Homesickness
I was in hospital with Virginia Spiers’ mother once. A very nice family: I expressed a longing for some decent cheese and they kindly brought me some from their local dairy. It was delicious, I recall, but then in hospital anything would’ve been.I could eat some of that cheese now.
Country diary
Tamar ValleyVirginia Spiers
Wednesday August 9, 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1839943,00.htmlThe 10.30 train leaving Calstock for Plymouth glides into Devon across the viaduct over the Tamar, high over tidal water and purple flowering reeds. Cotehele House disappears and then, between cuttings, come glimpses of a Friesan dairy herd, and relics of orchards laden with early apples. Eucalyptus plantations on the Cornish side of the river heave into sight above the controversial marsh fields where the National Trust seeks to breach the protecting bank to let in salt water and expand the reed beds.
After Bere Alston’s reversal junction, where passengers once went on up to London, long views of the blue reach by Halton Quay and of boats moored off Cargreen are interspersed with the dappled shade of line-side woodland, drifts of rosebay and meadowsweet, maize and sun-bleached stubble. South of Bere Ferrers (with the stationmaster’s house and holiday coaches) an iron bridge crosses the Tavy estuary towards shady Warleigh Wood, downstream of the super-grid power line. Past tenders resting on mud in Tamerton Lake, the train rattles along the shore beside choppy water ruffled in the north wind blowing from Kit Hill.
Within an hour of our departure we are in the Plymouth City Museum, at the dimly lit Turner exhibition, Light into Colour. Some detailed studies show a busy and peopled landscape – packhorses; smoking limekilns; harvesters and corn sheaves; carousing sailors on the Hoe; and, at Ivy Bridge, a stage-coach (24 hours’ journey from London to Plymouth in Turner’s time). Best of all, the light effects – the sky reflecting off tidal creeks winding inland beneath darker woods and fields and linking the glittering Hamoaze and sea with this valley’s scenery which Turner described as “more worthy of Italy”.
