Well, that’s it… the Aston has gone back, and for the first time since I was nineteen I am carless.
After fifteen months of ownership, I (we – because this was a decision upon which which my wife had some considerable input) decided that stabling an expensive, seldom-used ornament made little sense, so I agreed to sell it back to Aston Martin Birmingham. And when I say sell, the transaction necessitated making an eye-watering payment to cover the negative equity caused by the crippling rate of depreciation that goes with Aston Martin ownership.
You don’t get that with Porsche.
But neither do you get a crowd of camera-clicking petrolheads gathered around Stuttgart’s finest at every services where you stop.
As they say… you pay your money and take you choice.
Anyway, I wanted to make the final road trip one to remember, so we set off to Salamanca two weeks ago, having spent most of the previous two days deciding what we could cram into the Aston’s derisory provision for luggage, and what would need to be sent by courier. As my wife pointed out, one doesn’t have this problem in a Porsche… not even in a 911.
Salamanca – if you don’t know it – is a Spanish gem. Situated in north-western Spain, the city is the capital of Salamanca province, and part of the Castile and León region. It is sometimes referred to as the Oxford of Spain, and to spare my brain unnecessary legwork, I’m going to quote from Mr Wikipedia here:
“Salamanca is considered a quintessential Spanish Renaissance city, particularly known for its architectural and urban aesthetics, as well as its humanist thinking and emphasis on knowledge. The city’s architectural style, the “Golden City” due to its sandstone buildings, and its vibrant nightlife contribute to its unique Renaissance character. Furthermore, Salamanca’s University, founded in 1218, and its associated “Salamanca School” of thinkers, particularly Francisco de Vitoria, shaped the city’s intellectual landscape during the Renaissance.”
So, there you go.
We stay in the Hotel Catalonia Plaza Mayor, which is slap bang in the centre; the only problem being that it’s noisy. There is no air conditioning – the hotel offers either heating or air conditioning, and the end of April is considered too early for the latter – therefore we need to sleep with the windows open; it’s a Saturday night, and sleep does not come easily.
Monday morning, we’re on the road to Santander to catch the ferry, and for once I have an unprecedented slice of good fortune. On road trips, there are two things I hate: firstly, stopping for petrol, and secondly paying through the nose for it, so my wife uses her technology skills to locate the cheapest available fuel, even if it means making a bit of a detour. However, on this occasion there are no bargains to be had, and so I decide to fill up at the motorway services where we stop for breakfast.
Good job, because half an hour later we learn from a friend that the whole of Spain – as well as other tranches or Europe – have a power outage which means that plastic cannot be used for payment, and that petrol pumps are now redundant. What caused this, we wonder? Local radio – before it went off air – speculated that it could be a cyber-attack, and I concur with this line of thinking. Pimply, unwashed youths tend to retreat to their bedrooms and use the internet to do one of two things: masturbate furiously over porn, or attempt to hack into something which will screw up anything run by the internet. And the electrical grid – or whatever it’s called – would seem to present itself as good a target for this as the Pentagon security system.
Surprisingly, we reach the ferry terminal without any traffic light-related problems and actually embark pretty much on time.
Tuesday afternoon and we dock in Plymouth on a glorious late spring day. This is perfect for a roof-down blast along the A38 and a pretty much full-on blat up one of my favourite stretches of Devon road, Halden Hill, which is still bizarrely camera-free.
I’m going to miss this car, I think, as we fly through the narrow hedge-banded lanes leading to Woodbury Common and arrive at our friends’ gaff in East Budleigh.
Later that evening, a friend asks me at dinner if I’d ever consider moving back to England.
‘Absolutely not,’ I reply in a heartbeat.
And yet, on our final morning, breakfasting al fresco at a Budleigh Salterton beachside café, with the smooth-pebbled beach on one side and on the other a tarmacked stretch of the coastal path, along which a procession of geriatrics wheel small geriatric dogs in small geriatric prams, I feel the ghost of nostalgia suggesting that there are many much worse places to live.
Thursday… and we dont have to look far to find them.
Birmingham, for instance.
Having dropped off the Aston and shed a few tears at Aston Martin Birmingham, we leave Solihull in a “seen-better-days” taxi, and head to New Street Station.
I point out the supposedly aspirational areas of suburban Birmingham, as our air conditionless taxi crawls from one bottle neck to the next.
‘Shirley… Edgbaston… Moseley, ah… somewhere around here is where my friend used to live,’ I tell my wife.’ She’s not called Shirley, by the way… that’s a suburb of Birmingham.
‘It’s no wonder he moved to Papua New Guinea then, is it?’
Whoever designed New Street Station should be shot. There are no escalators, and lifts – if there are any – are discreetly located, so all luggage needs to be lugged up and down stairs. And stairs there are aplenty.
In keeping with all UK transport terminals, you are constantly reminded to stay in close contact with your possessions, but there are no bins, so rubbish is discarded everywhere. Placing bins in public places means that someone is required to empty them, and as all the Eastern Europeans have gone home, there is now no one willing to do this.
Our train to Bristol arrives and is packed; but trains in England are always packed, so no surprises here.
However, we have allocated seats, and eventually manage to find them. The train manager informs us that due to a systems failure (possibly attributable to spotty youths tapping on keyboards in their bedrooms) the communications system is down and the air conditioning will only be working in certain coaches. Thankfully it works in ours.
But every time I visit, the country where I lived for most of my life has a more dilapidated and unkempt feel to it.
I relax and reflect on the past couple of days. I always welcome the opportunity to spend a little time in the UK. It’s good to see family, old friends, to enjoy the simple (mainly pub) pleasures of UK life. But every time I visit, the country where I lived for most of my life has a more dilapidated and unkempt feel to it. It’s more crowded and everything costs so much more. And – I might be biased – but the further one travels from East Devon, the more one is aware of an ever-present veneer of austerity, decay, and hopelessness. And that’s before you even get to the North of England.
A friend who spent most of his life in the hospitality industry tells me that this is a victim of decay too. Pubs close at ten – often earlier… restaurants are often closed by eight, as no one wants a table after six these days. In fact, no one goes out any more.
We eat at a popular Woodbury Salterton pub – The Digger’s Rest – on Wednesday night. The table was booked for seven and by eight we are the only customers left in the entire pub. I wrote, in a previous blog: ‘Ah, I think… so this is England, “Merrie England,” the land of Falstaff, Bulldog Drummond, Bertie Wooster, and other jocular, earthy characters with cloth-bare chests and deep throated laughs who liked to quaff ale, or sip port long into the night. No, the utopian conception of English society and culture based on an idyllic pastoral way of life is no longer to be found in this hostelry.’
This… or any other hostelry.
The train clatters on, as does my mind.
Trips to England for me are often associated with the pursuit of my passion for cars. But this time I left the Exeter Porsche shop in a Park & Ride bus, bound for the city centre. And beyond the railway line I catch a glimpse of the M5, the motorway on which we had driven to Birmingham a few hours ago. Arrive in an Aston Martin… depart in a train. Life goes on. I’m not sufficiently entitled to be unaware that there could be worse things in life.
We arrive at Temple Meads station in Bristol and another “seen-better-days” taxi takes us to the Fox & Goose at Barrow Gurney, which transpires to be a decent pub with reasonably priced, edible fodder, an acceptable pint of Guinness and comfortable accommodation, a long stone throw from Bristol Airport.
But here my newly acquired travel luck runs out.
I ask the landlady for a taxi number and she informs me that there’s a layby fifty yards down the road where a bus that goes straight to the airport stops every fifteen minutes or so.
We present ourselves at the appointed bus stop at eight o’clock the following morning, and the bus duly arrives.
I ask for two tickets, and am told by the driver that they will cost me nine pounds apiece.
‘Nine pounds?’ I say. ‘To go, what… one mile?’
‘Well, it’s nearer mile and a half actually. Same price from every stop from the city centre, mate. Take it or leave it.’
We take it.
And that’s about it.
England. Take it or leave it.
I think I’m going to leave it for a while.