Tag Archives: Somerset

The Best Laid Plans

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We’d planned to move from Symondsbury, Dorset, to Portland for a night or two. Our three nights were up and Husband’s idea was to stay at a pub stopover, where we’d be able to park up for a night for the price of a meal we’d get in the hostelry. We’ve done this before when travelling long distance and it worked well when we drove up to Shetland. On this occasion, however, we draw a blank. The pubs that had seemed to be offering overnight parking on Portland have been prevented- by what, we do not know- a by-law, perhaps?

Portland, of course has become famous- or infamous- for having to host the hostel barge, the ‘Bibby Stockholm’ where asylum seekers would be moved from their hotels. Opinions differ about the rights and wrongs of housing the refugees on the barge although those who’d moved in subsequently had to be moved again due to disease-ridden conditions.

We’re stuck with a conundrum. There’s just one night before we are due to move to a site nearer home and we’re out of time on Ernie’s Plot. After some research it becomes clear we’ll have to move into Somerset and to a pub with a campsite not far from Yoevil. It’s a pretty village and pub, although the rain confines us to van until we go to eat. Again, the pub provides a delicious meal and the site is fine for a night.

I’m impressed by the German family who were eating in the pub- a couple with two teenage sons. They emerge in the morning, after a rainy night, from two, tiny Quechua pop-up tents which [the parents] quickly fold away into the boot of their hire car before they all sit at a picnic table for breakfast; truly a minimalist trip!

It so happens that we’re close to Montacute House, a National Trust property with lovely grounds. We pack up and head off there, having coffee in the van then wandering the house and gardens which are formal and elegant. Built in 1598, the house belonged to an Elizabethan lawyer, Sir Edward Phelips. It’s popular today in spite of the intermittent rain, with children playing on the games lawn and the cafe courtyard busy with people lunching. We return to the car park and have lunch in the van before heading off to yet another National Trust property, Tintinhull Garden, a mere 7 minutes away.

We park and follow a path through an orchard meadow, through a gate, across a road to a lovely old manor house. The garden lies through an archway, a network of 7 garden ‘rooms’ in arts and crafts style. It’s far quieter than Montacute, a peaceful spot with a graceful pond and gazebo and wonderful large beds with rows of flowers and vegetables all mixed up together. Through a gate is a wilder area with fruit trees, including a mulberry tree groaning with fruit.

Our third site is to be much closer to home, back into Dorset to a village near Poole. It’s South Lychett Manor, an enormous, family friendly site with every convenience you can think of and quite a few you can’t. There is a grand entrance through wrought iron gates and a long driveway, an extensive shop, a pizza van and cafe. It’s a far cry from Ernie’s Plot but variety, as they say…

Grace is the alter ego of novelist and short story writer, Jane Deans. To date I have two published novels to my name: The Conways at Earthsend [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Conways-at-Earthsend-Jane-Deans-ebook/dp/B08VNQT5YC/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2ZHXO7687MYXE&keywords=the+conways+at+earthsend&qid=1673350649&sprefix=the+conways+at+earthsend%2Caps%2C79&sr=8-1 and The Year of Familiar Strangers [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Year-Familiar-Strangers-Jane-Deans-ebook/dp/B00EWNXIFA/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2EQHJGCF8DSSL&keywords=The+year+of+familiar+strangers&qid=1673350789&sprefix=the+year+of+familiar+strangers%2Caps%2C82&sr=8-1 Visit my writer Facebook page [https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=jane%20deans%2C%20novellist%2C%20short%20fiction%20and%20blog or my website: https://www.janedeans.com/

Festival Fever

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Glasto

The Glastonbury Festival, at Pilton in Somerset, south west England, is the mother of all music festivals-the largest in the world.

I went to it once, in the nineties. Bjork was headlining and Elvis Costello was near the top of the bill. From where I stood, Bjork appeared as a miniature doll in a pink dress about half a mile away, beyond a sea of surging festival-goers. And while I liked much of Bjork’s avant-garde material she was not best suited to the venue. Elvis Costello and the Attractions were thrilling, though, ‘Pump it Up’ throbbing out across the crowd in a stirring morass of sound.

We watch snippets of Glastonbury on TV each year, although more and more of it elicits incomprehension or snorting derision as current tastes in music diverge further from our own. This is a time-honoured process and guaranteed to both irritate and delight the young; the ‘things ain’t what they used to be’ tradition.

But they aren’t what they used to be. The festivals and outdoor music gigs of my youth were attended by the young. I could go and watch the most popular and biggest-selling bands on my Saturday job pay. I got to see Fairport Convention, 10cc, Chicken Shack, Led Zeppelin, John Heisman’s Coliseum, Pink Floyd and very many more iconic musicians and could afford it all [including transport, food and drink] on my meagre toy shop salary of twenty five shillings per Saturday.

The crowds flocking into Glastonbury and all the other festivals of the summer are twenty and thirty somethings or older, middle class and often with their children in tow. The festivals have changed, become more corporate, more mainstream, more media-led. They are gargantuan circuses of food, entertainment and marketing. Am I alone in feeling nostalgia for the crude outdoor setups of my teenage years?

Glastonbury is still a phenomenon, a treasure of the English summer-this year’s event mercifully mud-free. And for 2019, supposedly ‘plastic-free’ too; except that it wasn’t. Photographic images of the mountains of refuse left from the event are testament to the failure of this lofty ambition. Yes-there were water stations [so woefully stretched that campers were unable to use the showers], saving a few plastic water bottles, but the burger vans and bars were clearly not on board with the plan. There is also an issue with tents being left-in a condition rendering them un-recyclable. One cunning Dutch entrepeneur has invented a ‘cardboard’ tent, which may be a solution in the future, although it seems doubtful.

This weekend sees the staging of our town’s own, homegrown, humble music festival, free to attend this year and hopefully funded from stalls and sponsorship. Most of the musicians are local, as are the stalls, the volunteers and the attendees. The weather [which can make or break the event] is set to be fine. The women’s football final does not include our home team [the football having destroyed last year’s attendance]. What can go wrong?