A Visit to Tuxford

We went to have a look round an art gallery in Tuxford. Coincidentally, Tuxford had been at the back of my mind since Bill Taylor had spoken about the Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway to our local history society. Tuxford had been the railway’s HQ, with sheds as well as locomotive and carriage works.

On our way to the gallery we found the Lodge Lane Industrial Estate just south of the village. Such places can often seem a little unwelcoming with their miles of spiked aluminium fencing, a proliferation of security notices, CCTV and watchful eyes from the portacabin gate house.

Crossing the car park, which had once been occupied by a profusion of sidings and a transverser, I picked out the single storey, former LD&ECR’s station building on the northern edge of the complex. Above the door was the sign, “The Goods Yard.” It is now occupied by model railway specialists - designers and builders of bespoke layouts, as well as providers of a wide range of relevant kit. The nearby former LD&ECR’s wagon works now houses various industrial enterprises.

Tuxford had four stations by the end of the nineteenth century, which, for a settlement of its size, must have seemed like very generous provision.

 

We eventually found the art gallery in the centre of Tuxford and the eager and communicative artist in residence showed us round. I looked at all the pictures and tried to make sense of the various artists’ objectives, where stated.  

Over lunch, however, I concluded that the print of the Jubilee and un-rebuilt Patriot at Birmingham New Street by Philip D. Hawkins and the detailed large-scale maps of the old Tuxford LD&ECR complex that adorned the walls in the hallway at the Good’s Yard had done more for me than anything I’d noticed at the art shop. Each to their own, I suppose.

Remembering a Badminton [and Train] Man

John Tarry, who died last year, has been formally remembered in a plaque erected recently above the entrance to the sports hall at Southwell Leisure Centre. As the inscription reveals, John was devoted to helping badminton players of all ages and abilities develop their skills.

John was much more than a coach, however. He ran a number of clubs and development groups over a forty-year period. John seemed to be present at every home match for all of the various club teams. He would provide the shuttles, score cards, record book, pen, table and drinks and then attend to anything else that needed doing. 

Badminton was not John’s only interest. He talked knowledgably about jazz, cycling, local history, family history, the Roll-Royce engineering club, aeroplanes and trains.

Sitting on the bench at Friday club nights, John and I often talked about trains. When I was researching the former Nottingham Suburban Railway, John provided four pages of notes and a hand-drawn map to show me where I could find visible reminders of the line. Chris and I followed his itinerary in the car over a couple of subsequent afternoons. He spoke with affection about the long-gone Nottingham Victoria station and about train spotting at Grantham in the heyday of steam.

John kept in touch with the current railway scene, partly through various magazines that I had passed on to him. He bought some OO gauge models to display at home on a short section of track. He was as pleased as Punch to tell me about his acquisition of a Class 91 electric locomotive from a favourite model shop in Pickering.

The plaque is a fitting reminder of John’s contribution to his chosen sport. I will also remember a man who - like me – was more than happy to talk about trains.

Teignmouth

Another famous railway location is where the West of England main line curves out of the station at Teignmouth and onto Brunel’s sea wall. In the summer of 1979, we regularly walked up and down the steep, Eastcliff Walk footpath that crosses the line here, providing a link between our guest house and the promenade.

Our son was just eleven months old and one of the attractions was that our hostess provided a baby-sitting service, which meant we could enjoy the fleshpots of Teignmouth most evenings during our stay. One morning, the landlady rather abruptly demanded to know if we were Irish [perhaps prompted by my Merseyside accent?]. She told us that Lord Mountbatten had been murdered on a boat whilst out fishing. I did not know it then but I am exactly 48.1% Irish [more than any of the other identifiable bits of me, as it happens]. It was just as well I didn’t have that knowledge to hand because I would have missed my breakfast that day, I think, at the very least. She was livid.

That year, I began a period in which I took lots of pictures of our children at play and none of the railway scene, apart from very occasional trips to the embryonic, steam heritage lines. Meanwhile, a procession of HSTs, Brush 4s and Peaks continued to pass through at close quarters. The last Western diesel to be scrapped had been disposed of at Swindon just one month earlier.

On our recent return to Teignmouth, I caught a glimpse of things to come in the form of a Class 800 Intercity Express Train [IET] heading west. Continuity was provided by the iconic HSTs, still going strong forty years on.

Signalling my intentions

The lanes at the morning swim were reduced from four to three. Half the pool was now for slow swimmers, and I know my place. The signals were clear enough – clockwise for slow, anti-clockwise for fast, clockwise for medium, all arranged so that where there might be arms and legs straying outside the lines of coloured floats, impact is minimal because everyone is theoretically going the same way at these points.

Except that they are not, because the slow lane is not a lane any more. It is a free for all. I signal my intentions by moving off clockwise as instructed and virtually hugging the side of the pool but there is a backstroke swimmer bearing down on me. I take evasive action but it takes me into the path of someone coming up behind me very fast for the slow lane. There are now ten of us and we are more or less split between those obviously trying to follow the rules and those who seem oblivious to them. Goggles and caps apparently give license to ignore any signage at all.

When in Newton Abbott recently, I was surprised by some random signalling - this semaphore signal gantry at the junction of Torquay Road and Brunel Road. Chris took a quick photo when we stopped at the adjacent, roadside version. I was in the right lane, thank goodness, or rather the left lane - the slow one.

It was great to see this reminder of Newton Abbott’s former importance as a railway junction – once with its own sheds and workshops, of course. Railway book publishers, David and Charles, begun by David St John Thomas in 1960, occupied the site after the railway vacated the premises. They moved on to Exeter in 2015, as part of F+W Media.

Back in the pool, I completed my forty lengths in an astonishingly slow time and just as the whistle was blown for the end of the session. I though about querying the decision to reduce the number of slow lanes from two to one and effectively creating an “anything goes”, choppy water, slowcoach zone. Then I thought, “Naaagh”, or something similar. 

    

Biking it to Oxford

When we cycled to Oxford from Wallasey in a round trip that also included youth hostels at Bridges, Malvern Wells, Duntisbourne Abbotts, Stratford-upon-Avon and Shrewsbury, over a few days in April 1965, it was the furthest I’d ever reached from home by bike - a personal record which stands to this day.

Passing Oxford station on the park-and-ride bus this week, I was struck by the forest of bikes parked outside the station. We obviously started something.

Exeter Central

From our farmhouse family holiday, I took the bus to Taunton on the Monday morning of 29/7/63. I was in the first carriage with my head out of the window immediately behind 4993 Dalton Hall’s swaying tender all the way to Exeter St David’s. Hauled up the hill to Central by 34078 222 Squadron, I then changed trains again for the Exmouth line with 80059 as far as Polsloe Bridge Halt.

I ran to Exmouth Junction sheds. It was like heaven on earth. I knew it would be special. I copped almost everything I saw, including Merchant Navy 35026 Lamport and Holt Line [coming off the shed and backing down to Central prior to a trip to Waterloo] and 15 light Pacifics. I was ecstatic. The return journey to Taunton was behind a Warship - a taste of things to come, of course, but on that day, I just didn’t care.

Here is Exeter Central 55 years later, still nestling comfortably in its shallow valley below Northernhay Gardens. The centre roads have gone but the platforms and canopies are instantly recognisable. We came in by bus this time and though Exeter has a lot to recommend it, the bus station is not one of its finest attractions. In fact, it’s awful.

Just Like Eddie

Sometime in 1965 or shortly before, Ian and I went down to New Brighton bathing pool where we obtained Heinz’s autograph. With the encouragement of record producer, Joe Meek, Heinz had left the Tornados after their stupendous hit single, Telstar. He had his only significant solo triumph with Just Like Eddie, a tribute to Eddie Cochran. On the same night, we also got Pete Best’s signature [the former Beatles drummer], as well as other members of the Lee Curtis All Stars. The performers entered the bathing pool on the seaward side of the complex, where the upstairs ballroom was situated.

A little later during the same year while I was staying with my uncle in Winchester, I visited Eastleigh locomotive works in search of Merchant Navy No. 35020 Bibby Line. I found her in the process of being broken up. Well, to be honest, she was already in bits, but I counted her anyway because she was the last one of the class that I needed and I certainly wouldn’t see her again. I have no idea at all how I managed to get around the works on my own because you normally needed a permit and to be part of an organised party.

This week, I went back to Eastleigh for the first time in 53 years. We had been invited to a family event just down the road and it was too good an opportunity to miss. Chris took this photo of the station frontage, while I reminisced about how I could possibly have bunked round the works.

Reminding myself online about Eastleigh before travelling south, I came across a newspaper article about Heinz Burt, a son of Eastleigh, no less, who worked at Eastleigh locomotive works after his career as a rock singer had folded. Heinz apparently missed out on royalties that should have come his way. He was living in a tower block in Southampton when he died, by then penniless, of motor-neurone disease in the year 2000. He was 57 years old. Heinz has a road named after him in his home town. We found Heinz Burt Close on the way to the station. It’s strange how things sometimes come together.

      

Blowing my own trumpet

The 20,000th visit to the blog site this week and 350 posts completed. Thanks for dipping in, though I do have a follower in Russia who sometimes adds 20 at a time overnight. I also get quite a few curious emails these days, imploring me to claim my non-existent HMRC rebate, settle my Apple i-phone account for music I haven’t downloaded, check my Amazon account for books I haven’t bought, reply to the FBI immediately [honestly, today] or respond to fictitious bank transactions I haven’t made - so obviously no connection there.

I see Northern Rail were cancelling Sunday services again yesterday. As previously, shortage of trained drivers is part of the discussion. I don’t remember that ever being offered as an acceptable reason for no trains in BR days. Trotting out the “lack of available drivers” excuse again brings renewed calls for re-nationalisation. Northern Rail, meanwhile, blame current workers’ contracts, so take your pick.

Northern Rail had a train to spare when we arrived at Newcastle Central station recently. They had put on a special to help commemorate the RAF’s centenary. On the concourse, the RAF band were blowing their own trumpets.

"Do 'im, Berts"

We sat at the picnic table outside the pub and looked out over the Trent. It was a bright, warm evening. The swallows wheeled and swooped. A lady plonked her bag of dog poo down on the next table. “Where’s the bin?”, she said, but it was too late. My cheese and onion crisps had already lost their flavour.

I know I can only lose friends by having a go at dogs. I’m not. I’m having a go at some dog owners.

This picture of the promenade at Dawlish shows one of my favourite places in the world. There was even a steam train due.

Chris, being a more adventurous soul, went for a wander along the breakwater. I turned back towards the railway. A yappy dog ran straight at me, stopping just short - but still very agitated.

This sometimes happens when we are walking or cycling on the trail at home. The dog owners’ default position is always, “He’s OK, he’s only being friendly.” Every time when this has happened previously, I’ve murmured something polite, smiled and moved on without a fuss, even if I have already been slobbered on, had my crotch sniffed or received dirty paw marks on my trousers.

This time, for reasons unknown, I did not raise my head, I did not smile, I simply covered my groin with both hands - as if defending a free kick in the wall on the edge of the penalty area. Then I walked on. This was interpreted as an affront. “Do ‘im, Berts”, came the response. At this point I did look round but both the owner and the man he was talking to made a point of looking away. It was as though the command had mysteriously drifted down from above.

I find dogs unpredictable, often intrusive and sometimes downright scary. Their frequent barking from a nearby garden disturbs the peace when I’m sitting outside. Their little coloured packages now litter the trail, as dog poo itself did when we used to play park football. We used to joke about that special aroma of “wet dog” perfume. None of us grew up with dogs at home. If we had, my perspective would, no doubt, be different.

I know how important they are to some folk. I understand the special bond that many people have with them. Not everyone feels as comfortable in the company of dogs as some dog owners imagine. That is what I would like some dog owners to consider. 

It was fifty years ago today

On Sunday 11^th August 1968, I walked down to New Brighton station with Ian, Grah’ and John and took the Mersey underground electric train to Liverpool Central, this being before the link to Lime Street station had been made. 

We walked into Lime Street station. It was chocker. We debated how best to get close to the action. Should it be platform six or platforms seven and eight? I think the train was in six, so we thought if we could get to the end of the longer seven, we might get a better view looking back.

The few policemen around already looked harassed and overwhelmed. They could not have been expecting such a large crowd. I tried to take a picture from a permanent ladder fixed to a signal. I was told to get down and my place was taken straight away by someone else. I had already become separated from the others and I hadn’t a clue where they were.

I tried to manoeuvre my way back through the throng to the platform edge, to get an uninterrupted shot of Stanier Class 5 No. 45110. I was shoved in the chest by a policeman. It really took me by surprise. I fell backwards into the crowd. I felt quite hurt, though not physically. That had never happened to me before - incurring the wrath of the law in such a personal way. I had a very strong sense of right and wrong as a youngster, and I remember feeling very puzzled and unjustly treated.

I gave up trying to get a good view. I just stood where I had ended up in the middle of the crowd. As the train left I tried to poke my camera between kids sitting on their dads’ shoulders and a lot of people who were taller than me.

That was it. We made our way home.

[Based on an extract from my book, Train Spotters]

Remembering Steam

In 2008, the National Railway Museum wanted to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the end of steam on British Railways and especially the running of the Fifteen Guinea Special from Liverpool Lime Street in August of that year. My friend John Beck replied to their advert in the railway press and we were invited to join in the celebrations at York.

We met some of the retired enginemen who had been employed on the day in 1968, and our own recollections were filmed for posterity by the NRM. We contributed to a series of Radio Five interviews for a programme marking the event, which was broadcast after most peoples’ bedtime. I felt glad to be so closely associated with the event - though our only contribution on the day had been to go and say goodbye to No. 45110.

I was asked to write a piece describing our reminiscences for the museum’s archive, where it is already likely to be gathering dust. In it, I wrote that as a result of an early introduction by my Dad, together with our school railway society trips,

           “the beauty, excitement, camaraderie and atmosphere of the steam railway was set alight in us……...” and that the events of 1968………. “brought an end to an era that had really only recently begun for us …... Overall, I felt a bit cheated, because I was born just a few years too late to make full use of the glorious 1950s and early 1960s steam heyday. It was to be all over on this day and we were still teenagers……… We trooped back home, a disconsolate bunch.

We have made the most of it since, of course, preservation and all that and the magnificent return of express steam to the main line. I’m still proud to have been a train spotter. It is the magic of steam. Either you feel it or you don’t.”

[Based on an extract from my book, Train Spotters]

The end of steam in sixty-eight

These photos were taken on Sunday 11^th August 1968. Ian called for me and we went round for John. If my memory serves me, the bottle of pop lasted no further than the pavement outside 16 Mount Road. We picked up Grah’ on the way to New Brighton station and took “the underground” to Liverpool Central Low Level before wandering up to Lime Street.

August eleventh was the date

for the end of steam in sixty-eight,

an event destined to deflate,

but what a crowd on platform eight.

A “black five” turned out, not a crate,

with driver proud and fireman mate,

fire burning brightly in the grate,

days numbered, what would be her fate?

Whistle to lips, as cheeks inflate,

last steam departs from this estate.

Thunderous echoes at last abate,

last wisps of smoke they could create.

Trudged sadly homewards through the gate,

we thought we had been born too late,

no cinders falling on your pate,

the country now a diesel state.

Although there was no one to hate,

I really couldn’t get it straight.

It left me feeling quite irate,

steam, then, just pictures at the Tate.

But progress onward at a rate,

means now the situation’s great,

a new “Tornado” to elate.

All things come to those that wait.

Mike Priestley, 2008

Silkstone Waggonway

Most old pit villages have an interesting story to tell, even when, as is often the case, the accounts themselves are disturbing. Andy showed us round his home turf in South Yorkshire, yesterday. In the church yard is a monument to the 26 children who drowned underground in the Huskar mining disaster of 1838.

A plaque on the wall of the Red Lion pub further along the main street has the details of the incident that must have caused unimaginable anguish in the community. The resulting enquiry led to the Mines Act of 1842, which prevented children below the age of ten from working underground thereafter.

Andy took us onto the former track bed of the Silkstone Waggonway, a two-and-a-half-mile, horse-drawn tramway, built by the Barnsley Canal Navigation Company in 1809. It linked Silkstone Cross with the Cawthorne Canal at Barnby Basin, serving the collieries of the Silkstone Valley.

The original stone sleepers are clearly visible along much of the course of the tramway, which is now used as a footpath. Cut into the surface of each slab are the holes where the rails were formerly pinned into place. There are information boards to inform walkers about the former tramway, together with a small section of track.

    

Whoosh

The vacuum cleaner was on the top step but I was hoovering at the bottom with the hose outstretched. Wrong way round - I know. It fell off and I instinctively put my leg out to stop it sailing off through the glass panel in the door at the foot of the stairs. Ouch!

It got me thinking about vacuums. There was an old department store in either Liscard Road, Wallasey [Robbs?] or Grange Road, Birkenhead [Beatties?] that my mother took me to, where they had an overhead pneumatic vacuum system for sending off your money and the bill in a pipe to a central pay station and then your change and receipt came back a minute or two later. I liked the sound it made during its journey - a hiss and then a whoosh, as it shot off round the shop.

In Devon, we happened upon Brunel’s atmospheric pumping station at Starcross, where he set up a rail system that used air pressure in a tube set between the tracks to move the carriages along. It did not last long. Maybe he just chose the wrong location for such a radical experiment, as the former South Devon Railway is still battling with the elements today when compared to more favourably situated railway routes.

Now there are ideas being mooted for high speed “hyperloop” pods as the trains of the future, so perhaps Brunel was just way ahead of his time, in addition to all the other more tangible successes he achieved.  

The cut on my arm has just about healed, but my leg is still swollen and playing up from time to time. At least, the x-ray showed no fracture. Always vacuum the stairs from the bottom would appear to be the advice I need to give myself.

Cockwood Haven

Before you reach Dawlish and Teignmouth on that much revered stretch of railway that skirts the south Devon coast, the line crosses the entrance to the small harbour at Cockwood Haven.

That would be a good place to watch trains, I thought – probably many times - before I actually got there. It is better than I thought. You can sit outside at the Anchor Inn as the trains skirt the sea wall and at the same time keep an eye out for the birds coming and going on the tidal creek, including whimbrel, kingfisher and little egret, while we were there.

Sunday summer evenings may also include a bit of steam. Many special trains, as well as those on the heritage lines, have been affected by restrictions designed to prevent lineside fires. Even where steam has run, it has been handing over most of the hard graft to a diesel, working in tandem.

I even copped the class 66 when No.60009 Union of South Africa headed back towards Exeter on Sunday 15^th July.

  

The LD&ECR’s Last Stand

When William Arkwright of Sutton Scarsdale Hall near Chesterfield was looking for suitable rail links to take out the coal that lay beneath his country pile, he was unable to come to a convenient arrangement with the existing railway companies, so he decided to go it alone. Edward Watkin of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway, and who presumably, therefore, had his own axe to grind, called the bill setting up the Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway, “as mad a scheme as was ever presented to parliament.”

Arkwright’s brain child did get off the ground but it never looked like matching up to its cross-country plans. Up and running, it only existed as a separate entity for ten years before being taken over in 1907 by the Great Central Railway. The line west from Shirebrook to Chesterfield and the track east from High Marnham Power Station to Pyewipe Junction on the western edge of Lincoln, closed to passengers in stages during the 1950’s, though summer weekend holiday traffic continued up until 1964.

The only LD&ECR branch line on the system, to Sheffield via Clowne, was often referred to as the Beighton branch because it joined the Midland Railway and the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway [later the Great Central Railway] at that point. It closed to passengers in 1939, though some collieries along the line continued to be served after that date.
A further one hundred and eight years down the line, the remaining section of the LD&ECR extends from Shirebrook to High Marnham. In recent times it has been used to take coal from Thoresby Colliery to power stations at West Burton, Cottam and Ratcliffe-on-Soar, and, given the intentions of the original set-up, that seemed wholly appropriate.

Class 66 No. 66613 pulls forward past Thoresby Colliery signalbox on 18/6/15, having brought empty MGR wagons into the sidings. The spur to the colliery itself is to the right.

From this point, east of Edwinstowe, the West Burton-bound MGR trains headed west to join the ex-Midland Railway, now known as the Robin Hood line, at Shirebrook. They turned north onto those metals to Shireoaks East Junction and then east on the former Great Central Railway through Worksop. In 2014, UK Coal announced that Thoresby Colliery, up to that time the sole remaining deep level coal mine in Nottinghamshire, was to close in July of the following year.

The large Dukeries Hotel at Edwinstowe was built in 1897, the year that the railway opened. The girder bridge that carries the line over High Street is behind the camera. The hotel car park entrance is directly opposite the former station’s approach road.

Although coal traffic was the mainstay of the railway, it had been hoped in the early days that the hotel at Edwinstowe would help to attract large numbers of visitors to the surrounding area, which is still referred to today as the Dukeries. There was a concentration of stately homes in this part of north Nottinghamshire, including Thoresby Park [Earl Manvers], Rufford Abbey [Lord Savile], Clumber House - demolished in 1938 though the extensive parkland now belongs to the National Trust [Duke of Newcastle] and Welbeck Abbey [Duke of Portland].

Although well-to-do visitors were able to reach the aristocratic families themselves more easily - including the occasions when King Edward VII fancied a day at Doncaster races - the hoped-for tourist boom amongst the population at large never really materialised. The hotel was rebuilt after a serious fire in 1929, and it survives today as a bistro pub and inn called the Dukeries Lodge, although at least one booking agency mistakenly claims it to be of eighteenth, rather than late nineteenth, century origin. It also survived a temporary loss of dignity when it was re-branded for a time as “Ma Hubbard’s,” which was maybe not quite in keeping with its earlier incarnation as a rather grand railway hotel.

A well-maintained permanent way curves past the former station building at Edwinstowe, in this view looking west, taken in June 2015. A mixture of semaphore and colour light signals was in service along this stretch of line. Edwinstowe station originally had three platforms for through trains, plus a bay at the Lincoln end and a refreshment room.

The occupants in the old station building in 2015, a private ambulance company called First4care, described their working environment as “bright and airy,” on their website [www.first4care.org.uk]. The former platform edging stones have been taken up and deposited further back from the running line, as a safety precaution against encroachment from any detached slabs and the platform surfaces are very overgrown in parts including the sprouting of some now well-established pine trees.

It is not all bad news for the old LD&ECR, however. It was handed a lifeline east of Edwinstowe in 2009 in the form of the High Marnham Test Track, based at Lodge Lane, Tuxford. Network Rail uses the 10.5 mile stretch from Thoresby Colliery Junction for testing engineering vehicles, equipment, machinery and other plant, as explained on their website [www.networkrail.co.uk]. Speeds of up to 75mph are permissible. Though not energised, sections have been equipped with overhead catenaries and a third rail to simulate conditions on electrified lines elsewhere. The four-mile former British Railways branch from Boughton, which formerly served Bevercotes colliery, comes under the same jurisdiction.

The future for the old LD&ECR now looks better still, in spite of a study in the year 2000 [www.railwatch.org.uk] which concluded that it would be uneconomic to reinstate passenger services on the line. By 2009, Nottinghamshire County Council had picked up the issue again and commissioned a further appraisal to investigate the possibilities of inaugurating an hourly train service to Ollerton [www.worksopguardian.co.uk, 21/7/09].

After the colliery closed in July 2015 and with the cessation of coal traffic on the line that would inevitably have followed once coal stocks had been removed, circumstances might now further encourage the reinstatement of passenger services. Not only are the freight trains literally “out of the way” but any new passenger service would have a well-maintained railway already in place to make use of. The plans for an extension to Ollerton, via the junction at Shirebrook, are very much on the table again.

The scheme appears to have some local political, business and community support, and the government has nodded its approval too, from time to time, saying that a bid to their growth fund could make it happen if local councils also supported it [www.newarkadvertiser.co.uk - 16/6/15]. The Prime Minister made positive comments about it on 8/6/16, in answer to a question in parliament from the local MP. Sherwood Energy Village at Ollerton has been mentioned as a possible new station site. Intermediate stations at Warsop and Edwinstowe would also be reopened.

At the time of writing, the proposal remains just that, however – a proposal. Time will tell if there is to be a further renaissance on the old LD&ECR, a truncated railway that was built to main line standards and received plaudits at the time for the quality of its construction. However, it was a big idea that soon ran out of money, hitting the buffers at Chesterfield and Lincoln well over a century ago. So, will the cash be found today for its latest last stand tomorrow? Much as I would like to see it happen, I will not be holding my breath.
 
[This article is published in the current edition of the Railway Antiques Gazette, with thanks to the editor, Tim Petchey]

Downstream

A voyage on the Kingswear Castle from Totnes to Dartmouth seemed like a good idea. Constructed in 1924, she is the only operating coal-fired paddle steamer in the country and is part of the National Historic Fleet.

The navigable lower Dart was previously unexplored territory for us. It was extremely hot when we reached Totnes and any sort of a breeze on the river would have been welcome, as, too, would have been the arrival of the Kingswear Castle but, unfortunately, she did not show up. She had “burst a pipe”, her place being taken by the Dartmouth Castle, instead.

The Dart estuary is vast with uninterrupted woodland for miles on both banks and no signs of any habitation or roads until Stoke Gabriel appears at the head of a creek and then picturesque Dittisham comes into view. The whole area is quite captivating when viewed from the water.

As we approached Dartmouth we passed the Kingswear Castle at her mooring. No doubt they were busy working on the offending piece of burst pipe so that she could claim her rightful place on the waterway the next day. That must make a very fitting sight, come to think of it. Oh well, win a few lose a few.