think of you

I might not give the answer that you want me to

Oh well

Peter Green