I wrote last week about regularly visiting one set of grandparents in Sussex as a child, and in this season of summer holidays, my thoughts turn to when we used to visit my maternal grandparents in South Devon.  They had a wonderful house and garden, perched at the top of red sandstone cliffs between Teignmouth and Dawlish.  We could walk down through the wooded dell, onto the sea wall, across the railway line (looking out for approaching trains) and down to the golden sands below.  Anyone who has travelled by train along the mainline down to Exeter will remember the spectacular railway line which follows the coast.  Here was the stuff of summer holidays: paddling and swimming on the glorious golden beaches with grandparents, feeling the furrowed sand beneath my feet when the tide had gone out, and enjoying ‘sausage sizzles’ on Dartmoor (the precursor of barbecues which hadn’t been invented then).  I still remember the excitement of going out fishing on my grandfather’s boat on the Teign estuary, although I quite often felt slightly seasick with the swell of the waves.  Today, I still love going to the seaside on holiday.

We used to drive to Devon from York in our sturdy Dormobile camper bus, and it was a very long journey in those days, with significantly less motorway than exists now.  I seem to recall the journey took about 7 hours to travel 350 miles, and my father (the only driver) often drove through the night while we four girls slept in the back.  This was long before the provision of seatbelts for rear seats, and we used to snuggle down in our sleeping bags to make the journey pass more quickly by sleeping.  Apparently I had a lucky escape – or my guardian angel was watching over me – on one such journey when my mother awoke in the front passenger seat in the middle of the night and saw to her horror that I had my hand on the handle of the sliding door adjacent to my seat, goodness knows for what purpose!  She moved very swiftly to prevent my opening the door as we were going along.

The journey to Devon was certainly a long one, and we used to listen repeatedly to Dad’s Army cassettes on a black cassette player with the result that we all knew the scripts by heart.  It was definitely a group activity, unlike nowadays when many people listen avidly to music on their smart phone, but it tends to be a solitary rather than a shared experience.  Even now, if I watch repeats of Dad’s Army on TV, it brings back to me those long car journeys, and I can still quote much of the dialogue verbatim!  This all goes to prove that what you learn by heart as a child remains with you for a long time.

We used to drive down the Fosse Way in those days, and we all knew that the halfway roundabout, with its elegant silver birch trees, was at Tredington, just north of Shipston-on-Stour.  Anything untoward which happened before the halfway roundabout meant that we would turn round and head back, but once we had passed the roundabout, that was the point of no return!  The most extraordinary coincidence is that we have lived at Shipston, 3 miles from that roundabout, for most of my adult life.  I still drive round it regularly and remember those long-distance drives.  Meanwhile the birch trees have grown much taller.  I firmly believe that everything happens for a reason.  I also think that when we look back on earlier events in our lives, the change in perspective can often highlight a particular significance which we didn’t realise at the time.  The Tredington roundabout seems to symbolise a halfway point in the journey of my life.

Sarah Bourne, Chaplain for the Arts – 4^th August 2021       sarahbourne@banburystmary.org.uk