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BUDE CONNECT: THE MEETING: AGM Oct 24

Blog by Lynne Pearl

What is it about Bude that uplifts and takes you far away?  It has the most amazing two beaches, with surf rolling in for the last three thousand miles.  It roars day and night, in wind and rain, sun and rain, all kinds of weather.  It just roars and doesn’t stop.  The waves are white, pure white, rolling from far off shore and for as far as the eye can see up the coast and down into Cornwall, never was there such a coast.

The cliffs are high and craggy.  They certainly don’t seem soft and mushy prone to the sagging rock falls on the South coast of Devon, where when it rains so much the cliffs become porous and soft, finally fall into the sea taking houses and a few feet of garden each time.  Here the cliffs if they fall must come down in black jagged boulders. 

The wind is everywhere and the sky is over and above and the turf under your feet on the headland is springy.  From here, there is a flag pole, and monument that tells you how far it is to the nearest land, and where.  It is North America with thousands of miles of sea between.  There is the fullness and the emptiness.

Its’ beauty just goes on and on and the world and any cares no longer exist and there is just this beauty and then not even that, just infinity and peace.

So, to get to this beauty there is no longer a train, the last train ran in 1966

The last train, diesel railcarNº55012, left Bude for Exeter Central on 1st October, crammed full. It closed Oct 66 after 68 years of service.

The line ran from Okehampton, thrOugh Meldon Quarry, Maddaford Moor, Halwill Junction, Dunsland Cross and Holsworthy.

(More at remg.org.uk/location/bude.shtml0 with lovely old photographs.

In fact Bude is a train desert, it is farther from a mainline station than practically any other place in England.  So, you have to be pretty determined to get there.

Now as of the last couple of years there is now an organisation, grass roots, to connect Bude with the world.  It is ‘Connect Bude’ made of local people who know a thing or two about railways and engineering. 

We had a meeting in October in the Falcon Hotel next to the Canal in Bude which looks practically straight out to sea across the Atlantic Ocean where the surf rolls in day in and day out and is a favourite surfing beach with a major surfing culture.  And this day was no exception, the sun was shining it was mild and people were swimming in the sea in late October.  It was inspiring.  And it was beautiful.

The AGM of Connect Bude heard from some very worthy speakers, a gentleman who talked about the engineering aspect of the railway line, a speaker on the various sites that could be chosen for a new station in the town of Bude.  (The site of the old station is now built upon, sadly)  But much remains.

My favourite speaker was the gentleman from Devon who talked about how other railway lines had been reinstated, success stories of their kind.  It was a view of a new start a new way for all of us to move forward together.  Here is something concrete which we can put our hearts into.  A new vista on an old technology.  Really much of the infrastructure is still there in the landscape, the cuttings, the raised beds on which the rails had run, the little bridges and the staggeringly beautiful viaducts which dot our landscape.    I have written poems to their beauty…

‘LETTER FROM THE LOOE LINE

Valley gorge of yellow leaves,

Dark green holly, ferns and sheep grazing,

With a viaduct, slim, elegant like a suit,

Then trees, bare, silent, wait and sleep.

It’s a secret road to who knows where along the valley line…’

We concluded our meeting with the fire and energy and hope of that speaker who had already seen an old railway reinstated, as in Tavistock and in Okehampton.  Here in Devon there is change. We have what we need to effect major societal change that will massively affect the climate positively. 

Let’s support Bude Connect @www.connectbude.co.uk email

Lynne Pearl, author, ‘Road Trip River Voices’ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Road-Trip-River-Voices-Liminal-ebook/dp/B00HAG1Q2I

Thiel:One Foot In Front of Another.’ https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=Lynne+Pearl&i=digital-text&ref=nb_sb_noss

On Good Reads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7796332.Lynne_Pearl

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Painting of tor

Art by Cath Whitehead