NOVEMBER 2022 • 49 “Nearly two weeks,” came the mother’s reply. “Ever since she split up from her boyfriend”, she added simply. I stared at the mother and then at her child, wondering where to begin. When you’re a teenager, feeling sad and locking yourself in your room while you mope about after you’ve split up from your boyfriend or girlfriend is not a mental illness. It’s normal, for goodness sake. This sort of thing was far from uncommon when I worked in child and adolescent mental health, taking time and resources from children with real, serious mental health problems. I was astonished at how molly-coddled and cosseted children had become with parents seeming to have lost all sense of perspective. Of course, I get that parents are worried about their teenagers. It can be a strange, confusing time not just for the child but for the parent too, as your sweet little baby seems to morph and change right in front of your eyes. I also understand that it’s sometimes difficult to differentiate between what’s normal and what should be setting off alarm bells. But there seemed to be a deluge of referrals from the middle class worriedwell—those who were hovering over their children all the time, paranoid that every little twinge or tear was evidence that they needed urgent psychiatric help when what they’d really benefit from is a kind word and a cup of tea. Talk about wrapping kids in cotton wool—these days they are hermetically sealed in their own little bubble entirely removed from the world, not even allowed near cotton wool in case it irritates their delicate skin. The type of parenting that creates this “snowflake generation” might make childhood easy, but it makes them profoundly unprepared for the real world. It does children a tremendous disservice because it gives them no life skills for enduring the difficulties they will face when they are adults. We have created a generation who lack any selfreliance and strength, who believe the world revolves entirely round them and that their feelings are paramount. It is the ultimate “megeneration” where they are so sensitive and lacking in resilience, that even the slightest perceived slight or offence is experienced as being utterly catastrophic. What worries me is how they will cope in the big bad world once they finally grow up. They’ll all be jabbering wrecks. Q WE HAVE CREATED A GENERATION WHO LACK ANY SELF-RELIANCE
HEALTH putting too much strain on them. If the pain in the joint becomes too severe, then a doctor may consider prescribing painkillers, physiotherapy and, depending on the joint, a steroid injection or surgery is sometimes considered. There are some other conditions that can cause muscles and joint stiffness and aches. Other types of arthritis and joint conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis and gout, can cause pain, although these tend to be more localised to certain joints. Stiffness can also be caused by some medications, so if you have recently had a change in your medication, then this might be worth exploring with your doctor. The NHS recommends that someone see their GP if the pain or stiffness lasts for more than two weeks, or if it is starting to affect their ability to do their everyday activities or to sleep. Q Got a health question for our resident doctor? Email it confidentially to askdrmax@ readersdigest.co.uk The Doctor Is In Q: Dear Dr Max, I hope you can help me. I am in my sixties and have noticed that when I stand up after sitting down, my back, neck and legs are really stiff and achy. Is this a normal part of ageing or should I be worried? Thank you. - Mary A: Dear Mary, I’m sure there’ll be a lot of readers who can relate to this question. This kind of ache and stiffness when getting up is, I’m afraid, very common as we get older. It is usually caused by osteoarthritis in the joints. This is a common type of arthritis that happens when the cartilage (the protective cushion in between bones) wears away. Without this protection, the joints become painful and stiff. Osteoarthritis tends to develop slowly and usually starts during middle age. Losing weight and keeping active can help. Many people find gentle exercise like swimming also helps, as the water supports the joints and avoids Dr Max Pemberton 50 • NOVEMBER 2022 illustration by Javier Muñoz
I n one of my strongest memories of school, I’m on a muddy sports field trying out for the football team. Desperate to be noticed by my teacher and picked as goalkeeper, I scramble to stop every shot. With seconds to go, a long-range attempt sails towards me. Even now I can see myself diving to the left, getting my fingertips to the ball and pushing it around the post—the save that secured my place on the team. But hold on: there’s something wrong with this memory. When I replay it, I always see it from the teacher’s point-of-view, not my own. And that’s impossible. Most people report having at least some memories that play out from an imagined, external point of view. Researchers think that this phenomenon reveals important things about memory in general, along with some useful ways to boost our brains. For starters, we’re more likely to recall something “in the third person” if it made us self-conscious at the time (ie, aware of our audience). That’s fine for happy recollections. But if they’re negative, it’s worth questioning just how accurate they are, or even choosing to view them from a more positive point of view. • Pick an uncomfortable memory that you always see from the outside, and imagine it from your original perspective. Focus on all your good intentions at that time, too, and see if you can change the way this memory feels now. Third-person thinking is more likely with distant memories. It gets harder to recall details, so we tend to rely more on photographs to prompt us, and our brain takes on more of a “reporter” role. • Choose an old memory in which you’re looking at yourself, and imagine experiencing it from your real viewpoint instead. Research suggests that you’ll remember key parts more vividly, and probably unearth some new details too. The fact that we sometimes remember from an impossible point of view reminds us that all memory is partly an act of construction. • When you need to learn something actively, switch on your imagination. The pictures you paint with your mind’s eye can become realistic, lasting memories from whatever angle you choose. • Finally, treat even the clearest recollection with healthy scepticism (yes, even my world-class soccer save!). The accuracy of human memory is very much in the eye of the beholder. Q See Your Memory In A Whole New Way Perspective has a powerful impact on recall, says our memory expert, Jonathan Hancock NOVEMBER 2022 • 51 R E A D E R ’ S D I G E S T
Monica Karpinski is a writer and editor focused on women’s health, sex, and relationships. She is the founder of women’s health media platform The Femedic We’re taught that sex drive goes something like this: if you’re attracted to someone and want to have sex with them, desire should bubble up spontaneously. But if you’ve been in a relationship for a while, when was the last time you had the sudden urge to tear your partner’s clothes off? If you answered “Some time ago”, don’t worry—this is perfectly normal and is no reflection of how much you love or are attracted to them. Sex drive has long been misunderstood as a kind of innate hunger that wells up from deep within us. And, according to the hugely influential work of sex researchers Masters and Johnson in the 1960s, desire is what sets it off. We feel this first, their thinking goes, which then gets us aroused and ready to go. But this isn’t really how it works. For women, sexual desire is more likely to be responsive, which means that we start to feel aroused after there’s been some pleasurable physical stimulation. We start to enjoy ourselves and think, Actually, yes, sex sounds good. Ever got in the mood after your partner has started kissing your neck? Desire doesn’t leap up and consume us, but is instead given the space to develop. The feeling that we suddenly want sex, on the other hand, is known as spontaneous desire. This is that immediate, pounce-on-you sort of desire we see in films. But despite what the name suggests, these thoughts don’t just materialise out of thin air. Rather, they’re driven by our anticipation of 52 • NOVEMBER 2022 DATING & RELATIONSHIPS It’s Normal To Not Spontaneously Want Sex—And It’s Not A Bad Thing, Either
pleasure and other underlying motivations for sex. We might want to feel close to someone, for example. Once this puts us in the mood, our body then gets the memo and we start to become aroused. According to sex researcher Emily Nagoski, 75 per cent of men and 15 per cent of women say that they feel spontaneous desire, while five per cent of men and 30 per cent of women say they mostly experience responsive desire. It is possible to feel either and for your primary style to change over time. For example, after you have been in a relationship for a while you might find that your desire becomes more responsive than spontaneous. This isn’t a sign that anything is wrong with you or the relationship, just that different things are sparking your interest in sex as you become more familiar with someone. That’s perfectly normal. Expecting ourselves to want the same thing, in the same way, for the duration of an entire relationship can add unnecessary pressure to sex and even set us up to fail. If you wore your favourite outfit the same way every day, wouldn’t you get bored of it at some point? Could you be put off the look altogether? Instead of waiting to be struck by desire for sex, then, we should create space for it to happen. After all, not wanting sex out of the blue doesn’t mean that it isn’t important to us! Although you might not actively be thinking about sex, you may still be open to it happening. Exploring this feeling could mean taking things slower and seeing where kissing or cuddling goes, for example, without any sense of pressure or guilt about the fact that you’re not instantly ready to go for it. You could deliberately carve out time to be intimate with your partner, which may involve something as simple as lying skinto-skin together in bed and seeing what happens. But perhaps most importantly, understanding how desire works for us can stop us from worrying about what we “should” be doing in bed. There’s no right or wrong when it comes to what turns us on—and no “bad” way to want sex. Q NOVEMBER 2022 • 53 After you’ve been in a relationship for a while, you might find that your desire becomes more responsive than spontaneous
your lower back by putting a rolled towel or pillow under it. You can put your knees up for extra stability or put pillows under them when you’re lying down to take pressure off the back. These precautions might sound like they’re taking the fun out of sex, but there’s no reason why they should. Going slow and telling your partner what’s working for you can be a very sexy thing! Try to focus on the pleasurable sensations of touch and intimacy, rather than getting fixated on what could go wrong. But if things start to get too painful, stop—it’s not worth the injury. Once you’ve got some idea of which positions are comfortable, you can experiment with types of touch and play. For example, you could try stimulating different erogenous zones, like your fingertips or inner thighs. Q Got a question for our resident sex and relationships expert? Email it confidentially to [email protected] Relationship Advice Q: Recently, I’ve been having some pain in my lower back, to the point where I’ll start having sex with my partner and have to stop. How can I manage this without our sex life disappearing or becoming boring? - Victoria A: I’m sorry to hear that you’re having some trouble with your back. First things first: if the pain is affecting your day-to-day life, I’d recommend speaking with your doctor about treatments and stretches that could help. Certain positions and types of support may make things easier in the bedroom. What works best for you will depend on the nature of your pain: where exactly is it and do certain movements make it worse? The answers to these questions should give you some idea of which positions will cause pain, and therefore which ones to avoid. For example, if your back hurts when arched, you might want to try positions where you’re lying down and can keep it straight. If you are lying down flat, say in missionary position, you could support Monica Karpinski 54 • NOVEMBER 2022 DATING & RELATIONSHIPS
Great for general cardio fitness, exercise bikes can be a brilliant way of training at home. However, choosing the right bike is incredibly important, which is something that Roger Black and his team recognised when creating the Roger Black Folding Exercise Bike. Just Cycle And fold away Roger Black is offering a 10% discount on the full www.rogerblackfitness.com range of home fitness equipment for all Reader’s Digest readers. Please use discount code DIGEST10 at checkout. Standard T&Cs apply. There’s no excuse not to get on your bike this Winter. Get your indoor cycling fix and feel the benefits. “Best Present EVER are the words from my 77-year old father who received his Roger Black fitness bike for his birthday. He said it is so simple and easy to use, with no complicated gadgets. The seat is VERY comfortable, so using it everyday is a pleasure. It folds away neatly so it can be stored behind a door if need be” Anna, Farnham
by Caroline Frost PHOTOGRAPH BY Chris Jackson/ PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo As the world mourns the passing of our longest-reigning monarch, we look back at the woman who defined a generation and made us proud to be Elizabethans, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II H E R M A J E S T Y 1 9 2 6 - 2 0 2 2 NOVEMBER 2022 • 57
Many years from now, historians will surely debate in what ways the reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was significant. What will remain without doubt is that, in the length of her time spent on the British Throne, the social changes that she witnessed and ways that the monarchy itself evolved while she presided over it, her position demanded certain personal qualities that she was uniquely able to offer. Why so? Because the fates conspired to thrust an unassuming young woman into an extraordinary position, with responsibilities and challenges she could not have dreamed of in her earliest years. Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, the elder daughter of the Duke and Duchess of York, was born on April 21, 1926. With her younger sister Margaret, she enjoyed a childhood of stability and contentment, until the first of a series of extraordinary events altered her path forever. That was her uncle’s abdication in 1936, when the uncrowned King Edward VIII decided he couldn’t abide the thought of life as a monarch without his beloved-butdivorced partner Wallis Simpson by his side. So he quit, passing the Crown to his hesitant but dutiful younger brother. Unexpectedly, the Duke of York became King George VI and his elder daughter first in line to the throne. Even then, the Princess’s life continued to run smoothly into adulthood and her time as a new wife and mother. When the Second World War disrupted every British life, Elizabeth didn’t shy from joining in the nation’s effort and raising its morale, training as a driver and mechanic with the Auxiliary Territorial Service. She had the good luck to meet her lifelong companion, her distant cousin, Prince Philip Mountbatten of Greece, when she was still very young, and soon prepared for life as the wife of a handsome naval officer. Although their marriage endured its own bumps in the early years, the H E R M A J E S T Y Q U E E N E L I Z A B E T H I I superstock / alamy stock photo
NOVEMBER 2022 • 59 Smilingonthebalconyduringher coronationonJune2,1953,joinedby (L-R),her childrenKingCharles III andPrincessAnne andherhusband,theDukeofEdinburgh pictorial press ltd / alamy stock photo pair settled into a happy union of shared interests and extraordinary mutual support. By all accounts she was a shy but fun-loving friend and family member, often more comfortable with dogs and horses than people, fond of brisk country walks, dances and a Dubonnet at dinner time. All of this could have made for a perfectly pleasant and ordinary life, except for the second, equally shocking brush with fate that propelled her into a very different station. Princess Elizabeth was devoted to her father, so it was a terrible blow on February 6, 1952 when the King died unexpectedly in his sleep at Sandringham, aged just 56. Elizabeth had just embarked on a trip to Australia and New Zealand. On the way there in Kenya, she had stayed at the Treetops Hotel the night before the news came through. As observers remarked, she unknowingly went up the tree a Princess and came down a Queen. By the time she returned home two days later, to be greeted at London Airport by her first Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, it was clear that life was never going to be the same again. Her Coronation marked the beginning of a new Elizabethan age.
While this gave way to the swinging Sixties, the rise and fall of trade unions, the coming and going of 14 Prime Ministers, the impact of digital technology on everything (including increasing scrutiny on her own family), the Queen remained a constant, seemingly unchanging figure. Because of her long life and exalted position, it is probable that she met more public figures on the international stage than anyone else in history. She visited an estimated 110 countries, and in return entertained world leaders at home, where the regal hospitality she offered along with her own personal tact and charm contributed hugely to Britain’s position in the world. Wildly popular at home from the day of her Coronation, the Queen also enjoyed the devotion of her hundreds of millions of subjects worldwide, even as this number depleted through the course of her reign, as Empire gave way to Commonwealth and many British territories moved towards independence. With all of this, plus her palaces, the long list of world leaders hanging on to her discreet wealth of wisdom H E R M A J E S T Y Q U E E N E L I Z A B E T H I I Pictured in Sierra Leone in 1961 alongside her husband, Prince Philip trinity mirror / mirrorpix / alamy stock photo 60
61 In 1985, Reader’sDigest commissioned this portrait ofHer Majesty (by Michael Leonard)to celebrate her 60th birthday. It now hangs in theNational PortraitGallery, London
62 • NOVEMBER 2022 and experience, her huge personal fortune and subjects waiting to curtsey and bow wherever she went, the Queen could have been forgiven for letting it all go to her crowned head. Instead, tales of her down to earth nature, mischievous sense of humour and kindness behind the scenes all abound. Like so many other people, she was tested by the personal trials of her family. Her younger sister Margaret publicly dithered over whether to marry her divorced lover in the 1950s, and three of the Queen’s four children were divorced in the 1990s, all producing their own share of headlines. This, together with a huge fire at her beloved Windsor Castle, contributed to what she termed her “annus horribilis” of 1992. Privately, she did her best to stay out of her children’s business, while always doting on her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Publicly, she simply carried on with what she regarded as the main purpose of monarchy—serving her people. The Queen faced other challenges. In 1997, the death of her daughter-inlaw, Diana, Princess of Wales, tested her connection with her public, when her natural reserve jarred with the wider emotions of the day. Expressing her sadness in unprecedented fashion on that occasion saw her change course and adopt a more open, accessible style. It served her well in the later years of her reign as she moved with the changing world around her—whether that was taking part in the opening ceremony of the London Olympics in 2012, sending text messages or Her MajestyQueen Elizabeth II with her son King Charles III and his then fiancée,the lateDiana Princess of Wales at Buckingham Palace in 1981 simon serdar / alamy stock photo
chatting to other Commonwealth leaders via the wonders of video call. She was known by family members to be a sharp-eared mimic, who loved a good giggle with her husband when the most ceremonial of events suffered a mishap. Given her exalted status, she was surprisingly without airs and graces, as one garden party guest discovered when he was presented to Her Majesty and, to his horror, his mobile phone started ringing. She told him, “You’d better answer that, it might be someone important.” Paradoxically, it was this solidness that served her so well in the rarified air of her unique position. Her Majesty never once was seen to exploit her regal standing; instead she surrendered to the duties that came with it, while remaining personally understated and without artifice. Her constancy made her symbolically significant as well as personally respected. Even as many Republicans expressed their desire for a nation without a monarchy, there were very few who had a bad word to say about the woman at its heart for seven decades. For them as much as her natural fans, she represented the very best of Britain—devoted to her family, dedicated to her public, and tireless in her service. Historians will surely agree that, following the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, it is unthinkable we will see her like again. Q R E A D E R ’ S D I G E S T Queen Elizabeth II smiles with theDuke of Edinburgh onHorseGuards Parade during the annual Trooping the Colour parade, 2009 lewis whyld / pa images / alamy stock photo
Alison Sudol INSPIRE Alison Sudol is an American singersongwriter, musician, actress and video director. Having released three critically acclaimed albums under the moniker A Fine Frenzy, she has toured with Rufus Wainwright and opened for The Stooges. Her new album Still Come The Night is out now via Kartel Music Group I would redistribute wealth. No single person needs billions of dollars, and taxes would be so high for that bracket that people would gladly donate substantially to avoid it. I’d teach everyone to count to ten when they’re angry. I would also teach breathwork to help people to emotionally regulate. Everyone would learn emotional language for what they are feeling and how to use it. So we’d count, and breathe, and then communicate. The modern world is moving so fast. It’s difficult to process emotions at the speed we’re living. We don’t have time to walk in nature, to check in with what we’re feeling, to dig underneath the quickfire response and see what’s actually going on. We’re often not taught emotional language when we’re small, so when something hurts us, we react—we cry, we scream, we hit, and either get punished or soothed
© ANGELA KOHLER depending on what kind of parents we had. But if we don’t learn to sit with and voice what we feel—not suppressing it or negating it, simply naming it so it can be addressed— then we don’t learn how to handle those immediate impulses. Meditation, yoga, healthy eating, healthy self-esteem, kindness, art, music, compassion, gardening, and care for the earth would be taught in school, regardless of income bracket. There would be more after-school activities, trips into nature. Lots of camping. Star-watching. All schools would have gardens for the kids to learn how to help things grow. Useful things like how to change a tyre, how to do taxes and laundry, regardless of gender. Algebra would be optional. Childcare would be free and parental leave would be a year for both partners. In the UK, paternal/partner leave is one to two weeks. At two weeks postpartum I was barely going downstairs. I don’t know what I’d have done if my partner had a job he had to return to that early. We are incredibly lucky that we are freelance and he worked during the pregnancy so we could have a long chunk of time together postpartum. In the US, paid maternity leave is 12 weeks but there are multiple exceptions to this rule that leave a lot of holes for people who need support the most. Having a baby is nuts and especially the first NOVEMBER 2022 • 65 time round it just knocks you sideways. It’s also the most exquisitely magical time where you just look at your baby and cry with joy randomly. Sanitary products would be free. Half of all women and girls in developing countries are forced to use things like rags, grass and paper as sanitary products, which pose a dangerous risk for infection. Plus, in many countries, girls are forced to stay home on their periods, which can cause them to fall behind the boys in their class. It needs to change! There would be at least an hour per workday to be spent in green spaces (which would be funded by our billionaire friends’ tax fund). Offices would have nurseries so people could see their kids during the day. Lunches would be served together, family style, with families invited. Counselling and wellbeing services would be offered at every workplace (not just fancy Silicon Valley mega businesses). People would be cared for and compensated better. Work wouldn’t have to suck your soul. I’d create a better system for getting the duvet cover on the duvet. No matter how I do it, it always takes forever and often results in me walking around inside the thing jabbing around blindly, trying to work out where the corners are. Surely there’s a better way. Q
Tog Illustration by Gel Jamlang ether Banding
There was so much more to this unlikely friendship than a common name by Emma Taubenfeld With additional reporting by Paul Robert INSPIRE 67
B A N D I N G T O G E T H E R Paul O’Sullivan lounged around his apartment in the US city of Baltimore one evening in 2014, feeling bored. So, like a lot of people with nothing better to do, he logged on to Facebook. Just for fun, he decided to try to find out how many other people on the social network shared his name. Moments later, dozens of Paul O’Sullivans, name twins from around the world, filled his screen. On a whim, the then-27-year-old human resources employee sent friend requests to them all. There was Rotterdam Paul, a singer and guitarist; Manchester Paul, a bass player; and Paul from the US state of Pennsylvania, a drummer. Four men with the same name who all love making music? Baltimore Paul had an idea. Wouldn’t it be funny, he asked the other three musical Pauls, if they formed a band called The Paul O’Sullivans? They all agreed that, yes, it would be funny. And so they did it. Starting a band across multiple time zones—the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States—proved to be tricky. Many of his fellow Paul O’Sullivans ignored him, but a few felt too curious to pass up his invitation. Says Paul O’Sullivan from Rotterdam in the Netherlands, “My first reaction was, ‘Who is this guy and what does he want from me?’ So I thought about it for a while.” Ultimately, he couldn’t resist the unusual friend request. As Baltimore Paul scrolled through the profiles of the Paul O’Sullivans who accepted his invitation, he noticed something four of them had in common: they were all either amateur or professional musicians. Friends named PaulO'Sullivan (leftto right): Baltimore Paul, and Rotterdam Paul
R E A D E R ’ S D I G E S T “We decided to try to write a song, but it was impossible for us to play together live from four different places,” says Rotterdam Paul. They would have been out of sync, and being even half a second off from one another would have wrecked their sound. Fortunately, Manchester Paul, a 59-year-old former professional musician who now works in public health, knew how to fix that: they would create a kind of musical assembly line between countries. “I have done a lot of studio work, including some online sessions,” he says. “It’s not that unusual. Even Stevie Wonder has worked that way.” T he production line starts in the United States. “Baltimore Paul comes up with the musical ideas,” says 54-year-old Rotterdam Paul, who works as a counsellor in a mental health facility. “I’ve written songs before, so I help with the lyrics.” Baltimore Paul and Rotterdam Paul then record a basic track with guitars and vocals, and email it to Manchester Paul, who, in addition to the electric bass, plays guitar, wind instruments and the upright bass. “I listen to the song over a few days to get a feel for what bass arrangement seems most appropriate,” he says. “It’s not my usual way to record, but the technology does make it very easy.” Once he records a bass track, he emails it back to Baltimore Paul, who then builds it into the main song. Later, Pennsylvania Paul adds the drumbeat. Round and round the track goes, with each member adding on his own layer until they achieve the sound they want. The Paul O’Sullivan Band released its first original song, “Namesake,” in March 2016. It’s an upbeat poprock track about long-distance relationships—not romantic ones, but friendships like those they had begun to develop. But just months after the song’s release, Baltimore Paul began experiencing health issues that forced him to take time off from making music. The other Pauls also decided to take a break from the band. But they didn’t press pause on their friendship. Instead of supporting each other in the recording studio, they supported one another more generally. The other Pauls made sure Baltimore Paul never felt alone, even with NOVEMBER 2022 • 69 THE PAULS SHARED PHOTOS, CHATTED ONLINE, AND CHECKED IN ON ONE ANOTHER
70 • NOVEMBER 2022 the long distances between them. They shared family pictures, chatted online, and checked in on Baltimore Paul and on one another. “We developed a lasting friendship, despite the fact that we have never met,” says Manchester Paul. “I honestly don’t think that we could get any closer.” Rotterdam Paul wholeheartedly agrees: “We share our lives through group chats on Facebook Messenger and on Instagram. We always cheer each other up when we hear that things aren’t going so well. Sometimes I’m in touch with them more than with my friends in the Netherlands.” Adds Pennsylvania Paul, 58, “The other Pauls are gentle, dear, caring people. They are a fountain of joy.” Even their age difference— Baltimore Paul is two decades younger than the others—was of no consequence. “At first the only thing we had in common was that we shared a name, but friendship took over,” says Manchester Paul. “It is probably because of the music. Musicians tend to gravitate together and age doesn’t matter. In my work I play with people who are anywhere from 30 to over 60.” Finally, after a four-year break, Baltimore Paul was well enough to start making music again. The first thing the band did was create a music video for “Namesake,” which debuted on YouTube in February 2020. In its first two weeks online, the video pulled in more than 20,000 views. It has now been watched more than 50,000 times. And when COVID-19 slowly shut down the world just weeks later, the Pauls didn’t miss a beat. After all, the band had already gotten the hang of remote work. But now their international connection took on new meaning. “Writing a song with someone across the ocean makes you feel less trapped,” says Baltimore Paul. They used their time during the pandemic to record their first EP. Titled Internet Famous: A Retrospective, it was released in April 2021. Half of the proceeds from Internet Famous were donated to the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund, which supports the World Health Organisation’s work in fighting the pandemic. “Life is tough sometimes,” says Pennsylvania Paul. “When you have an opportunity to generate joy, you have to put aside the other stuff.” Amid the pandemic and the lockdowns, the four Pauls were discovered by the media. They appeared on the national US Dr Steve Simmons B A N D I N G T O G E T H E R
NOVEMBER 2022 • 71 R E A D E R ’ S D I G E S T television programme The Kelly Clarkson Show, and they have been interviewed by high-profile media outlets such as The Washington Post, CBS News, and Forbes magazine— not so much about the music, but about the unique way the Pauls met, the feel-good story behind the band. Some media incorrectly presented The Paul O’Sullivans as a project that started during lockdown, when in fact the band came together five years before the pandemic. Although he enjoys the publicity, Manchester Paul bristles at the portrayal of the band as a gimmick. “The music that Baltimore Paul writes is in fact really excellent,” he says. “It would be interesting to take it further.” After so many years of getting together remotely, they would love to meet in person one day, but so far only two of the Pauls have done so. In the fall of 2020, Baltimore Paul surprised Pennsylvania Paul at his home after coordinating the visit with his fiancée. It was the first time any of them had met face-to-face without a computer screen in the way. The two saw each other again the following summer and they hope to add the other two Pauls to the mix soon. “It would be great to meet and perform with the band,” says Rotterdam Paul. “We talk about it a lot. I do want to take my family to the United States for a vacation and meet the other Pauls.” So far, personal commitments and pandemic restrictions have stopped them from making specific plans. Manchester Paul, who already plays in two professional bands and is involved with numerous recording projects, agrees: “It has been a lovely journey that has lasted seven years so far. Where it will go, I don’t know. A world tour would be great.” That is exactly what Baltimore Paul dreams of: a whirlwind fourstop international tour—one concert in each of their hometowns. “What are the odds,” he says, that a random Facebook request would lead not only to new music but to lasting friendships as well? “Some things are just meant to be.” Q Friends named PaulO'Sullivan (leftto right): Manchester Paul, and Pennsylvania Paul photos courtesy of the paul o’sullivan band
INSPIRE 72 • NOVEMBER 2022 Sailing into Kotor, Montenegro RockingTheBoat
Why naturist sailing is the most stressfree holiday you will ever experience words and photography By Chris Moore Royal Clipper
R O C K I N G T H E B O A T 74 • NOVEMBER 2022 it felt as though we were attending a conference, for people with no pockets these things were a godsend. After all, just where are naturists supposed to keep their room key? After a couple of days on board, I became proficient at surreptitiously glancing somewhere between neck and tummy button to impressively remember someone’s name without coming across as a gawker. If it had been an Olympic sport, I would have been on the podium. On a steamy Saturday afternoon in late June, my wife and I joined a couple of hundred undercover naturists who had been drawn to Venice’s San Basilio dock like moths to a 60w light bulb. We greeted friends old and new like excited school children on the first day of term. We had migrated from all over the world—Canada, Germany, Australia, US, South Africa and the UK—and in the Venetian heat, we definitely felt over-dressed. However, the queue to be processed and allowed on board was not the place to strip off. Finally, with paperwork completed and negative COVID tests in hand, we were allowed to head up the gangplank. By early evening, we had been successfully re-united with our I was leaning against the rail watching the sun lift above the horizon. A warm westerly breeze tousled my hair and filled the vast, white polyester sails above me, pushing us gently south-eastwards. I turned to the lady standing a few feet away and raised my coffee cup in an early morning toast. “To the start of another perfect day.” She smiled and nodded. “Cheers”. We were both naked. We weren’t sleep walking, hadn’t forgotten to get dressed, nor were we on a schoolboy dare. We were, after all, in our sixties and double dare days were long over. We were sailing in the Adriatic on the world’s largest clipper, a graceful five-masted ship with 42 sails and another 200 or so fellow naturists, most of whom were still snoring away in their cabins. I turned to my fellow nudie and wished her a cheery “Good morning”. Her name was Amy and she was from Australia. I was pleased with myself for remembering her name; well, you try remembering the names of 200 naked strangers. Actually, I have to confess to having some help. Each of us was given a lanyard upon boarding which had our first name printed on the front and a pocket to keep our room key card. Although “SHIRTS, BRAS, PANTS, EVEN A PROSTHETIC ARM, WERE LYING ABANDONED ON THE DECK”
R E A D E R ’ S D I G E S T NOVEMBER 2022 • 75 Royal Clipper
the open water, tourists in St Mark’s Square momentarily turning their cameras on this unexpected floating attraction. Losing the tugs, we turned south and headed to Ravenna. Many of the passengers were return sailors. In fact, according to Bare Necessities—the US travel company that has been chartering ships and organising nude cruises for over 25 years—the passenger return rate is almost 80 per cent. A staggering number given the industry average is nearer 30 per cent. There’s a reason people keep on returning. luggage (yes, even naturists have to bring some clothes, though why some need two large cases for a twoweek nude cruise still beats me) and joined the rest of the passengers on deck as we readied to head out into the Adriatic Sea. “Sailaway"—that magic moment when the captain gives the nod to weigh the anchor and set the sails—is a grand occasion. As the crew set the sails (somewhat disappointingly with a push of a button rather than a hearty heave-ho) and assisted by a couple of tugs to guide us down the Grand Canal, we processed gracefully towards 76 • NOVEMBER 2022 R O C K I N G T H E B O A T Pula, Croatia
As the tugs left us, the captain announced that the pilot had left the ship, which was code for “OK, you can get undressed now”. Before he had finished the announcement, shirts, bras, pants, even a prosthetic arm, were lying abandoned on the deck (though I think the latter probably just got caught up in the moment) and we all breathed a collective sigh of deep relief that sounded very much like “Freeeedom”. And that’s what naturism is all about. Losing one’s clothes is a very liberating feeling. As our clothes fell to the floor, so did our inhibitions and life’s stresses. You really have nothing to hide and without the entrapment of clothing it’s very difficult to judge people or peg them into a certain box. It doesn’t matter what title you have (we’ve met doctors, professors and reverends), what job you do (there were anesthetists, an actress, IT and financial professionals and a former ballet dancer, to name a few) or how much money you have—we are all the same. Removing our prejudices along with our underpants makes for a much more open, tolerant and respectful environment, which is why everyone is so easy to get on with. By the end of the cruise, we had met everyone else on board. Thank goodness for the name tags—all bums look pretty much the same to me. Meals were dressed affairs—after all no-one needs to see your nipples dipping into the salad bowl at the self-service buffet—and dinner often went late into the evening with good conversation and laughter. Groaning as we lumbered from the dining room to the bar—strangely, all paths seemed to lead to the bar on the mid deck—we worked off our dessert each night with dancing. We headed to Pula, on Croatia's Istrian Peninsula, famous for its impressive and wonderfully preserved Roman amphitheatre, before hop-scotching down the coast to Game of Thrones fans’ favourite Dubrovnik and popping into Krk, Zadar, Split, and Korcula along the way. Each stop offered Instagram-ready photos of colourful harbours, ancient ruins, magnificent churches and impressive walled cities. Shore excursions were available at every port of call for those keen to walk like sheep behind a flagcarrying guide. Not our thing, so we wandered off to explore on our own. In a number of places, the ship NOVEMBER 2022 • 77 R E A D E R ’ S D I G E S T “AS OUR CLOTHES FELL TO THE FLOOR, SO TOO DID OUR INHIBITIONS AND LIFE'S STRESSES”
We boarded the ship and immediately made our way straight to the back. It’s amazing how quickly you can remove your clothing almost without breaking stride and we were on the marina deck and ready to skinny dip in the warm, clear aquamarine Adriatic in seconds. Our eagle-eyed crew were on hand to look out for our safety. Now this is the way to cool off after a very hot and sticky morning of plodding around historic, picturesque towns. We climbed out of the water, towelled off, stopped off at the “we never close” bar before collapsing on our sun loungers. “Where did we leave our clothes?” I asked my wife. “Can’t remember” she shrugged. Never mind. On the way back to Venice, we ticked off another “country visited”—San Marino. I had always associated San Marino with an easy England win in Euro qualifiers (though that’s no longer a given) and knew very little about it. What a delightful place. The charming medieval walled old town and quaint, narrow cobblestone streets set on a mountain top from where you can see for miles is worth the effort of a short hilly climb. You can was unable to enter the small town harbours so we were tendered to shore. The tenders shuttled back and forth to the ship, giving us enormous flexibility. Tours to local nude beaches or naturist resorts were also offered for those who wished to feel the sand between their toes. The beaches are beautiful, though much of the Croatian coastline is pebbly and sand is only to be found at the bottom of the sea some yards away. My wife and I hired a local guide from WithLocals in Dubrovnik for a personal tour—a much more intimate, fun and rewarding way to see a new place and well worth an extra few euros. We met Anastasia the cat (google: Anastasia Dubrovnik Cat), met a local couple still living within the walls of the Old City selling an array of herbs and spices, and walked the route of Cersei’s Walk of Shame (sadly my wife declined to re-enact it). Games Of Thrones fans will know what I’m talking about. Returning hot and sweaty from one of the many daytime excursions, we approached the ship on the tender and could see the marina platform at the back of the ship was open for passengers to swim, kayak, float or paddle. 78 • NOVEMBER 2022 R O C K I N G T H E B O A T “THANK GOODNESS FOR THE NAME TAGS—ALL BUMS LOOK PRETTY MUCH THE SAME TO ME”
also get your passport stamped here from one of the world’s oldest—and smallest—republics, though strictly speaking it’s a tourist stamp, and some killjoy governments will tell you it’s illegal to “deface” a passport. We paid our five euros for ours. Sailing on this beautiful, tall ship is a unique experience whether you are clothed or not. We ate delicious food, visited interesting places, and enjoyed the company of like-minded people. The ability to do this sans clothes gave us a tremendous sense of freedom, relaxation, and wellbeing. Our favourite location was at the stern of the ship where we would watch land slip away or the sun dip below the horizon. We sipped rainbow-coloured drinks with names like “Hugo” and “Yellowbird”, not knowing exactly what was in them but remembering that too many made you forget how your legs worked. We would exchange war stories with new friends and put the world to rights. We stretched out like cats in front of the hearth and didn’t want the sun to go down—ever. The sky was cloudless and we hadn’t a care in the world. Q NOVEMBER 2022 • 79 R E A D E R ’ S D I G E S T Dubrovnik, Croatia
Day 1: Depart UK Fly with Qantas / Emirates from your most convenient airport: London Heathrow, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle or Glasgow. Days 2-4: Singapore Enjoy a city tour including Merlion Park, Marina Bay, Thian Hock Keng Temple and the fabulous orchid gardens. As an alternative, you may choose to stop in Dubai at no extra cost. Days 5-7: Melbourne Visit Victoria Markets, Federation Square, the MCG. Perhaps take an optional excursion to explore the Great Ocean Road or Fairy Penguin Parade. Days 8-9: Adelaide We take a sightseeing tour of the city’s historic buildings and attractive parks and gardens. Our Freedom Day provides an opportunity to tour the wine region of the Barossa Valley, or visit Kangaroo Island. Day 10: The Ghan Experience One of the world’s most iconic rail journeys. Covering 1,555 kilometres, we see the everchanging landscape as we journey north. Enjoy all inclusive Gold Service with on board meals included as are a wide selection of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. Days 11-12: Alice Springs Visit the Royal Flying Doctor Service, the School of the Air, and the Old Telegraph Station. On our Freedom Day, perhaps take an hot air balloon trip or an excursion to the Western MacDonnell Ranges. Day 13: Uluru (Ayers Rock) We enjoy a refreshing glass of sparkling wine and witness the changing colours as the sun sets. There is a chance to explore the rock in the morning, before visiting the impressive Olgas. Days 14-17: Cairns & The Great Barrier Reef Snorkel in the sheltered coral lagoon and view the reef from the semi-submersible reef viewer or underwater observatory. Lunch is included. Optional tours on our Freedom Days in Cairns include a scenic railway journey to Kuranda, and a day trip to the nearby World Heritage listed Daintree Rainforest. Wonders of Australia 22 days from only £6,245 per person Call FREE for a brochure 0800 141 3719 or visit distantjourneys.co.uk
SPECIAL OFFER £632 PER COUPLE BOOK BY 30 NOV SAVE UP TO Award-Winning Tours First Class Hotels 99% Customer Satisfaction Daily Breakfasts included worth £349pp Flexible Tour Options Price Promise & Covid Guarantee 100% ATOL Protection Departure Dates Stopover Offer Price Per Person Availability 28 Jul 2023 – £5,895 7 Rooms 06 Oct 2023 £29pp £6,495 New Date 10 Nov 2023 £29pp £6,495 New Date 23 Feb 2024 £29pp £6,495 New Date 08 Mar 2024 £29pp £6,495 New Date 05 Apr 2024 £29pp £6,245 New Date 26 Jul 2024 £29pp £6,795 New Date Days 18-21: Sydney A morning’s tour includes the beautiful waterside suburbs of Bondi Beach, Double Bay, and Rushcutters Bay. We continue to the city centre and Hyde Park, Parliament House, and the Royal Botanical Gardens. The tour finale is a fabulous luncheon cruise with amazing views of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. Why not use your Freedom Days in Sydney to visit the spectacular World Heritage listed Blue Mountains? Day 22: Arrive UK We arrive at your chosen airport; London Heathrow, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle or Glasgow bringing an end to our incredible adventure. distantjourneys Book by 30th November 2022 and enjoy a homebound stopover from only £29* per person (£48 for singles). Stopover choices are Singapore, Bangkok, Dubai, Sentosa Island or Bali and include return transfers and four-star accommodation with breakfast. Other destinations: New Zealand • South Africa • Japan • Vietnam • Cambodia • India • Sri Lanka Terms and conditions: Special offer is £29pp in twin / double room (£48 for single occupancy) is for a two night stopover in Dubai, Singapore, or Bangkok, and is subject to the availability of flights and accommodation. * Stopover offer is not available on 28 July 2023. A two night stopover on Sentosa Island is £149 per person (£298 for single occupancy) and three nights in Bali is £129 per person (£248 single occupancy). The saving of up to £632 per couple is available on tours departing from October 2023 and is on the price of the homebound stopover. Single occupancy supplement on tour £1,245. For more details and full booking conditions, please request a brochure or visit www.distantjourneys.co.uk
The Surprising Feminist History Of The Travel Guidebook by Brendan Sainsbury The little-known story of the 19th-century woman who broke convention to pioneer the modern guidebook INSPIRE 83
84 • NOVEMBER 2022 Scour the internet for famous 19th-century explorers and, chances are, 99 per cent of them will be men. Furthermore, there’ll be little mention of Mariana Starke. It’s a striking oversight. A pioneering travel writer who circumnavigated the battlefields of France and Italy during the age of Napoleon, Starke was a woman years ahead of her time who has a valid claim to being the inventor of the modern guidebook. Sharing the same publisher as Jane Austen, the industrious Mariana undertook much of her research on the bumpy post-roads of continental Europe several decades before the advent of the steam train and continued to perfect her craft until she was well into her sixties.
R E A D E R ’ S D I G E S T Her debut travel book, Letters from Italy published in 1800, evolved over a period of 40 years (and numerous editions) from a collection of personal reflections on art and culture, into a consummate travel guide that included meticulous details on everything from steamship timetables to medical supplies. Many subsequent guidebooks, including the iconic Baedeker and Murray brands, borrowed heavily from Starke's ideas, while most modern travel writers indirectly owe her a debt. So, who exactly was this unorthodox, trailblazing woman and how did she enter the fickle world of travel writing? Mariana Starke was born into an upper middle-class family with literary leanings in Epsom, Surrey in 1762. Her father had served as a regional governor in British India. Her mother was a thespian and lover of literature who counted the writer and poet William Hayley among her friends. Educated mostly by her mother, Mariana proved to be an erudite and able student. In 1787, at the age of 25, she helped translate the French plays of StéphanieFélicité de Genlis into English. The following year, her self-penned play, The Sword of Peace won enough plaudits to be performed at London’s Haymarket theatre. NOVEMBER 2022 • 85
86 • NOVEMBER 2022 In an era when it was customary to disregard women writers as lightweight and unqualified, Starke published both works anonymously. Yet, undeterred by the obstacles in her way, she continued to challenge the inherent sexism of the era, appearing as a character in her second play The British Orphan dressed as a man. Such intrepidness set the tone for many of her subsequent adventures. Starke’s nomadic lifestyle began in 1792 when her family travelled to Italy in the hope of finding warmer weather to cure her sick sister’s tuberculosis. Tragedy hit when her sister died in Nice en route to Rome. In a double blow, Mariana’s father succumbed to the same illness in Pisa two years later. However, rather than turning around and heading home, Starke spent the next four years musing on Italy’s art and culture, using her experiences to form the basis of a travel book. Mining her good literary contacts, Letters from Italy was published by Richard Phillips in 1800 with an updated version, entitled Travels in Italy Between the Years 1792 and 1798 coming out in 1802. Starke’s books were groundbreaking, not just because she was a woman. Dispensing of romantic Dr Steve Simmons T H E F E M I N I S T H I S T O R Y O F T H E G U I D E B O O K A map of Europe afterthe Peace of Tilsit, 1807
NOVEMBER 2022 • 87 R E A D E R ’ S D I G E S T descriptions of natural landscapes in favour of more practical information, they were written with the express intention of encouraging readers to follow in her footsteps, a concept in marked contrast to most of the effusive travelogues that preceded her. While not short of admirers, the guides remained little used for nearly two decades, primarily because Europe was still embroiled in the Napoleonic wars, and not a particularly inviting place for culture-seeking tourists. The situation changed in 1815 when victory by the Seventh Coalition at the Battle of Waterloo ushered in a period of peace and prosperity as the well-to-do members of the middleclasses, encouraged by better roads and cheaper prices, expressed an increasing desire to travel abroad. As the map of Europe had been substantially redrawn since Starke’s 1802 guide, the author—by now well into her fifties—produced a more comprehensive update. Writing in the book’s introduction, she commented: “I determined to revisit the continent; and become an eye-witness of the alterations made there by the events of the last 20 years: events that have so completely changed the order of things, with respect to roads, accommodations and works of art, that new guides for travellers are extremely wanted in almost every large city.” Published in 1820, Travels on the Continent went a step further than her earlier tomes, covering the breadth of Europe from Portugal to Russia and including concise advice on inn accommodations, how to hire a horse carriage and the intricacies of personal safety. “English travellers, even when going post, have rarely been robbed; unless owing to imprudence on their own part, or on that of their attendants,” she sagely remarked. Starke’s restructured book struck a chord, not just with aspiring "budget" travellers, but with her new publisher, John Murray II. A shrewd Scot, Murray was a foresighted man with an uncanny knack for spotting ground-breaking ideas. In 1815, he published Jane Austen’s third novel Emma (and all her subsequent books) while, decades later, his son, John Murray III went on to publish Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Starke had first approached Murray in 1814 at a time when the STARKE'S BOOKS WERE SO POPULAR THAT PIRATED COPIES BECAME COMMON
88 • NOVEMBER 2022 notion of travelling for pleasure was entering a new chapter. What had once been the domain of rich young aristocrats on a "grand tour" of Europe’s great art cities with an assemblage of servants and tutors in tow, had become accessible to a wider selection of people. Suddenly, Starke found herself poised at the head of a new trend. Under Murray’s tutelage, the book and its subsequent editions sold well and Starke—now publishing under her own name—became a minor celebrity. Stendhal, Dickens, and Mary Shelley were all said to have dipped enthusiastically into her guides and even pirated copies of the book became common in Europe. Written primarily in the third person, post-1820 editions were more like a tailored guide than a reflective memoir. Sights were ranked in a system of one to five exclamation marks, journeys were laid out in suggested itineraries and detailed appendices contained exhaustive lists on how to behave, what to take and how to travel. Among priceless nuggets of on-the-road advice, Starke recommended readers not leave home without bringing pistols, a rhubarb grater, a medicine chest with pure opium, and a sword case. Some of the book’s more popular sights would remain recognisable to modern travellers. “The Louvre, though recently despoiled of many treasures, still boast[s] one of the finest collections in the world of paintings and sculpture,” wrote Starke, alluding to the repatriation of works looted by Napoleon after 1815. In an illustration of changing tastes, she gave Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (“a celebrated Florentine beauty”) a measly one exclamation mark, his androgynous John the Baptist a middling two, and his Virgin and Child with St Anne a more generous three. Starke undertook several more research trips between 1824 and 1830 enabling Murray to update and enlarge her book well into the 1830s (by which time it counted over 680 pages). However, with the author approaching 70, the publisher started looking to milk the emerging travel market for himself. In 1836, Murray’s Handbook for Travellers on the Continent ignited one of the world’s first long-running T H E F E M I N I S T H I S T O R Y O F T H E G U I D E B O O K NOW PUBLISHING UNDER HER OWN NAME, STARKE BECAME A CELEBRITY
NOVEMBER 2022 • 89 R E A D E R ’ S D I G E S T guidebook series and quickly established a prototype for all books that followed, including the concurrent Baedeker brand launched in Germany in the 1830s. While refining the genre over a period of decades, Murray plundered numerous ideas from Starke including the adoption of inn listings, route itineraries and a subjective star system. Murray and Baedeker guidebooks proliferated in the mid-19th century with regular updates covering everywhere from Switzerland to the lightly mapped expanses of Algeria and India. Successive editions became more and more detailed, feeding a new appetite for "tourism" (the word had first been coined in 1811). Murray guidebooks remained in publication until 1968; Baedekers are still produced today and have been complemented by an abundance of Rough Guides, Lonely Planets, and other brands. Superseded by these iconic guidebooks, Starke’s pioneering volumes had slipped off the radar by the late 20th century. But our collective amnesia doesn’t diminish their importance. Defying the conventions of the era, the maverick Starke was a rule-breaking protofeminist who crisscrossed Europe by horse-carriage rather than car and wrote with a quill rather than a pen, covering thousands of miles to report on the best places to wash a petticoat, or buy decent milk. Modern travel writers would struggle to emulate her. Starke died in Milan in 1838, aged 76, while travelling between Naples and London. The last edition of her book was released posthumously, in 1839. Perhaps unsurprisingly considering her workload, she never married or had children. Instead, her rich catalogue of books stands as her legacy, along with the compelling travel culture it helped create. Q Portrait of John Murray II; Murray’sHandbook for Travellers on theContinent
England’s Jurassic Coast includes prehistoric cliffs that loom over Sidmouth inDevon by Ben Lerwill from national geographic traveller The shores of Devon in southern England tell a story of dinosaurs, Romans, and much more 90
TRAVEL & ADVENTURE F rom a remote sandstone ledge drops a bewildered man in a wetsuit. It’s taken an eternity for him to work up the nerve to jump, and he plummets through the air with an expression somewhere between elation and terror. The rocks zooming past behind him are hundreds of millions of years old; the bay he’s arrowing into has witnessed visitors ranging from plesiosaurs to pirates. And, with the sun illuminating the red cliffs and ivied, coastal woodland, there comes an almighty splash as the October-cold sea rushes up to swallow him. For the man—me—it’s an unutterable thrill. Tom Devey, the guide who’s just patiently coaxed me into stepping off a 25ft precipice, gives a thumbs-up from the shore and gestures to a cove nearby. We’ve been clambering over the boulders of Devon’s southeastern coastline near the hamlet of Maidencombe and Devey, who works for Rock Solid Coasteering, had been leading me through some jumps. We’d swum under natural arches, climbed rocks, then plunged back into the sea. At one point, a grey seal appeared, bobbing in the swell just feet away. Now it was time to call it quits and warm up. “I’ve got hot chocolate,” he grins, patting his pack and leading us to a tiny beach walled off by giant shelves of rock. As he pours from the flask, he points out the storage holes and camping spots favoured by generations of smugglers who used this shoreline to spirit illicit shipments of liquor and tobacco into the West Country. “On the subject,” Devey says, producing a hip flask, “tot of rum in that?”. On Devon’s southeast coast, the history is spread as thickly as the clotted cream this place is famous for. I’m here to discover more about the area’s past and present on a journey from the ancient city of Exeter to the Jurassic Coast, via the pub-dotted ports of the Exe Estuary. Devey tells a tale from local folklore of three bootleggers blockaded into a sea cave by the authorities. “They were trying to drown them,” he explains, as we look east along a series of hefty headlands. “But when they unsealed it three days later, there was no sign of the bodies. People think the men found a way into the wider cave system and escaped inland.” The busy quays and taverns of Exeter, 19 miles to the north at the head of the estuary, would’ve been the obvious place to flee. Devon’s capital city was no stranger to smugglers and seafarers during the 17th and 18th centuries. Long before that, its plum location had attracted Roman and Norman invaders, then Saxon settlers. “When the Normans turned up, the citizens of Exeter lined the city’s NOVEMBER 2022 • 91
92 • NOVEMBER 2022 I F T H E S E C L I F F S C O U L D T A L K walls and made obscene gestures at William the Conqueror and his army!” says David Radstone, one of the city’s Red Coat guides, with palpable relish. Our meeting place for a (free) city tour is Cathedral Green, which is shadowed by one of the mightiest religious buildings in England: Exeter Cathedral. The streets around us are filled with a mixture of timbered, medieval buildings and harsher post-war architecture. Gargoyles and grotesques glower down from the cathedral. Home to a large university, the city is fascinating. After the Normans arrived, Radstone explains, Exeter took on various guises: it went from prosperous merchant city and a major hub of the English cloth trade—in the late 17th century, 80 per cent of Exeter’s residents were employed in the wool industry—to an ill-fated Luftwaffe target, when 1,500 homes were destroyed in a single night in May 1942. As we wander the centre, we run our hands over the original Roman city walls, admire imposing Georgian townhouses, and stand agog in front of beforeand-after photos of the bomb-damaged city. In the distance, green hills bulge into view. With a population of around 130,000, a lot of them students, “It’s an easy city to live in,” says Radstone. “You can see the countryside from almost anywhere.” We end up at the handsome quay, once abuzz with ships full of yarn. Today, its old warehouses are home to pizza restaurants, vintage stores, and bike-hire outlets. Away from the quay is one of Exeter’s most notable attractions, the fantastic Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery. I’m particularly wowed by a hoard of 22,888 Roman coins found by a local metal detectorist, and the 100,000-year-old hippo fossils discovered while building a road in nearby Honiton. The soaring cathedral, meanwhile—mainly unscathed by German air raids—very much lives up to the hype. At 8:15 am, I walk self-consciously into morning prayers to find the dean leading a congregation of just two. High above the nave, the world’s longest stretch of gothic stone vaulted ceiling fans out like a giant forest canopy. “P eople say it makes sense to make rum in Devon,” says Gemma Wakeham, one half of the Two Drifters Rum wife-and-husband team. Just outside Exeter, the world’s first carbonnegative rum distillery
NOVEMBER 2022 • 93 is stocked with stills and barrels that recall the coast’s spirit-smuggling past. Strung from the rafters is a flag bearing the St Petroc’s Cross, the county’s emblem: a black-and-white cross on a green background. That’s more or less where tradition ends. “The distillery is electric and runs on renewable energy,” says Wakeham, explaining that her husband’s chemistry background has driven their green ethos. The rums themselves taste great, full of zest and warmth. “When we launched in 2019, we were producing 80 bottles a week,” says Wakeham. “That number is now 2,500.” The distillery aims to offset every single element of its production, from carbon-capture technology to the growing of spices to the shipping of sugar cane. This is in my mind as I head along the Exe Estuary to Topsham, once the second-busiest port in England. I arrive to the sound of baying gulls and mast-slapping halyards, with the river shimmering out towards the sea, surrounded by saltmarshes. “When William of Orange arrived in England in 1688 to take the throne, this is where most of his fleet landed,” says Ed Williams-Hawkes, a powerboat navigator complete with eye patch. He points toward the quay. “You can imagine the scene: brass cannons being pulled by Shire horses, platoons of Swiss mercenaries, soldiers from Scandinavia. Incredible to think about.” His son Tom is the owner of nearby Salutation Inn, a few minutes’ walk away past Dutchgabled townhouses. Above: the magnificent Exeter Cathedral.Opposite: Adrenaline junkie Tom Devey leads a coasteering session at Maidencombe Beach photo: (cathedral) ©p.a. thompson/getty images
94 • NOVEMBER 2022 Like the rest of the town, the inn creaks history. Its 300-year-old wooden door—broad enough for Victorian coaches to pass through— is still marked with apotropaic carvings to ward off evil spirits. These apparently didn’t stop some lively activities from taking place here in centuries gone by, from attempting to get a horse to jump over a table in the dining room to wrestling matches. It’s a lot less rowdy on my visit, largely because the inn is now geared to serving local products such as crab, partridge, and West Country cheeses. An in-house fish deli, opened during lockdown to support local fishermen, is still going strong. The marshes and mudflats that stretch between Exeter and the English Channel are a site of international importance for wading birds, which flock here in the tens of thousands to feed on invertebrates. At a nature sanctuary near Topsham run by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, I find a seat in the hide overlooking the reed beds. I’m too early for the throng of winter visitors—geese from Siberia, godwits from Scandinavia—but the scene is a lively one nevertheless. Pretty teals fuss on the banks, and shovelers dabble past, waggling their wide, flat beaks. Elsewhere in the hide, I can hear a hushed conversation about moorhens. It’s a peaceful spot, and mighty easy to linger at, but looking up I see heavy clouds rolling in, as relentlessly as waves, from the direction of the sea. I t’s Thursday, folk night at Exmouth’s The Bicton Inn, just a few streets from the sea where the rain clouds are massing overhead. The historic porttown of Topsham
Forty voices ring around the pub, surging in unison as they sing and fogging the dark windows. Nautical flags are strung around the walls and tankards are being downed. “This song is about how the news of Nelson’s victory travelled across the land,” announces a well-oiled greybeard, as another local gets his accordion ready, “although it’s said there are a few north of Tiverton who still haven’t heard!” The local sailors of the Battle of Trafalgar era wouldn’t have witnessed the kitesurfers that busy the headland these days, but the sea air—and the lingering hint of journeys to faraway lands—would have been as restorative then as they are now. “Well, heave ’er up and away we’ll go!” roars the chorus of voices, “She’s a fast clipper ship and a bully good crew.” Exmouth is also the official western starting point of the 93-mile Jurassic Coast. This Unesco World Heritage Site is where local history does a few somersaults, kisses goodbye to the human race, and speeds away into the mists of time. But the coast’s name is something of a misnomer: the rocks here actually yawn back farther, to the Triassic era. Some of those near Exmouth are 250 million years old. The resulting scenery—wild, wave-bashed headlands—makes it a glorious place to hike, dawdle, or just simply gawp. The geological timescales are brain-spinning: the red cliffs here were originally part of a vast desert, which was later flooded by a tropical sea. Around 140 million years ago, the waters receded, freeing up more space for roaming dinosaurs, before sea levels rose again 100 million years ago. My final stop is the town of Lyme Regis in neighbouring Dorset county—though geology knows no borders. Here, as much as anywhere, the region’s multilayered history is on full show. I walk past a long line of pastel-painted beach huts to reach Lyme Regis Museum, which tells tales of smugglers’ ships, naval brigs, and British palaeontologist Mary Anning, portrayed by Kate Winslet in the 2020 film Ammonite. The museum sits on the site of what was once Anning’s home, and I follow the advice of a staff member to wander out to Black Ven, a nearby cliff. “Erosion means there are always new fossils being exposed,” she explains. It’s early evening and there are seven others searching the rocks as a stiff breeze comes in off the sea. After 20 minutes, with the light fading, I turn a stone and find a partial ammonite imprint the size of my thumb. It’s not the prettiest find—or the most intact—but it represents about 130 million years’ worth of history, and that’ll do for me. Q national geographic traveller (uk) (january/february 2021), copyright © 2021 by national geographic traveller (uk), nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel R E A D E R ’ S D I G E S T NOVEMBER 2022 • 95
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I ndia’s southwestern state of Kerala lives up to the moniker it shares with Yorkshire, “God’s own country,” with its variety of offerings—backwaters, beaches, wildlife, waterfalls, tea estates and spice plantations—and it was the first of these that I got to enjoy recently. Travels with my family (senior citizen parents blessed with enviable fitness, my husband and our three school-going children with extraordinary energy levels) usually involve plenty of sightseeing, walking and activity, but this trip was different. The backwaters beckoned and exploring this network of canals and waterways leisurely seemed the ideal choice. Kumarakom is a village that sits serenely on the banks of Lake Vembanad, the largest lake in the state. It serves up a slice of times gone by, but on a modern platter. Resorts abound, each with a range of amenities and almost all with the obligatory swimming pool. Instead of being in the water, we chose to be on it. You can hire a boat for a few hours, a day or even an overnight stay, waking up to fishermen casting nets in the morning tide. We enjoyed a five-hour cruise around the lake, dropping anchor midway for a lunch of local dishes—including fish caught Our reader Anaita Vazifdar-Davar takes a slow boat in Kerala Kerala’s Backwaters My Great Escape: 98 • NOVEMBER 2022 POWERED BY