Route Britannia, the Journey South: A Spontaneous Bicycle Ride through Every County in Britain

by Steven Primrose-Smith

  “No one wants to see that.”

  “Oh, I don't know,” she said, chuckling and wandering off. “I don't know.”

  No, really, I do know.

  I cycled another horribly steep hill to Little Torrington and its campsite.

  “Why are your hills so steep?” I asked the site owner. “I mean, it's not like you've any mountains around here. What do you do if it's snowy or icy?”

  He shook his head.

  “It doesn't snow that often.” This was west England, famous for its wet weather. “I've lived here fifteen years and it's only snowed three times.”

  This is at odds with the weather statistics websites that claim Devon has between eight and fifteen snowy days each and every a year. Maybe he forgot to mention that he spends each winter on the Costa Blanca.

  *

  The next morning I cycled back into Great Torrington and finished off the B3227, the lovely country road that had already carried me the fifty-odd miles from Taunton. At Stibb Cross I leapt into a maze of tiny, traffic-free lanes and got utterly lost. I navigated by compass for a while until I stumbled upon what I was looking for, passing a road sign saying “Slow” beneath a red triangle containing a gnome.

  We think of garden gnomes as a very British phenomenon but the statuettes as we know them today originated in Germany in the mid-1800s. One of the fellas in the first batch of gnomes to reach these shores from Germany, Lampy, still survives and is insured for £1 million. They are still popular in Germany, with an estimated population of 25 million. Here, unfortunately, our love affair with garden gnomes is dwindling. Sales have halved in the last ten years and there may only be around five million left in the entire country. At least they were safe here at the Gnome Reserve.

  I walked into the reception area where the elderly lady at the desk was already serving another woman. She saw me and stopped.

  “Just let me deal with this,” she said to the woman. She looked up at me. “Yes?” she asked.

  “What?” I said. “Aren't you dealing with this lady first?”

  “Aren't you delivering something?”

  “No, I'm here to see the gnomes.”

  “Oh.”

  I suppose it was the high-vis jacket I'd been given on that rainy day in Wales, or perhaps grown men don't usually turn up to a place like this by themselves.

  Eventually the other customer was served and I paid my money.

  “Go and take a gnome hat from the other room and then see the Gnome Reserve. Then come back in here and I'll give you a quiz to go fairy spotting.”

  In the adjoining room was a wide range of gnome hats – apparently the gnomes don't like it if you enter their woods under-dressed – and I selected a natty, rainbow-striped one.

  I wandered the reserve, the sunlight dappling the pathway, birds tweeting in the trees. There were hundreds of gnomes: gnomes on a fairground, gnomes at a beach, gnomes on a chessboard, a gnome airport and gnome farmers, one of whom was riding a pig, although not in a David Cameron sort of way; this was mostly for children after all. There was a gnome motorbike race, what appeared to be a gnome court passing judgement over another gnome taking a dump, gnome spacemen, the Gnome Olympics and a sort of gnome cemetery where the little fellas had gone green with the moss that had grown over them.

  Finally, there was the Ottery Pool full of hook-a-ducks. The idea was to pick your lottery numbers by selecting six yellow plastic birds at random – the bottom of each contained a number – and yanking them out with a big stick. I don't do the lottery and so I decided to use the ducks to select my next Chinese meal. I got number 38.

  I popped back to the office for my fairy quiz and asked how many gnomes there were.

  “We're in the Guinness Book of Records,” said the lady at the desk. “If you include all these pixies inside as well there are about two thousand.”

  “And do you make them all yourselves?”

  “We make the concrete ones but the themed ones, like the Olympic gnomes, we buy them in. Do you have gnomes yourself?”

  “No, I don't have a garden.”

  But really that's a rubbish excuse. A gnome would be equally pointless in a bathroom. She gave me my fairy quiz and pointed me in the direction of the Wild Flower Garden.

  “And you can put your hat back now if you like.”

  “Why? Would it offend the fairies?”

  I was trying to get into this.

  “Not really,” she laughed, “but you don't need it.”

  I ambled around the flower garden looking for fairies, failing to find most of them. A young mother and her daughter were on the other side of the looping garden path, eyeing me suspiciously. Why the hell would a middle-aged man be here counting fairies all alone? Well, because I'd been sent here, obviously.

  Since I was in Devon I stopped at the site's café and had myself a cream tea. I took my scone, split it in two and added the jam and then the clotted cream. I later read that only a moron does it in this order, or someone from Cornwall. In Devon you're supposed to put the cream on first.

  I'd enjoyed my afternoon at the Gnome Reserve and I'd learnt something. By forcing myself to look at every nook and cranny of that little flower garden I noticed things I wouldn't otherwise have seen, like tiny flowers and weird little insects. It was an exercise in extreme and accidental mindfulness. Maybe we should always be on the lookout for fairies; we'd see so much more of the world.

  I continued westwards into Bude. It was a warm late spring day and all was right with the world. Things were brightened still further, admittedly childishly, when I passed a plumber's van with the workman's name on the side; he was called Cobbledick.

  I had now entered Cornwall. Despite being the most scenic county, according to the BBC, it was, by the Independent's reckoning, the poorest in England. Indeed, it was England's only county to receive emergency EU funding. As they say, man cannot live on views alone.

  On our pound-a-day trip the campsite at Bude had been good enough to sponsor us a free night. I wanted to return to it and pay this time. Unfortunately I couldn't remember where it was.

  I cycled around Bude and, passing a Chinese, remembered the gnomes' meal suggestion. I looked at the menu in the window outside. Number 38 was ten battered prawns. But with no sauce that would be dull. The gnomes were clearly idiots. But then I remembered I still had some on-the-turn sausages in my bag. The gnomes were offering me an unappealing option in Bude so that I'd finish off the sausages before food poisoning kicked in. I could accept their suggestion at a future Chinese when number 38 would be something amazing. Clever little gnomes!

  I found Bude Holiday Resort. It wasn't the place we stayed last time but I was beginning to wonder whether I'd invented the other campsite. The young girl on reception looked at me with suspicion.

  “Are you a contractor?” she asked.

  “No, why?”

  “Because of your jacket.”

  “I wear it to stop cars hitting me.”

  Do building contractors walk around town in cycling shorts? I don't know. Maybe they do.

  “It's just contractors aren't allowed to stay here,” she said.

  “Well, I'm not a contractor.”

  She bashed the keyboard on her desk for a bit.

  “That'll be twenty pounds,” she said.

  “Really? That's expensive.”

  She looked blankly at me.

  “That's the price.”

  “It's ironic,” I said. “If I was a contractor I could afford to stay here.”

  “But you're not a contractor.”

  “No.”

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “That's the price.”

  Twenty quid to sleep in a field is ridiculous and tonight there was an alternative. I wasn't making the other place up. I eventually found it. They only wanted eight pounds, which is just about right.

  *

  I woke up to yet another totally lovely day. Was this really England I was cycling around? By half eight the
tent was already too hot and had to be opened to let in some cool air. I made coffee, ate chocolate-covered macaroons for breakfast and made a leisurely start around half ten.

  It was a wonderful pootle down towards Widemouth Bay with its craggy cliffs, decorated with tiny flowers, falling steeply into the sea. Down below, in the coves and caves, ancient smugglers squirrelled away their ill-gotten bounty of wine and brandy and, if duty-free shops are anything to go by, those massive Toblerones.

  Moving downhill I cycled through a swarm of flies three hundred metres long. The swarm was three hundred metres long, not the flies; that would've been terrifying. Coming out the other side I found something in my mouth. Was it a shred of coconut from this morning's macaroon or a creature from that swarm? I was coated with the little buggers, the sheen of sweat on my brow acting like fly paper.

  It wasn't long before I was in Boscastle. We'd cycled through this Cornish coastal village last year and I'd looked longingly at its ridiculous museum without the funds to go inside. Now I was back and I had more than a quid in my pocket. Today nothing could stop me entering The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic.

  There are two ways a museum of magic can go. The first is with a knowing wink, hinting that, yes, of course it's all a load of nonsense, but it's fun so enjoy yourself. The other way is to take it very, very seriously indeed. Today's museum took the second approach.

  There was an interesting collection of items, including a pentacle the size of a small pizza made out of matchsticks by a Pagan prisoner called Bill, who was serving life. The attached note said Bill had used it in his cell for many years, but it didn't say how. Probably as a coaster or something.

  I learnt about the Book of Shadows. It's a home-made collection of spells, recipes and magic formulas copied by hand from a coven's master copy. The initiated witch is then supposed to add to the book when she discovers her own spells that work, or her own recipes, like that delightful fruit cake she made for the WI. The museum's own Book of Shadows had originally belonged to an elderly gentlemen who gave it to a witch in Lincolnshire.

  “After twelve years and an unfortunate incident with the elderly gentleman, the witch decided not to use it any more and kindly donated it.”

  I love the vagueness of the statement. What was the incident? Is there now an old fella hopping around Lincoln in the form of a frog?

  Another star exhibit was the Time Machine. But this was no TARDIS, merely a metal disc attached to a battery. The museum was honest when it said, “Details of how it worked are sketchy.” Apparently a Mr Alex Saunders would stand on the disc and enter a trance while his mate Derek Taylor transcribed what happened, like an episode of Quantum Leap but without any actual time travel. Or even anything as exciting as leaping.

  Some of the items in the museum were presented in a way that made you wonder how its label typist kept a straight face. Here's a caption for a painted broomstick:

  “Owned by writer, artist and sensitive Olga Hunt from Manaton; on a full moon she delighted in leaping all over Haytor rocks with her broomstick, much to the alarm of campers and courting couples.”

  Yeah, of course she did. And if she delighted in interrupting couples shagging on Haytor rocks then she wasn't that sensitive.

  Still not convinced by the magic on offer here? In 1998 a small yacht was becalmed outside Boscastle harbour. The sailors approached the museum and apparently asked to “buy the wind”. Don't ask me how but the wind was then tied in three knots on a rope and sold to the gullible lads. And guess what? “The boat sailed the following morning.” The most unbelievable thing about this story is that the Devon coast had a day without wind in the first place.

  I cycled up the hill away from the museum of magic and out of Boscastle, and before you could say abracadabra I was in Tintagel. I got myself settled on a cheap campsite in a huge, weirdly sloping field and went out to find the town's star attraction.

  According to legend, Arthur was conceived at Tintagel Castle. To be honest, to call it a castle is a bit of a stretch. It's merely a few low walls on a dramatic cliff top. Since the 16th century, bridges and steep staircases connect the mainland to the rocky outcrop on which the castle's remains stand. It's worth a look but don't go expecting round tables or anything.

  As someone who's not much of a fan of the Royal Family, I think we should hold up Arthur as an inspiration. I'd prefer all our monarchs to go around not actually existing. And the old pro-monarchist argument about queenie bringing in more than she costs is also true of Arthur, despite his non-existence. Tintagel Inc. is coining it in, charging nearly nine quid a pop to visit the place. If people are interested in viewing an imaginary king's castle, just think how many tourists would still want to see the Queen's gaff once she's out on her ear.

  I was after some more local food but it couldn't be found. I hunted the menus outside Tintagel's bars and restaurants for Stargazy Pie but no cigar, and no pie.

  Stargazy Pie is like a normal pie but instead it has a number of pilchards' heads protruding from its crust. The macabre-looking dinner is actually from a village called Mousehole, but it's in the far south-west of Cornwall and I wasn't going that far for a pie full of bones.

  I fell into the King Arthur's Arms, bought a pint of eye-wateringly strong Rattler cider and looked at their menu. It included fish pie and so I asked the barman.

  “Is this fish pie Stargazy Pie?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know where can I get some?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “None of the pubs around here have it.”

  “Have you ever tried it?”

  “No.”

  “Would you?”

  “No.”

  Maybe it was just something people made at home when they wanted to scare the grand kids.

  *

  It rained in the night and I awoke to a grey, misty and overcast day, the sort of morning Morrissey would probably write a song about.

  I cycled on to Camelford, the location of Britain's worst mass-poisoning event. In 1988, twenty tons of aluminium sulphate were accidentally added to the water supply. It eventually broke down, but then only into sulphuric acid, which didn't really help. The contamination was not initially acknowledged. At the time the water industry was about to be privatised and an investigation into the mass poisoning of an entire town's water was considered by Michael Howard, then Minister of State for the Environment, as “very distracting”. In fact, authorities said the water was safe to drink, but that people might want to add cordial to mask the unpleasant taste. No one was told what had really happened until sixteen days later. Short term effects included the usual diarrhoea and vomiting but also more disturbing stuff, like the victim's hair turning blue, as though the whole town was slowly morphing into Smurfs. No one knows how many died as a direct result of what happened but, over the years since the leak, autopsies have revealed abnormal amounts of aluminium in the brains of the people who lived in Camelford at the time. But at least there was a happy ending: Michael Howard was made a Lord. So that's alright then.

  Avoiding the water, I left Camelford behind and from there took the A39, a big mistake. It's a horrible road for cyclists, both narrow and busy. I escaped its traffic by heading off towards Padstow but since I'd seen it on the last ride – it's little more than a shrine to Rick Stein anyway – I continued onwards to Newquay, the surf capital of Britain.

  Entering the town came as a surprise. I'm not sure why, but I was expecting a long, wide beach with a few old VW camper vans on it and buff, long-haired dudes in knee-length shorts riding the waves. Instead the beautiful coastline gave way to Watergate Bay's admittedly lovely sand surrounded by hideous hotels. A lorry was holding up traffic, its advertising pitch “Eat More Chips!”

  All in all, Newquay seemed run down. As well as its surfing credentials, it's Britain's stag night capital. Vice.com describes it colourfully as a place of “puke, herbal ecstasy and endless fingerings” with “feral children roaming in packs...making
Vines of each other eating glass and drinking alcohol through their eyes”. In 2009, two teenagers died in separate drunken cliff falls in what was branded the “fortnight of shame”. The town has tried to clean up its act. For one, it's banned the mankini, although I can't imagine it's the garment of choice for many teenagers, otherwise you'd find more 1970s Top of the Pops presenters holidaying in Newquay.

  Cycling through town, the hills kept on coming. I wanted to head a little further down the coast but the road fizzled out at Towan Head, a cliff where no more progress could be made by bike without turning back. So I stopped and sat in the sun, making up for this disappointment with a honeycomb and caramel swirl ice cream. An old couple came to rest nearby.

  “Do you want to go any further, Alan?” asked the old woman.

  “No,” he replied sourly.

  “What do you want to do?”

  He looked her right in the eye.

  “I want to drink,” he said.

  It wasn't just the kids who were on a bender.

  *

  The choice in Cornwall is a busy A-road with a steep hill or a non-busy non-A-road with a stupidly steep hill. This lumpy south-west corner of Britain is a gorgeous place to cycle but I'm just not sure there's enough beauty to justify the pain of its gradients if you're carrying heavy bags. And the roads, even the A-roads, are too narrow for cyclists and motorists to happily co-exist. Even when I stopped and dismounted to allow traffic to pass me there wasn't enough room to do so until nothing was coming in the opposite direction. I imagine even driving around here in a massive pain in the arse.

  Newquay had been the western terminus of my British journey. For the next few weeks I'd be heading east. I decided I'd avoid the cars of the A30 and found a quiet road running almost parallel. This route brought me to Castle-an-Dinas, an Iron Age hill fort, now just a ring of large channels. There wasn't much to see but the views were great, especially towards Goss Moor, a large, low forest with strange spiky hills behind. At the gate of the site someone had flyposted an ad for a dog grooming business that urgently demanded some googly eyes.