Weymouth wanderings

Years ago I inherited a book, signed by a great-aunt, about a canteen in which she volunteered, run by the Armed Forces Abstinence Union in Weymouth from 1940-5. On a fresh reading, I understand they were not teetotally abstemious, but in current parlance it was something they were working towards. I opened a random page and saw for the first time a bit of Cymraeg, to my delight.

"Recalling your many kindnesses during our stay in Weymouth ... The Intelligence Section 15th Welch Regiment. Cymru am byth". Signed by L/Cpl. Jones et al. ["Cymru am byth" = Wales forever]

I knew my partner and her family (from Cymru) had holidays in Weymouth during the 1960s, as did I from Portsmouth. I like to imagine that we occupied the beach at the same time. Happy Recollections celebrates a surprising amount of Cymreichtod (Welshness) in Dorset, and in several descriptions of the military postings, across several pages, notes songs sung that were "in the blood" of the soldiers, tunes such as Cwm Rhondda and Aberystwyth. I have learned from my brother's gene-testing that I have some gwaed Cymreig (Welsh blood), and this book added another albeit circumstantial connection. My roots are partly in Weymouth as my father was born there in 1925.

I'm revisiting Weymouth from sometimes vivid, sometimes imagined, memory. In the 1960s we always spent a week or so there with the great-aunt, my father's father's sister. It was always by train from Portsmouth. Trains to the harbour shared the track with the road, which was often covered in the squashed overspill of Guernsey tomatoes which came ashore there. At the same time, not far away at Bridport, "Celtic cousins" from Roscoff (Llydaw/Brittany) famously came ashore to sell onions from their heavily laden bicycles. I remember them too in Portsmouth, and wonder what became of them.

The bus terminus was by the Prom above the beach, close to where sand sculptures were created by a man that was even old when my father was young, but still there in the 1960s. His descendants still have the site and now also run a modern visitor centre at the other end of the beach. The deep green buses of the Hants and Dorset Omnibus Company displayed exotic sounding destinations such as Sutton Poyntz, Osmington Mills, Langton Herring, Upwey Wishing Well and Portland Bill. The bus was often a 'Lodekka', a double-decker low enough to pass under bridges without being decapitated. It necessitated four seats together "on top", with a lowered 'sump' gangway to the right. Downstairs (my father always called it "inside") below this sump, a sign advised "Please mind your head when leaving your seat". Imagine the upheaval when someone sitting by the window on the left hand side upstairs wanted to alight before the three adjacent passengers.

One year we were greeted at the station by a cabbie shouting "Anyone for Pontins?". My father thought they had said "Anyone from Pompey?" so he said that we were, surprised that his aunt would have sent for a taxi, which would anyway have required a jaunt to her nearest phone box. Thankfully we avoided Pontins (in nearby Preston: even Preston sounded exotic to me in those days), and instead walked the coastal path round to my great-aunt's bungalow at Rodwell.

After leaving the bustling fishing harbour, we would walk around the Victorian Nothe Fort and Gardens, these days a themed "destination". Further around the path was a neglected octagonal summer house in a garden above the low cliff. It was claimed this had been King George the Third's "bathing machine", later to be restored and displayed on the Prom. There were of course many such, and the one in Weymouth a mere replica. I can find no record of the one in the garden, and fear that so much historical detail has been lost in the vastness of cyberspace.

Evenings at the bungalow were often spent playing cards (Rummy or "Whot") with acquaintances of my ageing long-widowed aunt. They called each other only by Mrs/Miss (Surname), one being a Miss Pilbeam. Days were spent on bus trips to places still popular with visitors, such as Chesil Beach, cream teas at Portesham or the swannery at Abbotsbury. I was told a local legend that the 18 mile stony beach, from Portland along the coast, was thrown up by a storm centuries ago, and believed this at the time.

On Weymouth's wide sandy beach were the Punch and Judy show, donkey rides and "floats" for hire – small wooden twin hulled boats propelled by hand held double-paddles. No pedaloes then, and thankfully jet-skis had not been invented. But overriding memories for me are of just not liking the sun, of calamine lotion, and believing that sandwiches are so-called because of gritty yellow stuff being found between two slices of bread, which, in order to fit the story, I convinced myself were only ever eaten on the beach.

Down the road from the aunt's place we often visited ornamental gardens at Sandsfoot Castle. My brother and I were told to look into the depths of the ruin where we could see an image of "Old Nick". The red graffiti of himself with horns on his head, painted on an inner wall, amused me as a child. My brother is "young Nick": no relation to the Devil. I was told, probably in jest, he was named after Sputnik (1957). A clue perhaps to my father's Soviet sympathies at that time, which have only latterly come to light.

On the rugged island of Portland nearby there was a regular routine of places to visit, curiously the very places where my father's colleague and friend Harry Houghton (of the Portland Spy Ring) brought the Russians ashore, such as Church Ope Cove and Rufus Castle. According to my mother's diary, I supposedly "met" Houghton outside the Golden Lion Pub, but I wasn't yet two years old.

The aunt died around 1970, but thanks to the book, many memories have been triggered.

LINKS

Happy Recollections - B.W. Club for the Forces Weymouth, SIGNED | Oxfam Shop

Nothe Fort - Wikipedia

Regency History: Sea bathing in Regency Weymouth

WEYMOUTH'S SEASIDE HERITAGE (historicengland.org.

Tales of espionage in four ports: Portsmouth, Portland, Porthmadog, Portmeirion. Part 1. (cambriancrumbs.blogspot.com)

Chesil Beach - Wikipedia