{"id":2588,"date":"2013-10-02T13:48:06","date_gmt":"2013-10-02T12:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/?p=2588"},"modified":"2026-05-24T06:19:27","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T05:19:27","slug":"steps-back-in-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/2013\/10\/02\/steps-back-in-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Steps Back In Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

We said our cheery farewells to Phil and Ingrid around midday and pointed Eileen’s nose in a southerly direction.\u00a0 At Cross Houses we didn’t spot any houses looking angry, but we did spot a sign advising that the road ahead was closed.\u00a0 We pulled over to work out which direction to take and almost instantly a chap in a car pulled up next to us and asked where we were trying to get to.\u00a0 We told him, and he chirpily said \u201cright, follow me\u201d and so we did.\u00a0 We wiggled along down very narrow country lanes, sometimes wondering if he actually realised we were in a campervan\u00a0 and not a mini. Finally we did pop back out on the main road and managed to stick to the planned route.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Friday we started our twelve- day session of spending time, with someone we knew. everyday.\u00a0 I spent a morning with my lovely mother-in-law, Jean.\u00a0 Rodney drove over to Evesham to check out a part for Eileen at the Autosleeper workshop and then came back to eat a tasty lunch with Jean and me.\u00a0 Our next stop was in a campsite near my old home town, Weston-Super-Mare. On advice from Rodney’s brother, Morley to delay our arrival in Padstow until early evening, we decided to spend the morning exploring my old haunts in Weston-Super-Mare.\u00a0 I clicked into an enthusiastic reminiscing mood and had a fabulous time.\u00a0 We drove past my old grammar school, or should I say, the site of my old grammar school.\u00a0 The buildings have been knocked down and there is now a replacement school in the middle of the playing fields.\u00a0 We drove past my last home at Oldmixon and also had a nose around my first home in Severn Road, which was an off-licence (bottle shop) owned by Courage Brewery, but it is now a real ale free-house pub.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

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\"My
My childhood home, Severn House at 69 Severn Road<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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It was a wonderful three-storey building with cellars underneath and a barn and stables out in the rear yard.\u00a0 It was only about two-hundred metres to the huge sandy beach and was a brilliant place to grow up in (age 7 to age 16).\u00a0 The beer may be good inside, but the building now looked rather sad.\u00a0 The old ‘Severn House’ sign had been removed and the lovely front window was completely boarded in with a huge sign ‘The Waverley’.\u00a0 The back yard was all fenced in and both the barn and the stables were gone.\u00a0 However I was pleased to see that the stone cherubs were still looking anxious above the front door.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"The
The cherubs that watched over our door<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Even though it was raining, we decided to go for a stroll, so we parked Eileen next to Ellenborough Park and strolled past Walliscote Primary School, which brought back fond memories.\u00a0 My headmaster was Mr Bunny, which seems such a wonderful name for a primary school headmaster and it’s a surname that I ‘ve never come across again.\u00a0 We ambled down the High Street and on to the Playhouse, we zigzagged through to the beach front at The Old Thatched Cottage Restaurant, where I worked as a waitress in the school holidays; that was a tough job, but the left-over food, mid-afternoon, was good.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

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\"On
Standing on the Grand Pier<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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We reached the Grand Pier just as the speakers were booming out the sound of Cliff Richards singing ‘Summer Holiday’; As a child I used to kiss the television when he appeared on it….!\u00a0 The Grand Pier with its Ghost Train, Hall of Mirrors and slot machines burned down five years ago, but it has now been rebuilt to look roughly the same,\u00a0though curiously still not long enough for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution to be based there. When the tide goes out at Weston-Super-Mare, it really and truly goes out, and the Grand Pier is left standing on the sand with no water around it.\u00a0 When I was a child I used to think we sent the sea over to Wales and they then sent it back, twice a day…..doh!\u00a0\u00a0 I ‘m still wondering why they didn’t rebuild the new pier further out past the low tide mark and move the R.N.L.I. boats to it. When we later drove round the seafront to Birnbeck Pier, or the Old Pier, as we used to call it, I was surprised to find it still standing, though only just standing by the look of it.\u00a0 Walls are gone, roofs have collapsed and most of the decking is rotten, but there is one narrow section that has been repaired to enable the lifeboatmen to still reach the R.N.L.I. Station to launch their boats in an emergency.\u00a0 It all seems a rather crazy set up and very sad to see the old pier in such a miserable state.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"Birnbeck
Birnbeck (Old) Pier in a very sad state<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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As a child I loved walking along on the top of the sea wall, it was too boring just walking along the flat promenade; there needed to be the added excitement of the possibility of falling off.\u00a0 So naturally, I crept a short distance on the wall, but it wasn’t a good idea to go too far at my age with dodgy knees.\u00a0 I managed to <\/span>not<\/b><\/span> buy any candy floss, toffee apples, or a stick of rock, but I did have a youthful moment when we wandered in to the Winter Gardens. The door to the ballroom was open, so we crept in and I revived my teenage memories.\u00a0 I used to go there on a Saturday night to watch, and dance to, some classic bands: T Rex, Curved Air, Rod Stewart and The Faces, Mott The Hoople, Slade, Procol Harem, oh blimey, I do feel old now with that selection of bands!!!<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"In
In the Winter Gardens ballroom<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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When Rodney had finally had enough of my reminiscing, we hopped back in to Eileen and drove, on a road that never existed in my day, out to the M5, a motorway that also never existed in my day.\u00a0 Rodney has promised me a night at the Grand Hotel on the seafront one day; maybe my 70<\/span>th<\/span><\/sup> birthday, we probably don’t need to return again before then.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our next stop was in Padstow, to stay with Morley and Anthea for three nights at their Bed and Breakfast. Eileen had to stay on her own, parked beside Rick Stein’s deli, fishmongers and fish & chip shop, but she had a nice view of the Camel Estuary.\u00a0\u00a0 Up at the B & B, Anthea fed us extremely well with home cooked meals and a couple of delicious clotted cream teas and on Monday, Morley took us on a long drive to Buckfastleigh in South Devon to see an old pub, The Valiant Soldier.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

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\"Padstow
Padstow Harbour<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\"Eileen's
Eileen’s view across the Camel River<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The place was open, but we had to pay \u00a34 each to get in and we couldn’t even get a drink when we were in there.\u00a0 Apparently, in 1965, the brewery decided there were too many pubs in the town and withdrew the licence.\u00a0 So when the widowed landlady called time on the last night, she promptly downed tools and never cleaned up, she just closed the door and lived upstairs.\u00a0 The doors remained closed for thirty years until the property was put up for sale in the mid-nineties.\u00a0 When the doors were re-opened in 1996 there were still cigarette butts in the ashtrays, unwashed glasses left on the bar, the optics still had alcohol in them and there was even change still in the till.\u00a0 It’s a perfect time-capsule of a pub left for thirty years untouched. It’s quite fascinating.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

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\"Trying
Trying to get a drink in the public bar….<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\"The
The Valiant Soldier<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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On Tuesday morning, we returned to Eileen and set off north, leaving Cornwall, crossing Devon and in to Somerset again.\u00a0 I fancied stopping at the Blake Museum in Bridgewater, but apparently it’s not full of stuffed Blakes; it’s a museum about Bridgewater, situated in Blake Street…. shame.\u00a0 Instead we purchased a new bulb for Eileen’s security system and stopped briefly for a bit of shopping in Street (that’s a town) and then checked in to the Cheddar Mendip Heights caravan site, which is nowhere near the source of the big cheese, but up some terribly narrow lanes near the village of Priddy.\u00a0 The campsite manager said he sold the best mature Cheddar cheese in the world and as he was a big man with a big beard, we thought it best to agree with him.\u00a0 We bought a block and popped it in to Eileen’s empty fridge.<\/span><\/p>\n

I found it hard to fall asleep on our last night in Eileen.\u00a0 Maybe it was the thought that for the next month we would be hopping in and out of our friends’ spare beds, dragging our suitcases here and there.\u00a0 Maybe it was the realisation that we wouldn’t be sleeping in our cosy bed in our little ‘snail house’ for at least five months. Maybe it was the wind and rain blowing around in the trees outside, as if they were trying to say \u201cgo home to somewhere warmer, winter is arriving here\u201d.\u00a0 Or maybe it was just Rodney snoring a little too loudly beside me.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

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\"Waiting
Waiting in the Ladies bar for a gentleman to bring me a drink<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We said our cheery farewells to Phil and Ingrid around midday and pointed Eileen’s nose in a southerly direction.\u00a0 At Cross Houses we didn’t spot any houses looking angry, but we did spot a sign advising that the road ahead was closed.\u00a0 We pulled over to work out which direction to take and almost instantly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-on-the-road-in-great-britain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8353,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2588\/revisions\/8353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}