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Transcript

Walking The Dog Episode 1 · UK Column Radio

0:08
Well, let's go poppy. So we're just walking along the road. This
0:43
is the uh main little road which comes through my village. It can be
0:49
quite busy. We're past the uh local shop with some lovely little flowers outside,
1:03
and we're just about to turn down the hill and then we can walk
1:11
through church lane and we can then start our walk properly. One of the
1:19
things I've noticed is that you've got to be very careful these days with the
1:23
electric cars. Hello, how you guys? What you want sympathy? No,
1:42
yes, the electric cars are the things because they drive as fast as
1:47
other cars, but you can't hear them. And I'm wondering how many people
1:57
are going to catch sight of me to talking to myself, so excuse me
2:04
talking to myself, And of course all their suspicions are going to be confirmed.
2:12
But that takes us into another journey of my life in this little village
2:15
and what happened many many years ago when I started to speak out. So
2:25
we're now going down the lane. We're going past the local church and the
2:30
churchyard. It's looking pretty neat at the moment. I think the men have
2:35
been in cutting it out, cutting down in here greenery. Now this little
2:53
lane can get quite we used to get quite dark. They seem to have
2:59
upgraded the the lights, but you used to come down here and think,
3:04
wow, let's let you off. How are you talking? Okay, So
3:30
there we are. We've already met one of the long standing dog walkers,
3:36
and we're through now into the park, which is actually a really nice place.
3:40
It's quite a big area. It's basically flat, and it then drops
3:47
off down towards the river, and you've got two play areas. You've got
3:52
a big one for the older children where they can play football and they've got
3:58
all the climbing stuff, and there's a separate one which is sort of screened
4:01
off for the younger children, the little ones. And then the ground drops
4:10
away quite sharply to the river, and the other side of the valley is
4:15
quite flat. If you get a lot of rain, the river can rise
4:19
quite a lot. And I've seen a field on the far side completely flooded,
4:26
and also flooded a couple of the local houses at the time, which
4:29
was pretty amazing. Really. Now, this is an odd thing. I'm
4:35
just passing on my left because it's a tree that was planted in memory of
4:42
a baby that died and the date on it is the well. The date
4:50
is in memory of the beautiful baby that died, and it's from twenty second
4:56
of November twenty sixteen to the twenty four Actually that little child only lived a
5:01
couple of days, but a tree was planted. But it's very strange because
5:06
it's sort of become a shrine and it's covered with all strange things still left
5:14
over from Christmas, Christmas tree decorations and flashing lights, and nobody's got the
5:20
courage to say, actually, most people don't like it, and yes,
5:30
there's a subject for another day. Perhaps. So we've now got to the
5:34
end of the park and we're just coming up a little bit of a slope,
5:40
and I've got the choice here because I can go straight on for a
5:45
walk through the woods, where I can turn left and go down to the
5:47
river. The dog's going to look at me in a minute because she likes
5:54
going straight on, so perhaps we'll do that. And this is an interesting
6:03
track because it used to be the track along which the what do we describe
6:13
him as, the lord of the village would come in his wagon to church.
6:18
So it's a path where he could come from the local estate along this
6:25
back lane away from the main road. He could do this very scenic ride
6:32
to church and back without having to get too close to the hoyper LOI we
6:43
can already hear some of the birds singing, which is nice. I've noticed
6:46
this over the last few days. It's like the the winter's maybe receding a
6:54
bit. Maybe we're heading a bit towards the spring, the lighter area.
7:00
Sorry, the later evenings are coming on. And yeah, it just gives
7:06
you a nice feeling. So I had the choice today did I, well,
7:15
did I talk about serious things or did I just talk about the nice
7:23
things? And although I've already been up for an hour or so, having
7:30
a look at what's been going on, of course most of it is very
7:31
clue me. So I thought we'd just stick with trying out the recorder on
7:40
this track and see how we got on. Poppy's trotting along. She's very
7:47
happy she's on squirrel patrol, because I have to say, as a dog
7:56
with quite a lot of terrier in there, she's quite keen on squirrels.
8:01
But her creepy thing is that she'll stop and look her up into the trees.
8:07
And I've never seen a dog do this before, and she'll sit and
8:13
look up and see whether there's any of the little furry long tail creatures,
8:20
and if she sees them, she will be off because she always rates her
8:26
chances. But I have to say she's getting older and the little squirrels seem
8:35
to be pretty fast. So I'm pleased to report there's been no sad incidents
8:41
for quite a while. Now. I know there's quite a lot of UK
8:54
column viewers and listeners who are dog owners, because whenever we put up something
9:01
to do with dogs, we can see there's always a lot of positive comments,
9:09
and so I really hoped that by doing this we might us dog walkers
9:16
might have a bit of bondy. And I'm coming up into the woods.
9:22
Now this is a track. It's just a muddy track, a lot of
9:26
leaves on the ground, a lot of quite old trees here, so most
9:33
of them in this area are all covered with ivy, and for a lot
9:39
of them, it's been the end of them. But this is really part
9:45
of the fact that nobody tends the woods properly anymore. But it is a
9:52
lovely area. And if I stand still in a minute, we can still
10:01
hear the birds and a little bit of the hum and the traffic on the
10:05
road, which is about half a mile away. So there you are.
10:22
We'll get onto the quieter side in a minute. The ground he is covered
10:28
with a lot of dead leaves and little sticks and a lot of ground ivy.
10:37
But the other thing that's here is wild garlic. And in whatever a
10:46
little bit of time, you can walk through here and it will smell like
10:50
garlic and we'll be in a sea of white flowers. It's very pretty,
10:56
if a bit smelly. Yeah, something nice. So the track here is
11:05
mainly now dead leaves, and everywhere, I'm pleased to say is very clean,
11:11
even though these tracks get warped a lot. There. Well, there's
11:18
no litter that I'm seen today, and most of us, the keen dog
11:22
walkers, if we see it, we pick it up because it improves the
11:28
look of the place and it makes us feel better. So there we are.
11:31
That would be the good deed. I'm not sure whether you can hear
11:37
that. But a little bit of breeze there is blowing, the blowing the
11:41
rain off the trees. This is a bit misty, gray misty. The
11:50
rain stopped, but it's still really damp, and yeah, I can see.
11:56
I can see now a little bit of the valley through the trees.
12:05
Maybe you can hear a little bit of the wind come into the windy side,
12:07
because we're heading over to the southwest, excuse me. And yeah,
12:15
the track winds around this area used to be used for breeding pheasants, so
12:22
there was some walled off areas and obviously in days i'd say principally between the
12:30
wars, maybe a little bit just afterwards, when the estate was run properly,
12:35
this area was one of the sheltered bits of the woods where I think
12:41
they raised pheasants. But now it's pretty much neglected and the woodland does as
12:48
best it can, but it's still very pretty. No leaves on the trees.
12:54
Of course, you have to be careful because we're coming down quite a
13:03
quite a steep slope and it's pretty slippery underfoot, and this little bit is
13:11
a little trap waiting for the unwary when you have to step down over some
13:16
quite big, muddy sort of artificial steps, and then we come down on
13:22
a lower track. And this is really lovely because when the sun is shining,
13:30
you just here walking along quite a narrow track where on your right it
13:35
drops down quite sharply to the river. But you're under the canop here the
13:41
trees. Today it's not looking that beautiful because it's misty and damp, and
13:50
I wonder how we're doing, and I wonder how the audience is reacting to
13:54
me taking them on a walk. There's a cave on my left. It's
14:00
a very interesting cave. So the hill that I've just come down over is
14:05
mainly limestone, and in this area there's within a few hundred yards of me,
14:11
actually there's an entrance to a big cave system where when I came to
14:16
the village many years ago, you were able to go in the public was
14:20
able to buy a little ticket and go in and see the cave system where
14:26
they did fight pretty interesting things, including saber saber tooth, tiger teeth.
14:33
My goodness, it's a bit early in the morning for that sort of thing.
14:37
But of course, eventually the government got going with the fact that everybody
14:43
doing anything positive locally it had to be insured, and that pushed the costs
14:48
up, and so eventually the local estate said, no, we can't keep
14:52
this running, and it was all closed down. The same thing happened with
14:56
our firework. Firework celebrations on the fifth of November, which used to be
15:03
lovely, but eventually they were stopped because people got frightened about public liability and
15:11
we had to have sufficient insurance. It's funny, isn't it. I said,
15:16
we do this walk and we've just concentrated on the nice things, but
15:22
a few memories quickly bring me back to the reality of what's going on.
15:28
I'll try and move on from there. So we've walked I don't know,
15:33
probably about one hundred and fifty yards just down this gentle slope at the side
15:37
of the valley, and what's appearing on our right is the old railway track
15:46
which used to come out of Plymouth and run a long an estuary, part
15:54
of the estuary, and then it would actually come up alongside the river here
16:00
to a terminus in the village where I live. So it's quite interesting to
16:06
see the old track. And in a minute we're going to come down the
16:11
path with the side of the old railway bridge itself brick built piers, and
16:18
that would take the railway over the river for another few hundred yards where there
16:23
would be a terminus in the village itself. And there were some very nice
16:30
books with quite a lot of detail about that railway track. And yeah,
16:37
for local people, that was a big life saver because although there was,
16:41
of course a bus in and out of Plymouth, the train was something special.
16:47
And of course the train will helped bring goods to and from what was
16:55
then very rural area. So these are some rough stone stones that people have
17:03
put for steps. And I'm now standing between the old pillars, which brick
17:11
pillars, which come across the river at an angle, and that's how the
17:15
railway line went over. And I'm just going to retrace my steps a little
17:21
bit because back up here it was a stone. I don't know where it
17:25
is, and it had a date on it. I think it's been buried
17:30
under the the mud. I can't quite read it. And of course I
17:37
haven't got my glasses. So good morning. How are you? She might
17:52
do, she might not. I'm actually recording some audio while I'm walking.
17:56
Yeah, you're happy to still keep talking today. I haven't seen you for
18:00
a while. What you've been up to? Oh? Nothing much? Walking?
18:04
Yeah? Good? What a treat? Yeah? Yeah? Walking every
18:11
day? That's good? Well, I do as well. You meet them.
18:15
Sometimes you meet people and other times you one couple. You still always
18:21
see them. Didn't see them for about six months. Then all of a
18:26
sudden, I've seen them, and I said, no, this is it
18:27
now. I said, I might let me see you now every day in
18:30
the following day, I'm again to know. Yeah, it's good. It's
18:36
always good to get out and talk to people. What time You're only going
18:40
to be a minute earlier, a minute later and me and you can miss
18:42
people. Yeah. Well, I'm doing this little recording because I'm interested run
18:51
a little media organization, right, and we get we get a lot of
18:55
people who are keen dog people and they walk their dogs. So I thought,
19:00
I'm just going to be out walking and a little bit of a narrative.
19:03
And you've done it, of course, because I met you and we're
19:04
chatting. Yeah, but I've got three cats inherited three cats from me brother,
19:12
So of course I can't really have a dog because I don't make the
19:15
cats be theirselves and they will never But I just come out, Yeah,
19:22
biscuits and all the dogs know me, and they all come running up to
19:26
me, and that is the man. The biscuits run up and get a
19:32
biscuit. They know where they are. They always remember yeah, that's right,
19:37
all right, we'll see you again. Okay, take care. Well,
19:47
there we are. That's one of the beautiful things about walking a dog
19:51
is that you meet people who are still human and you can hear it.
20:00
Now. So this is the river. It's not very big at the moment.
20:17
It's probably only about well, this part of the channel, what would
20:22
I guess that about twenty five feet wide, and the river's probably a couple
20:27
of feet deep, but there's a little bit of a drop there and lot's
20:30
of big rocks. It's very much a devon river, and that's the water
20:36
coming down over those rocks and obviously heading further down the river where there's a
20:41
lovely little bridge, which i'll take you to in another trip. And then
20:47
on my left we've got one of the old lime kilns where they burnt the
20:52
limestone in order to get effectively fertilizer for use on the fields. This one's
20:59
in the little bit of a bad condition because it's got a lot of ivy
21:02
on it, and at some stage, many many years ago, somebody put
21:07
a huge metal band around it to hold it together. But I have to
21:15
say, as the years go by, it's looking more and more dodgy,
21:21
so perhaps we'll stay away from that. I can hear there in the distance
21:27
there's a I thought it was a chainsawt, but I think it might be
21:33
somebody doing some angle grinding. This is from the there's a few houses in
21:38
an interesting little area on the other side of the river. I wouldn't tell
21:45
you everything about this patch, because that'll give me something to talk about another
21:48
day. I'm wondering how my recording's working at the moment, because this is
21:56
the first time I've ever done this. And now we're coming up to a
22:02
little footbridge. Two people can just walk side by side and it passes over
22:11
the river whatever it is twenty yards upstream of the old ford where you could
22:21
bring your wagon down and actually cross the river here and then go back up
22:26
the hill and you'd have crossed this river. And I'm just standing on the
22:33
bridge. It's quite nice. It was built a few years ago, a
22:37
wooden bridge, and we got a lovely view of the water flooding over those
22:47
stones and heading down ultimately towards the estuary and the sea. And on my
22:56
left is another interesting area of river as a beachy bit, which all the
23:02
local children love because they can come down and paddle if it's summer, or
23:07
throw stones and skatestones. So that's really quite nice. And now we're just
23:15
walking up a little bit of slope away from the ford and the bridge,
23:22
and what you now start to see is another little railway bridge. And this
23:30
was where they built a bridge so that the people who own the houses that
23:34
I just mentioned they could get under the rail line. But I know that
23:41
this rail line was very, very scenic because of the views across the estuary
23:49
and the river and coming up the valley. And how do I know this,
23:55
Well, when my father was a young boy and he lived in Plymouth,
24:00
sometimes he would come out on that on this train. They'd bring their
24:06
bikes so they'd enjoy the journey out, and then they'd use their bikes to
24:12
cycle back into Plymouth. And my father would talk about this sometimes, because
24:19
of course he never expected to have a son living close to that railway line,
24:26
old railway line, and particularly if he'd had a whiskey, he might
24:33
be reminiscing about what it was actually like in those days. And that's a
24:40
great conversation he could have any hell, anyway, well, we're now walking
25:04
along an unmade road. It's quite flat, a little bit bumpy, and
25:11
we've got the river on our left, so we're effectively heading up stream.
25:17
But this will take us back into the village and then we will come up
25:22
quite asleep, a little bit of hill back to the main road and I
25:27
can get home. Remains of another lime kiln on my right, it's really
25:36
only the burning chamber that's still there on that one, and also on the
25:45
right we've got remains of the old areas where they used to quarry stone.
26:02
Good morning, Well it's not, is it really good? Go Poppy?
26:18
Well there we are. There's some birds singing. It's getting better. Poppy.
26:32
Oh my goodness, I think she's having fun. To be honest,
26:38
it's well, you know, I just get the sense that I'm going to
26:45
chase you because I can, and I assure you that if your dog said
26:51
I'm not having it, she'd run away or be whimpery. Well, there
27:04
we are. That's Poppy in action. She's basically a lovely dog and friendly,
27:11
but she had a bit of trauma in her young days, and so
27:15
she's a little bit wary of some dogs, and it's almost like she's got
27:19
to get the telling in. She's got to get the taeilling off in first,
27:29
so she can be a bit grumpy, but she's never done anything nasty.
27:33
And then there are other dogs she meets, including some that she's absolutely
27:37
in love with. That makes her a cougar because she's nearly thirteen, No,
27:45
she is thirteen. So there we are, Poppy on the prowl.
27:55
So we're just coming back into the built up part of the village. Now
28:00
this is still on the unmade road where there's some very interesting old houses and
28:04
cottages. It'll get a bit noisy in a minute because there'll be a few
28:11
cars around vans. Yeah, Bobby, it's where you lead on, Bobby,
28:15
Come here, pops. So you can hear there the river. Oh
28:26
my goodness, what have we got On the left, we've got snow drops
28:30
and this is a lovely site because this means that for the walk where you
28:37
go upstream where there are lots and lots and lots of snow drops, it's
28:44
going to be white and very pretty. So I'll see about taking you there.
28:52
And here we are. We're back to another little road. When we've
28:56
got a footbridge over the name Stone Bridge for the road, and this will
29:10
take me back up into the village, and I have to say, this
29:18
particular road to get steeper and steeper will be in a little lane in a
29:23
minute. And that's pretty steep, which of course is good, isn't it,
29:29
because at the end of the day we've come out to exercise, and
29:33
so your thighs get a pounding. On the final stretch up the hill.
29:41
We'll see how we get on. So you can hear the water on the
29:55
road, car tires making the noise. I often wonder what it would have
30:02
been like to have lived in this village, maybe not pre car would say,
30:07
maybe in the twenties or thirties, where of course, relatively it was
30:12
only relatively few people that owned a car, and not many street lights,
30:25
so at night time, of course people could see the stars. And that's
30:30
something that I think is part of the madness of our modern society, that
30:37
we have to be bays and increasingly brilliant street light to keep us safe.
30:45
And having said that, I've just realized I've broken my own rule, because
30:51
I'm back on the cloud world, as many describe it. So here we
30:56
are, we're just going up the lane. And some very interesting stone work
31:03
here, which was done by a local stone basin. Many years ago I
31:11
had the pleasure of meeting him and he was still alive, and he created
31:15
this amazing stone work of bigger stones mixed with little tiny chips that he could
31:26
put in just beautiful layers, and the face of the finished wall was so
31:37
flat it was like somebody had taken a knife. And it's like somebody's taken
31:45
a knife and cut their way through. So there we are breathing a bit
31:52
more heavily now, but we're doing pretty well, and of course I want
32:00
to get in. You will get that glow of yes, I've already had
32:07
exercise when the non dog walkers haven't. So final bit. Well, here
32:32
we are a few cars still. Let's cross over and we can get home.
32:44
Well, I'm going to say thank you very much for joining me.
32:47
It's been fascinating and it's been great to have some company. I'll see you again.