England #18 – visiting Clatterford, arriving in Peasedown St. John in The England Chronicles - May 2017

Saturday, May 6 (2017!) continued- in which we reach the end of Dartmoor, and head north to Peasedown St. John. With a stop in North Tawton, which is where the wonderful Jam and Jerusalem (Clatterford in the US) was filmed. If you have not seen Jam and Jerusalem/Clatterford, omg go watch it right now!! It’s a Jennifer Saunders/Dawn French creation, a comedy about a women’s guild in a small town. If you like British TV you’ll know everybody in it- Pauline McLynn (Mrs. Doyle on Father Ted), Joanna Lumley (AbFab’s Patsy- playing someone who is about 150 years old), David Mitchell (the first thing we ever saw him in – and go watch Peep Show too), Sue Johnston, Maggie Steed, Sally Phillips – for starters. It’s hysterically funny and VERY sweet. And when I realized the town they filmed it in was just a couple of miles off our route, I had to go see it in person.

This clock tower was the main thing I remember from the series. And Rosie (Dawn French) trotting down the street past it in the opening scenes.

It’s quite a small town – 2,026 people at the last census. But it does have another claim to fame, aside from being Clatterford – Sylvia Plath lived there with Ted Hughes for short time before they separated, and Ted Hughes lived there until he died. I didn’t realize this until after we visited, so don’t know which house they lived in.

We made a friend! We’re both cat people, so we’re both always making cat-friends everywhere we go. This cute little guy was hanging out in his open window, and let us pet him.

There is a gorgeous old church and graveyard too – also featured in Clatterford, but in person it was way bigger than I remembered it being in the show. Which I need to watch again since I’ve actually been there now-

After this last side trip, we drove onward to Peasedown St John. And drove, and drove, and DROVE AND DROVE AND DROVE. Unfortunately, and stupidly, I did not look at a real map before we set off. We just put our final destination into the GPS and the Google Maps app, and let them duke it out. And yet again listened to the GoogleBitch who hated us. Peasedown St John is maybe five miles south of Bath – on the same side of Bath that we were on. Looking at the map NOW, and googling the directions, it should have taken us about two hours to get to Peasedown St. John from North Tawton, going up the A303. Instead we let GoogleBitch take us up the M5 to the M4, which meant going all the way to Bristol, which is northwest of Bath, and then back down south again, right smack through Bath. Actually, according to the directions, I see it’s about half an hour longer to go that way than to just go straight north and right to Peasedown St John. And it’s pretty much all the M’s, which are the equivalent of interstate highways in the US. The other routes were A-roads, which are sometimes divided and sometimes two-lane, and which go through all the little villages. SO I suppose GoogleBitch was taking us the… easier??? route — at least the one with the major highways. Well, until north of Bristol where you get off the M5 and onto A4 and then go smack through Bath.

And my lovely friend the ancient GPS kept trying to help! He kept telling us to exit the M5 and go through Glastonbury, then kept telling us to exit the M5 and go through Wells — which would have taken us directly to Peasedown St John. Vs going way up north and around and back down through Bath. But I kept hesitating, thinking SURELY Google Maps is the right one! We don’t want to go back roads!! Wrong. We drove and drove and DROVE and DROVE and then I said, “OMG are those signs for BRISTOL?? WHY ARE WE GOING TO BRISTOL?????” And then we drove some more and I said “We’re NOT going THROUGH Bath, are we??? OMG FOR FUCK SAKE WE ARE GOING RIGHT THROUGH BATH!!!! NOOOOOO!!!!!” And of course going right through Bath was awful!!! It’s a pretty big city and it was roundabout after roundabout after roundabout after roundabout!!! Good thing I was pretty much an England Driving Ace by then or I’d have just laid down in the road and wept, and I felt like doing that anyhow.

I don’t know why we kept having these problems – Kim and I are both, ummm, directionally challenged, and Kim can’t read a map to save her life- and although I CAN read a map, I can’t look at it and then remember what I’m supposed to be doing once I’m driving and not looking at it. Still, should have at least looked at it. Lesson to remember for next time. When I told Baker B we’d gone up north around Bristol and THEN back down south right through Bath, he said, “What the hell did you do that for??? Are you insane????” Well, yes, by the time we finally arrived, I WAS pretty much stark raving mad. And exhausted.

Anyhow, we finally did make it, arriving in Peasedown St John at maybe 6:30. So, still plenty of light, luckily. I think we found our Airbnb without too much trouble, although maybe the trouble was overshadowed by the nightmare drive getting there. I know we had problems more than once getting to it in the future- there were several twists and turns and we kept getting lost, of course.

And of course the drama was not over! The woman we rented the Airbnb from neglected to tell us where to park. And it was in a row of attached houses, with the very narrow main street at the front, and an alley in the back, where a lot of people were already parked, so we assumed that’s where we were to park too. And it would have been quite a hike from the street and up the hill with our luggage. But… there was no free spot at ours. There was a van and a motorcycle and no room for a third vehicle. Even a tiny third vehicle like ours. I parked as well as I could, which was not very well at all and in a few minutes a neighbor knocked on the door- she couldn’t get around me. And said visitor parking was out on the street. She was VERY nice and I apologized profusely, and …. tried to move the car. And tried and tried…and I COULD NOT GET TURNED AROUND!!! It was SO embarrassing, and a little bizarre, but I’d gotten squeezed in at an odd angle apparently. And I scraped the car on a planter, and bumped the back on the wall!! So, thank god we had insurance. The neighbor finally backed way up to the far end of the alley and let me park in her spot so she could get around me, and from there I was able to get turned around.

Here’s a visual! This isn’t our spot, I think it’s the next door neighbors, but that’s an example of the tiny space, and I was kind of squeezed in behind the (not visible) van and motorcycle in ours, so you can see how I had NO room to turn around.

And this is the little road in front of the houses where we were supposed to park. It was a struggle too at times; you can see how little space there is, and I am not a very good parallel parker. But I always managed, and most days there weren’t quite so many cars and I could just pull in a spot easily. Almost as soon as I got parked after the alley-blocking fiasco, I got a text from our host apologizing for forgetting to tell me about the parking, so I think the neighbor probably contacted her and said, what the hell, would you get your renters out of the alley??!!??

After all that trauma, we headed off to the closest pub we could find – the Prince of Wales, which was just down the road from us. Excellent fish and chips, and a weird Guinness which was not draft, but was draft?? When I ordered a pint of Guinness and the odd kind of Aspergerish bar-guy pulled out a big can, I said, oh, never mind, I’ll get something else, and then he got all friendly and animated and told me all about how it’s actually just like draft and he put it on some strange machine that.. did something to it… and I ended up with a nice pint that was just like any regular pint of stout. I have no idea how, but he said that’s how Guinness was being sold now. It’s the same thing and more economical?? Whatever, it was REALLY good. The bar guy was my buddy after that – before the Guinness explanation he was very standoffish and glarey and kept having to go back to ask the kitchen things about what we could and couldn’t order, but the Guinness cheered him all up. As it did me!

I was going to post some pictures of our Airbnb, but that will, of course, have to wait till later as this has gone on quite long enough.