The third series of Michael Portillo Train Travels commences at Swindon and continued through Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. Yesterday in describing the second journey to Scotland I mentioned the 39 Steps in relation to the Firth of Forth Railway bridge and this afternoon as I commenced to write, first checking TV programmes for the day, I found that the 1959 Kenneth Moore version was commencing at the that very moment. I had time to check the post during the first advert break and eureka I was notified that my lawyers had been successful and obtained reimbursement of the insurance policy excess thus protecting my no claims bonus and premiums for the renewal later in the year. It was a great relief as the issue was not clear cut owing to my inability to be precise about what happened. This is a cause for celebration.
I have visited Swindon during visits to Calne in search of family heritage, staying at Travel Lodges on the M4 and going into the outskirts of the town to the Cineworld Cinema, the supermarket and for a couple of meals. Family ancestors did work for the railway after it was established in Swindon and also in Wales. The Railway that created work and provided accommodation for large numbers of families has significantly contracted but I believe that railway carriages continue to be constructed in the town.
I have not visited Bath the great Georgian town and where despite the medicinal qualities of the hot spa baths being disproved they have reopened to great success providing warm bathing throughout the year and with panoramic views over the city. It is now on my list for things to do before I die, combined with a visit to the cricket ground at Bristol.
I have stayed at Bristol, yes it was for a conference, at an excellent small hotel at a time when the town was in the process of reinventing itself. Bristol became a major port to the USA and Australia and Brunel’s Trains from Paddington going to the dockside. His SS Great Britain is now on show there. The steam powered ship was originally designed as a luxury first and second class vessel to the USA with only 240 passengers but did not pay was therefore adapted, trebling the number to Australia where use was also made of wind power from the six masts. After completing and publishing research on the history of my maternal family which lived in Calne since the 15th century I was contacted by descendents of a distant first cousin whose family went to Australia on the first voyage of the SS Great Britain.
I also have travelled from Oxford to Bristol on the same line when as a Child Care officer I had to collect two teenage runaways who had absconded from a remand home and had got as far as Cornwall before being apprehended by the police. The journey back proved to me the most challenging albeit entertaining of my professional social work experience as they regaled passengers with the intimate details of their recent experiences. Fortunately I was accompanied by a mature female companion who was of assistance when they attempted to run off again with two squadies on the train.
The second stretch of this journey is between Yatton and Weston Super Mare. I had no knowledge of Yatton before the programme. The area is famed for the growing of strawberries.
I first visited the South West in my Childhood when the family came to Ifracombe in North Devon and we had a coach trip to Cheddar Gorge which Michael visits, and where we explored the great cave. I have seen large and better lit caves in Gibraltar and France since but in the late 1940‘s and 1950‘s I found the cave and the gorge amazing. Cheddar is more well known for its cheese and what I did not know is that authentic Cheddar is matured in one of the caves.
I have not been to Weston Super Mare and after watching the programme I am not inclined to plan to do so.
Michael commenced his next stretch at Torquay. I had a family holiday at Paignton in my childhood which is the next resort with sands whereas Torquay is more of a fashionable harbour although in fact as Portillo records 20000 people passed through the railway station on one day in its heyday as a resort rivalling the South of France. The climate is milder than elsewhere and is in a sheltered position on the West Coast with Palm Trees and Mediterranean flowers but the temperatures are not significantly different and in fact only a few degrees above the average elsewhere. Decades later I was to holiday at Brixham Harbour and to return to Torquay and Paignton. During of these holidays I travelled on the steam railway to Dartmouth which Michael undertook during this episode. The river Dart is beautiful and the train journey is one of the most picturesque in the UK. Dartmouth is also where ten British Naval College for officers is located. It is also where the TV series the Onedin Line was filmed, plus Falmouth and Exeter.
Michael continued to Totness a town which is trying to become carbon neutral and an example environmentally, introducing rickshaw taxi’s, encouraging the use of local produce and a currency for exchange in the locality. I have no recollection of visiting the town.
I cannot remember where it was in Devon that my car broke down on the way to a family holiday at Mousehole, Cornwall, pronounced Mousal, I think. The gearbox went and I was to get to the car park where amazingly there was a coach going to Penzance and a taxi ride from our destination. I was able to contact the AA and left the keys so that the car could be collected and taken to a garage. I then travelled back by train to collect the car when the work was completed.
I was also unfamiliar with the third segment from Bugle to Megavissey. Bugle is a station in mid Cornwall from where. Close to St Austell, Michael visited the largest open Clay mine still in operation and using the latest equipment it produces an enormous output compared with that when the manufacture of China was in its heyday. The reason for the increase has been the use of clay to produce white paper and in other processes.
Michael the visited the Lost gardens of Heligan close to Megavissey and created by the Tremayne family in the 18th family, then fell into disuse and restored in the 1990’s about which there were several TV shows. The gardens have a collection of ancient large rhododendrons and camellias, lakes various flower gardens and sub tropical tree ferns attracting several hundred thousand visitors a year. The final subject was the fishing for pilchards which became and essential fish food during the Second World War. As a consequence the fish became unpopular and have been rebranded as sardines and which have become just as popular.
The last segment commences at the sand dunes of Perran and a lost church. I have stayed at Hayle close to St Ives where the holiday homes are among the dunes on stilts, similar to a place in the South of France. The first holiday had been a Mousehole on the south facing coast, an attractive fishing village of colourful cottages. I still remember a glorious meal at a French restaurant at St Ives with its Artists colony and where I acquired one of the famous oblong vases from the Troika pottery shop. I was attracted to most of the items on display but funds were limited otherwise I would have started a collection which would have been worth thousands to day as reselling prices have risen following the closure of the pottery. During the holiday visits were made to Newquay where I believe on a rain swept summer’s day the film Mary Poppins was seen and to Falmouth with its harbour as well as Land’s End, and the open air Minack Theatre on a rocky headland which has been performing plays throughout the summer for 75 years
In the programme Michael visited the last remaining tin mine which because of changes in production requirements is anticipating a demand for increased production because of the change in tin content for solder and other uses. His final visit on this journey was to the beautiful Helford river where oyster farming has been developing again since the last outbreak of disease decimated those farmed around the UK. In the programme the owner of a farm argued that most of the concern about eating oysters’ is unjustified. The best way to eat them is raw and alive from the opened half shell with lemon juice or perhaps chopped shallots, mixed peppercorn and white wine. They can also be smoked, baked, stewed, fried, boiled, roasted or pickled according to taste, but they must also have been alive at the time of preparation. There is health value but as an aphrodisiac questionable.
I have written about the 1939 Hitchcock film, the 39 Steps with Robert Donat, the 1979 production with Robert Powell and the latest version in 2008. Less familiar to me was the 1959 version with pipe smoking Kenneth Moore who first encounters the doomed spy catcher in a London Park. The film includes the scene where he escapes from the police on the Firth of Forth Railway Bridge. He gets a lift from Sid James as a lorry driver who has done his time and recognises Hannay, putting him in the caring hands of Brenda De Banzie who looked after him in every sense as he looked after her with husband’s permission when he too needed to lie low from the coppers. In this instance because of the time factor Hannay disguises himself among a cycling group to get past the police check point.
I was delighted that this film includes the Falls of Dochart at the western end of Loch Tay near Killin with Kenmore village at the other end, and which is over looked by Ben Lawers, a 4000 ft mountain which I have climbed. I have spent two summer holidays in accommodation along the Tay valley first in an isolated hillside cottage and then in a second cottage on the same estate. It was only during the second trip that the purchase of a local Sunday revealed why the cottages had become holiday lets. This involved a crime of passion during the second world war involving both dwellings, a revelation I withheld from everyone else until the end of the holiday.
In the film the political gathering is replaced by a residential school for girls, but all the other features remain true to the original John Buchan novel.
I have also been following N.C.I.S given the haphazard way the episodes are being shown. The Naval intelligence and Investigation homeland unit reached an interesting phase with confirmation that the father of the director was still alive after she had buried him over a decade beforehand. The man who killed her father, an international arms dealer who she has attempted to find ever since also reappears as the father of Tony’s new girlfriend who works at a local hospital. This has been a deep undercover operation but where the father arrives to take him and his daughter for breakfast and announces that he knows who the young man really is. Tony then appears to have been blown up in his car which only later they learn was being driven by the father’s assistant. This was not in fact an attempt to kill Tony but the daughter. The splendid Abbie works out that the bomb is the same as those used to murder arms dealers around the world. Someone is getting rid of their competitors. The father appears to have escaped but is seen floating in the river with a bullet in his head. The daughter is so shocked to learn the truth about Tony that he breaks off the relationship. Understanding what has happened her father arranges for her to go into hiding before his assassination takes places. Tony realises that he had fallen in love although it is evident that ‘Davied’ who resisted all his earlier advances has fallen for him since their near death experience together.
The former Attorney General gives evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry on Wednesday and the former Prime Minister Tony Blair on Friday. The following week it is the turn of Clare Short.
I have visited Swindon during visits to Calne in search of family heritage, staying at Travel Lodges on the M4 and going into the outskirts of the town to the Cineworld Cinema, the supermarket and for a couple of meals. Family ancestors did work for the railway after it was established in Swindon and also in Wales. The Railway that created work and provided accommodation for large numbers of families has significantly contracted but I believe that railway carriages continue to be constructed in the town.
I have not visited Bath the great Georgian town and where despite the medicinal qualities of the hot spa baths being disproved they have reopened to great success providing warm bathing throughout the year and with panoramic views over the city. It is now on my list for things to do before I die, combined with a visit to the cricket ground at Bristol.
I have stayed at Bristol, yes it was for a conference, at an excellent small hotel at a time when the town was in the process of reinventing itself. Bristol became a major port to the USA and Australia and Brunel’s Trains from Paddington going to the dockside. His SS Great Britain is now on show there. The steam powered ship was originally designed as a luxury first and second class vessel to the USA with only 240 passengers but did not pay was therefore adapted, trebling the number to Australia where use was also made of wind power from the six masts. After completing and publishing research on the history of my maternal family which lived in Calne since the 15th century I was contacted by descendents of a distant first cousin whose family went to Australia on the first voyage of the SS Great Britain.
I also have travelled from Oxford to Bristol on the same line when as a Child Care officer I had to collect two teenage runaways who had absconded from a remand home and had got as far as Cornwall before being apprehended by the police. The journey back proved to me the most challenging albeit entertaining of my professional social work experience as they regaled passengers with the intimate details of their recent experiences. Fortunately I was accompanied by a mature female companion who was of assistance when they attempted to run off again with two squadies on the train.
The second stretch of this journey is between Yatton and Weston Super Mare. I had no knowledge of Yatton before the programme. The area is famed for the growing of strawberries.
I first visited the South West in my Childhood when the family came to Ifracombe in North Devon and we had a coach trip to Cheddar Gorge which Michael visits, and where we explored the great cave. I have seen large and better lit caves in Gibraltar and France since but in the late 1940‘s and 1950‘s I found the cave and the gorge amazing. Cheddar is more well known for its cheese and what I did not know is that authentic Cheddar is matured in one of the caves.
I have not been to Weston Super Mare and after watching the programme I am not inclined to plan to do so.
Michael commenced his next stretch at Torquay. I had a family holiday at Paignton in my childhood which is the next resort with sands whereas Torquay is more of a fashionable harbour although in fact as Portillo records 20000 people passed through the railway station on one day in its heyday as a resort rivalling the South of France. The climate is milder than elsewhere and is in a sheltered position on the West Coast with Palm Trees and Mediterranean flowers but the temperatures are not significantly different and in fact only a few degrees above the average elsewhere. Decades later I was to holiday at Brixham Harbour and to return to Torquay and Paignton. During of these holidays I travelled on the steam railway to Dartmouth which Michael undertook during this episode. The river Dart is beautiful and the train journey is one of the most picturesque in the UK. Dartmouth is also where ten British Naval College for officers is located. It is also where the TV series the Onedin Line was filmed, plus Falmouth and Exeter.
Michael continued to Totness a town which is trying to become carbon neutral and an example environmentally, introducing rickshaw taxi’s, encouraging the use of local produce and a currency for exchange in the locality. I have no recollection of visiting the town.
I cannot remember where it was in Devon that my car broke down on the way to a family holiday at Mousehole, Cornwall, pronounced Mousal, I think. The gearbox went and I was to get to the car park where amazingly there was a coach going to Penzance and a taxi ride from our destination. I was able to contact the AA and left the keys so that the car could be collected and taken to a garage. I then travelled back by train to collect the car when the work was completed.
I was also unfamiliar with the third segment from Bugle to Megavissey. Bugle is a station in mid Cornwall from where. Close to St Austell, Michael visited the largest open Clay mine still in operation and using the latest equipment it produces an enormous output compared with that when the manufacture of China was in its heyday. The reason for the increase has been the use of clay to produce white paper and in other processes.
Michael the visited the Lost gardens of Heligan close to Megavissey and created by the Tremayne family in the 18th family, then fell into disuse and restored in the 1990’s about which there were several TV shows. The gardens have a collection of ancient large rhododendrons and camellias, lakes various flower gardens and sub tropical tree ferns attracting several hundred thousand visitors a year. The final subject was the fishing for pilchards which became and essential fish food during the Second World War. As a consequence the fish became unpopular and have been rebranded as sardines and which have become just as popular.
The last segment commences at the sand dunes of Perran and a lost church. I have stayed at Hayle close to St Ives where the holiday homes are among the dunes on stilts, similar to a place in the South of France. The first holiday had been a Mousehole on the south facing coast, an attractive fishing village of colourful cottages. I still remember a glorious meal at a French restaurant at St Ives with its Artists colony and where I acquired one of the famous oblong vases from the Troika pottery shop. I was attracted to most of the items on display but funds were limited otherwise I would have started a collection which would have been worth thousands to day as reselling prices have risen following the closure of the pottery. During the holiday visits were made to Newquay where I believe on a rain swept summer’s day the film Mary Poppins was seen and to Falmouth with its harbour as well as Land’s End, and the open air Minack Theatre on a rocky headland which has been performing plays throughout the summer for 75 years
In the programme Michael visited the last remaining tin mine which because of changes in production requirements is anticipating a demand for increased production because of the change in tin content for solder and other uses. His final visit on this journey was to the beautiful Helford river where oyster farming has been developing again since the last outbreak of disease decimated those farmed around the UK. In the programme the owner of a farm argued that most of the concern about eating oysters’ is unjustified. The best way to eat them is raw and alive from the opened half shell with lemon juice or perhaps chopped shallots, mixed peppercorn and white wine. They can also be smoked, baked, stewed, fried, boiled, roasted or pickled according to taste, but they must also have been alive at the time of preparation. There is health value but as an aphrodisiac questionable.
I have written about the 1939 Hitchcock film, the 39 Steps with Robert Donat, the 1979 production with Robert Powell and the latest version in 2008. Less familiar to me was the 1959 version with pipe smoking Kenneth Moore who first encounters the doomed spy catcher in a London Park. The film includes the scene where he escapes from the police on the Firth of Forth Railway Bridge. He gets a lift from Sid James as a lorry driver who has done his time and recognises Hannay, putting him in the caring hands of Brenda De Banzie who looked after him in every sense as he looked after her with husband’s permission when he too needed to lie low from the coppers. In this instance because of the time factor Hannay disguises himself among a cycling group to get past the police check point.
I was delighted that this film includes the Falls of Dochart at the western end of Loch Tay near Killin with Kenmore village at the other end, and which is over looked by Ben Lawers, a 4000 ft mountain which I have climbed. I have spent two summer holidays in accommodation along the Tay valley first in an isolated hillside cottage and then in a second cottage on the same estate. It was only during the second trip that the purchase of a local Sunday revealed why the cottages had become holiday lets. This involved a crime of passion during the second world war involving both dwellings, a revelation I withheld from everyone else until the end of the holiday.
In the film the political gathering is replaced by a residential school for girls, but all the other features remain true to the original John Buchan novel.
I have also been following N.C.I.S given the haphazard way the episodes are being shown. The Naval intelligence and Investigation homeland unit reached an interesting phase with confirmation that the father of the director was still alive after she had buried him over a decade beforehand. The man who killed her father, an international arms dealer who she has attempted to find ever since also reappears as the father of Tony’s new girlfriend who works at a local hospital. This has been a deep undercover operation but where the father arrives to take him and his daughter for breakfast and announces that he knows who the young man really is. Tony then appears to have been blown up in his car which only later they learn was being driven by the father’s assistant. This was not in fact an attempt to kill Tony but the daughter. The splendid Abbie works out that the bomb is the same as those used to murder arms dealers around the world. Someone is getting rid of their competitors. The father appears to have escaped but is seen floating in the river with a bullet in his head. The daughter is so shocked to learn the truth about Tony that he breaks off the relationship. Understanding what has happened her father arranges for her to go into hiding before his assassination takes places. Tony realises that he had fallen in love although it is evident that ‘Davied’ who resisted all his earlier advances has fallen for him since their near death experience together.
The former Attorney General gives evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry on Wednesday and the former Prime Minister Tony Blair on Friday. The following week it is the turn of Clare Short.
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