Driving to Plymouth

Think back on your most memorable road trip.

Can be wet and windy!

In the 1980’s we went to visit a friend from college for the first time. It was a journey we would make every couple of years until  he moved up to the North of England.

We lived in the Midlands and I’d learnt to drive about 6 months before. I was driving a Morris Marina.

We took the M6 then M5 motorways until it ran out and changed to an A road. We stopped off for breakfast at a service station because the journey was about 240 miles. I hadn’t been on a motorway very often and as we came out of the service station  I ended up on the North bound slip road! I did something illegal. I reversed back down the road and then took the South road!

Luckily the route was very simple, we got to Plymouth, and the house we were visiting was a few hundred yards away from the motorway junction. I remember we took bicycles on the roof of the car so the rest of the week was spent cycling to beaches and visiting various interesting places. The trip back was uneventful!

This was pre satnav and we used maps to navigate. To be honest I still use an A to Z if I want to find somewhere. But my driving is restricted to short journeys these days.

A striped tee shirt

Describe an item you were incredibly attached to as a youth. What became of it?

I miss that tee shirt

It was orange and white

I felt like a pirate

Fun to play in.

I was only a child

Wore it forever

But it wore through

Holes in the cotton

But wouldn’t let it go!

Eventually grew out of it

My mom used it to dust!

Longshore drift…

Someone asked a question on Facebook about posts sticking up through a beach in lines.

I have a relative at the coast and had wondered the same thing myself. I asked and found out that they were used to slow something called longshore drift. It’s where over time tides moving along the coast shift sands sideways. Groynes (boards) between the posts held the sand back and stopped the beach being washed away.

The Leopard

My friend sent me this photo (I don’t have an attribution for it). This was a few year’s ago when it was open and the Leopard Hotel was running ghost tours and serving lovely food.

Then one of the owners died and it was taken over by a family member. I don’t know what happened but I think Covid didn’t help. In the end it closed and the owner moved elsewhere. Although the frontage looked OK it needed a tremendous amount of money spending on it as it was partly derelict in the back upper floors.

The hotel stood empty for months, it was bought by an entrepreneur who may have been going to turn it into flats. Unfortunately someone got in and apparently set up a cannabis farm in it (what I heard). Then it simply burnt down. Some of the frontage may remain but the place is boarded up.

I was involved for a while because I painted the murals in the back room, the Arnold Bennett Suite. I never got decent photos in there. I do hope it can be restored.

Mystery Plays coming back?

Mask made for one of the plays

Something is being planned. Over several years the Penkhull Mystery Plays involved the local community in theatrical projects to bring people together. The plays bought a mixture of fact and fiction, history and spirituality together to create a one day festival of fun to penkhull village Green. Usually in early or mid July.

Up to 400 people would be involved in making props and costumes, acting and setting up the play and other work. All these activities built around the central performance where local adults and children got together to bring stories such as the history of the Trent and Mersey canal, Jonah and the Whale, the song of Solomon, a history of the 1842 peasants revolt in the Potteries and other interesting and fun stories onto the village green as a substantial play.


The organisers also included singing and making music for the shows. Writing scripts, putting on seperate performances for the day including morris dancing, maypole dancing  local choirs, brass bands, Ukelele players and a tower of song where individual musicians could perform. There was also an annual tug of war competition and circus skills workshops on the village green. A recent introduction was the Titchy Theatre where new writing was put on as playlets by a small number of volunteer actors. There were also stalls for such things as bakers and crafters and local charities together with plant sales.
It was only as Covid began that the Mystery Plays were toned down and had to be suspended. But with the 100th anniversary of the uniting of the six towns into the City of Stoke on Trent and the 20th (is it 25?) Anniversary of the Mysteries it feels like an important time to bring it back to Penkhull.

Another year almost gone…

Tempus Fugit

Time flies, life goes on

Hurt and pain are never gone

Somewhat diminished

But still living here

Coiled round my heart

With everything dear.

Life seen in chunks

Days weeks and months

One year follows another

Some I can smother

Forgetting the pain

But then it rises again.

My life will continue

My future uncertain

Draw back the veil

Open the curtain

On next year’s adventures

And will I have dentures?

(well I couldn’t find a better rhyme…!)

Shortest day

People were meeting for sunrise at Stonehenge this morning as today was the shortest day of the year in the northern Hemisphere. This is the Northern winter solstice.

Apparently the day was less that 8 hours long, although it was so cloudy and grey it might have been shorter for all I could tell.

Of course on the equator days and nights are pretty much of equal length and I presume the Southern Hemisphere had its longest day either yesterday or today. What will it be like in six months when it’s summer here again? Who knows.