The Coast Road by Paul Gogarty

Author:Paul Gogarty
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 2003-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

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‘The highest purpose of a civilisation was to create meaningful forms of leisure, for its citizens—and for the individuals the ideal to be sought was leisure as an exploration of the good life.’

—Blackpool postcard quoting Aristotle

Three: The Northwest

Mudflats and Arabian Sands

I am making my sprint for the Northwest under the cover of night partly because I find driving in the dark comforting, but also because the curtain conceals the oceanless state of England’s western flank.

In Tenby, on the coastline nicked by Wales, I got my first real job, aged sixteen, as a deckhand on a pleasure boat taking visitors to Caldey Island (the Italianate home of a small cell of Cistercian monks). While Nobby Stiles was skipping round Wembley with the World Cup, I was enjoying my own delirium, romping with one of the passengers in the sand dunes. Formative experiences.

Tonight an orchestral sunset sits upon the puffed purple pillows of Wales. A new mood settles on me as Sid and I cruise to the tenor sax of Coltrane. To my right wheat-coloured Gloucestershire stretches weatherless and rooted, far from the nibbling sea. At night even arterial roads can be invested with beauty. Two Jersey cows wander across a bridge and stare down, collecting car numbers.

I feel a strong sense of a journey, of leaving one place and not yet arriving at another. For the past month I’ve been stopping at every distraction, and have never driven more than 50 miles in a day. But tonight is different. There is time for a rhythm to build as I drive, without stopping, the length of the M5.

North of Wolverhampton, as I pull off the M6 into a Moto service station and park up for the night, I wonder if unofficial raves still erupt in the car park like the one I happened on at two in the morning during a diving jaunt to Oban a decade back. The tarmac that night was an alien landing strip, car spotlights anointing two hundred metronomically jerking heads as techno blasted from a wall of speakers in a white pick·up truck.

Tonight the car park is all functional regularity: Fords and Nissans, segregated trucks, and one very flash American motorhome snoozing in a corner out of the way. A sign declares ‘Two hours parking free’. Beneath it is another informing anyone wanting to overnight that they should pay £6 or risk a £60 fine. I pony up the £6. I reckon I’ve spent well in excess of £100 on parking alone since starting this trip. With Sid gobbling a pound’s worth of diesel every five miles, plus the cost of campsites (between £9 and £18), motorhoming may not be the most economic option when it comes to touring.

I scramble up into my double berth at the rear of the vehicle. No one next to me and no one up front either in the van tonight. Families are always only on loan. On the plus side, it does mean I won’t have to tiptoe around in the morning.

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