Coast

2 minute read time.

FormerMember

7 Sep 2012

The Hooken landslide, East Devon

It's one of those peculiar syndromes that you can you live near a place for years, and never get around to visiting it. We'd seen pictures of the Hooken landslide in East Devon Coast and Country magazine a while back, but never gone to see it. Yesterday promised good weather, so Irene and I took a day out.

We took the infrequent local bus to Branscombe and had lunch at Branscombe Mouth, a popular visitors' spot on the coast. From there a path goes eastward through a caravan park, where you see a signpost saying it's a mile and two-thirds to Beer, then along a mildly hilly path that runs through undergrowth at the foot of the chalk cliffs, until you come to the landslip proper.

In the 1700s, a huge chunk of the cliff slipped, leaving a gorge between the crags of the slipped part and the main cliff. Over the centuries, this gorge, a sheltered microclimate, has become a jungle of ash, maple, wayfaring tree, brambles, clematis, and much else. The path winds through this woodland, up some 500 feet between the cliff and crags, until you finally come out at Beer Head to stunning views and a comparatively leisurely descent either back to Branscombe Mouth or on to Beer. It's not a long walk, but quite a strenuous one, especially on a hot day. It's thoroughly worth the effort.

Once over the heavy part of the walk, Irene and I talked a bit about our situation. I don't if this is usual, but at this point, the overall picture isn't looming as much as the practicalities. Irene's troubled about how she'll continue her own writing, which is a major part of her life, if I'm not around. Because of my job, I'm thoroughly comfortable with computers, but Irene - despite being seriously intelligent - came to computers a lot later, and easily gets thrown by, well, just about anything not routine. With me on call to make decisions about weird error messages - "Oh, ignore that" ... "That's important" ... "Don't download that, it's a hoax" - quite possibly we've both contributed for years to a situation where she hasn't learned to find her own ways around computer problems. Suddenly, she's very bothered. It might seem trivial to worry about practical things at a stage when I'm not even planning to be dead any time soon, but on reflection, daily tasks are deeply interwoven with a person's presence - and would be a reminder of that person's absence. Irene would have to come to different ways not only of computing, but of getting things off high shelves in the supermarket, opening stiff jar lids, and many other mundane things.

However, mundane things took a break yesterday. Doing the climb was a reassurance that I'm throughly fit, which has got to be a good starting point (though it still feels pretty bizarre to have a serious, probably terminal, condition with virtually no symptoms). It was a beautiful early autumn day, and I'm sure there'll be plenty more of them.

- James

FormerMember over 11 years ago

Hello, James. Thank you for educating me about the Hooken landslide, of which I hadn't heard! Glad you and Irene are both getting out and about other than to tedious or frightening appointments.

I understand the 'daily tasks alone' dilemma. I'm in Irene's position, at least I was in 2009, and hope never to be again, but who knows... It's a bit depressing to consider such things, perhaps, but independence is important for everyone. My mother (widowed last November) depended entirely on my father for practical tasks and is now frequently flummoxed by trivia, which adds to her stress. On the other hand, my late mother-in-law, when her husband retired, taught him to shop and cook and do various 'wifely' tasks so that he would be able to cope should she no longer be around. As the wife of an utterly pointless drunkard, I became in effect a single mother, and had to do all kinds of things I would have happily fobbed off on my husband, had he been conscious or sober. I was resentful of it at the time but I suppose (grudgingly) it was good for me.

But it's still preferable to have someone within earshot who'll fix the annoying stuff! best wishes to you and Mrs Adler x x x
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FormerMember over 11 years ago

Yes, my mother-in-law was the same; it must go with the era. She was not stupid - she was doing the Telegraph crossword in her late 90s. But she couldn't do practical stuff, and was terrified to experiment - she'd assume a battery-powered device was broken because she'd put the battery in the wrong way round. Plus she was forever buying stupid gadgets from catalogues that you could see at a glance were unfit for purpose. Irene says she was always like it, and undoubtedly it was down to her upbringing. She'd never had to be self-sufficient. Fortunately, Irene and I had both lived alone for years before we married; anything one or other of us can't (or prefer not to) do is only in specialist areas, not the basics of life.
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