Gene Genie

As part of our initiative to spend a long weekend away somewhere in the UK each month, SWMBO and I have just spent some time in North Devon. I have to come clean and admit it was tied in with me having the opportunity to play the Saunton golf club, a course considered to be one of the top links in the Country.

The only reason it is not on the Open Championship rota would be the inaccessibility of the course and the lack of hotel accommodation. The course is just on the edge of Exmoor, in the prime surfing area which encompasses Saunton Sands, Croyde and Woolacombe. i won't go into the merits of each bay in terms of long board or short, but the locals are pretty passionate about which is  best.

So, having found a location for the golf it was necessary to find somewhere to stay, and I decided Ilfracombe would hit the spot. 'Oh dear', said my mate Ray, an expert on the coast-line of Devon and Cornwall having yomped most of the footpath in his time. 'It's like a time warp, a screen set from the TV series life on Mars'.
Well no problem, I thought, I can cope with that, and it will give us a bit of us time.

We first went to Clovelly, a heritage site and almost a living museum village. we walked down to the harbour on the narrow cobbled stone walkways, and looked back at the distance we had travelled, and the drop we had negotiated. Fortified with a pasty and a cup of tea we set off back up again. It was at this point that I recalled getting back up by Land Rover the last time I was there. I must have been about 10, and my Dad could not face the climb and so we all returned to the top by car. Sadly that service does not operate off season, so a walk back it was.

We took in the history of the place, the fact that until recently all deliveries were done using donkey powered sledges, and that it was the favoured place of Charles Kingsley who spent his childhood in Clovelly before moving on. he always maintained a cottage and returned most  Summers to write. He was part of the Ruskin, Dickens, Tennyson crowd and his best known novels are Hereward the Wake and Westward Ho!.

Westward Ho is not far from Clovelly and also has a well thought of links course, considered one of the oldest in England.

Now back to Ilfracombe, where we arrived to find a very pleasant room waiting for us, with one of these open plan bathrooms as part of the accommodation. I find this sort of design quite strange. Anyway, the proprietors were very pleasant and had not long purchased the place, moving down from Birmingham in the process.

We quickly changed and went out to the restaurant SWMBO had booked as a birthday treat. And indeed treat it was. We had the place to ourselves, our own private chef and waiter, and failed to realise it was a sign of things to come.

On Sunday, we got up and found to our horror that Ilfracombe was closed.......nowhere to have a decent Sunday lunch, nowhere to eat in the evening, the tunnels beaches which are one of Ilfracombe's main tourist features were also closed, so we were stuffed. We ended up in the local 7/11 getting a feast of stuff to take back to the room, popped on a film and slobbed out there!

As a tribute the the open plan accommodation, we did take ourselves to a village in Exmoor called Simonsbath and in due course I will add a photoshop picture to this article as a record of events.

We have now done Christchurch in Dorset, Edinburgh and Clovelly in our weekend schedule, April we look forward to going to Cambridge, we are hopeful of a few more things to do there!!

The Nineteen Days of Christmas

I have had a bit of a result this year. My Christmas celebrations always start with the Varsity match, either by being at Twickenham in person, or in a pub somewhere watching on the TV. From then on its trying to cram as many Christmas do's and celebrations in as possible.

This year they have changed the date of the game. It was always the second Tuesday in December with a 2pm kick-off, its now the first Thursday at 4pm. So I have an extra five extra party days, and spectators at the game can have a much more leisurely luncheon before decamping to the ground. The local residents are not too impressed. They see it as another night of traffic conjestion but hey ho.

The game has lost some of its appeal as a match in recent years, with the professional game depriving both Oxford and Cambridge of the budding and current home international players who used to grace the sides. Nowadays there is the odd colonial cap who is doing a PhD or similar, otherwise it is well meaning under-graduates given the biggest stage in the game on which to perform. As an event though, it continues to get good support from students, graduates and hangers-on from the City. I probably fall into the last category.

Now where is my diary, I still have a few dates to fill up.