A Couple of Good Meals and Remembrance Sunday (Plymouth, Part Two)

Keith again. I guess it wouldn’t be a blog without one rambling and random personal note. I enjoyed two really nice meals in the evening while in Plymouth. Jayne has noted my love of the restaurant Nando’s in a previous entry. There is a Nando’s in Plymouth but after spending the better part of an hour trying unsuccessfully to find it on Friday night, I stumbled onto a nice pub with a crackling fire and enjoyed a fine platter of fish and chips. And on Saturday I braved a lashing rain, as they say here, to find a restaurant called Lanterns in the City Centre where I had a brilliant mixed kebab and Greek salad.

The weather wasn’t any better for our final day, which started with a memorable small-town experience. Sunday was Remembrance Sunday, a holiday of special significance in Great Britain. On the calendar, it’s close to our Armistice Day, marking the end of World War I. But in spirit it’s more like our Memorial Day, a solemn remembrance of those who gave their lives in defense of the nation. The British Legion, a veterans’ organization, gives out red paper poppies in return for donations in the days leading up to Remembrance Sunday.

In the tiny bar at the hotel in Plymouth on Saturday night, I watched a part of a live BBC broadcast of a Remembrance Day observance at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Lots of stirring music, pomp and ceremony, with Prince Charles in attendance, and ending with a shower of those red poppies from the roof of the hall.

As we set out on our final day of the trip on Sunday morning we saw a Remembrance Day program at the other end of the spectrum in terms of elaborateness, but certainly no less moving. We were in the little town of Tavistock, actually the birthplace of Sir Francis Drake, as their Remembrance Day parade came down the town’s main street -- a small band, some military men in uniform, Boy Scouts, Girl Guides and a church choir. The procession ended in front of the local parish church for a memorial service. Unfortunately, we had a schedule to keep to and couldn’t stay for all of it.

On the road again, we rode down narrow stretches of highway through the legendary English moorlands which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made famous in “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” We stopped in Princetown, where the creator of Sherlock Holmes started writing the most famous story starring the fictional sleuth. Princetown is also near the notorious Dartmoor Prison, a forbidding 200-year-old facility which still houses convicts. It was originally built to hold French prisoners from the Napoleonic Wars, but some Americans ending up doing time there after being captured in the War of 1812.

We learned that in addition to being the Prince of Wales, Prince Charles is the Duke of Cornwall and as such owns about 70,000 acres in this area. His interest in ecology and conservation is evidenced in an informative visitors center which explains the natural history of the Moorlands. Not much else is open in Princetown this late Sunday morning, but the visit is capped off with a nice version of a Sunday pork roast at a café located in the town‘s former police station. Another walk, thankfully short, through sheets of rain back to the bus.

Last stop is Buckland Abbey, about 8 miles from Plymouth. It was founded in 1278 as an abbey for Cistercian monks. It became a private residence in the 1530s after King Henry VIII ordered all monasteries in England closed. Drake shows up one more time in our story as this was his home from 1581, when he purchased it from fellow seafarer Sir Richard Grenville, until his death in 1596. There’s a good video on the life and career of Drake, who was part pirate and scoundrel, part hero. And the tour of the Abbey is a walk through the Elizabethan and Georgian eras of English history.

From there, it’s back on the bus and back home. We’ve learned a lot, hopefully -- the students have to report on the weekend for their class -- and have had some fun. But it’s nice to be back in London, which we’ve come to look at as home. At least for a while.