10 June 2016 - Tavistock Club Site, Moorshop, near Tavistock, Devon

I heard the rain through the night, and on waking there was little change. We discussed options over breakfast, and checked the long range weather forecast; this suggested there would be no significant change during the next week. With this information we knew we could not “sit it out” so again considered our immediate plans. Unfortunately the next six days were not reserved for indoor activities, so we simply had to bite the bullet and venture out.

Soon we found ourselves on the road south, the A386 toward Plymouth. Ten miles south of Tavistock we reached the city’s most northern Park & Ride, parked gratis but paid for the ride into the city, a modest £5.20 return for the two of us. The rain had not let up and visibility from the bus was no better than that from the car on the road south. On arrival in Plymouth, we drew our rain hoods around our heads and set off for The Hoe above the waterfront.

It is here on this raised esplanade above the shore, that Francis Drake reputably played a game of bowls after catching sight of the Spanish Armada gathering on the horizon. Alas as we looked out this morning, our views were obscured by the rain but we did observe a naval vessel heading into port and another sitting further out.

It is here, from Plymouth that the same Francis Drake had sailed off in 1577 to begin his voyage which traversed the Straits of Magellan and discovered the Drake Passage south of Cape Horn, and then later in 1579 landed in California. After circumnavigating the globe he was knighted aboard the Golden Hind at Deptford in 1581.

Throughout the millennium, Plymouth has been about the sea – sailors in peace and war, voyages of adventure and exploration, passenger arrivals and departures, ship building and ship repairs, merchants and maritime trades, cargoes, docks and warehouses – the sea as a place of work and as a place of leisure.

During World War II, the city of Plymouth was heavily bombed. Nearly 1,200 people were killed, over 1,000 were badly injured and 4,450 people were reported as missing. Around 18,000 buildings were damaged and about 3,700 were totally destroyed. It was among the most heavily bombed cities in England.

By 1944, before the War was ended, there was a revolutionary plan in place to create a new modern city. The rebuilding work began in 1947. The city was further extended to the north in 1951, taking in Tamerton and Roborough, the latter where we parked today. To the east, the Plymton and Plymstock areas, which had been growing steadily since the 1920s, became a part of the City in 1967.

Today, with a population of over 250,000, Plymouth is once more undergoing major change and development. 

This morning, we admired the corpulent statue of Francis Drake on The Hoe, and there we were accosted by a gentlemen lurking about with warm smiles and unknown intent. He was in fact a now redundant city guide who loved to offer his knowledge to anyone who looked like they might be a tourist, now for free. He told us his wife had told him to leave the poor tourists alone, but out for  compulsory healthy exercise, he simply could not help himself. He would have gladly attached himself to us for the rest of the day, but we were able to extract ourselves from his clutches, albeit so well meant. Not, however, before he was able to offer much history and correct so many myths, one being, according to him, the bowls game being played by Drake in the face of looming maritime battle. According to him, and this I did know, Drake and his cohorts were in fact little better than a bunch of pirates who had been engaged to protect the realm, and “bowls” were vessels of refreshments that pirates and men, good or evil like to swill.  He saw that the tide was not yet conducive to setting sail and saw no point in leaving the rum keg or whatever was being used to fill the “bowls”. This actually sounds far more logical than the often repeated alternative.

We walked eastward along the waterfront, battered by rain and wind and wondering at the wisdom of our decision to venture out. Soon we found relative shelter from the blustery wind around in the bay, the Barbican and Old Port where so many famous sea voyages had commenced.

From here the Pilgrim Fathers set out to settle North America, the first of many to colonise lands across the Atlantic. Captain Tobias Furneaux set out from here to become the first Englishman to circumnavigate the world in both directions. Later he accompanied Captain James Cook who in 1768, 1772 and 1776 set out for his three long voyages to the Pacific. Charles Darwin set sail from here in 1831 in the survey ship HMS Beagle captained by Robert Fitzroy. In 1839 the ship “Tory” set sail for New Zealand to set up the first British colony in New Zealand, soon followed by others under the auspices of The Plymouth Company of New Zealand, buying up 60,000 acres of land and to found the town of New Plymouth. Many years later, in 1901 and again in 1910, Scott left from here on his Antarctic expeditions. And so the list goes on and on and on.

We stood on the Mayflower Steps to remember these voyages, still subjected to the rain, and then decided to seek shelter in a café for a rare morning tea. The establishment we happened upon was quite charming, built in the reign of Elizabeth I and decorated in the most cluttered old fashioned way you can imagine. Music from old favourites of about 1960 played while we enjoyed our coffee and scones and crumpets in this delightful place. We were the only customers so the service was most personal; perfect for such a morning. By the time we emerged into the day, the rain had abated, although it never did completely clear.

Lanes in the Rubicon

We found our way up through the old section of the town, that neglected by the German bombing. In fact this area had been so neglected, the Medical Officer of Health declared fifty six buildings in the Barbican area as unfit for human habitation. Then in 1956 the Government said that subsidies for new houses would be paid for every slum house knocked down. There was massive protest, national as well as local, and thirty two New Street houses were saved, on the condition that the properties of historic value were bought or leased, and restored.

We popped through an open gateway that invited cautious investigation, steps up into an Elizabethan garden. Feeling we were trespassing, we only spent a moment there, but long enough to feel as if we had stepped back through the centuries.

Finally back up in the “new” city, we wandered about the shopping malls and streets of modern shops, none very impressive except for the large Drake Circus Shopping Centre. This is really the only retail structure that sports anything but a square or oblong flat architectural functional plainness. We found a walk-in hairdresser that charged an acceptable price; I added my name to the queue and we sat reading magazines until my name was called. Fortunately after having indulged in morning tea, the lateness of our lunchtime was hardly a burden. After stepping out neatly groomed and finding a bench under a tree in relative shelter to eat our lunch, we found the Museum and Art Gallery. This was most rewarding, and doubly so given that it is to close for renovation at the end of this summer and not to re-open until 2020. There is an excellent section on the city and its history as well as the normal type of exhibitions that museums contain. Upstairs we enjoyed the small but excellent portrait exhibition.

 

The afternoon had slipped away yet again, and it was time to walk back down into the town, catch the bus back to the Park &Ride and drive the short distance home. It had been an excellent day after all and certainly a hundred times better than sitting inside the caravan being miserable about the weather. 

Mural on the wall of the Drake Circus Shopping Centre