Locally, I’m what’s known as a ‘blow-in’. Far from finding this a derogatory term, I think it’s a lovely echo from history, harking back to the days when visitors literally blew in on the winds that filled their sails, before leaving on the next tide.
But the implication that I’m only a temporary feature in a permanent landscape is unavoidable. Towns like Dartmouth are accustomed to the transient nature of visitors and trade – it’s always been their lifeblood. Nonetheless, within the town there’s a core of local people who truly belong.
Their ancestors walked these streets, created these homes, built timber ships in this harbour, and have caught fish in these shallows since time immemorial.
There’s a temptation when marvelling at what is a wondrous natural environment that you overlook the living history of the ancestral families that inhabit it.
Monty Halls explored the wondrous natural environment of south Devon
The convoluted track of the South Devon cliffs is intertwined with their DNA, the brine of the ocean is in their blood, and the sea wind carries the ancient breath of their relatives.
By a happy coincidence we had not one but two proper South Devon locals on the boat the other day. This was a meeting of some significance, as one of them represented the entire range of emotions the sea can create, and the other the perfect means to translate such emotions into words.
The first was Rachel Cole, coxswain of our Rigid Inflatable Boat, employee of my Great Escapes business and marine biologist extraordinaire.
Meet Rachel Cole, coxswain of our Rigid Inflatable Boat, employee of my Great Escapes business and marine biologist extraordinaire
Rachel’s job is to act as a guide for everyone on the boat, pointing out interesting features of the coastline that was her playground as she grew up, and revealing some of its secrets.
She’s the daughter of a fisherman from the nearby port of Brixham and knows, more than most, how the sea can give one moment and take the next. Her father was killed ten years ago in a fishing accident.
Pete Cole was by all accounts a fine man, lost to a job that remains the most dangerous in Britain by some distance. Even in this age of mechanisation and long-distance rescue, a fisherman still has a one in 20 chance of being killed during his working life.
Among the other hardy souls on the boat that day – this was, after all, a fast trip in an open RIB on a bitingly cold morning – was Kev Pyne. It seems to me that every village has a Kev (or certainly should have), someone who has the knack of observing the rhythms of life around them, and then translating them into words in the form of poems.
A POEM...
Riding a RIB with Rachel,
She who has such a great empathy
With the circadian rhythms inherent
There in the mystical magical sea
So as you marvel how this might be
Until you discover that she is
A fisherman’s daughter from a
Neighbouring fishing community
Whose dad comes with her, is in her
For what is always and eternally.
This tradition of oral history seems particularly strong when related to the sea, and its modern embodiment in Dartmouth is Kev.
He has that rare gift of summarising the change of the seasons, of capturing the essence of the sea itself. It might be as a dolphin rolls in the wake of a boat, or a gathering storm, or – as in this case – local knowledge and heritage coming alive before his eyes on a speeding boat.
The trip was a good one, with the grey seals now back out on the Mewstone, and the cliffs and coast just beginning to shake off the slough of winter. Kev certainly enjoyed all of this, but for him the real story of the trip lay a little deeper.
When he got home, as is his way, he wrote a poem, and sent it to me with a polite note saying how much he’d enjoyed the day. As ever, it was a perfect description of the trip, capturing the mood of the moment and the wonder of the day – our first boat trip of the new season.
But it was the verse about his guide on the day that really caught my eye, a verse I’ll share with you if I may, a touching tribute to someone lost, and the permanent, proud legacy in the life of the daughter he left behind: