Travelin' Man

       Looe and Polperro   Pat and Yvonne left for home early this morning, sending a text to say ‘see you when you get back’. Felt a wee bit strange to tell the truth. However, I still had the rest of the week to enjoy and I was also up early to catch a train to Newton Abbott where I would join the Exeter to Plymouth express, jumping ship at Liskeard. Wasn’t sure what I was expecting but the train was hardly an express, it stopped at every station en route. And it consisted of just two coaches. On board I struggled through the throng of passengers to find a seat in the sardine can and found myself sitting alongside a chump decked out in full Manchester United football gear. Man U grey jogging suit, Man U replica shirt, Man U trainers, even a Man U baseball cap. Looked a right plonker. I guessed he was about 19 or 20 with the mentality of a 13 year old. He sat there alongside who I took to be his mum, a slight looking lady who looked half starved to de...

  Teignmouth “I wish I was coming with you” my old mucker ‘Wilf’, John Wilson said as he dropped me off at Corby Station. In a way I wished he was too. We had shared a load of memories from as far back as the 1960s when we used to travel around the country following Liverpool F.C. and going to gigs. “Where's the rucksack?” Wilf asked, laughing. In 1971 we had headed off down south with just that, and a tent on our backs. We were hitch-hiking and bound for the Isle of Wight but ended up in Ramsgate. Not because we didn’t have a map, more because it was done on a whim. Reason will become clear later on. The abiding memory is of causing mayhem in a shop nearby Ramsgate Station as we knocked boxes of sweets off shelves with the protruding tent poles from our rucksacks and being told angrily, “Get out!!”. Here I was in May 2014 with a hold-all that weighed a ton! I was off for eight days to wander around Devon and Cornwall, starting in Teignmouth. Something I had been looking ...

                                                                                                                                                                    The Joshua Tree. ‘The Joshua Tree National Park is a vast protected area in southern California, characterised by rugged rock formations and stark desert landscapes. Named for the region’s twisted, bristled Joshua trees, the park straddles the cactus-dotted Colorado Desert and the Mojave Desert. Crafted over millions of years by torrential rain...