A Knight’s Tale – Page 3

A Knight’s Tale (134: Kilcullen Would Have Been Too Far Away)

One evening we were given a trip from Port St Charles into the Atlantic Ocean.

Flanked by the lowering sun we then encountered Kilcullen towing New Horizons.

Quite why John Peck and Fraser Dodds, who manned the rowing boat New Horizons, needed the attentions of the support boat at this point, I am not sure, for they are given in the statistics of the Ocean Rowing Society as having completed the race. Kilcullen, you see, is one of a group of vessels deputed to be on hand in case of need by rowers in distress. I understand that, because they tended to stay behind the slowest competitors, these yachts would be a good 500 miles away from the leaders.

Very soon after this, we experienced one of the dramatic gold and indigo sunsets that Sam had enjoyed during his 59 days at sea.

By this time the crew of Kilcullen were relaxing in silhouette.

The next morning a cast of crabs danced the side shuffle on the rocks.

Sam, always having been one of the leaders, told us how the waves could toss his little boat considerable distances through the air.

The purpose built rowing boat was designed to keep upright. Provided. That the windows to the small cabin remained closed.

One morning my son was woken by the hailer of a cargo vessel asking whether he needed assistance. He informed them that he had no need of it. Off they sailed.

Then, out of the blue, the ship turned and sped back towards Pacific Pete.

Just imagine the bow wave. This didn’t send Sam’s boat any distance. Instead it sent it in a circular spin in which it rolled over twice.

Had the windows been open Sam and his boat would have joined his camera on the bed of the ocean into which it had slipped. He didn’t mention this on one of his weekly telephone calls to me.

A Knight’s Tale (133: The Official Welcome)

At last Sam arrived into Port St Charles and

successfully brought his boat into dock.

He sat aboard for a while, preparing himself for his first touch of land for two months.

Sam, Dixie, Ken Crutchlow, Louisa5.04138

Then came the official welcome of Ken Crutchlow, Secretary of the Ocean Rowing Society, filmed by Dixie,

Before doing anything else Sam was required to report to border control. This involved walking along a narrow quayside to present his passport to a man in a little office. As he was rather wobbly, he needed my assistance to reach this point. It was, of course, a great privilege to be selected to provide such support.

Jessica, Louisa, Sam, Ken Crutchlow and Derrick 5.04146

After this we lined up for group photographs. Here Jessica, Louisa, and I join Sam and Ken.

Here, I relayed the result to the Nottingham Evening Post.

Before repairing to the bar, Sam caught up with me, his mother and his sister.

Here he is in the beach bar.

Each evening for the rest of our stay, we began with potent rum punches in the main dining area upstairs. After a few of these, Ken would always cry: ‘Samson Knight. Who named that boy?’

We were to learn in particular how the voyage had not been without its narrow escapes.

A Knight’s Tale (132: Awaiting The Arrival)

With about two days to go before Sam’s expected arrival into Port St Charles, excitement was enhanced by

a golden sunset, which is almost a cliché. Not in Port St Charles.

Jessica watches as Louisa shows her photographs to Dixie Dean, the Society’s cameraman.

Birds like the Yellow breasted Sunbury,

and the Barbados Bullfinch, the only indigenous species, which is found nowhere else, take advantage of nature’s camouflage,

as does the land crab.

The grackle

and the sanderling don’t seem to need it.

This gentleman demonstrates the method of releasing milk from a coconut.

For a number of years my friend bo Beolens, who has written a number of bird books and who, as Fatbirder, runs an international birding website used my picture of the Lesser Antillean Bullfinch to illustrate his Barbados page.

Just before the expected arrival time even the previously bright blue Caribbean Sea darkened,

and a rainbow arced over Port St Charles.

I was regularly in touch with Radio Nottingham to deliver live updates from my mobile phone. That night, I opened our balcony doors so that listeners could hear the deafening waves crashing in from the Atlantic. Unknown to me, these were the forces that had caused Sam to drop his anchor to prevent him from arriving during the night.

A Knight’s Tale (131: Bridgetown Part 2)

There follows the last stretch of my walk to Bridgetown.

Bougainvillea continued to spread its various shades of magenta and pink along the roadsides. In the first of these two pictures, the rambling plant seeks the protection of the thorns of the plant to which it clings.

Others ramble around buildings that have seen better days.

I passed a slender schoolgirl complete with backpack on her way to her classes. Her hair had received the typical close attention that the turn-out of all these young people displayed.

Although some of the roadside buildings remained rather unkempt,

others were smarter,

and even grander.

Those steps, and the increasing traffic informed me that I was nearing the Bajan capital. Was the young woman with her arms folded pondering boarding the taxi/bus?

Had she done so, she would probably know what offence the hapless driver went on to commit.

Other flowers in the hedgerows and gardens were frangipanis

and hibiscuses.

By the time I reached Bridgetown in the heat of the day I wondered whether I should, like this woman, have taken one of the rare buses, or at least heeded the advice to start out at 5 a.m.

As previously mentioned I did ride back.

A Knight’s Tale (130: Bridgetown Part 1)

One morning I walked the ten miles from our hotel to Bridgetown along what passed for a main road. Whenever I checked directions I was told I should be on a bus. Not that there appeared to be many bus stops. If you wanted a ride you leapt into the road and gesticulated. It may have been marginally safer to have been riding on one of these ramshackle vehicles which went careering along the winding roads than to have spent my time jumping into bushes to avoid them. I am not sure. If there was a speed limit no-one adhered to it. Actually I did ride back and the journey was remarkably comfortable. Unfortunately I had wasted valuable time standing in the wrong queue. A certain amount of local knowledge was required to station oneself correctly.

Along these roads people lived in chattel houses. These are portable homes, stout, and some very old. Although people didn’t seem to worry about outside maintenance, the insides looked spotless and the adults and schoolchildren who emerged from them were beautifully turned out; womens’ dresses and children’s uniforms vying with the display of the ubiquitous

bougainvillea, frangipani, and hibiscus.

This street scene shows the sign for a roadside bar; a well cared-for church, and typical chattel houses,

one with some kind of lean-to constructed of weathered corrugated iron, which was a common roofing material.

The gardens of some of these houses contained car wrecks.

Other occupants preferred shrubs,

such as this bougainvillea trained around a porch behind a little picket fence.

and along which rampant buses tore.

The children who emerged from these simply constructed homes were clad in crisp, clean, uniforms and certainly were not ‘creeping like snail, unwillingly to school’ (William Shakespeare).

A Knight’s Tale (129: Waiting On Barbados Part Two)

Here is a selection from a swimming trip in the waters of Port St Charles harbour:

Louisa just had to join the turtles, like pebbles washed by tidal waters, the colours of their carapaces brightly contrasting with their natural element which reflected the skies above.

In this last picture, Jessica’s toes curl at top left.

On my ramblings around Barbados in May 2004, some of the local people, who called me ‘the white man who walks’, thought I wasn’t quite right in the head, especially as I had a tendency to set off around mid-day.

On one occasion this proved to be quite happy for the photographer in me when I was able to watch the sugar cane being harvested.

It was the approach of this loaded lorry that alerted me to what was going on.

Here was the cane to be cut before collecting;

and, further on, containers loaded beside stripped fields.

Tractors were employed to load the vehicles;

after which, were this elderly couple engaged in gleaning? I must say I felt for them labouring under the overhead sun.

Jean-François_Millet_-_Gleaners_-_Google_Art_Project_2

They put me in mind of Jean-Francois Millet’s painting ‘The Gleaners’, which caused such a stir at the Paris Salon in 1857.

A Knight’s Tale (128: Waiting On Barbados, Part 1)

During the few days waiting for Sam to arrive in Port St Charles, Barbados, and afterwards, I took the opportunity to roam the Island with my camera.

Jessica, Louisa, and I began our stay in an hotel on the southern tip of the island, some miles from the finishing point, but soon transferred to join Chris, Frances, and Fiona in one in the luxurious developing holiday playground.

This area presented a stark contrast to how the rest of the inhabitants of Barbados lived. Our hotel was surrounded by a compound patrolled by armed guards to keep out people like a coconut seller seated on the wall outside. His produce looked unappetising and he charged fairly optimistic prices.

Some distance away, a young woman, seated on a rugged outcrop gazing out to sea, was persuaded to rise to her feet.

Port St Charles (Speightstown on the map) lies on the Caribbean Sea to the north west of the Island. To the east storms the Atlantic ocean. The two bodies of water meet at the northern tip of the Island. Rowers need to navigate this point with precision. Too wide and the current would would carry them to Cuba, too near and they would be smashed on these rocks. The competitors rowed in pairs or solo. One of the pairs hit the rocks, and had to be rescued.

These seascapes are of the more gentle Caribbean.

Much less inviting was the dark, violent, Atlantic that, on the last couple of days, swept my son so fast towards his final destination that he dropped his anchor to slow himself down in order to arrive in daylight. Not for him, Cuba or the rocks.

Meanwhile, I traversed the island.

Cacti flowered profusely;

I learned later that this is a calotropis;

this is an hibiscus;

bougainvillea grows everywhere on the island;

as do coconuts.

A lone stork stands out from the long grass by the sea,

on the coast of which expensive holiday homes contrast with

the traditional wooden chattel houses.

I was surprised to see a horse lurking in the hedgerow, but have since learned that racing is a popular pastime, dating from the colonial years.

This is possibly a grackle, or a Barbadian Black Bird.

The iridescent blue tinge on the neck of the Zenaida dove is intriguing.

I expect there were plans for this rusting drum.

I have seen graffiti in many forms, but only on Barbados has it been carved into succulents.

A Knight’s Tale (127: The Big C)

Next, Sam displayed his boat, Pacific Pete, at Crick Boat Show in Northamptonshire. As a publicising exercise, my son sat on board and answered questions about what this was all about. One gentleman went to great lengths to obtain a good view; another seemed more interested in his lunch; was a third offering Sam a pint?

Back home in Newark, during the Dragon Boat Festival,

Louisa took a turn at fielding the questions. The gentleman seemed more engrossed than did his partner.

Sam’s friend Lewis Cove carried a bucket collecting donations for the Atlantic row, undertaken the following year.

Inspired by

Hokusai’s Great Wave, I designed the logo Lewis totes. The idea was a play on The Big Sea and The Big C, in aid of which Sam was rowing.

A Knight’s Tale (126: A Nod To Little Gidding)

The last leg of the Henley to Newark row/walk from Nottingham to Newark was 25 miles in length.

Sam in Pacific Pete on River Trent, cattle on bank

Sam set off without James, and I trailed in his wake. It is hard to believe that I managed to keep within sight of him as he rowed along the River Trent, but these photographs would seem to prove it. Perhaps the cattle would bear witness.

James, Gemma, and Louisa following Sam in Pacific Pete

As the rower moved into Farndon, James, Louisa, and Gemma set out to greet him and to follow him towards

Newark Castle, first passing the railway station;

to be greeted by his reception committee as he docked. Louisa, as requested, handed me two pints of beer – all for me.

Perhaps this was a lap of honour alongside the castle ruins. This 13th century castle was originally built for the Bishop of Lincoln. A Royalist stronghold during the English Civil War, ‘in 1646 the garrison surrendered, but only after a direct command from Charles I. Parliament ordered the castle destroyed so it could never be held against them again, but fate took a hand; plague broke out in Newark town, and the destruction of the castle was halted.’ This quotation is taken from http://www.britainexpress.com/attractions.htm?attraction=93 which contains a more complete history in very readable form.

So, what has all this to do with T.S. Eliot’s ‘Little Gidding’? From this, the last of the poet’s Four Quartets, I have borrowed

‘What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from………….

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time’.

Sam took delivery of his boat at Henley where he and James set about preparing and stocking it for the journey. Note the large bin behind my son as he crouches in the boat,

which I strapped on with the rather optimistic intention of collecting sponsorship money.

Sam, James, Pacific Pete setting off 7.03

Pacific Pete left the mooring,

and we were under way. This was to be the last sound footpath I trod for the next eleven days.

It was our friend Alison Tucker and her sister Rosemary who made these Henley prints and sent us on our way.

A Knight’s Tale (125: Reaching Nottingham)

Sam continued rowing Pacific Pete along the River Soar through Leicester,

passing the National Space Centre, and

Sam displaying Pacific Pete to Outdoor Pursuits Centre

Outdoor Pursuits Centre boys and Pacific Pete

introducing boys at an Outdoor Pursuits Centre to the boat.

A harvester gathered in the crop; a coot paddled by; a mallard breakfasted with her ducklings; and a water snake broke the surface of the river in which a mallow was reflected.

James having returned home for a short period, I got to work the locks.

Anyone who has read https://derrickjknight.com/2022/03/25/a-knights-tale-118-the-long-walk-begins/ will know how I avoided encountering bulls in the fields I had to cross. This rather amused a gentleman I met en route. He said that no farmer would dare leave a dangerous animal on such a public area. Following this advice with a great deal of trepidation, I mounted a stile around which this herd of cattle were clustered. As I climbed over the animals all ran away; the scary bull in fast pursuit.

Here Sam approaches Ratcliffe lock, in sight of the coal fired Power Station opened in 1968.

Further on, at Beeston, we made another group of friends. Paul, with the long hair, owned a wonderful Dutch barge, on which I slept overnight.

Sam and James in Pacific Pete at Trent Bridge

James had rejoined Sam by the time he rowed under Trent Bridge, in sight of The Brian Clough stand of Nottingham Forest football ground.

My son was then interviewed on the bank of the river by Radio Nottingham.

Sam and James in Pacific Pete, Jessica watching

For the penultimate, short, leg of the trip, only four miles in length, we were joined by Becky’s friend Jo Stone, and by Jessica, who watches our son and James moor on the Nottingham waterfront. Sam was to row the race in aid of Cancer Research. Jo suffered from leukaemia, and Jessica from myeloma. The far younger Jo was not to live much longer; Jessica survived until July 2007, having accompanied us to the finish at Port St Charles, Barbados in March 2004.