I woke yesterday intending to run however I had had another dreadful night’s sleep, my bursitis has been plaguing me at night and ruining my sleep lately. Strangely it doesn’t hurt when I run but I had only slept for a few hours and really wasn’t feeling it. My daughter had stayed over so she suggested we went for a nice long walk instead so that’s what we did.
My son has decided to do a Family Tree, something I had started years ago and then left unfinished, and he had found one of our ancestors was buried at a churchyard in the next village about 2 miles away so we set out for Bishops Tawton. It was quite warm when we set off and my cold blooded daughter was debating wearing her fleecey jacket but I assured her she would be fine with just her hoody. She was but within about 10 mins I had my zip up one off and tied round my waist. I always run about 10 degrees hotter than she does. I’m sure she is part amphibian ( on her fathers side 😜).
We set off down through the town, and started towards her house to drop some stuff off then walked up and over the top of the Park and then down the far side of the same Park and then turned and continued alongside the river. We saw several dog walkers along our walk, the majority of them lovely well behaved dogs on leads. The warmer weather seems to have cheered people up and most greeted us with a “Good Morning” which we answered happily. We stopped once to assist a couple, the man being in a handicapped vehicle which was struggling up a particularly awkward slope with a tight turn partway, and then carried on our way, under the bridge. There is a loose drain or manhole cover on that bridge and each vehicle that goes over it rattles it. We were walking along a track, worn in the grass along the river bank by years of dog walkers and children sometimes quite muddy but luckily it was dry for us.
There is a lovely house to one side which spent all of lockdown being refenced along the sides, having the small stream which runs through it’s grounds extended into a lovely lake… now home to waterfowl … and then meandering down to join the river. We used to wander past on our lockdown walks and peer through the small saplings planted along the river side fence to check on progress. “ oh they’ve filled the lake” “ oh look they’ve built a jetty” “ I wonder if there are fish?” etc as we wandered on. The saplings have grown and it is increasingly difficult to see through now( probably the owners intention 😳). I don’t blame them though
We carried on along the towpath, then turned up a lane which climbs quite steeply into Bishops Tawton ( so called because of the Bishops Palace, now Court Farm, which used to house the Bishop of Devon) . This lane is built between some really old original hedges which contain several wildflowers I remember from my childhood and don’t usually see any more. The hedges were rife with what my Nan used to called Whitflowers, and the pink campions,bluebells, violets, yellow celandines,and of course, cow parsley and the wild garlic. This lane is also home to lots of nut trees as we discovered in the lockdowns and took advantage of . We were heading to the 14th century Church of St John the Baptist and had to walk through the oldest part of the village to get to it. Past The Three Pigeons, a 15th century pub which is said to be haunted by a monk. And down past several lovely old characterful houses ( and several hideous new builds) and then up again towards the church. The lilac trees were in full blossom and cherry and apple trees too which was beautiful but my seasonal allergies are in full flow so I unfortunately couldn’t smell anything and just admired the display.
Then up towards the church, past 6 little old cottages, with their pretty little front gardens, and a friendly little black and white cat that ran to greet us. We entered the churchyard through the front gate and then realised the task ahead of us. On Ancestry UK we had found a note saying he was buried in the churchyard but we didn’t quite know how many graves that involved!!! It was very pretty with masses of bluebells growing amongst the gravestones but what a task!! We set off down through the side of the church and soon realised how hard this was going to be. The graves are obviously in no sort of order with modern ones slotted in amongst illegible ancient ones. As is the case with most graveyards now several had fallen over, lichen covered others making them hard to read, curlicued writing on others made them equally hard to read and we couldn’t even just walk up and down the rows easily as some were written on the side facing us but some were facing the other way round!! We divvied up and set to reading as we went. Loads of familiar local names there and then after about half an hour I found a huddle of stones with the correct surname in them. Although some of the names seemed familiar, we were looking for John Pile and he was missing from these names. The dates were about right though so I took photos and thought I’d check to see if they were siblings or cousins. And we carried on searching. we must have spent nearly another hour and were on the verge of giving up, assuming his must have been one of the stones that had fallen over or was illegible when my daughter gave a shout” I’ve found him!”
And there he was….my 3 times and her 4 times great grandfather John Pile 1815-1859. Standing there in the sunshine it gave me a bit of a funny feeling to think about him all those years ago. Also wondering why he was over on a completely different side of the churchyard to the other Piles??? Just then the Exeter to Barnstaple train went rocketing by and my daughter frantically recorded it on her phone for her work colleague who is a train geek and has his own model setup. And then I took some photos of the headstone, so we could find it again and I could show my son
We started to walk towards the gate again and passed the monument to those who served in the wars. There were 7 Private Locks and a Sgt Lock too and we wondered if they were all the same family and whether any of them came home. How awful for the wives and mothers ….
And we set off back homeward. It is weird researching family trees as you feel connected to the past reading about them all. This was from my mum’s side of the family and on my dad’s side there are several gamekeepers and redheaded ( now I know where I got it from) landladies of pubs. Funnily enough I spent a lot of my years up to the age of 40 ish working in various pubs and hotels and my dad used to spend his leisure time pheasant beating and pigeon shooting with his friends and his gun dogs. Must be in the genes. 😂
Hopefully I will feel more like running tomorrow 🤞but this wasn’t a wasted day.
Long run
VRB meet up at Boston parkrun 
