By bus to Camelford : Ken Gibbs

THE BEAST ON A BUSY ??? BUS

Working for UNICEF for many years, taught me a lot about transport and logistics – lessons which I found useful after leaving the agency. In this piece, I elected to use public transport – a bus – for the simple reason that, because of my advanced age, I am entitled to travel on the buses, free. The government of the day some 25 years ago, decided that this was something to help keep older people with older vehicles off the roads.

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Recently, with a succession of good days when I couldn’t find an excuse why I shouldn’t actually help in the garden, I was encouraged to mow the lawn and strim the edges and so turned out the appropriate machines. Because it had been left for so long, there was a lot to do and the machines had to work hard. Very hard. Near the end, the strimmer began to labour and I feared that I had asked too much of it. I put it away as I was far too tired to investigate, promising myself that tomorrow would be soon enough. The machine needed rest and I needed a stiff gin-and-tonic.

Tomorrow came and as I wanted to show that the machine could not be further used until it was “repaired”, I looked at what had caused it to labour so much. A cursory look showed that one of the plastic tines had snapped causing considerable unbalance – something simple to “repair” providing one has spare tines. I didn’t.

The nearest supplier of such tines lies in Camelford, a village some distance from Rock, but on the local bus route. The route from Rock to Camelford winds through pretty and very narrow lanes not far from the sea so a trip there is always a pleasure with seascapes at every other turn – weather permitting. I had no plans for Saturday morning so a trip to Camelford to buy tines for the strimmer seemed to be ideal.

The bus was almost on time and, given that it was Easter Saturday, this was a miracle as there is a lot of traffic from the visitors who often don’t know their way, and want to get wherever it is they are going, slowly. The bus was driven by someone I had not met before who reminded me strongly of the Steptoe father in “Steptoe and son” series, being in possession of rather few teeth and a wide smile to go with those he had. As I had forgotten to put in my dental bridge before walking to the bus stop, I calculated that we had but twelve teeth between the two of us.

On the bus were two middle aged women who wished to project an image of experienced walkers but who came without a map and only a faint notion of wanting to walk from Port Quin to Polzeath which they maintained was only five miles. Mmmm ! There’s a flat five miles and there’s another, much longer Cornish coast path five miles which is likely to take at least twice as long – but I didn’t say as much. They didn’t even know where the bus should drop them for Port Quin, and neither did the driver. Happily I knew where they should alight – at Saint Endellion church and you could see their faces drop slightly when they saw the sign to Port Quin: 2 ½ miles. As most of it is downhill, I didn’t think they would suffer unduly with the added distance.

From here until Port Isaac I had the bus and the driver to myself. I soon realised why he had almost been on time in Rock. In addition to maintaining an unintelligible commentary while driving, which included his view on the lack of skill of oncoming drivers, he managed multi-tasking sufficiently well to maintain a schedule which is generally possible in winter without icy roads but nigh impossible in summer with all the visitors. And today, there was a low hanging mist which reduced the visibility somewhat. Who needs a stiff walk to get the blood coursing through one’s veins when a Cornish bus ride can have the same effect without wearing out one’s leg muscles ?

The added interest on this bus was that the gearbox seemed to be equipped with sharp teeth as we discovered each time third gear was engaged. Obviously, the driver had not been trained before the days of synchromesh or he’d have double-de-clutched each time, so we proceeded to a symphony of shrieks each time third gear was needed. Had my deafness not denied me access to the driver’s monologue, I might have discovered exactly what he thought of the gearbox, the bus, the bus company and the maintenance crew combined; and I’m quite sure it wouldn’t have been complimentary.

In Delabole, one female visitor who perhaps had gained her driving skills in London, thought she could force the bus to reverse when it was clearly not her right of way. She misjudged our bus driver who simply pulled on the hand-brake and crossed his arms over his chest obviously ready to wait till she cleared the road for him; and she was sufficiently upset by this that she told him what she thought of him in a loud voice. Mistake. Big mistake.

The bus driver put his head out of his window and in almost perfect toothless mimicry, repeated what she’s said much to the amusement of the local pedestrians and, I have to say, those of us on the bus as well. The visitor saw that she was not going to prevail despite her skills, and had to reverse to let us pass. The bus driver stuck his head out and thanked her kindly. My guess is that she won’t argue with Cornish bus drivers for awhile yet.

Just beyond Delabole lies a wind-farm which has four very tall wind turbines with the latest in blade technology which requires the tips of the blades to have sharply curved ends not unlike the upturned tips of modern jet airliners’ wings. Today, because the mist was hanging low, one could only see the lower half of the turbines with this curious shape emerging from the cloud only to disappear back into the cloud on the upswing. It was ghostly and silent and to me, infinitely preferable to covering the landscape in coal-fired power stations. With mankind’s insatiable appetite for power on demand, it would seem that wind turbines offer a partial solution to reining-in global warming. They may be clearly visible but do not necessarily offend the eye. Don Quixote might judge them to be slightly too high to tilt at, but they are as much giants as their predecessors ever were.

The final run in to Camelford was mostly downhill and surprisingly free of traffic. As I was due to spend an hour in Camelford before the return bus, and as there is relatively little to excite interest beyond buying two packs of plastic tines for the garden strimmer, I alighted at the top of the town near the museum and walked to the garden machinery shop which lies at the very bottom of the town. One passes the library – which boasts no fewer than four computers and very few books – and, further on, two political clubs. The Liberal-Democrat Club appears quite care-worn while close by, the Conservative Club occupies a pretty building which seems recently to have been refurbished. It seems that Conservatives are not poor in this area.

The tines were available and having bought two packs to save a return within the year, I took coffee and a toasted tea cake in a local cafe. Life must be slow here as the only others in the cafe were an older couple who were taking their breakfast and the time was around 11am. Time moved on, albeit slowly, and I thought I’d pop into the art exhibition next to the museum – because it was free - to use up some of the spare time. Sadly, while the art was accomplished, it was not to my taste and just before leaving, I saw that there was a very small display of lace and lace-making equipment on one side. There were several complete pieces here including a child’s cap which was exquisite. I asked the curator if lace-making had been local to Camelford ? Apparently not. Which was the nearest centre known for its lace-making ? The immediate answer was Honiton. Now Honiton is around 80 miles distant from Camelford so this came as some surprise because to travel from Camelford to Honiton would have taken at least one day in the 1850s when lace-making was at its height. Perhaps it signalled that there were – at least in the Camelford area – some families sufficiently rich that they would buy top quality lace no matter from where it came. I had learned something new.

The bus arrived – on time and the driver was happy to see me back again. The one-sided conversation continued from here until Rock with me not understanding a word but grunting what could have been taken as agreement from time to time. Deafness has its advantages in that one can convey complete engagement in a conversation without participating at all.

When we passed the wind turbines above Delabole, we were only able to see the base of the nearest one with blades completely hidden in the mist as the weather had deteriorated. In Delabole, we picked up a group of ladies who were going to “The Strawberries” despite it being far too early for even the hot-house variety. Strawberries are sold throughout summer in St Endellion so we had to assume that ladies knew the place by reputation (it boasts an unique music festival at Easter and mid-summer) so had come to buy last year’s strawberry jam and to listen to some music even though the Easter Festival was already over. It looked like they were out to enjoy themselves no matter what was – or was not – going on. These are the sort of cheerful visitors we like.

And so passed a Cornish country lane morning leaving me looking forward to the next concessionary foray. Perhaps I’ll explore further afield.

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