by Bill Bryson
His work done, Beeching returned to ICI and was given a peerage for services to evisceration. Although Beeching wasn’t responsible for all the cuts commonly attributed to him, he was no hero. About a third of the cuts he proposed were, by any measure, short-sighted or regrettable. It has also been suggested that many of Beeching’s figures were collected intentionally during quiet times – at seaside resorts out of season, for instance – to make certain lines look particularly underutilized. One of the services that Beeching wanted to axe was the Exeter-to-Exmouth line. It survived and now carries a million passengers a year, suggesting that Beeching’s assessments were not always reliable or even necessarily honest.
Ernest Marples likewise was elevated to the peerage at about the same time, but soon afterwards fled the country in order to escape arrest for tax fraud. He died in France in 1978, never having returned to Britain or having shown the slightest inclination to be other than an odious, oily-haired Tory wanker.
Thanks to Messrs Beeching, Marples, Wilson and others, my travel across Devon and Cornwall could not be done by train. Nor, I was wearied to discover, could I go by bus either, so poor were local services. To get from Totnes to Salcombe, a distance of nineteen miles, would involve separate journeys from Totnes to Brixham, Brixham to Dartmouth, Dartmouth to Torcross and Torcross to Salcombe, and then the same again in reverse, but the buses were so infrequent that it would take days to make the full return journey anyway.
So I had no choice but to drive, and it took for ever. All the roads were narrow and full of blind corners and tight spots. At every village and hamlet lines of parked cars meant that the roads were not wide enough for two cars to pass, so everyone had to take turns letting other cars through. It was all surprisingly good-natured and agreeable because everyone was considerate and no one cheated. This was the English at their best – like the England that used to exist everywhere, in which you considered the needs of others along with your own on the assumption that they would do likewise with you.
I stopped at one point and counted as a string of twenty-eight cars gratefully accepted my gesture of deferral. They all waved to me a sincere but distracted thanks as they simultaneously squeezed through a tight space between me and a cottage built hard by the road. Whether they wished it or not, all those cars were now part of a convoy slowly making its way across south Devon. Eventually a driver in the distance flashed his lights for me to come through, and I discovered that I was now the head of a convoy of my own. At least two dozen cars were reliant on me to create openings and squeeze through blockages. I found I quite enjoyed the responsibility of it, and I am happy to say I led them successfully to Salcombe with hardly any losses along the way.
Salcombe is a famous yachting community, picturesquely sited on a sweep of green hills overlooking a preposterously pretty cove. The last time I was there, some twenty years ago, you could drive into the village and park by the harbour, but those days are long gone. Today there is a park-and-ride car park on a hilltop a mile or so before the village centre. Even from a distance I could see there was a queue to get into the car park, but I spotted a space in a layby and darted into it with an abrupt and daring manoeuvre that prompted six or eight other cars to honk their horns and flash their lights in a spontaneous gesture of admiration.
I walked into the village along the crest of the hill and then down a steep curving road, past cottages that all had perky nautical names and the trim but impersonal look of second homes. The population of Salcombe, I read somewhere, increases tenfold during the summer season, from two thousand to twenty thousand. This was definitely the summer season. But even when crowded to bursting, it is a lovely place. In the harbour, little boats with triangular sails floated on the glassy water like party favours. A tangy smell of marine life hung in the air. Gulls cawed and wheeled overhead, dropping splatty white cluster bombs on rooftops and pavements. Goodness knows what those gulls eat, but it certainly keeps them regular.
Salcombe is smart and prosperous and jaunty. Everyone was dressed like a Kennedy at Hyannisport. I had to get a jumper out of my bag and tie it around my neck to keep people from staring. They all had a robust, healthy, sea-sprayed look about them. These people didn’t walk from place to place, they bounded.
The main street in Salcombe is Fore Street. The Daily Telegraph has deemed it the sixth coolest street in Britain. I have no idea how they make such an assessment, though I suspect, this being the Telegraph, that it has little to do with science or much real thought. The shops were unquestionably upmarket. At the Casse-Croûte Deli, the special of the day was Brie and asparagus tart made with organic cider, which I was pleased and relieved to see. How often have I had to decline a Brie and asparagus tart because the cider wasn’t organic. It occurred to me that in my lifetime British food has gone from strange and unappetizing to strange and unappetizing again with about fifteen years of glorious, unselfconscious tastiness in between. Call me an unreconstructed savage, but the sooner we get back to a national diet of chips with gravy and that sort of thing the better it will suit me. In my day every restaurant meal started with prawn cocktail and finished with Black Forest gateau and we were all a lot happier, believe me.
Everywhere in Salcombe was packed. I stood not the slightest chance of sitting down with a cup of coffee or organic tart, so I decided to go for a walk and retraced my route back up to the hilltop and along the road towards Kingsbridge. About a mile along, there was a narrow, beckoning lane off to the right leading through glorious countryside back down towards the fjord-like Kingsbridge estuary. From my hilltop vantage point, I could see the estuary poking its skinny arms into various clefts in the middle distance. I had left my Ordnance Survey map in the car, so I couldn’t see where the local footpaths were, but I thought I could amble down the lane to the next village and maybe find a nice, forgotten pub for lunch. I walked for perhaps a third of a mile, unable to see anything beyond the thick hedges pressing in on both sides, then came around a bend and to my dismay found a giant piece of farm machinery coming up the lane towards me. It entirely filled the available space and was roughly brushing the hedges on both sides. There wasn’t any possibility of my standing aside for it, and no gaps for farm gates anywhere along the way to retreat into, so I had no choice but to turn round and walk briskly all the way back up the hill to where I had started, acutely aware that just behind me, moving at a speed just fast enough to be menacing, was a giant machine that could flatten me like a piece of dropped chewing gum if it elected to. I turned from time to time to the driver to mime a kind of apology for being in his way, indeed for existing at all, and to indicate that I was moving as fast as I could, but there was not the tiniest hint of warmth or compassion in his grim, set expression. The faster I tried to move, the more he seemed to speed up. At the top of the hill, I bent double gasping for breath and he sped past without a look of acknowledgement.
‘You’re welcome, you hayseed fuck!’ I called, but I don’t think my words had the wounding effect I wished for. I can only hope that later he reflected on this and felt bad about it, or perhaps that he get a terrible disease and died.
I returned to the car and drove a dozen miles along yet more slow but glorious roads to Torcross, a hamlet on a dramatic sweep of coastline overlooking Start Bay. To the north from here stretches a duney expanse called Slapton Sands, so similar to the beaches of Normandy that they used it for a dress rehearsal for D-Day in the spring of 1944. Amid great secrecy, thirty thousand American troops were loaded on to landing craft and taken out into the bay to practise coming ashore, but by chance nine German torpedo boats spotted the activity and cruised at will among them, blowing the landing craft out of the water with ease and causing all kinds of mayhem. No one from the Allied side, it appears, had thought to line up suitable protection for the exercise, so the U-boats were able to move about undisturbed.
One of those watching the carnage was Eisenhower himself. Nobody seems to know how many people died. Numbers range from 650 to 950 or so. An
information board at Torcross says 749 American soldiers and sailors died. Whatever the exact figure, far more Americans were killed that night than died in the actual landing at Utah beach just over a month later. (Casualties were much higher at Omaha beach.) It was the most lopsided rout America suffered during the war, yet few people have ever heard of it because news of the disaster was withheld, partly for purposes of morale, partly because of the general secrecy surrounding the invasion preparations. What is most extraordinary is that the Germans, having chanced upon a massive collection of boats and men engaged in training exercises just across the sea from the Cherbourg peninsula, failed to recognize that an invasion of northern France was imminent.
Here at last I got a walk in. I strolled up on to a big hill above Torcross village, a taxing climb but worth it, to a field high above the bay. The field was extensively land-mined with cowpats, but no cows were about, I was pleased to see. The view took in the mighty sweep of Start Bay, which is surely one of the very loveliest in England. To the south an attractive white lighthouse stood on an eminence called Start Point. To the north at Stoke Fleming there was some other tower – a church steeple, I decided – and in between sprawled the most exquisite, effortlessly perfect combination of fields, clustered villages, farmhouses and wandering roads.
Just at this point a herd of cows appeared over a rise and decided to come and have a look at me. They weren’t aggressive, just stupid. All they wanted was to be with me. But of course as soon as they got near they became skittish, which meant they were capable of panicking and trampling me into a shape and consistency not unlike the glistening pats they left everywhere. I didn’t want to panic them, so with an air of stoic resignation I let them escort me to the gate. I walked back down the hill and went for a walk along the sand dunes, which was hard on the ankles but at least free of cows.
Wishing for a cup of tea, I drove on to the historic town of Dartmouth, famed for its gorgeous setting on the River Dart and home of the Royal Naval College. On the outskirts, an illuminated sign beside the road told me on no account to drive into town but to use the park-and-ride system on the perimeter, but I went anyway to see if they were lying. They weren’t. Dartmouth was heaving and it was impossible to park, so I went all around the one-way system and back up the steep hill to an extraordinarily distant park-and-ride car park, where I should have gone in the first place. Parking cost £5, which seemed outrageous to me, bearing in mind that all I wanted was a cup of tea and that I was severely inconveniencing myself already for the sake of their economy, but I felt slightly mollified when I discovered that it was £3 after 2 pm. So I rode a bus back into town and had a shuffle around, which is what tens of thousands of other people, most of them of about my age and socio-economic background, were doing. This, I realized, is my future: a dotage spent shuffling around in places like Dartmouth, visiting shops and tearooms, bitching about crowds and costly, inconvenient park-and-ride schemes.
Dartmouth used to be filled with charming shops, though I guess I should allow that that was more than twenty years ago when most places were filled with charming shops. Today it seemed to be mostly small, busy cafés and gift shops selling planks of wood with foolish sentiments on them. Dartmouth long had a celebrated independent bookshop, Harbour Books, run by Christopher Milne, son of A. A. Milne, but that closed in 2011, so I was pleased to see that there is a new bookshop in town, called the Dartmouth Community Bookshop, a not-for-profit cooperative. It is very small and on a back street, but at least it is a living bookshop and I hope the people of Dartmouth support it. I went in and talked to the manager, Andrea Saunders, and she told me that it was doing well, which I was pleased to hear. But, her books aside, if you gave me a £100 gift certificate I would struggle to spend it in Dartmouth unless it was to make kindling.
I had a cup of tea, then transferred myself to the waterfront, where the town overlooks the broad estuary of the River Dart. This was very much more agreeable, indeed quite beautiful, and I suddenly remembered why someone might choose to pass time here. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a little oik of a kid about thirteen years old in a Chelsea shirt sitting at a bus stop eating a bag of crisps. When I came back a few minutes later, the boy was gone and the crisp packet was on the ground. There was a bin three feet away. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that if Britain is ever to sort itself out, it is going to require a lot of euthanasia.
I stayed two nights in Totnes while in south Devon and liked it very much. It is a trim and well-kept place with an interesting range of shops – like Dartmouth used to be, in fact. There was a little more in the way of New Age crystals and that kind of thing than I personally require, but also some good galleries and antiques shops. I went into four shops one morning as a kind of experiment. At one I was given a friendly good morning by a lady of about my own age, at another I received a wordless nod and small smile – not unfriendly, but not exactly lavish – and at the other two I was completely ignored by the people in charge.
I can never decide which is worse, the titanic indifference of the average British shopkeeper or the suffocating attention of American ones. It’s a tough call. Recently I was in New York and on an impulse I went into an Aveda shop. My wife likes Aveda shampoo (she likes anything that costs more than it ought to) and I thought I might surprise her with a little gift.
‘Hello,’ said the nice young woman who was in charge, ‘can I help you find something?’
‘Oh, no thanks, I’m just looking,’ I replied.
‘What’s your pH?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. I didn’t bring my soil test kit.’ I gave her my friendliest smile. She didn’t know I was joking.
‘Have you tried our new performance shampoo?’ she asked and thrust a cylindrical green bottle a little more into my face than I would say was altogether a good idea. ‘It is made with 100 per cent plant surfactants and cleanses gently while engaging the senses.’
‘I am really just looking, thanks,’ I said again. What I was actually looking for was a price sticker. I’m a generous soul – anyone will tell you that except for those who know me fairly well – but there is a limit to how much I will pay for shampoo, even for someone who has given me children.
As I bent to examine some bottles on a lower shelf, I became aware that the sales assistant was studying the top of my head.
‘Have you tried our exfoliating shampoo?’ she asked.
I straightened up. ‘Miss, please,’ I said, ‘I just want to browse quietly and alone. May I do that, please?’
‘Of course,’ she said and took a step back. She was silent for a nanosecond, then stepped forward again. ‘I’d recommend the exfoliating for you,’ she said.
She had, I realized, Retail Tourette’s Syndrome, a compulsion to blurt unwanted advice. There was nothing she could do about it. Whatever I touched or looked at, she would have to comment on. In the end, I had to leave the shop. On the plus side, I think she saved me $28.50.
So the manifest impassivity of British shopkeepers doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it does my wife. Still, you do sometimes wonder if it would kill them to say hello. Sometimes I just have this sneaking suspicion that it might help them win some repeat business if they didn’t make it quite so clear how much they loathe you coming into their shop and touching things. Then again, as my wife always points out, no matter how warmly or not they receive me, I am still not going to buy anything because I think everything costs too much and I have everything I need already.
From Totnes, I headed to Dartmoor, land of hills and heath, of wild ponies and clapper bridges across tumbling rills. I had just read In Search of England by H. V. Morton, which is always described as a classic, presumably by people who have never read it because it is actually quite dreadful. It was written in 1927 and consists largely of Morton motoring around England and slowing down every twenty miles to ask directions of a besmocked bumpkin standing at the roadside. In every village he went to Morton found a man with a funny accent and f
uck-all to do, and had a conversation with him.
On Dartmoor he stopped at Widecombe-in-the-Moor and asked an old man leaning on an ash stick whether they really sang the old folk song ‘Widecombe Fair’, featuring Uncle Tom Cobley, for which Widecombe is famed.
‘Oi zur,’ the man replies. ‘We zings it after a zing-zong zome-times afore “God Save the King”! Oh, aye, zur!’
The impression you get from In Search of England is that England is a cheerful, friendly place, peopled with loveable halfwits with comic accents, so it is a little ironic that the book is so often cited as capturing the essence of the nation. An even greater irony is that Morton eventually soured on England because it wasn’t fascist enough for him. He moved to South Africa in 1947 and lived the last thirty-two years of his life there, forgotten by the world but happy to have servants he could shout at. The only thing I remembered from the book was that he made Widecombe-in-the-Moor sound awfully pretty and I was curious to see to what extent it remained so. I am happy to say it is still a gorgeous place. It has a lovely church with a magnificent tower, a green, a pub and a shop, and stands amid a symphony of rocky hills. I said good morning to an old fellow by the churchyard, but he didn’t say ‘Oi zur,’ or anything amusingly rustic at all.
I drove up into the hills and parked in a rough car park presumably put there for walkers, and got out with my trusty walking stick and map. It was a splendid morning. The hills were sprinkled with sheep and wild ponies and granite outcrops called tors. Dartmoor gets almost eighty inches of rain a year, making it one of the dampest of English regions, which is of course saying a great deal. Because the drainage is poor, the water gathers into what are locally known as ‘feather beds’ – pools of water just covered over with moss. These are practically indiscernible, with the consequence that outsiders frequently step into them and then vanish with a startled glug, or so it is said. I didn’t actually believe this, but I stayed on the paths nonetheless.