The Beacon Bike (eBook)

Around England and Wales in 327 Lighthouses

Edward Peppitt (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
288 Seiten
Icon Books Ltd (Verlag)
978-1-83773-169-5 (ISBN)

Infos

The incredible story of a 3,500-mile cycle ride to explore the onshore and offshore lighthouses around the coastline of England and Wales, proving that a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis doesn't mean giving up on a lifelong dream. The Beacon Bike is the inspirational tale of one man's quest to fulfil the promise he made to himself as a small child, nestled in the bed of an attic room while the glow of Dungeness lighthouse flashed past his window - a comforting, ever-present companion. It is also a loving tribute to the coast; not only its beautiful landscape, but also the communities that make it so special. It celebrates the generosity of spirit found in people around the the country, as well as the history of the iconic lights that brighten their world. This journey is a testament to the joy of life's simple pleasures. A warm welcome at the end of a long day. The fire of a child's imagination, rekindled in later life. The power of a light that pierces the darkness.

Ed Peppitt

Textauszug

PROLOGUE

Somewhere in the space between wakefulness and sleep, I become aware of the regular blink of light. It permeates the inky blue darkness and momentarily brightens the plain white walls. I begin to count the interval between flickers – always ten seconds – each flash illuminating the room, punctuating the dark reassuringly. I climb out of bed and make my way to the window, looking out to find the source. And then it comes to me. The light is travelling through the night from Dungeness, from the beacon that keeps ships from running aground and sailors safe, that marks the end of the land and the beginning of the sea. The lighthouse.

Seeing the light

When I was a child, a part of each school holiday was spent at my grandmother’s house on Romney Marsh in Kent, about half a mile from the sea. It was a house divided into two – she had bought a large town house after the war, then set about splitting it down the middle and selling one half to an old friend. The hallway had two unlocked doors, one to each side of the original house, where my grandmother and her friend met each morning to allocate the morning post. They even shared a party phone line between them, and you could often listen to Mrs Kemp’s tittle-tattle just by picking up the receiver. I had a bedroom in the eaves, and from the mullioned window I could see for miles around.

It was July 1974 when I made the discovery that it was the lighthouse that projected its flash onto my bedroom wall. I was just six years old. It felt comforting, reassuring somehow. Each day of our holidays on Romney Marsh, I climbed the stairs to my room at dusk to check that the light was still flashing. And I remember the sense of relief and wonder each time I saw it.

We had a routine for every holiday. There would be a trip to Dymchurch, dubbed ‘the children’s paradise’ and home to fish and chip shops, a funfair and the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch railway that ran along the coast from Hythe. We’d schedule a stop at Dungeness, and my dad would buy fish from the seafront shack run by Mrs Thomas. She’s still there today, although it is her son rather than her husband who brings in the catch, most of which is supplied direct to local restaurateurs. You have to be on the shore early and meet the boat to compete for the pick of the freshest fish.

Then we’d walk our Labrador, Sam, along the shingle beach, towards the pair of lighthouses. I discovered that the earlier 1904 lighthouse had been made redundant once the nuclear power station was built in the sixties, which obstructed its beam of light across the distinctive shingle spit. A new lighthouse had to be built in 1961, unmanned and automated, and one of the last new lighthouses that Trinity House, the body that governs lighthouses in England and Wales, ever built.

On some trips, when the weather allowed, Dad would go night fishing with long lines, setting up his fishing paraphernalia, his flask and his lamp on the shingle at dusk. I sometimes joined him, but only in the hope that I might meet the lighthouse keeper arriving for his night duty. I imagined him with a large bunch of keys, immaculately dressed in smart Trinity House uniform and distinctive white-trimmed cap. With hindsight, he must have looked a lot like Captain Birdseye. But he never did arrive, a fact that mystified me, as come what may, the light would unfailingly start to flash as dusk approached.

That’s when my obsession with lighthouses began. My parents noticed, and presented me with a copy of Lighthouses of England and Wales by Derrick Jackson, a book that became my favourite companion for many years. I learned how, when and where they were built, and that every lighthouse has a unique character, with no two sharing the same light, colour and flashing pattern, so that mariners could distinguish one light from another.

I suppose I could have become just as obsessed with steam engines, toy cars, football, sticker albums or any other pastime that tended to attract boys of my age. But for me it was only ever lighthouses.

When I was ten or eleven, and enjoying some independence with the help of my bicycle, I formulated a plan for an adventure that one day I would undertake. I would cycle around the coast, clockwise from my grandmother’s house, ticking off each lighthouse that I’d read about obsessively in my book. I recently discovered five rusty-stapled pieces of paper in the back of a filing cabinet that outlined my proposed journey, how far I would cycle each day, which lights I would see and where I might stay.

It was an expedition I was confident that I would undertake one day, but, like many dreams or ambitions formed in childhood, life got in the way. It was always a trip that I planned to make one day soon. Nevertheless, lighthouses remained a constant feature of my life. I remember every family holiday not by the cottages we rented or the food we ate, but by the lighthouses that were nearby. Summers in the West Country meant Start Point, the Lizard or Tater Du on the south coast, and Hartland Point, Lynmouth Foreland or Trevose Head on the north coast. The August weather had been so poor over the summers of 1974 and 1975 that my parents decided to holiday inland in 1976. We rented a cottage in Kettlewell in the Yorkshire Dales and promptly sweated out the hottest, driest fortnight for 100 years. My mum assumed that my quietness during that holiday was because I was missing the beach and a bucket and spade. But I knew it was because there wasn’t a single lighthouse within 40 miles.

The summer holidays that followed Kettlewell were almost perfect for me. My aunt had bought a small cottage in Llanmadoc, on the Gower Peninsula in Wales, and we stayed there for three consecutive summers. From the cottage, I could walk to the ruined wrought-iron lighthouse at Whiteford Point, and rainy days meant Swansea Market followed by a glimpse of the lighthouse at Mumbles.

After university, I joined up with a number of other slightly rudderless would-be travellers by getting a job at Stanfords, the map and travel bookshop in Covent Garden in London. Here the staff were incredibly knowledgeable, but held a shared belief that they should be, and deserved to be, travelling somewhere. As a result the retail part of the job was never taken very seriously, and serving customers was always regarded as an unwelcome and somewhat disagreeable aspect of saving up for the next big trip.

Retail staff came, saved up their funds, went travelling and then returned to start the process all over again. I quickly learned the hierarchy: seasoned, global travellers worked upstairs on the international desk, sharing their stories of travelling through unmapped and politically unstable parts of the globe. Those with fewer expeditions under their belt worked at the European desk on the ground floor. From here, they were as likely to be called upon to help with the choice of gallery, restaurant or hotel on a romantic city break, as with possible places to camp on a long-distance trek across the Alps. That left me in the basement – a windowless, dark and rather damp space – selling local walking maps and guides to British towns and cities.

There were three of us in the basement. At one end of the floor sat John, a 30-something amateur sailor who ran the maritime department. His passion was for boats rather than retail, and he despised most of the customers he was called upon to serve. He reserved the strongest disdain for customers who asked questions, and also for those who took books or maps off his shelves, even if they subsequently purchased them. But he had one unrivalled skill that became his party piece. Describe a sailing or boat trip anywhere in British waters, and John could tell you which British Admiralty chart or charts you would need. From a catalogue extending to hundreds of pages, this was an impressive feat to witness.

At the other end of the floor was Jon without an h, in charge of all maps and books published by Ordnance Survey. Now, Jon had already clocked up twenty years of service at Stanfords, almost all of which had been served in the basement. He had exceptionally blond hair and pale skin, and I wondered if it was natural or had resulted from a lack of sunlight. He had an extraordinary memory, as well as a trick up his sleeve of his own. Name any village, town or city in the UK and Jon would know, instantly, which of the 250 or so large-scale Ordnance Survey walking maps it appeared on.

I took the central sales area of the basement, and my role covered general UK tour guides, street maps and road atlases. But I spent a lot of my day trying to appease or apologise to customers who’d had dramatic fallings out with John. On one occasion a customer approached my friend David at the international desk and asked for help with selecting an Admiralty chart. When David suggested that he needed to head down to the basement, the customer begged him to come with him, explaining that he ‘daren’t ask that ghastly man for help again!’.

I may have had some natural talent for retail, but I realised that I needed my own party trick if I was to hold my own in the basement. It came very quickly and easily to me. Name any point on the UK coast, and I could reel off the ten nearest lighthouses heading either clockwise or anti-clockwise. Admittedly, mine was the least valuable skill from a retail perspective and it was seldom called upon. But it was always something of which I was immensely proud.

Stanfords was also where I met my wife, Emily. It’s fair to say that she has endured, rather than embraced, my passion for lighthouses, but she has always been supportive of my slightly quirky interest,...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 25.4.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber
• Themenwelt: Reisen ► Reiseführer
• ISBN-10: 1-83773-169-1 / 1837731691
• ISBN-13: 978-1-83773-169-5 / 9781837731695