Going Back

I hadn't been back to Truro in years. Since my mother died I had no more reason to visit. I'm not sure what inspired me to go there again; I woke up on this sunny summer morning and got hit by a yearning to drive.

A breakfast of coffee, a day bag packed with camera, paints and more coffee, and I was out of the door. The journey is normally around an hour and a half and every mile was a blast of nostalgia as I crossed the two moors and meandered the slow route through the centre of West Devon and Cornwall. I've loved the occasions when I've had the time to take the scenic route; so rare when she was alive and I was working so compulsively. These were the roads of my youth, learned when I first got my licence and started exploring; a brief season of travelling between Exeter and Truro at the weekends, stopping to fish at Burrator on the way home on a Friday night and arriving in the early hours so I could spend half a day and a few evening hours with my lovely Alison. Young love...

The day unfolded and my journey evolved as I got sidetracked by one memory after another. I'm not sure how healthy this was becoming as, with each new stop, I found a quiet sense of loss crawling over me.

Burrator itself was a strange mix as I slowly drove around the edge of the reservoir. I found a spot I often parked up in and got out of the car. As I reached the water, standing on a bit of old granite wall, I was suddenly sitting there with my dad.

He had fished this place in his own early manhood and was eager to show me how good the fishing was. We were sitting down on the wall – not an ideal position for fly fishing – and we were chatting. We'd arranged to meet up there that Friday evening after I'd just got a permit for the reservoir. He had suddenly lit up and was eager to show me around. I was easy about it.

This communion was unusual by then. Actually, looking back at my childhood, it was rare. There were few moments in my early youth when dad and I actually conversed. I know there were a few more, but this is the only one that stuck in my mind. Don't get me wrong; I've no idea what we actually said, though I know we got pretty philosophical. What made it stick were two things; firstly, he showed respect and surprise for my thoughts (I've no idea what they were at the time) and, secondly, he got really agitated when I became more interested in our conversation than in catching the trout that were going mad in the waters ten feet in front of us as the sun set. He suddenly broke off our conversation and took the rod from my idle hands.

He didn't catch a fish, despite a number of fly changes. There followed a rather curt explanation of how to milk hot spots like that. I sort of listened. I wasn't upset - I was generally unconcerned; I found his sudden manic expression amusing because my heart was full of the love of dad/son communication and nothing could shift that. Not even his own seemingly crazed outburst. I was just glad to be there with him, having a chat and enjoying a beautiful evening. (I wish I could share with him now my version of that evening.) Dartmoor is an oddly pervasive region. There was an area on the western bank of the reservoir that I could never fish after dark. I don't know why, but it always spiked the hairs on the back of my neck.

The mysteries, the legends and the dramatic landscape character all contribute to a vulnerability in the subconscious. Gradually increased exposure maybe leads us to become a tad suggestible. Perhaps this landscape began to prepare my mind for what was to come later in the afternoon.

Leaving Burrator, I headed back inland through Tavistock and down through the centre of Cornwall. There were no special early-youth memories, but I passed through a village that, twenty five years earlier, had endured a services upgrade which involved temporary traffic lights.

I had travelled that section with the family – children both under four – one weekend visit to mum and her second husband (difficult, always). A few miles earlier I had overtaken a bloke in his overblown and ancient estate car. He was seriously creeping along and I (and a growing queue behind me) had endured twenty-five mph speeds for miles. We had reached a short stretch of open(ish) road. I took the slight opportunity to pass him on a long right-hand bend. There was no cutting up - though I had to drop to second and accelerate aggressively to make use of the brief opportunity.

A mile after I took him, and at last driving much faster than allowed by his restrictions, I realised that he was keeping up with me, bend for bend. And then we hit the section of roadworks with the temporary traffic lights at red. As I cruised to a stop at the designated position I watched in astonishment as our soon-to-be acquainted maniac screamed past me and screeched to a stop in front of the 'Wait here' sign! I then watched with growing concern as he got out of his car and marched towards me. I hastily locked the doors and was just winding my window up as he reached me. There was a vaguely unhinged expression on his furious face. He started to rant.

Then the lights turned green. I pulled away from him, carefully passing his car, and behind me, with him still standing in the middle of the road, every car that had been stuck behind him passed him too – either on the outside or, as the queue opened up, back on the inside of him as he stood, powerlessly frustrated and actually hopping on the white lines. It was just too funny and we laughed with released tension. My last image of him was of a crazed, skinny man, leaping up and down in the middle of the road as traffic passed him on either side. Looking back, I feel a minor regret. Minor only because he was a twat and I was just reacting. But, with the hindsight of three decades of my own tribulations, I wonder what had contributed to his state of mind at that moment and I find myself wishing I could have stopped to have a chat. I think he was a very stressed man, expressing his desperate frustrations despite himself.

At last; I approached the outskirts of Truro. It's fair to say that my formative years were spent here. I came in on the A38 and, after Indian Queens, found myself on that old familiar road and cruising in through the 30 limit past Laddock village hall. I slowed to approach the junction with the little lane that led to my old girlfriend's family farm and turned right, into the leafy tunnel of dense overhead oak and hazel. The sun was breaking through the canopy, lighting the verdant hedgerows with glitter-ball crazed splashes of light.

Though I knew the junction, I didn't really remember the entire journey, so I crept through the silvan tunnel, winding up and down along the valley. And then, there it was; her old farmhouse and the farm where I spent the weekends of my late teens, working with her dad at harvest times, exploring the bluebell wooded valley and taking in the views from the top field; in the kitchen – typical Cornish farmhouse, with a huge Esse range (half as big again as the more common Aga) – there was a map of the farm with all the fields named and it was actually called 'Top Field'. My mind was a kaleidoscope of idyllic memories, and the wonderful feel of her hugs – everything coloured by her warm love.

I pulled into a gateway and got out of the car, camera in hand, to walk back down through the farm yard which the lane ran right through. It was a very quiet lane and I don't remember its dividing the yard as a problem.

During harvest we'd pull the grain trailer up to the grain pit beneath the silo, tractor out in the lane, and gradually tip the load for the auger to pull up into the silo. I don't remember anyone ever being stuck waiting in the lane. The yard was loosely formed by various stone buildings and a worker's cottage, with the farmhouse and garden flanking one side of the main yard. As I ambled slowly, taking in the memories it all triggered, the garden came into view. The clothes line was just as I remembered it still and, immediately, we were rushing out of the back door to take in the washing as sudden summer downpour washed over the farm. We'd been having Sunday afternoon tea before going to sing in a choir concert, so dressed in our choir uniforms – Alison trying to run in her long dress and all of us laughing at the silliness as we got as wet as the washing in seconds.

On the other side of the road from the farmhouse and main yard stood the old open-fronted hay barn, in the old Cornish style, stone walled and slate roofed. It was empty and the dry dirt floor was strewn with strands of old hay. A heap of farm machinery bits lay quietly deteriorating in the corner and the still air was heavy with hay dust and the smell of old oil and flaking metal.

As I stood there, four years of memories cascaded through my mind. A stolen kiss around the corner from the rest of the harvest team, both of us sweaty and dust streaked, laughing at the naughtiness of that momentary hug before rejoining the work; standing on the growing stack manhandling bales off the elevator in the stifling heat as we neared the underside of that baking slate roof; finding the new kittens in their nest of trampled hay in an alcove between bales while the mother cat was away – she was wild and vicious and definitely to be avoided when she had kittens. Alison was keen to adopt one, but keeping them friendly needed to start young - the farm cats had to fend for themselves, keeping the mouse and rat populations down. Pets weren't encouraged.

It looked to me like the farmhouse wasn't being lived in at the moment, though the place was still being maintained. On the other hand, the farm worker's cottage was in pristine condition and looked like it had been sold off. The buildings themselves clearly weren't being used for modern farm work, except one barn that had some seasonal kit stored. The old combine shed where Alison's dad kept two ancient combines he'd picked up cheap at farm auctions then converted from 'baggers' to 'tankers', now held a single, very swish-looking, enormous combine which just fitted in the space. Progress...

The memories kept coming and I became aware of a growing melancholy. It was time to go. As I drove on up the lane and past the fields of our youth there were more memories – the steep hay field that ran down to level out by the stream where I just managed to stop her dad's old flatbed lorry with its dodgy brakes before it sunk itself in the boggy ground. We were harvesting and stacking bales on the flatbed. Taking it into the field was an interesting test of my newly acquired driving 'skills'. You just had to go down to the bottom first while it was empty because there was no way you'd stop it with a load up. No power-steering, no air-breaks - another old auction find. I loved it.

And then I was on the tops. I stopped at a gateway to have a look over at the views. Shocked! Whilst the lane was still bounded by hedges, the latest land managers had ripped out most of the field banks. I was looking across a prairie! It had been recently harvested and the stubble stretched as far as I could see and over the hilltops into the valley beyond. My memory filled in the missing banks, rich with foxgloves and bramble and guarded by ancient dwarfed oaks, bent and twisted by the strong prevailing gales of hundreds of Cornish winters. I wondered what the present farmers called this 'field' now.

I got back in my car and left the lanes of my youth. I wouldn't be going back.