VT Coughtrey - Grand Tour part one

NOTES	The next morning I started out for work as usual, but as I approached the gates of the brewery I suddenly found myself turning on my heel and heading west - in the direction of Newquay! I had no idea of the best route to take, but I reckoned that if I followed the coast for a couple of hundred miles I must get there eventually. So, kitted in my blue boiler suit, donkey jacket bearing the legend TAMPLIN across the back, and great gumboots (it must have been cool for August or I couldn't have gone anywhere in this gear) I walked back along the seafront and westwards out of Brighton.
	Somewhere along the Old Shoreham Road I came across a strange little camping shop, where I bought a small meths-burning stove, a bottle of meths, a set of tin plates and spoons and a rucksack to put it all in. After walking a few more miles, probably when I reached Worthing, I decided I'd better start thinking about hitching. To improve my chances I found a barber and had a haircut and shave. When I eventually started hitching I discovered that it would have been more sensible to hitch back to London and embark on the main route to Cornwall from there. The lifts were very few and far between and, in general, were only for two or three miles to the next village or town, or from the outskirts of a city to its centre. I could have asked to be dropped off at various junctions with the more direct inland routes, but for some reason I persisted in hugging the coast.
	By the time I arrived at the centre of Portsmouth, it was getting dark and I was tired, so I consulted the Book of Taps and found that there was a Salvation Army hostel in the city. Actually, the Sally Ann was no tap at all, unless used in conjunction with the NAB, which would sometimes issue vouchers for it - the same system as for the Church Army hostels. I soon found that the SA hostels were not particularly cheap considering how dirty and basic they were, as well as dangerous. The food was abominable. In general, dosser-cooks were given the job of boiling up butcher's scraps. You were presented with a bowl of gristle and bone fragments (made crumbly and therefore edible by days of continuous boiling), floating in grease. There was other food, but this cost a lot extra. Usually, there was little attempt to control the nutters and knife fights were not uncommon.
	Sleeping accommodation was in open-fronted cubicles, just wide enough to get a single bed in. Bed bugs were plentiful and their bites are no fun. Drunks lurched about and wandered into your doorless cubicle wanting to talk to you at all hours of the night. It was hard to hang on to any possessions. Even your boots could disappear if you made the mistake of falling asleep. Actually, on this particular occasion, there would have been no chance of sleeping anyway, because there was a window at the head of my bed and on the other side of this window, pneumatic drilling of the road was going on all night, without cease.
	This and subsequent visits to Salvation Army hostels led me to the conclusion that this organisation or, at least, a section of it was in the hands of a bunch of rogues with no princples at all, religious or otherwise. I still bridle whenever I read about all the marvellous work done by the SA. But, of course, they may well have reformed themselves since then.
	Early next morning, not bothering to stop for the 'breakfast' I had paid for, I hit the road again. For the next few days, I half walked, half rode in dozens of short lifts, sleeping in barns, town parks and even public lavatories (they used to stay open all night, but no-one ever used the ones in country villages between about 11.30pm and 7am). I used the information in the Book of Taps to full advantage, to eke out the remainder of my wages from Tamplin's. This told me where the 'soft' NAB offices were, as well as convents, monasteries and small local charities kindly disposed towards dossers. My crazy coastal route took me in and out of Southampton, Bournemouth and Exeter before I arrived in Plymouth. That was where it struck me, albeit temporarily, that my mission to rejoin Linda was a touch impractical. I thought, "Why not just forget her and try to settle down in Plymouth?" 'Settle down' was a very important phrase to use when trying to tap any welfare or social work agency. You had to persuade them that your one-and-only goal was to remain in the same place, with a wife and two children, and in the same job for the rest of your life. I bet they don't talk like that now!.
	Having dossed somewhere in the town overnight, I set about performing the hard task of doing the ritual round of government agencies (as described in Chapter 25), in order to get a job, hostel vouchers for a couple of weeks and perhaps a little money (I had by now almost run out). All went well except that they would only issue vouchers for the wretched Sally Ann and the job I got with the Green Card looked as though it might be truly apalling. It was as a brick kiln cleaner quite a way outside of the city, at Yelmpton. I was warned that it was extremely hot work, because there was no time to let the kilns cool right down before you had to go inside them. I could see that it was also going to be very dirty, dusty and heavy work. Of course, I accepted the job in order to be able to proceed to the next stage of the NAB-tapping ritual, and I may have genuinely intended to have a go at it, at least for a week or two. However, the next morning I couldn't force myself to turn up at all, so spent a fraudulent few nights in the Sally Ann with the vouchers I had obtained on the strength of getting the job. This SA turned out to be every bit as bad as the Portsmouth one. In the daytime I explored the city. I remember thinking what a terrible dump it was, but then the heart had been bombed out of it in the War and it had been rebuilt in great haste.
	As Plymouth obviously wasn't going to work out, it seemed to me that I might as well get back on the trail of Linda. I set off late at night for some reason, having stocked my rucksack with provisions bought with the small amount of cash the NAB had given me. Not now being able to get any lifts at all, I walked and walked, over the Tamar and into Cornwall. I have a couple of very pleasant memories of that leg of my journey. One is of waking up after a good night's sleep on the springy leaf-mould floor of a beautiful wood and making porridge over the little meths stove, with almost a pint of sterilised milk. I had made very little use of the stove and utensils thus far, but for this breakfast alone it had been worthwhile lugging them around with me for a couple of weeks. Ridiculous as it seems, I have always remembered that porridge as one of the most delicious and satisfying meals I have ever had. I think it has something to do with the fact that this was my first encounter with sterilised as distinct from pasteurised milk. It just happens to taste wonderful in woodland air at dawn after a peaceful sleep!
	In the same area I found an isolated little church and was resting in the churchyard when the vicar appeared. He seemed delighted to have someone, however scruffy, to whom he could deliver a long lecture about the history of his church and of Christianity in general in that region. For my part, I found everything he was saying fascinating and learned a lot, but I thought it a good plan to leave him in no doubt as to my impecunious state. As we parted, he thrust some money in my hand. I can't remember how much it was, but it was sufficient to be very handy for the next few days. Unfortunately, this pleasant episode did nothing at all to diminish the bad impression I had formed of vicars from that previous encounter, in Lutterworth (see Chapter 24). I suppose I trained myself to think of this Cornish one as an aberration.
Well, I've now been told by one authority that it's 'cyder' in Cornwall and by another that 'cider' is the correct modern spelling everywhere. Take your pick!	Eventually, I arrived in Looe, where I used some of the vicar's money to sample rather too much of the local, very powerful cyder (is it 'cyder' or 'cider' in Cornwall?), then spent the night lying on the sea wall listening to the intermittent mournful blasts of a foghorn somewhere out to sea. Someone in one of the pubs had informed me that Newquay was on the opposite coast of Cornwall and a long, long way from Looe. That was when I decided to give up the pursuit of Linda once and for all.