The home run

The home run started from the Royal Lion Hotel of Lyme Regis. Having eaten quite late the evening before, I was not up for the bacon or sausage sandwich that I usually take in such places and settled for some brown toast. But, rather to my surprise, half grapefruits were on offer, something which used to feature in childhood meals - yellow rather than the red here - hard put to say which meals now - but which I have not taken for years, in part at least, because grapefruit and warfarin did not mix very well. But I took one on this occasion, without the childhood castor sugar, and really enjoyed it, almost to the point of taking a second. Is this something I shall repeat at Epsom?

After mulling the matter over, with the indecision which seems to be part of everyday life these days, we decided for the A303 as the way home, on the grounds that, while it involved long stretches of sleep-inducing dual carriageway, it did not require any brain work. It was a route we both knew well. The plan was frequent stops, both to stave of sleep and to stave off the back pains which seem to come with sitting in a car seat for any length of time. I blame their sculpturing; one is held far too firmly in a fixed position and one's body is given no room for manoeuvre, for the wriggling about that seems to be needed to keep my back up and running.

So the first stop was Cartgate, a place which we have used many times over the years. A place for picnics, comfort breaks and café food. A place which I did not get around to noticing in these pages until around ten years ago, at reference 3, which must have been many, many years after we first came across the place.

Then there was a stretch of A303 which included a lot of large laybys, large enough for there to be a strip of grass or something between the road proper and the layby, an access lane and a parking lane - with hedge and countryside beyond. One could get out of one's car at such a place without worrying about lorries and such like hurtling towards one. We took one of these as our next stop.

I got out the rollator and did a few circuits of the layby, coming across the bit of country litter snapped above, on the broken ground between the parking lane and the substantial hedge. The rest of the animal was a few yard further along. But how had it got there? Road kill chucked into the hedge and disturbed by foxes? Could a fox take a small deer? No idea how long it had been there. Maybe if I watch 'Vera' for long enough I will get some idea, with she and her team seeming to go in for remains of this sort. One mile west of Mere according to a sign.

There were also sundry items of small litter, abandoned by careless motorists and one small pile of plastic bags containing what appeared to be mainly empty plastic bottles. What sort of a person would drive to a layby without disposal facilities to dump such stuff?

The recent rain had bought out some large slugs, one of which is snapped above, somewhere between two and three inches long.

While BH, contrary to her usual response to slugs in our garden at Epsom, found a more attractive one to play with. Very fine horns it had too.

Setting off again, we had a curious incident of dazzle, whereby we appeared to be facing a battery of maybe four searchlights somewhere on or near the central reservation. This turned out to be caused by a temporary road sign, I forget what shape or what it said, but I do remember it as yellow and black. Curious because one expects this sort of thing to be caused by some freak reflection of the light from the sun, tricky in this case as it was late morning and the A303 heads roughly ENE, so most of the time the sun would have been ahead of us, over to the right. Maybe the bit of A303 in question had swung around to the north, giving the sun more of a chance.

The last stop, as it turned out, was the Holiday Inn at Solstice Services at Amesbury, which we may not have been using for as long as Cartgate, but which we have been using for quite a while. Contrariwise, it appears to reach these pages some years earlier, at reference 4.

As it happened on this occasion, it was able to show me what a staghorn sumac should look like at this time of year, as snapped above. Which might have simplified the discussion exemplified at reference 5.

We also went beyond coffee and biscuits, going so far as to share a veggie pizza between us. The pizza was fine, well suited to the occasion. Good service. And I learned that I do not like to take my black coffee while I am eating. 

After which we got back in good order, without further incident, despite the awkward junction of the M3 and the M25, despite the novelty of the T-Roc hire car from Enterprise. The young man who took it in even went so far as to thank us for the good care which we had taken of it - by which he might have meant that plenty of hirers do not trouble to clean out the inside when they are through, as BH had done.

Bouncy enough after all this to stroll into town to check that Wetherspoon's had reopened, which it had. It looked busy enough on this Sunday afternoon on the terrace, but it was not a suitable time for a beverage (as will be explained at the proper place) so I did not get to inspect the shiny new interior.

PS 1: I noticed today that Faraday's (the old electricity board showroom) is having what looks like a major refurbishment too, despite my dim memory being that it was quite smart inside. Perhaps all the pubcos feel the need to jostle for the considerable student trade available from the Art College, the Dance College, NESCOT and no doubt elsewhere.

PS 2: and a late update from Cypress, TX. Shrimps are in. For po-boys I refer you to Tesco's at reference 6. Plenty of other stuff out there about them.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/09/wellingtonia-113.html.

Reference 2: https://cartgatelodgecafe.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/12/gyproc.html.

Reference 4: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2011/04/hotel-inspections-continued.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/sumac-revisited.html.

Reference 6: https://realfood.tesco.com/recipes/shrimp-po-boys.html. Don't much like the look of the Tesco's bun: not much good to start with and fresh out of a freezer by the look of it. But then, the factory bread in the US is said to be pretty bad too. Is that why bagels, flat breads, corn breads and so on are so popular? Maybe they are  made in smaller factories. Maybe they can better stand the treatment.