Porthmadog

Roddy at Beddgelert

The above picture is Roddy, our not-so-new Cosalt Piper 1100 (you get the name?). Since acquiring Roddy earlier in the year, it would be fair to say that we haven’t had the chance to make a ton of use of him. However, now everything’s been tarted up a bit (a lick of paint; some new soft furnishings), he’s very much usable, and we’re currently getting the hang of this caravanning lark. Each time we go, we learn. On our first trip, to a little site near Alcester, in March, we learnt: March is cold; a hard pitch is better than a soft, wet grassy one. For our second trip, near Ledbury, we learnt the same lesson again, after being covered in mud. Now, finally, we are ready to make a week of it, so off we headed to the Beddgelert Forest site at the foot of Snowdon, and did we enjoy? You betcha.

Porthmadog is the closest town of any size for Beddgelert, home to the all-important Aldi, Wilkinsons, petrol station and  caravan repair shop (the latter necessary after the epic potholes on the way in to the camp site did our tow hitch in). It’s situated in the crook of the Llŷn Peninsula, at the mouth of the Afon Glaslyn which flows through Beddgelert from its source high up on Snowdon, and it’s this river which was the making of the town. Prior to 1811, there was no settlement here, just a marshy polder known as Traeth Mawr – this all changed when William Maddocks built the town cob and drained the surrounding land. This formed a new harbour, enabled more agriculture on the former estuary and kickstarted the foundation of Port Madoc and the nearby planned village, Tremadog. Today, the evidence of the resulting industry is all around. The remains of the Tremadog barge canal (for carrying copper) follow the path of the Welsh Highland Railway (slate) into town, where it meets the Ffestiniog Railway (also slate) – both of these have been restored, but will set you back more than was in our wallet on this holiday. Porthmadog has become a hub for the region, and most importantly, throws up numerous charity shops.

The main shopping street in Porthmadog is home to all the charity shops here. Some are familiar: Barnados and British Red Cross are a familiar sight all over the country. Tenovus now have shops around the UK, but started in Wales – most towns we visited on our hols have one of their shops carrying the usual charity shop fun, plus a selection of Welsh language books. More locally-minded, Freshfields Animal Rescue carries on the tradition of animal-based charity shops being generally ramshackle; and Age Cymru and St David’s Hospice make up the cohort. I should really say Hosbis Dewi Sant – this is after all a stronghold of Cymraeg, the Welsh language. I’ve picked up some roadsign grammar   (add a wch to make it imperative (arafwch = slow down!)) and vocabulary (mountain pass = bwlch). I hope to work on this.

Porthmadog isn’t a massive town, and it’s not the big city of North Wales by a long shot (this would be Bangor, I’d say), but it certainly fulfils it’s role. It’s a locus for the area, with all the facilities that tourists staying at Criccieth, Harlech, Beddgelert or anywhere else in this part of Snowdonia could hope for. It’s also a really nice little town, with steam railways, boats, beaches, delis and supermarkets, convenience shops and more specialised emporia. I’d cheerfully recommend  a visit if you’re in the region.

Find: Porthmadog @ Google Maps
Get there: Porthmadog is very handy to reach without a car (or caravan). If you really want to arrive in style, come by boat, but if not then you’re well served by a mainline station from Shrewsbury and Birmingham (this must be one of the finest train rides you could hope for), or even better, the Welsh Highland Railway from Caernarfon and the Ffestiniof Railway from Blaenau Ffestiniog.
Consume with: some local Welsh cakes, I’d suggest, from a local becws
Visit: You’re just around the corner from Portmeirion here (£10). For the cheapskates, walk in the hills for goodness’ sake! You have some of the most beautiful mountains in the land here.
Overall rating: four llyfrau

Alderley Edge

To The Edge, under creative commons, by kh1234567890. Click pic for link.

Alderley Edge is, according to Stuart Maconie’s excellent book, a wild, mystical place. A high heathland redolent with pagan rites and mysterious gold stores, numerous Arthurian legends, a rocky escarpment looming over the Cheshire plain. Here, the lonely farmer crosses the dreary moorlands to market only to be led by a bearded man into an underground lair to see the rows of sleeping men that would awake when England was in danger.

These days, you’d be more likely to come across that scenario on Clapham Common than Alderley Edge. The town only really took on its current identity from the 1880′s, when the Manchester & Birmingham Railway renamed the station from Chorley (to avoid confusion with Chorley, Lancs), combining an old name for the locality with The Edge, the aforementioned sandstone escarpment. The name stuck when Sir Humphrey de Trafford, local landowner of wealth and familiar surname, laid out part of his large estate in an extensive street pattern and the village expanded into the small town we have now. This period of expansion means that the town consists of large swathes of spacious Victorian villas on leafy avenues, making this quite the desirable commuter hotspot. That reputation was confirmed following Lord David of Beckham’s decision to settle here in his Man U days, followed by a whole gaggle of Premiership footballers, Coronation Street stars, two-thirds of New Order and the legendary Stuart Hall. Today the high street is a quiet but salubrious thoroughfare, dripping with designer sunglasses shops, expensive delis and coffeeshops.

And boy, have the charity shops fallen for it. Oxfam Books is the odd one out here with a fairly broad selection of coffee-table art books, undergraduate textbooks, and unemployed law students talking loudly about their friends in tax law when they should have been serving customers. The remaining charity shops have gone down the boutique route. Unlike nearby Wilmslow (coming soon), just as wealthy a town, Alderley Edge charity shops have decided that they cna focus on the expensive tat and designer clothes and despite being Cancer Research or  Marie Curie they can quite legitimately charge £25 for a man’s shirt. Now: if you have any sort of savvy at all you won’t have to look beyond a shop sale or factory outlet to find brand new Ben Sherman shirts for £25, so where they get off charging this for something someone has worn around, sweated into, and bashed and scraped, is beyond me. The worst offender is Barnados, who seemed to have gone so completely for the boutique feel that they had even employed a haughty extra shop assistant to stand at the back and judge you when you came in. All these shops had a massively disproportionate selection of women’s clothing, which is perhaps unsurprising, but not fun for a boy.

I suppose, in its way, Alderley Edge is not an unattractive town (although once you’ve seen one Victorian satellite town you’ve pretty much seen them all). There seems little to justify its reputation other than some expensive shops: there’s little history or dramatic scenery, there’s no amazing shopping experience or grand café culture. In short, there’s little to recommend it. By virtue of having four charity shops I’ll lift it off the bottom tier of visits, but if you’re in the area, skirt Alderley Edge and visit Wilmslow or press further afield to Buxton or Glossop – much more beautiful, interesting and worthwhile towns.

Find: Alderley Edge @ Google Maps
Get there: Alderley Edge station will get you here from Manchester Piccadilly or Crewe.
Consume with: We had Costa – despite a few cafés, most looked pretty uninspiring.
Visit: we didn’t stop otherwise I’d have been tempted to get up to The Edge to look for either goldbars or Iron Gates.
Overall rating: two leather jackets

Keswick

Jus' walkin' the dog by Rick Harrison, used under Creative Commons. Click pic for link.

As with our last weekend away, we didn’t pick a good time to put our undoubtedly good intentions and underused walking boots to use when we took a couple of days to visit the Lake District. This time, instead of rolling fog and drizzle, we had to contend with the aftermaths of laryngitis, colds and coughs, as well as the first substantial snowfall of the year snarling up the M6 through Staffordshire. It did, however, make the Cumbrian mountains that much more spectacular, all the more so to a first time visitor like me. As we drove towards Keswick from our hotel, through Kendal, Windermere and Ambleside, past a snow-capped Helvellyn, with Coniston Old Man behind us, it was really something quite spectacular. I can’t really think of an approach to a town that can compare in this country: perhaps the descent into Killarney from the national park would be a challenger, but it would be splitting hairs.

Once in the town, you’ll certainly find yourself in the company of large numbers of appropriately clad walkers. Clutching battered Wainwright guides and dressed in gaiters and waterproofs, the fully experienced rambling hikers of the Lake District congregate in Keswick for a tea and scone or pint of ale, before heading out again. We felt somewhat underdressed, but made the most of the Mountain Warehouse sale to cover some of the ground. Same as when we hit the Peak District, this visit was a reccy – we already have a return visit booked for March, and will break out the rambling hiker gear then. Probably we won’t set our sights as high as Helvellyn, but we’ll do our best.

The next challenge, after the professional ramblers have been successfully evaded, is trying not to spend all ones money in secondhand map shops. This is becoming more and more of a challenge, and will continue to be a problem as long as I keep buying up old Bartholomew maps and the like. Soon to come at CST is Tewkesbury, which seems to be trying to lure me in with exactly this, but it was actually Keswick that yielded up the home turf – under the patronage of the “late King George V” and in beautiful shades of brown and green, the Vale of Severn is opened up from Birmingham across to Clun – including Stourbridge, the Black Country (with fields!), Worcester, Bridgnorth, and so on (I’d best halt here before getting carried away…). This was in a sprawling upstairs bookshop on Station Street, and it’s not the only one: beware. Beware too the vast numbers of outdoorsy shops – there is literally every single one here.

Most pertinently, beware of your wallet when you arrive at Oxfam. This is one serious charity shop, though certainly a most pleasant one. Rather than separate book and other shops, this is a large, combined store. There’s a significant book section (including a large religious section if that’s your thing – this is, after all, Keswick of Convention fame) and a very well-stocked music section. Vinyls are arranged by genre, which is a good sign in a record shop but a bad one in a charity shop: it’s an indicator that staff know the values of their goods, so bargains are rare. This suspicion was borne out by a £30 copy of Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma, and £16 for After The Goldrush. Never mind. You might find a bargain amongst the huge array of vintage cameras, however: we walked out with a Kodak Brownie 127 for a cheerful £6.99. There’s also rails of clothes, vintage exercise bikes(!), record players and such.

A top notch, though expensive, charity shop, not many others could match up – and Barnardos, the only other circus in town, definitely doesn’t. Few items of interest here, sadly. Despite the paucity of charity shops, Keswick is worth a visit for so many other reasons, I can’t give it a low score – in fact, I enjoyed the town much more than a three would indicate, but this is a charity shop blog, after all…

Find: Keswick @ Google Maps
Get there: Train or 555 bus from Lancaster, or drive from Kendal, Penrith etc… but the slower the better to appreciate the surroundings, so maybe join the mob and walk here.
Consume with: we had a rather excellent baked potato at Laura in the Lakes, but there’s plenty of sustenance to go round.
Visit: get out of town – you’re in spitting distance of Derwent Water, Skiddaw, Grisedale Pike and many more.
Overall rating: three box brownies

  

Ross-on-Wye

Ross on Wye, Herefordshire, by Cross Duck. Picture used under Creative Commons, click pic for link.

Sitting in the bar of the Royal Hotel overlooking one of the Wye’s circuitous meanders, munching on fish and chips and generally wiling away time is, it turns out, an extremely pleasant way to slow down a Saturday afternoon. Typically for an English summer’s day, the fluffy clouds of lunchtime turned into a damp afternoon in Ross; later on, a plucky country music festival on the grass below will be entirely flooded by a massive thunderstorm – I suppose par for the course when you’re this close to Wales.

Ross considers itself a home of the British tourist trade – the first guided boat tours took in the Wye from Ross, the first tourist guide was published in 1782 about the river. It’s no wonder, really: situated on the edge of both the Forest of Dean and the Herefordshire countryside, Ross is a stone’s throw from the Malverns, the Black Mountains, the Bristol Channel or the cathedral cities of the West Country. And Ross itself is a desperately quaint little market town with pride in itself and its environs. Helpfully, it’s bursting with charity shops, making even a rainy stop-over worthwhile.

The town centres on its stilted Market House at the top of Broad Street. From there you can proceed uphill along the High Street towards St Mary’s church, the Royal Hotel or the Phoenix Theatre, past an array of locally run, independent shops. Particularly interesting looking were Waterfall Antiques, and Truffles deli, stocking an impressive 90 local ciders, arranged by distance from the shop. The opposite direction is Gloucester Road and here you’ll find St Michael’s and Acorns hospice shops. The former provided me with a speculative purchase of a Henning Mankell novel, introducing me to Inspector Wallander, off of the telly. Let me go on the record now to state that it was rubbish.

It’s the steep main drag, Broad Street, that houses most of the charity shops. You’ll find British Heart Foundation, Barnardos, Oxfam, Sue Ryder Care, Cancer Research and AgeUK lining the street and if you can’t find a bargain in there, you may well be blind. Ross is a tiny town that punches well for charity shops. It’s certainly one of the most agreeable visits you’ll find location-wise and you’d be daft not to have at least a little look.

Find: Ross-on-Wye @ Google Maps
Get there: Ross is a little bit like hard work if you haven’t got a car: you’ll need the train to Ledbury, though there’s plenty of buses from there.
Consume with: we had lunch at the Royal Hotel – perfectly serviceable, great location, decent price.
Visit: like history? Try Goodrich castle. Like nature? Try Symond’s Yat. Like walking? Try the Forest of Dean. And so on.
Overall rating: four Fat Face shirts.

Stourbridge

Arches by Nickster 2000, used under a Creative Commons license. Click pic for link.

Today, you’ll find Stourbridge as the westernmost compass point of a sprawling West Midlands conurbation, butting right up against some glorious Staffordshire/Worcestershire/Shropshire countryside. But it wasn’t always so: the Black Country isn’t like London with its endless 1930′s ribbon developments radiating out from the centre; rather, each town is a definable centre, each with a purpose (at least, orginally). Cradley is called the home of chain-making, Walsall’s famous for its leather trade, Wolverhampton for its steel. Stourbridge is no different and became, particularly during the nineteenth century, a world centre for the glass industry after significant Huguenot in-migration. The twenty-first century is a very different era and the Black Country is becoming a post-industrial society – though certainly not out of choice. Stourbridge retains an artisan-led glass quarter (around Kingswinford and Amblecote), but today finds itself as much a dormitory town for Birmingham, just the other side of the M5.

Stourbridge holds a particularly happy place in this blogger’s heart, however: it’s where he and his Charity Shop Partner (slash wife) have just moved, so chances are you’ll be hearing plenty more from the West Midlands and its environs over the next few months. Its location right on the edge of the countryside makes it a very appealing place to live – as accessible for the urban delights of Birmingham as for the craggy heights of Shropshire or the Malverns. If we fancy a breath of fresh air these days, we don’t have to drive to a gloomy Essex coast or wander through a crowded Epping Forest: we can ascend the overlooking Clent Hills and have our breath removed by a view spanning to Wales or the Cotswolds.

But that’s enough about me – more importantly, this is a charity shop shopping blog and has its priorities. Happily, Stourbridge punches pretty well. In a less touchy-feely era of civic government than our own, a Nascar styled ring road (see below) was built around the town centre and it’s within the ring road that you’ll find the bulk of the town’s shops. Note though – there are other charity shops scattered around, notably a couple in Wollaston that I may or may not touch on another time. Within the pretty attractive town centre I count a good nine charity shops as well as various other amenities and local shops. You wouldn’t come to Stourbridge for a day’s shopping experience any more, as you wouldn’t go to Dudley, Brierley Hill, Halesowen, or any other community within the catchment area of the monolithic Merry Hill centre, so be warned of that.

There’s a stretch of charity shops on the High Street including a pretty sweet and not-too-expensive Oxfam: we located a pile of cheap Jo Nesbo books and, happily, three Granta magazines for £1.50, which are now populating the landing bookcase. Having brokenheartedly sold several hundred books in the move, we now appear to be doing our best to counteract that. There’s also Barnardos, Marie Curie, Acorn’s Hospice and British Heart Foundation, and best of all the huge Mary Stevens Hospice Shop, fundraising for the hospice which is located in Stourbridge itself. There’s a second huge Mary Stevens shops in Victoria Passage, a sneaky cut also containing cafs, restaurants and little boutiquey shops. This Mary Stevens, as with the main one, sells plenty of furniture as well as clothes and books – the one on the high street has an entire upstairs bookshop. Look out for cast iron fireplaces and patio sets. On Lower High Street you’ll find Cats Protection League, just up from King Edward VI college – educators of Robert Plant and Samuel Johnson, no less. Then back up Market Street to find Happy Staffie Rescue and Scope. That just leaves the very mid-century Ryemarket Centre where you’ll find Waitrose and Smiths and the like, as well as PDSA and Salvation Army.

While Stourbridge is hardly remarkably beautiful or noteworthy, it turns out that it’s a very pleasant place to wile away some time. It’s a bustling little town centre with some gorgeous buildings – King Eds, the Town Hall and St Thomas’ church are all very attractive. It makes a great stop on a day out to the country as well – it’s only a short hop from here to Bridgnorth or the Wyre Forest. Best of all, a whole heap of charity shops – if this was the Grandstand vidiprinter, that would be 11 (eleven).

Find: Stourbridge @ Google Maps
Get there: Plenty of buses end at the bus station, and you also have the shortest branch line in Europe terminating at Stourbridge Town with its funny little trains.
Consume with: There are plenty of coffee and food places around – there’s a Caffe Nero, and The Well looks quite nice. If you’re willing to expand your horizons, there’s many pubs doing a wallet-friendly £3.69 carvery (The Old White Horse), some doing some lovely food in a lovely location (The Vine, Kinver) and of course, plenty of curry (I recommend Balti Bazaar in Lye).
Visit: The Glass Quarter is full of museums and things to do – the Red House Cone is basically a big red cone for making glass, and if glass is your thang, you’ll find plenty of interest at Broadfield House or the Ruskin Glass Centre. If not, take a wander along the canal or to the lovely Mary Stevens Park.
Overall rating: five antique fireplaces

Harborne

Harborne Farmers Market, from Pete Lewis' photostream under Creative Commons. Click pic for link.

Harborne is, I suppose, the West Midlands equivalent of Muswell Hill or Crouch End, or multitudinous other gentrified districts. More ethnically homogenous than, say, Bearwood or Smethwick just up the road, your typical Harborne resident is more academic from the nearby (and huge) University of Birmingham, or medical staff from one of the several large hospitals close by, those that can afford a little classier than Selly Oak. Harborne town centre is fairly innocuous and unambitious – Waitrose territory for certain – but take a quick detour into surrounding residential streets and you’ll soon see the appeal.

My auntie lives in Harborne, in a large house with a large garden, a drive and a garage, on a wide, quiet road. But if I lived there, without drifting into being an estate agent blog, I’d fall for one of the very red-brick Victorian terraces. They’re very distinct to this part of the country (believe me, I have spent enough time studying Victorian terraces of late), a burnt, dusty brick in cottage style. I’d be fairly content setting up shop there, I think. The high street is less inspiring, though not without merit, and certainly not without charity shops.

We visited a very healthy seven of the eight charity shops open on a snow-and-ice infested Harborne High Street, three days before Christmas. I say very healthy in that it was fairly miraculous that we escaped with no broken legs – apparently Birmingham is not a city that prides itself on snow clearance. But healthy and wealthy they were, most notably in the very well-stocked, very academic and literate Oxfam bookshop – overpriced as normal, but nevertheless painfully tempting. Most of the rest are, if you will, chain charity shops: British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research, Barnardos, Marie Curie and PDSA. Not that this is a problem: none was a wasted visit, with a goodly number of Stephen Kings purchased to feed a growing fetish, and a wide and varied array of tat (I say this in a friendly way: by tat I mean bric-a-brac; collector’s items; etc.).

Headway was closed, leaving only the most interesting of the bunch, Birmingham Settlement. This is a large, long shop, filled with not just cheap paperbacks and the usual assortment of clothes, but small furniture at the back, lots of picture frames and stacks of Playstations and the like. Good for a rummage.

Harborne is a pretty posh area and has a high-standing reputation as such. Many such places frown on charity shops, but Harborne seems to have embraced them, and quite right. As a result: thoroughly recommend a swoop by.

Find: Harborne @ Google Maps
Consume with: Nero as usual, but there’s the whole gamut of easy-to-understand coffee here.
Visit: The Birmingham Botanical Gardens are just down the road, and they’re plain lovely.
Overall rating: four Christmas trees

Ware

New River by Steve Chilton, under Creative Commons. Click pic for flickr photostream.

Sat just off the A10 near Hertford, Ware is an unassuming little English town, but it’s one with plenty of history. Not much of it is in the Hastings/Bannockburn/Agincourt mould mind: it’s situation on various thoroughfares and infrastructures has ensured it’s seen life in all its forms for a good 6000 years, making it “one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Western Europe” (so says Robert Kiln).

The London end of today’s A10 is one of the massive arterial projects of the 1930′s, and its bypass around the town of Ware is part of a number of deviations of that route from the Roman Ermine Street, which ran from London through Tottenham and Edmonton and on towards Ware. Ware was also on the Old North Road, a big ol’ coaching route, and was the location of the country’s first turnpike. On top of this, the river Lea meant that water trade was a big deal before the days of rail, and the town became the source of the New River, supplying London with something to drink. So, a fairly important place.

The town retains something of the old, quaint character: malting-houses dot the central skyline, the main road weaves past meadows and rivers, over bridges and past pillared townhouses. It’s a well-to-do location now, with a swift run into London on the train, and well-dressed older ladies serenely shopping on a weekday afternoon. We came primarily for a cup of coffee (it was one of those days) and found an hour plenty for that (alright, and some apple crumble) and the three charity shops here. You could spend longer though: the high street is pleasant and has plenty of cute-looking shopfronts. I’d suggest combining it with some other destinations: Hertford is very close indeed, and there’s close-by amenities at Hoddesdon, Bishop’s Stortford or even Welwyn Garden City, if that’s your thing.

The highlight of the visit (as at Waltham Cross, also not far) is the Isabel Hospice shop: a split-level affair, with the clothes downstairs being less interesting than an array of vintage fripperies upstairs. Some ridiculous hats here, which is always good, along with several bookshelves, a bucket of tapes, and a huge pile of Christmas decorations. Better to come here than pay several times the price at what must be the world’s biggest garden centre, Van Hage, just down the road. There’s also a newly re-branded Age UK and Barnardo’s and although there wasn’t much to buy here except for some excellent dressing-up materials, they weren’t poor by any means. Google Maps promises one or two others – I didn’t see any evidence of them, but perhaps I’m mistaken.

I liked Ware. I could easily spend time wandering along the Lea or perusing the high street by means of coffee, and the charity shops are a good combination of reasonable price and good stock. I’ll certainly be back.

Find: Ware @ Google Maps
Consume with: we had a very good coffee (and the apple crumble) in Truly Scrumptious
Visit: There’s a (small) part of me that fancies the New River Path all the way home. We’ll see…
Overall rating: three Terry Pratchetts

North Finchley

North Finchley, under Creative Commons from John Keogh's flickr photostream. Click pic for link.

There’s little to distinguish North Finchley as a place worth visiting. Like it’s southerly cousin, it’s somewhat nondescript, a trait I find to be common to great swathes of the diagonal corners of London. For some reason the North-South and East-West axes of London seem to retain more character: for example in North London, the central band of areas such as Camden, Islington, Holloway, Highbury, Muswell Hill, Tottenham, Winchmore Hill, etc. are quite notably their own places. But the Finchleys and places like Edgware, Colindale, Pinner, Harrow and the like are very obviously massive swathes of period suburbia, matched in the North-East by the bland expanses beyond the North Circular, Chigwell, Barkingside, the Woodfords and the like. Maybe it’s just me.

Psychogeography aside, North Finchley’s worth a brief stop, but that’s about it. There’s five charity shops to pick from: none are useless but none are outstanding. The pick of the bunch is probably North London Hospice, which is usually good for a bargain – on our most recent visit we found plenty of interesting looking books, tape sets of Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, and other odds and ends. That’s at the top of the high road – we then make our way down to Cancer Research, but not without stopping at the wonderfully odd Tiger, a sort of Ikea meets Muji of absolute randomness with conveniently calculable prices. Cancer Research has an excellent selection of books usually – we have picked up paperbacks by Richard Sennett, John Updike and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and even Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, which has apparently spawned an entire subgenre of classic novels revisited in horror style. Weird.

Across the Tally Ho corner (I’m guessing a hunting cry, there’s no specific reputation for ladies of negotiable affection here) past the Artsdepot is very standard British Heart Foundation, then back up the road for Barnardo’s and a very scruffy but occasionally bargainous Romanian Relief store.

I can’t really ply you with dramatic anecdotes and local ephemera because there isn’t much about which to waffle. North Finchley’s local to us, which makes it a convenient after-work mooch, but while you may find bargains, there isn’t much more to commend it.

Find: North Finchley @ Google Maps
Consume with: Coffee Republic has something of the interior of an unloved indie club, but isn’t too shabby – better than Starbucks at least. Cafe Buzz is to be commended for its carrot cake.
Visit: maybe the Artsdepot, which has pretty much loads going on.
Overall rating: three tape box-sets

East Sheen

Untitled, by Edgley Cesar, under Creative Commons. Click pic for link.

East Sheen’s a funny kind of place, really, the sort of location you happen across because you happen to be driving along the South Circular, rather than on purpose. It’s something of an infill town, being recognised formerly as some nowhere in the Brixton Hundred of Surrey, then as the eastern part of Sceon/Sheen (now Richmond), or as being an extension of Mortlake – the shops encroach along Sheen Lane to Mortlake Station even now – and later a constituent of the municipal borough of Barnes. Nevertheless, given its nondescript beginnings, there’s plenty to East Sheen, and it’s almost totally concentrated along the A205.

On a long, stretched out main road like an American edge city, the shops in East Sheen radiate out from the central crossroads with Sheen Lane, where you’ll find Waitrose, and the busiest traffic. There’s little to point to East Sheen as anything other than a charity shop or local amenity destination, as with Richmond, Twickenham and Putney within spitting distance, there’s little requirement for boutiques and extensive chain restaurants. There is, however, charity shops, and they perhaps benefit from the proximity of Richmond and its inhabitants: a mixture of vintage, obscure bric-a-brac and a pretty good overall selection.

Octavia, if I recall correctly, is the first one when approaching from the East, a labyrinthine and somewhat vintage-orientated shop with a distinctive aroma. Though there was a few vaguely interesting, but expensive, knick-knacks, this was sadly lacking in general goodness (a pity, as this is a charity I could get behind – it’s a contemporary extension of the fascinating work of Octavia Hill in nineteenth century London). We also have some nice bric-bracery on the crossroads, in Barnardo’s, Fara (two shirts for me), Cancer Research, Mind and the like. Not many stick out, which is strange because overall I’m left with an overwhelmingly positive impression of the place. Perhaps it’s the proximity of Richmond Park (so close, your rotisserie chicken won’t get cold) or the discovery of not only a wicker linen basket, but tapes of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, and I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue in Princess Alice Hospice. There was also chunky mirror-based indecision in a shop I can’t find listed, but definitely had something to do with missing people.

Sometimes the most fun in researching a location is not the place itself, but the people (of course it is! I’m a human geography student, what do you expect?), particularly those considered ‘notable’ by the hive mind of Wikipedia. Obviously, a pinch of salt is occasionally required (although Jacques Ranciere has a thing or two to say about the overthrow of expertism by collective knowledge), but there’s a full-on slew of names associated with East Sheen, so I leave you with the highlights:

Tim Berners-Lee Marc Bolan The Moody Blues Rudolph Nureyev Omid Djalili Debbie Harry Tim Henman Andrew Marr Davina McCall Trevor McDonald Roy Kinnear Rob Brydon Phillip Glenister Daniel Craig. Nice.

Find: East Sheen @ Google Maps
Consume with: As mentioned, a cooked chicken and fresh bread dinner from Waitrose comes highly recommended. There’s a snack/coffee point at Pembroke Lodge too.
Visit: Richmond Park, of course.
Overall rating: three audiobooks

Truro

 

Truro_S09044, from Ennor (unwell-resting)'s photostream, under Creative Commons. Click pic for link.

Truro’s famous neo-gothic cathedral rises above this medieval city a little like the Emerald City over Oz; a 250 foot jewel rising over the old county town, and Britain’s most southerly city. John Loughborough Pearson’s triple-spired Victorian edifice looms large over the town but the kink in its design belies the fact that Truro is much older than the cathedral and the designers had to fit the church to the town, and not vice versa. The ramshackle spread of Truro’s streets makes reveals the medieval structure of the town and as such, it’s quite a charming place to visit.

 

As the big town of Cornwall, it’s also a heaving mess of people on this sunny Easter holiday weekday. I can’t imagine it of a weekend – chances are I’d be less keen, having inherited a charming misanthropy from my father. But, it’s a pleasant diversion from the dusty wastelands of most of the Cornwall that the brochures don’t show you, so I’ll poke around further.

The plan of Truro has changed dramatically since Google’s satellite imagery was last updated. Gone are the huge building sites, replaced with the biggest Marks & Sparks you ever saw and a host of other large scale shops and eateries. The plaza in front is now the central part of this new development, and it’s an attractive arena with an outdoor market to complement the indoor pannier market. You can cut through the pannier market to the older, smaller town centre section of Boscawen Street, and between the two you have all the chain stores you’d hope for in a town of Truro’s size (probably more, even).

It’s worth having a poke through the side streets though, because it’s here that you’ll find the little retailers and cafes that make Truro actually quite pleasant. There’s a few crafty jewellery types (crafty in the make-their-own-wares sort of way, not suspicious) and handmade toy shops, that sort of thing. There’s also our lovely charity shops, and many of them – too many to give a run down of pro’s and cons, I think. I failed to make suitable notes, sadly.

At the top of Pydar Street we have British Heart Foundation and a teeny Cats Protection League. There’s a couple of shop-laden snickets through to The Leats, and at this end of town (mostly around River Street, heading back towards Boscawen) you’ll find the Cornwall Hospice, Cancer Research, Save The Children, Barnado’s, Age Concern and CLIC Sargent Hospice. That leaves Children’s Hospice South West, and finally an Oxfam that proved a significant iPhone/GPS fail. But, worth it, because it was a nice shop over the bridge.

That’s not a lot of information, true, but Truro wins on quantity rather than quality. If you want a pushchair, or a particular necklace, or a particular book, chances are you’ll find it somewhere in Truro, just be the law of odds. Plus, it’s an attractive enough town with its neo-gothic/middle ages mash-up architecture in abundance and plenty of things to do.

Find: Truro @ Google Maps
Consume with: something chocolate based in Thorntons Cafe, perhaps?
Visit: Has to be the cathedral.
Overall Rating: four convenient pushchairs