Odds and Sods September 2024

September was a vintagey sort of month as it turned out, with vintage trains, vintage buses, vintage cars, vintage biscuits and vintage cannons, and all of them unplanned when the month started out in an unvintagey sort of way.

Every September the town of Kingsbridge throws caution and the green lobby to the wall and pumps out thick blue diesel fumes all over the place. Yes, it's time for the Vintage Bus Running Day, when classic restored buses from all over Britain converge on the bus station in town, to compete with the scheduled buses, on vintage bus routes, and all of it for free. Just turn up, pick a bus you like the look of and get on board for a Magical Mystery Tour as the Beatles might have sung. This year we went on a short circular trip through West Alvington and Churchstow. There will be more on that in a future post.

By accident, this shot below actually looks like a vintage photo, until you see the petrol prices.

This shot was just lucky, getting a vintage car too.

There was a Supermoon in September and this was my effort in long lens, clear night, and hand held astrophotography.

This is the flags in the breeze on the memorial tank at Torcross. The memorial is for all those who died here in preparation for the D-Day Landings. This area was the main practice beach for the American part of the exercise. More about Operation Tiger here.

It all looks very placid and calm today. The other side of the Start Point lighthouse is the next point called Prawle.

The point of the month, this month, is Prawle Point and here it is on the south west coast path. It is a wild, windswept, wave swept spot, very interesting geographically and historically.

This is the Point, and that arch is called the Horse's Head, which you can sort of appreciate. The exposed building on top is the old coastguard lookout station. Today it is part of the National Coastwatch.

Prawle Point NCI is one of around 60 National Coastwatch Institution (NCI) stations along the coasts of England and Wales keeping an eye on those at sea and on the coastline, ready to assist HM Coastguard when things go wrong.

The Prawle Point lookout stands 200 feet above sea level at the most southerly point in Devon and is open 365 days a year. NCI

We are not very far from those D-Day practice beaches here and I suspect that this well disguised concrete remnant is a defensive "Pill Box" from the same war, to defend the small beach here. I am standing on what was the original beach where the sea would have been lapping at these old cliffs, tens of thousands of years ago. The land here has been raised above sea level since then.

West Prawle was home to a Radar Station during the war to give early warning of approaching aircraft. I suspect this is one of the defensive structures that existed back then.

There is also a wave cut platform here which you can walk on as the tide drops, where you will find fascinating rock pools. There were several of these embedded in the sandstone rock, exposed by the action of the sea, and they look very like petrified tree logs.

There is a great variety of different, beautifully coloured seaweeds.

This one looks like pasta. Tagliatelle a la Prawle.

Either side of the wave cut platform is a darker harder rock which looks almost like a reef.

Not far away is this foreboding bridle path made all the more sinister by the remains of a burnt out car that recently scorched the earth........ It's dark down there.

........ and the wooden sign next to it.

On a visit to Plymouth we saw the other side of Royal William Yard from the Mayflower Marina where we went to Jolly Jack's for lunch. More about Royal William Yard here.

At nearby Devonport docks is the Devonport Naval Heritage Centre. It is housed in old buildings that were formerly part of the naval base. Today they are outside the barbed wire fenced security zone. This group of buildings below contain part of the original Jacobean terrace of homes for the base's top brass. These remnants which have been added to, form the oldest naval buildings left in England.

Grade 2* listed. A pair of houses and attached offices forming the surviving part of the Officers' Terrace at Plymouth Dock, later Devonport Royal Naval Dockyard. Built 1692-1695 by Edward Dummer, Surveyor to the Naval Board and subsequently extended, mainly in the C19, and altered in the C20.

Up close and personal, you can see in more detail a whole gamut of weaponry, representing the history of warfare.

Gamut is an interesting word.

The term gamut was adopted from the field of music, where in middle age Latin "gamut" meant the entire range of musical notes of which musical melodies are composed; Shakespeare's use of the term in The Taming of the Shrew is sometimes attributed to the author / musician Thomas Morley.

The Royal Dockyard at Plymouth, known until 1823 as Plymouth Dock and subsequently as Devonport, was created in the 1690s. Its creation reflected the increasing strategic importance of the south west coast of England to the Royal Navy at that time. Several potential locations had been assessed before the site at Hamoaze was chosen, and the new dockyard was surveyed and laid out by Edward Dummer, Surveyor to the Navy Board. Construction largely took place between 1692 and 1695, and the choice of a completely new site enabled a comprehensive and ordered layout to be planned with the dock itself at the heart of the yard and the other buildings and facilities laid out around it.

The main part of the museum is housed in what was once the naval base's fire station. It was built when vehicles, including fire engines, were horse drawn, so that every vehicle also needed stables.

Amongst the many exhibits is a collection of ships models.

In the submarine room is an actual periscope through which you can see across the base. This periscope is housed on the ground floor.

What you are looking through though is about four floors up, on the roof. That is how large these submarines are.

There is also a collection of old cannons captured in naval battles and a collection of ships figure heads. The main part of the collection of figure heads is now housed in the museum in Plymouth. This bronze example from the 1700's was "lost" by the French.

September also saw some high tides not unrelated to the supermoon. This is the main road where the slipway overflows on to the road.

This is a superfast shot of a couple of seconds of swan action as it stretches its wings. It looks like one of those shots you see of splashes in milk.

Its a while since we did one of our Car Tours from our little Car Tour Book. The first Car Tour we did is here.The other Car Tours are here.

This Car Tour, number 5, happened on a beautiful late summer day. It involved some historic churches, a ford, a monument to a national hero, and a lot of very narrow and twisting Devon lanes.

We started in this historic ancient church, grade 1 listed, with the most incredible ornate ceiling. The building dates from 1430 and this is the original "wagon" roof, regilded in the mid 19th century.

Stone carved vaulting in the south aisle built in the 1520's.

Heavily carved stone decorated pillars.

Wooden artefacts too, including this former base of the Rood Screen, called the "Golgotha" with its warning of what is to come if you are naughty. It is over 500 years old and is possibly the only one of its kind left in the world.

This is one of the Devon lanes where a sunny day can quickly become as dark as night.

This is a different church, on a historic family estate built in the Arts and Crafts style, that included a quirky selection of hand embroidered hassocks.

This is the doorway into a huge monument to a very historic figure. It is designed in the Egyptian style, popular in its day, 1854.

This eccentric item in the centre of a village is a memorial that also had a useful function. You can just make out a lion and a unicorn.

We also encountered these pedestrians with wings, and I had to get out of the car and physically move them out of the way, because this was their road thank you very much, and they were not going anywhere. I will reveal all about these mysteries when I post my Car Tour 5 series sometime over the winter.

This time it is a vintage traction engine at a railway open day in Buckfastleigh. On this occasion you are able to visit inside the workshops which are normally closed to the public.

Steam engines are an oily business.

There were also some vintage cars on display and this one is a bit special. This is a Buick Straight Eight limousine. It was supplied new to the War Office for the use of Lord Mountbatten and was used as a chauffeur driven transport for General Eisenhower and Winston Churchill when they surveyed the D-Day practice areas we have already seen at Torcross. The car has also featured in several films, seeing passengers such as Donald Sutherland in the "Land of the Blind". We only know of its historic role during the war because a lady got the story from her grandfather who was the chauffeur.

If there are vintage cars around, there are usually vintage clothes and foods too, as their owners like to build the role. Here is a vintage biscuit assortment, some of which appear in my biscuit history posts here.Everything seems to be linking up in this series of photos.

Another day out, to an open garden this time. The famous yellow book scheme organises open gardens belonging to private individuals who can open their gardens to visitors a few days a year to raise money for charity. This was an unusual one and took me back to Prawle, to this unique house built astride the natural rock.

It had a commanding view of the English Channel and the old coastguard lookout on the cliff below. This rounds off my September selection nicely.