Country driving

The first incident concerned manners in narrow lanes. Some drivers, either foreigners or older drivers, showed too much consideration, slowing down or stopping at the first sign of oncoming traffic. Other drivers, mainly younger locals, showed too little, with one of these last managing to clip our wing mirror, rather than moving over a bit. Mirror knocked off its mounting and front cowling knocked off of its mounting, retaining clips broken. Rather to my surprise the mirror clipped back on and continued to move about to commands from the interior. Wrapped up here against the damp of an early autumn night. We shall see what a new cowling - a bit of moulded plastic - costs. Maybe we will be in duct tape land.

The second incident was more of an own goal. Wanting to get from Buckfast to Holne, less than five miles as the crow flies, rather than use the main roads which would have been ten, we got stuck in another narrow lane behind a tractor mounted hedge cutter, advancing in the right direction at foot pace, completely blocking the lane to other traffic. Rather than wait, we thought that there was a way round, but actually found ourselves at the back of Buckfastleigh, on the way to the Camphill Community. A rather surly local assured us that all we could do was go back and wait behind the tractor.

Then we remembered that there was a back way out of the Community, having used it before on a fete day, and so we decided to push on. Got through to the back way and through the first couple of gates. Nearly got stuck on the hump in the middle of the track but failed, it seems so far, to do anything dreadful to the exhaust pipe. Perhaps they are more protected these days than they were of old. After a more few twists and turns, made it to the outer gate, with a more or less public road visible beyond.

An outer gate shut with a sturdy padlock and chain. It was now late afternoon and anyone we were likely to be able to raise in the office was likely to take a dim view of the matter, perhaps with dark talk of trespass, and to suggest that we came back in the morning. Visions of a several mile walk back to the village to try and find some accommodation for the night. At this point, I thought a proper inspection of the chain was in order, to find that one link was a karabiner, the sort of thing used by climbers and rope men, so the gate was not locked at all.

Not too many minutes later we made it back to a real road, rather relieved that we had not had to walk back to the village. As it was, the surly local was perhaps wondering where we had got to.

Reference 1: https://www.camphilldevon.org.uk/.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carabiner.