18th August, 2024

A few days ago I went back. Back to a place that felt like ‘our’ place. A little village where we spent summer holidays, nestled in the South Hams countryside beside the gentle River Yealm. I had a yearning, a need to go back, to remember a time before. A time when we were blissfully unaware of the things that lay ahead.

My heart soared as I drove into the village and parked up. A car pulled in behind and a man jumped out and asked if I knew the way to the Dolphin pub. I felt like a local as I explained the way and Molly and I set off for our walk along the river. We passed the cottages we’ve stayed in, pausing now and then to breathe in the memories (well, that was me, not Molly… it was her first trip) and listen to the laughter and shouts from the river. The tide was in so the causeway to the village opposite was submerged and I remembered how we would be impatient to cross and would take our shoes off and wade across when the river was low enough. I remembered how the children spent hours crabbing on the causeway; how we swam across the river and down to the little harbour (and how I struggled to swim back against the outgoing tide!). How we hired a rowing boat, and how in the early mornings we would watch the sun rise and the river awaken.

I was home.

I wandered along to the Dolphin. We would always spend our first evening here (and a few subsequent ones) and I ordered a shandy. A man raised his pint glass to me and said ‘You should have ordered apple juice’. And, yes, I should, I explained, but I’m driving. But that had always been my first drink: a pint of dry cider marked the start of my holiday. And oh, how I wished I was staying here for a while.

I chose a settee near the open door, in the shade for Molly, where I could look outside at the river and the people passing. And I remembered the ledge outside that Tim and I sat on one lunchtime when our teenage children were off doing other things. We’d wandered to the pub and got talking to a solo traveller from Australia. She’d taken our photograph and said how in love we looked. I remember that we laughed, I suppose that we were in love and were happy it showed. I thought how brave she was venturing out into the world alone and I vaguely wondered what that would be like. I should’ve shut that thought down right then. Did I invite the troubles in? Or was meeting this woman an omen? I don’t know. But I’m grateful we spent time with her and that she took that photo.

The shandy was finished much too quickly. It was time to move on.

But I’d come home.

And I’d fallen in love again.