Come on, Poppy, let's be having you.
We're dressed for the weather today because I think my
previous predictions about spring approaching have
disappeared, so we didn't get that one right.
It's very, very grey today. And Misty Missy, and there's
quite a bit of light rain coming down and that very fine sort of
drizzly rain. So I'm here with the full foul
weather gear, as it was called in the Navy.
The dog didn't want her coat on. I'm a bit iffy about this
because Poppy's missing a little bit of fur in a couple of places
and she can get cold, but she also doesn't like wearing a coat
and so I gave in and Poppy is here commando and we'll see how
we get on with the walk. But I'm feeling quite pleased
with myself because I've been sat indoors doing some UK column
work. I'm not allowed to say what it
is. Well, I probably could depending
on the the future programming of when material goes out, but I
got on quite well. I was also pleased to receive a
couple of packages from one of those companies that delivers
stuff. And I was really pleased with
the young guy that dropped the little packages off because he
actually did ring my doorbell. And this is a big deal because a
while ago we thought it was a good idea to have a doorbell
because we didn't have one. And having selected one and
fixed it by the door at an appropriate height where people
could see it, I was then stupid enough to expect people who were
making a delivery to ring it. But I quickly found that the
delivery men, for whatever reason, would always knock on
the door, which we can't hear, and they would fail to ring the
bell. So possibly I need a big sign
actually saying ring here, but I don't think we're going to do
that. Well anyway, a few birds out and
I wonder whether you can hear this one.
Well, we've got the birds singing, but that was a dove
cooing sat on the gate looking at me with some suspicion.
And there's quite a few doves around here, and it's quite nice
to see them all grouped up. And yes, as you walk past, they
look at me with this sort of suspicious look on their faces,
cocking their head to one side. Now, I'm really pleased that a
few of you have come back with me because I had absolutely no
idea what was going to happen with my first walk with the dog.
And I have to say, I was absolutely amazed when the
YouTube views got up to 30. Sorry, 3000, a little bit over
3000, but I was delighted with that because it's been a long
time since we put stuff out on YouTube because of course
YouTube decided they were going to censor the column and, and
the main site was taken down. So as I think I said in episode
one, I know that I've got to think about what I'm saying at
certain times, but nevertheless, it was great to see you all
there. And I've looked at most of the
comments. There might be a couple now that
I haven't. And yeah, a lot of really nice
comments, which is a big boost because you do what you do and
you're not too sure how it's going to be received.
So it was really lovely to to see those comments coming in a
little bit of fraw with a couple of people over the fact that it
was audio and I had people saying, Oh well, it should be
video and you should have a selfie stick.
And I'm thinking no, no, I don't want to do that because the
moment you start videoing, I'll have to just wait for this lorry
to come down. Part of this track, the moment
you start videoing you, you have to concentrate on the video.
And that means that I'm not having an enjoyable walk with
the dog. And so I thought, yeah, the best
thing to do here is audio. And I did like the fact that a
couple of people said to me, yeah, Brian, it was great
because I was doing other things.
I think one lady said she was making lunch or a meal.
So we're going to stick with audio.
And I'll just say nicely, if you were one of the people who said,
oh, it's not a video, just stay with me for a bit and see
whether you can enjoy the fact you can just, you know, relax in
a chair or you can be driving or walking.
And we can do this together. And it is good.
It's great. You've come.
And I see that a few of you have come properly prepared with the
welly boots, and you're going to need them.
Yeah. So there we are.
Poppy's just what you up to, Poppy?
Yeah, she's having a good sniff around today.
I mentioned the squirrels previously and my goodness, the
the woods seem to be alive with them at the moment, so she's
happy to keep a watchful eye out.
And yes, where were we? Well, the other thing is that I
was able at home to sit down and watch the UK Column News and UK
Column Extra. So it was Mike with Vanessa and
Charles Mallett. I don't know whether you've ever
seen UK Column News, but if you haven't, I'd I'd encourage you
to watch it and you'll need to go to ukcolumn.org to do that.
I'm having a bit of fun here. But I know of course that many
people watch stuff on YouTube and we don't actually get near
websites. They don't actually go and look
for the source material. But it's always nice to be able
to sit at home and and watch the news.
And yes, I do try and join in the chat box when I can.
But I was also surprised when I saw the time because I did
another piece of work and sent a couple of emails.
And then I discovered that it was 3:20.
So I thought I'd better come out.
And here we are coming down to the river.
Hello. I'm actually recording a little
bit of audio here. So I'm meeting you.
You don't give me any names, but tell me about your dog.
Oh, this is Molly. She's 13 years old, very
arthritic and very slow, but she still likes to go out.
She's well travelled. Excellent.
She's. Been to Dubai and back.
Really. She lived on Channel Islands for
two years. Dubai a bit hot?
It was awful. She came back after six months.
Right. OK, Yeah.
Is that enough? That's absolutely perfect.
Thank you very thank you very much.
I've I've got it up on YouTube. It's it's just called walking
the dog. My name is Brian, Brian Gerrish
walking the dog. So I did the first episode, I
think it was about 10 days ago and I got, I got 3000 views on
it, which was pretty good. And a lot of people have said
that it's just nice to be able to listen to something that's
well, one person said it's a bit like listening to the radio
years ago when when those things.
So I walk along, I comment, I talk, talk to the dog.
And I've spoken to a couple of people, no names is all
anonymous. And yeah, people seem to have
enjoyed it. So, well, unfortunately we also
do a bit of that, but This is why I decided for this one, you
know, just to keep it upbeat. OK, well, there we are.
That's fascinating, isn't it? I wonder what will happen when
that Lady goes and if she does, go and have a look at episode
one. And also interesting, of course,
she talked about doom scrolling, which is the expression I
haven't heard before, but I know what she means.
So I thought I'd just bring you down to look at the river
because it's, well, it's dropped a bit, but it has been very high
over the last few days because we've had some, some really
extraordinary rain. And so I'm just stood here
watching it go down towards the old railway remains the old
railway bridge which I've talked about, but it's all looking very
wintry again today and little beads of rains clinging to the
ends of the smaller branches. And yeah, there's this little
bit of mist which swirls around, but I thought we'd we'd just go
in a slightly different direction.
So I'm, I'm going to head up through some farmers fields in a
minute and we'll come back down the back lane and it's generally
a loop. Of course I'm walking well, I do
want to get home at the end of it.
But it's one of the lovely things about where I live is
that there's a lot of wonderful places you can walk a dog.
You know, you haven't got to go too far from your from your home
and you can generally do circuits.
So we have a joke amongst the dog walkers you meet and you
say, ah, you're on a clockwise circuit today.
And then of course, sometimes they'll go and do an anti
clockwise because that turns to make things more interesting.
But I thought for Poppy this afternoon, we'd come out head
out in a, a different direction to the one I took took you guys
on before. I also yeah, Pops probably,
probably I'm also trying out a a new device here, which I hope is
going to work OK, because before my little microphone, I had a
soft pad over it, foam pad, which does cut out a bit of the
wind noise. But because it's very windy
today, I've got a a little furry cover over it on windscreen, as
they say. But this is just a it's like a
little ball of soft fur, which is hello stuck at the top of my
jacket compacts. And it looks like a small
creature, to be honest. So we'll we'll see whether we
get any comments. I hope you can hear those birds.
I'm not sure what they are. There we are.
There's a challenge to my my audience, one of the one of the
birds making that sort of repeated chirpy noise.
Little bit of an interesting garden.
I've watched a bit of work go on with some garden sheds being
built. I've also got a house here
that's recently been up for sale and it's quite incredible.
I, I don't think it's very big. It's probably only got 3 rooms
in it. And I wouldn't like to say when
it was built if I guess probably the 1920s and I suspect an
elderly person's lived in it for quite a long time because this
is the first time I've seen it on the market.
I said last time there was a bit of heavy breathing because I did
have a pretty bad cold those days that time.
Today I'm OK, but it is a bit steep, a bit steep this bit.
So some different little birdies there.
It's really wonderful to hear them.
And I love it when when the weather's better and you come
out and it's like the birds are all chirping because they're,
you know, happy. The weather's dry and the sun's
out. It's great now if you can hear
the sound, it's amazingly squidgy under foot.
It's a little bit of path, but when it's rained a lot, the rain
builds up here and you almost get a stream down the middle of
the path. Very strong smell of horses
here. I think I know which ones those
are because there's some little ponies which I think are kept
purely as pets because I don't even think they're big enough to
to ride on. So we just need to keep an eye
on Poppy because this is a, this is one of the sheep fields, but
I don't think there's any sheep in there today.
She's pretty good actually. She, she doesn't really show any
interest in farm animals. And we walked through a field
with some cows the other day and one of them showed a bit of an
interest in US and ended up coming quite close.
And that spooked Poppy a bit and all she did is woof.
And then eventually the cow went and joined, joined the others.
So we survived. But no, she doesn't really chase
sheep, which is good. And we try and respect all the
the rules of walking in the countryside and shut the gates
and stick to the path. So this is a lovely little bit
here. I'm up on a yeah, I'm really up
at the top of a little tiny hill.
So it's a great big field. There's another big field on my
left over the hedge, but this one's the sheep field.
You've got a wood on the right again with the sort of old trees
that I've described a lot of these.
I've got this heavy cover of Ivy.
I can see when I walk around that somebody seems to go go
round and chop through the the stem of the Ivy to give the the
tree a chance. But a lot of them are pretty
heavy with it. There's a lot of pretty old oak
trees in there as well. And I can say with confidence
they're English oaks. And I only recently learned the
difference between the English oak and the European oak.
But essentially the English oaks got a lot more wiggly branches
and and of course will be superior timber.
Well, maybe not. And yeah, you come down off the
the slight slope and then the field opens up.
So it's actually an L shape with the foot of the L off to my
right. And when the weather's clear,
you end up with a lovely view back through.
I'm going to say another, another of the valleys, because
I realized talking to you the other day when I was talking
about a valley, it was almost as though there's sort of one big
valley, but you're walking in a valley that's got other valleys
contained within it. This is really what makes Devon
so special. You got this amazing rolling
countryside and yeah, I love it as a county.
I mean, I only ended up here because of the because of the
Navy, really. But I do love it.
You've got beautiful coastline and Cliff walks and you've got
some wonderful beaches. And of course, you've only got a
hop in the car for sort of 20 minutes and you can be up on
Dartmoor and you know, summer it can get busy.
But Even so, there's much of Dartmoor where if you walk off
for 20 minutes, half an hour and you will be on your own in some
absolutely spectacular scenery. So this is another place that I
I thought I might take you, but only if you're well behaved and
actually most of you were last time.
So I'll give you I'll give you gold stars for episode one.
And we're just coming up to the hedge here.
Everything is autumn is still autumn colours.
So the hedgerows are this Reddy orange colour with dark greens
because there's quite a lot of holly around here.
And this bit of the field is interesting because there's,
there's obviously a, a stream comes to the surface and the,
the grass, which is all pretty thick and lush, but it's also
got the tall spiky grass. It's the stuff when you look at
an Ordnance Survey map and it says bog or marsh, it's always
got a drawing of these little spiky grasses that have got
round sort of like a tube. The leaf comes up, leaf comes up
like a a tube and they're quite thick in this bit.
And it's also very, very muddy here.
Poppy, poppy, poppy, poppy, stay, stay.
So this is a style, wooden style which obviously the farmers put
in to keep the sheep in. But the moment you've gone
through the style, there's a fantastic stone style which
these big steps which go up over the bank, which forms the sort
of basis of the of the wall of the field.
If you like really massive stone.
So some big lads put those in place and they've also, you
know, got wonderful Moss growing on them.
So there we are. Didn't did you hear that?
I'm not sure whether I'm, I've talked over it, which is a pity.
But we've definitely got some pheasants around here somewhere.
They're pretty distinctive with their their sort of clucking
noises and they're always very pretty.
As I mentioned last time, the estate, well, there's a couple
of estates which breed them. So normally the pheasant
population is pretty high until the shooting season, which is a
sad thing really, but that's life, isn't it?
If you can hear this. So this is quite fun.
So you've got the edge of the road, there's a lot of mud and
leaves and stuff, and then you've got a low Stonewall,
about 18 inches, which is completely grown over with all
sorts of plants, grasses and plants and Ivy and various other
things. And then the other side of that,
it drops down about four feet and there's quite a vigorous
little. There we are, we can hear it, a
little stream flowing down. It's almost like a culvert isn't
it? I suppose you might call it.
And that's going down the side of the road.
It is quite a fun thing. You occasionally see see
youngsters who have been lowered down in their with their welly
boots having a, a splash along it as their parents walk on the
road. It's good to see the little
things still keeping, keeping people happy.
And we have some colour here.
Well, we've got several types of colour actually.
And we've got some, Oh my goodness, what do you call them
out? Some little, oh little.
We've got some snow drops there, not too many of them.
And what caught my eye was these daffodils which somebody's
planted or they've planted themselves on top of this quite
high bank and they're all here looking really lovely.
Daffodils I've always liked as a flower.
And I like them traditional. I don't like them when they've
they've been bred. So they got, you know, really
sort of fuzzy petals. Those are really beautiful and
and they're always great in a big, big clump because you then
get this really big splash of colour.
There's the Primrose, that was the name that had gone out of my
head. So the other thing about Devon
is that in the banks, primroses just grow in profusion and it's
always the case. You can be driving along and
you'll suddenly see a big splash of colour from the primroses,
which is nice. So there we are.
There's a bit more of that stream really coming down.
The water looks, you know, very clear.
It goes over kind of sort of rocky bed to the to the stream
itself. So the the water looks really
clear. What can you see, Poppy?
She suddenly got very inquisitive at something or
other. We got a couple of big fields
here. I'm not sure what's growing in
is growing. I think it could be cabbage or
kale, something like that. But ginormous fields.
And of course, that's something you notice in the country
district that even over my lifetime, the tractors have got
bigger and bigger and bigger to the extent that there's a lot of
sections of Rd. that if the tractor comes through, you just
don't have a chance. And I think you have to be
reasonably good at going in reverse in Devon because most of
the lanes, you're going to have to do it at some stage or other.
And I can see some really spectacular blossom coming up,
but I'm not sure it's just around the corner, what tree
that is. I've got another lovely field on
my right here which sometimes we go into and walk round.
And this is another one which I think you'd absolutely call a
Meadow. So the young lambs and the sheep
are brought in here for fattening up.
And yeah, it's just a beautiful place because it's quite
sheltered and I think the little sheep at least come and have
somewhere that's where there's a lot of food for them.
And it's pretty nice place to be.
It's got the river on one side and the big stream on the other.
And if you walk through, it'll take you to a path where you can
go back into the woods again. Hello.
Come on. Probably.
So another dog Walker out there. It's a man I meet from time to
time. I haven't, I haven't spoken to
him properly. So I'm afraid I don't know what
his name is. It's a joke of the dog walkers
that there's a lot of people. You don't know their name, you
don't know their name. But you know the name of the dog
and you know the type of dog they've got, so the person is
always described by the dog they have.
And we've got a big flooded Rd. Well, it's not very deep, but
it's quite wise. You can hear this road is
completely flooded and you get a lot of mud collects in this bit.
Actually, I think I might have said welly boots, but I haven't
got welly boots. I've got straight probably,
probably come, come here, got straightforward walking boots.
And it's the only disadvantage is that if the water's deeper
than the, you know, the ankle of the boot, you're in trouble.
But we seem to have survived. So puppy's gone back on the lead
because although this is a little country Rd. here, there's
quite a few cars come along. You could also say a lot of them
go too fast. But that's, that's the way it is
at the moment. So narrow stone bridge, little
stone walls either side. And it's got a, a sort of
buttress bit where you can, you can actually stand and have a
look out at the river, which is very nice.
But we'll get away from that because there's another, there's
another car coming. And I'm coming into a little car
park area where there's a couple of cars and I suspect there'll
be cars from people who are training, you know, professional
gun dogs, sorry, professionally training gun dog.
And that's quite interesting to watch, depending on what they're
doing. But I suspect they'll be in the
woods. They've normally got a little,
it's almost like a little squidgy sandbag which they
either throw for the dogs to retrieve or they hide the that
little package in the in amongst the undergrowth of the trees and
the dogs have to go in and find it.
So I presume that's training them for recovering birds that
have been shot or going in to flush them out.
And I know there'll be a few people sad at this, but really
I'm describing a bit bit of Country Life that's been going
on for a long time. So we've got lots of catkins
here, although they're looking, some of these look as though
they're already going over a bit because they're a bit, they're a
bit brown and forlorn in the damp.
And we've also got some brambles beginning to spring up.
They will be covered in blackberries in due course and
people will be down here picking them.
And then there's a lot of trees these days that are all covered
in liking and they don't look particularly happy.
I've never found anybody really to ask whether that's normal.
And we've got a lot of trees that are suffering with
something. There's been a lot of ash trees
cut down because of the ash disease, which ash die back,
which certainly Devon got hit with a lot.
And that's a shame because of course the land owners were keen
to get those trees out because they're good timber so they
could sell them on for firewood. But it does mean, you know,
there's a, there's more of a sort of an attack on trees.
When I was a boy and I lived in Gloucestershire, we had Dutch
Elm, Dutch Elm disease. And so I, I can remember the
trees starting to die with that. They were, I believe the figure
for Gloucestershire was that they lost 600,000 Elm trees and
a lot of other counties in the country were affected by it, so
that was a bit of a shame. I think.
A question I asked myself is, is that sort of stuff normal?
Did it always go on or is this some form of transfer of disease
for trees which comes about because of the products we ship
between countries? I lived in Holland for a couple
of years and have to say I enjoyed my time there.
I don't think they're bad people so I don't really think they
would have sent over some special tree disease package,
but you never know so well you can hear it now.
We've sort of done a loop round and we're back by the main river
again. So it's quite noisy here because
the flow is coming down over a couple of big boulders and this
is on the other side of the river.
To me, this is one of the areas where the sheep come down to
drink. So it's a lot of it is worn into
the banks, worn down into a sort of gentle slope that they can
navigate and, and yeah, get a drink.
We've got a solitary daffodil here.
That's interesting, just one. And on the other side of the
river we got some more clumps. So I don't quite know how it
works with daffodils. So I know that once people plant
them, they seem to spread all over the place.
But the interesting thing is they're quite dispersed.
Hello, you're very smart dog. So we got a woolly coated white
cream woolly coated dog with a very, very smart red raincoat.
But we're being quite lucky at the moment because I think
actually the sort of Missy, Missy drivel, Missy drizzle is
eased off. We've got a special bit here.
Just give that a clunk. There's a big bit of a couple of
big bits of tree. The tree came down in winter
gales many years ago and they chopped it in order to free up
the path. But they, they, they then use
the, the biggest sections of the trunk to reinforce the
riverbank. And so these, one bit of the
tree here is embedded right into the side of the path.
The other one, I think the flood stream, because the river was
pretty high about a week ago, I think the flood stream has sort
of lifted it and partly dumped it back on the path again.
But that's all part of the cycle of the river.
It's probably time to comment on something.
And there's a little bench been put in here which is really nice
because you can sit on it and it's got a little bit of shelter
behind it. And you're looking over into the
sheep field and down the river and part of the path and next to
it is a very officious sign which says Environment Agency
Danger Weir. And it says this sign has been
provided for your safety by the Environment Agency.
And for further information please telephone 03708506506.
Well, interesting thing is that the dangerous Weir was created
by the Environment Agency because previously this was just
a section of a normal section of the river.
But many years ago, the Environment Agency got very
excited with volumetric flows of the water, not only on this
river, any other river they could get near.
And they decided they needed to measure the the flow of the
river here. So they effectively put in a
concrete section. It's about, I don't know, 40
foot long. So it's like a big culvert that
they forced the river to go into.
And they did that. So they had a known cross
section and they could then send a little probe out on a piece of
wire which would measure the speed of the flow.
And so they built that. Then they built a little wood
cabin and then they decided the wood cabin needed a fence around
it. And then it needed a few signs
to say what it was and to keep off it.
And then they decided that to power the whole thing, it was it
was best to go green. And so it's now got its own
little windmill and solar panels.
So I'd just like to say the warning sign for the Weir should
be completely unnecessary because the only people who
caused a problem in any danger is the Environment Agency.
And the other bit I'll add is that I've walked this path for a
very long time, but I've never, ever seen that probe in the
middle of the river. And I wonder whether that's the
case with a lot of other Environment Agency projects.
I am a bit cynical these days, but.
I'm just stick up for myself and say it's age-related and I've
never, I've never really been able to stand crap.
And I think that's what I'm looking at.
Yeah. Oh, here we go some.
We got some high quality catkins here.
These are about, I don't know, 3 inches long, quarter inch wide,
and they're all on this little tree fluttering in the breeze.
I don't know what it is with them, but I've always liked
them. I've always found them
interesting. And I can remember seeing them
when I was a very, very, very young child.
And yeah, the Catkin thing has stayed with me.
It's, it's funny what you remember.
So the thing I forgot to tell you was that the car park which
I mentioned where the cars were for the dog trainers.
One beautiful sunny morning many, many years ago, I, I was
walking the opposite way to the way I was walking now.
I was walking downriver towards that car park and you can't, you
can't sort of see into the car park until you get to about the
last 20 yards because there's some trees and bushes.
But I coming down, it was a beautiful morning.
I think it was quite early, well, reasonably early.
It was about 8:00 and I was just thoroughly enjoying the walk and
not really paying attention to anything.
I was just enjoying walking and listening to the sounds and then
the next minute I came round the corner into the car park and it
was like I'd gone through a time machine because there were all
these people in 18th century dress.
The ladies were there in their tight waisted hips to the ground
hoot dresses in beautiful colours, Blues and greens and
Reds. And there were men in their
breeches and waist coats and I think one of them had a tricorn
hat on. And it was, it was marvellous
and incredible at the same time because you just didn't expect
to see that. And it literally was just like
going back in time. And then I realised that amongst
them were other people in modern clothes.
And when I got the opportunity to talk to a couple of the
people, they were there with a film crew and they wanted to to
film a scene where these people were going to be on the little
stone bridge that I've been across.
And if I was one of the girls who did most of the talking
about what they were doing. But what I can't remember is if
she even gave me the name of the film.
And I also know that I never did ever find out where that film
clip was used. And I'd, I'd really love to
because I'm sure if I saw saw those people in their brilliant
coloured costumes standing on the the little bridge it, it
will be a fantastic memory. So there we are.
If you're somebody who enjoys film and theatre and that sort
of stuff, it's very powerful how costumes and all of the
theatrical stuff can really make an impact on you.
Yeah, contrast those beautiful people because I've got my I've
got my yellow high vis rain jacket on today and you might be
wondering why. They're just brilliant because
you go and buy stuff from various places.
I might have mentioned this before, but I'll mention it
again. And you can pay quite a lot for
supposedly waterproof jackets and stuff and they never seem to
last very long. So a friend said just go in the
local builders merchant and get yourself a yellow jacket because
they're half the price and they last twice as long and you know,
they've got a a lining. So it's not just a rain proof
jacket. And I did this and best thing I
ever did. So a number of advantages.
One is if you work walking early morning or mainly in the evening
winter time, you can actually be seen by cars if you get near the
road at all. But the other thing is if you
wear it when you're driving your car, it's like you're in a a big
bubble of sunshine, your own personal sunshine.
And it doesn't matter how grey the day is, you get in the car
with your yellow jacket and there you are, your own private,
private nuclear furnace. So that's two reasons.
But the other reason for enjoying a yellow jacket is you
get respect. People give you respect.
And I'll give you an example. I went to see some family the
other weekend and they were taking their youngsters to do a
bit of football training on a field.
Actually, it was a girls team. It was a girls team.
And when we got there, there was a few parents.
One man who I initially thought, you know, was, was the sort of
instructor because as we arrived, the guy looked at me
and he said, are you the guy running the place?
Because some of it isn't open. And I said, no, I'm not the guy
running the place. I'm just the guy wearing the
yellow jacket. Well, in the end, there was a
bit of discussion between these parents and they said, well,
actually the place isn't open at all because the little coffee
place isn't open and this and that.
And should we be here? And I'm pleased that one of the
parents said, well, look, why don't we just carry on and run
it? If somebody comes, we'll stop.
And so they ran the training session, but I'm pretty sure,
but when they said to me, was it OK if they stayed?
If I'd have said no, they would have absolutely not run the
session. And why?
Why would they have followed that?
Simply because I was wearing a yellow jacket.
Of course, if you really want to spook people out, you wear the
yellow jacket and you need a clipboard and preferably some
sort of walkie-talkie. And then I think you can do a
lot of things, including maybe some things which, yeah, could
cause the establishment a few problems.
So I'm here just approaching the church tower.
Poppy's had a really good, good walk.
She's actually been well ahead of me for most of it.
So she's doing all right here. Poppy, dog pops, what are you
doing? So I've just, so I've just come
away from the path a bit because it's one of the ladies I spoke
to earlier just coming past. I'm not being antisocial.
It's just that there's only so much talking to yourself you can
do without people really having concerns about you.
I'm reflecting a bit actually on what that Lady said to me, you
know what, what was I doing? And I said to her, well, it's
just about walking the dog and, and keeping it like that.
And I wonder whether that's what I should do Should I keep
walking the dog to be something very chilled?
Because really, when I'm doing this, I've got all sorts of
stuff going around my head. And I'm wondering whether I
share that with you, because obviously a lot of it will get
on to the topic of the day. So there we go.
Now I know this lady, so I wonder whether she'll speak to
me. Hello.
I'm recording a little bit of audio here without telling me
who you are. Would you chat to me just as you
come up here? It's a little thing which I
started called walking the dog. So I'm out walking, I'm talking,
I'm describing things, I'm meeting people and I've got a
very good response to it. So this is my second episode and
I'm going to say I think I know you well enough to say go on.
So who's your dog then? And what what sort of dog's no
key he? Is.
A collie. Collie.
Yeah, OK, that's that's good. So you're out for the afternoon.
Wander around, it takes. A lot of walking.
And do you do all the walks? Yes.
Yeah. OK.
I've been talking to people about the circuits and the fact
that all the dog walkers here, we never we don't mention the
place. All the all the clock walkers
here either go clockwise or anti clockwise.
I don't know what day it is, depending on what day it is.
Yeah. What you do, Yeah.
So what do you think of this little village then?
Because you've lived here for quite a while.
Oh. Yeah, I like it.
I. Love me, it's nice and.
Quiet and out of the way isn't. It.
Yeah, I think so. You can get places, but it's out
of the way. Yeah, your dog's heading towards
Australia. Yeah, he gets.
Bored. He gets bored.
So yeah, no, I like. It So were you born here then
all right OK OK can I can I be cheeky and ask when that was
then 49 so. 40 years. Ago, yeah, right.
So it's the same, same time as us actually.
So I grew up, came down here, I was here till 16 and moved into
town. I moved around and then I came
back here when my daughter was 5 and she's now 25.
Right, Yeah, it's pretty amazing that we've been having a big
huck out of all the stuff in the roof at home.
And it starts, you know, with toddler stuff, toys and Duplo
and prams and everything else. And it was so bad.
I I said to my wife, the only way we can deal with it is just
start and bring a bit down at a time.
So lots of books have gone off to the charity shops and and
probably 60% the way through, but I got a lot of papers and
junk and stuff out there. Well, this is true.
Yeah. Well, we kept a lot of it
because we thought the children might, might want stuff.
But they said don't want any of that joke junk in our house.
Yeah, my, I asked my daughter. She said no, I don't want any of
it. Yeah, I got given.
Stuff from when I was in school, about 10 years.
Ago, yeah, certificates and scrapbooks and yeah, yeah,
that's good. Anyway, thank you for that.
All right, we'll see you. Bye.
Well, there, there we are.
You see, this is what makes it difficult, because if we end up
putting a little bit of political stuff into a walk with
Poppy the dog, we could we could upset some of the people who've
agreed to talk. Oh, my goodness.
Life is difficult, isn't it these days?
So can I throw that back at you? You've come along with me today.
If you come for a second one, there must be a reason.
So I'm going to ask, what do you think?
Should I keep walking the dog as a as a relaxing thing where we
mainly concentrate on what we're seeing on our walks and how
we're just how we're feeling in a nice sort of way?
Or am I allowed to bring in some of the other stuff that gets
into my head about what's happening around us?
Perhaps you'd be kind enough to put that in a, a comment under
the I nearly said video. Well, I am going to put this out
as a video again. But of course, what it really is
a podcast. But the thing about YouTube is
you can use the premier system, which is good.
So have a think about it and tell me, tell me what you think
should happen and I'll make a decision.
I do enjoy chatting with the people and I've been surprised
actually at how relaxed most of them have been when I just say
I'm recording that Lady, that Lady was a little bit nervous,
you know, Pops, but she, she did it in the end.
So there we are secrets out. She's been in the village for 40
years. So have I.
And yet when we came here initially, when we came here
initially, we thought probably we'd only be here for a couple
of years because for Navy families, very often you, you
move different locations depending on, you know, where
you're based with the military. But we made the decision to stay
in Plymouth because it gave our wife and the children some
stability. And so time went on and then all
of a sudden you've got younger people in the village stop you
and they say, what did it used to be like?
And this really makes me smile because this is the question I
used to ask my neighbours. They in those early days, of
course, were much, much older than than I was.
But now I've got the youngsters in the village coming up and
asking me the same things, the passage of time.
I've just come through a little back bit here which I haven't
talked about. I'll tell you about that in due
course. It's raining now, so I'm going
to be quite happy to get in and have a cup of tea.
Yeah. Interesting little day.
Interesting day. OK, well, it's been good to see
you again. I hope you're relaxed and let me
know about episode 2 and what you should think I should do.
And if you're a video person, chill out and listen to a bit of
audio. Well done dog.
Most of that's probably gone on the wall.
OK, I'll say bye bye.