High Ham and Somerset – Page 11 – For the fainthearted . . .

Wanting to be significant

The Severn bore has been flowing. The Bore is caused by high tides in the funnel-like Bristol Channel causing a wave of water to flow over the top of the waters of the Servern that are flowing seawards. The bore can be up to two metres high, a formidable water wall moving up into Gloucestershire.

In Somerset, we have our own bore that flows up the River Parrett to Bridgwater. While the Severn bore might reach the height of six feet and six inches, the Parrett bore is more likely …

Bullying policemen

The postmen drove red ones and the Post Office telephone engineers drove bright yellow, my uncle’s Bedford van was white. It remains fresh in the memory.

In childhood, I loved going out with him as he did the farm rounds: checking livestock; drawing water from wells; moving electric fences; delivering bales of hay; tying gates firmly.

One summer’s evening, he had parked at the roadside and gone from the van to check cattle, telling me to stay in the van. It was a fine summer evening and I sat looking …

Looking for the boat to Avalon

In the dying light of the winter evening, the moorland to the north and south of the ridge that forms the Polden Hills was only greyness and shadow, were there to have been a barge carrying a mortally wounded king to his final rest at Avalon, it would have been difficult to discern among the unidentifiable shapes.

BBC Radio 3’s Words and Music programme accompanied the drive along the winding road that would have taken me to Glastonbury if I had not turned off the ridge and dropped down to …

Twelfth Night in Somerset

Always a sceptical race, suspicious of innovation and resentful about change, it took the English one hundred and seventy years to accept the Gregorian calendar. Introduced by Pope Gregory in 1582, it was not introduced in England until 1752. The New Year then began on Lady Day, 25th March and twelve day shift in the dates was not going to be allowed to change the real start of the New Year. If anyone is confused as to why the financial and tax year begins on 6th April, it is because …

A wee mouse

The darkness in the mornings takes longer to retreat than the evening gloom. At 6.30 am, it is still night-time when driving across Sedgemoor. The road to Pedwell is bordered by deep ditches on either side, even a drift onto the verge is sufficient to find oneself sliding into the black brackish water that runs deep when there are winter rains. On one recent morning, the driver of a lorry coming toward the village had ventured too far onto the soft margin and found his lorry suddenly at a forty-five …

Gentlemen no longer seen

A gentleman of the road. It is years since I last heard the term used, forty years or more since I last saw one. The last gentleman of the road I recall seeing was on Telegraph Hill, a steep road between Exeter and Plymouth. To walk the road at Telegraph Hill now would be to put your life in immediate danger from the lanes of traffic moving at 70 mph. It must have been a regular route for the old gentleman, for even in the 1970s the traffic was busy.…