Category: Blog

Eroding Our Heritage: How climate change could be destroying our past

Oh how much I want you at my birthday party. You’ll make the day so much more fun. I do so hope you can make it. Goodbye sister, my dearest soul.

Claudia Severa, inviting her sister Lepidina to her birthday party

It can be a sobering experience to realise what little trace our ancestors have left of their lives. When we pass, our family and friends will remember us well, but our grandchildren less so, and beyond that perhaps only fragments of memories remain. Perhaps we will be lucky and make some grand contribution to society that is remembered for generations but, as Bill Bryson has so memorably written, we don’t even know if England’s greatest bard spelled his name Shakespeare or Shakespear – or even when he was born. The Mayan civilisation once covered the whole of the Yucatán Peninsula, but we still don’t know why it collapsed. Closer to home, we can only guess what the stone rows and circles of Dartmoor were used for, the hut circles once inhabited now broken and scattered to the moor.

Now we live in a digital age, with our photos carefully backed up to huge servers, warehouses filled with microchips to collect our every action and memory. We are comforted by the knowledge that we will never be deleted, that our memories will never fade. But will those servers still be accessible in a hundred or a thousand years? One of the joys of geology is the contemplation of deep time, life bursting into existence, mass extinctions, and humanity barely even making it into the last scene in the great play of life. In the vast enormity of space and time, all we really have are the shared moments that tie us all together.

So the mundane remains of everyday life from ages past have a profound rarity and value. A note, a baby’s shoe, a boxing glove – all with tales to tell. They connect us directly to a person just like us. We can imagine Claudia’s excitement at her birthday party (11th September, around 100AD, at Vindolanda in Northumberland if you’re free), her optimism that her sister could maybe join her, the laughter and love that flowed when Lepidina arrived. I like to think that she did, by the way. I don’t like to think of Claudia feeling sad, missing her friend on her birthday. I hope the wine flowed, the sun shone and she had a wonderful day.

Every time we rediscover an object like this, we keep someone somewhere alive.

According to archaeologists, climate change is threatening some of these rare windows into the past. Organic finds such as Claudia’s note are much more common in peat soil, where the lack of oxygen helps to stop them from rotting. Warmer, drier conditions dry out and desiccate the peat, meaning it erodes and crumbles away, destroying anything preserved in it. At Magna, close to Vindolanda, archaeologists say that they have lost up to a metre’s depth of peat in places. Our fragmented connections with our ancestors are at risk.

For more about some of the find at Vindolanda and the surrounding area, and the impact that peat degradation could have on this treasure trove of stories, take a look at the article Climate change threatening buried UK treasures on the BBC website.

The Taleblazers Review of 2021

We launched the CIC in April, we could not believe that our social media accounts have grown in such a steady way and that more people followed us month after month. It was, and still is very exciting! Below is an extract of projects which we have done throughout 2021. Please don’t forget we also have podcast which you can find either here on our website, or on Apple or Spotify podcasts.

Our first project was to create a heritage map of Chelston so our friends and neighbours can explore the heritage of their local area. Ps. Let us know in the comments if you would like a physical copy, we have plenty which we’re happy to share.

Chelston Heritage Audio Trail

For ‘Medieval Masterchef’ and ‘Terrible Tales of Torre Abbey’ we collaborated with Torre Abbey. Medieval Masterchef was a series of short films which we recorded on the grounds of Torre Abbey. Terrible Tales was a guided walk where we shared stories focusing on the more spooky and supernatural elements that have grown up around the site of the Abbey.

Terrible Tales of Torre Abbey

We also took part in the National Plant Monitoring Scheme, where we chose the square SX6061, which is on the edge of Dartmoor a few kilometres north of Cornwood. We visited the square and recorded what plant species were there. Our square was heavily grazed, and we only found four species there: gorse, wavy hair-grass, tormentil, and heath bedstraw.

We were very excited to become Associate Members of the English Riviera UNESCO Global Geopark. This year we have held a Geology course and Geology Walks around Torbay which have been very successful with over 60 people attending so far.

In December we celebrated the Lightplay openings at the #RoyalTerraceGardens in Torquay. We were talking about William Pengelly, a local geologist and amateur archeologist, who excavated Kent’s Cavern and gave a crash course on the geology of the Bay.

https://twitter.com/taleblazersuk/status/1468500062091235332?s=21

We also run the Holiday Activities and Food Programme over the Christmas holidays, where children joined us for some festive fun!

We would like to thank everyone for all your support, likes and shares. 2021 was a great year and we are so excited for all our new projects of 2022!

Take a Hike Day 2021

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.”

― John Muir, The Mountains of California

Any self-respecting blog post about walking should really contain at least one quote from the Scottish-American naturalist John Muir, even if by its sheer eloquence it does render the rest of the blog irrelevant. Muir was probably the first proponent of walking in the outdoors as a leisure activity, an environmental pioneer and true multidisciplinary natural historian, and was behind the concept of national parks. Hikers owe a lot to John Muir, even if he was contemptuous of the word itself:

“I don’t like either the word [hike] or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains – not ‘hike!’ Do you know the origin of that word saunter? It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the middle ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going they would reply, ‘A la sainte terre’, ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.”

The word saunter nowadays is more frequently used to describe a slow walk, taking your time, an easy pace. Leisurely, perhaps. In the fast-paced modern world we inhabit, where most of us fly too frequently, drive too fast and even information travels at the speed of light, sauntering is a luxury. We just don’t have time to take a day – a whole day! – to explore somewhere on foot. Maybe we lack the skills, or the confidence, or the kit, or maybe we’ve just lost interest.

But walking – or hiking, or sauntering if you prefer – is so inherently a human activity that I would argue it’s such an essential one that we are profoundly diminished without. For the first half a million years or so of human evolution we were hunter-gatherers and we only started to put down roots 11,000 years ago. We only shut ourselves into towns and cities and made our homes draught free very recently. As a species we are designed to be out there. I believe even our love for high places stems from an evolutionary need to be able to scan the landscape for threats, the feeling of contentment arising from vantage points where predators could be more easily spotted than in the valleys and forests. Inherently, we are more content and happy when we are outdoors. And who knows what might happen when we get out there?

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

Enjoy taking a hike today and if you’ve enjoyed this post please let us know in the comments below!

Terrible Tales of Torre Abbey

Today is International “I love to write“ Day (apparently) and I have been tasked with putting together a little piece to cover that particular topic as well as our recent Halloween event that Taleblazers put on at Torre Abbey. 

Let me start by making this very clear: I do not love to write. Well, at least not mechanically.  

Being a comorbid dyspraxic has meant my life has been a constant struggle to get down the words in my head and transfer them to a physical medium, I cannot touch-type, my handwriting is almost illegible, 98% of it in block capitals and contains more misspelt words than you would expect from a gentleman with my erudition and vocabulary – sometimes the frustration and embarrassment of my condition is such that it will styme my efforts from the start and I regularly go months without writing at all. 

However, occasionally the mood will take me (or a deadline approaches and I find I can procrastinate no longer) and I pick up a Red and Black A4 notebook, one of my beloved Parker Jotters (black ink, never blue) and start scribbling down my nonsense. 

Whether it’s a ballad, a workshop plan, RPG scenario, a letter to a friend or just something completely silly, it all goes into my notebooks, some of it eventually gets transferred to a Word .doc but not much – mostly it stays in those A4 books, they get filled and filed into the bottom of my wardrobe and now at 45 years of age I have a small tower of them, 30 or more years of stories, ideas, poems, doodles and observations. 

Now I’m here writing my first Blog post.  

Blogging is one of those things that simply hasn’t ever appealed – the idea that strangers might enjoy reading my writing or be interested in what I have to say is laughable to me, having said that I hope someone does enjoy the effort – you should know that it took a lot longer than you’d imagine. Here I go… 

Autumn has well and truly descended upon us and with it all the colors, smells and traditions of the season. Reluctantly I return my shorts to the back of the wardrobe and pull forward the thicker, warmer clothes for Winter. Yet I am not miserable because with the colder weather comes Halloween, Bonfire Night and off in the distance there is the Winter Solstice and Christmas soon to come.   

As much as I love summer, this time of the year is my favourite, I have incredibly fond memories of bonfire nights at the Marshal’s family home as a child (I was the only one of my peers deemed sensible enough to light some of the fireworks) and Halloween has, at least in more recent years, been my preferred holiday. I enjoy the cold and crisp evenings and welcome the opportunity to sit out under a clear sky next to a flickering fire and tell ghost stories. 

I vividly remember the first ghost story I was told – it is a classic from the 80’s – Young lovers in their car drive into the woods. During the evening a thick mist descends, and the radio reports the recent escape of a brutal manic from an asylum in the local area. At one point the boyfriend has to leave the car, he insists his young lady opens the car door only when he knocks on the roof three times. Much later and with the woman in a state of high anxiety she is relieved to hear a knock on the roof and is about to open the door when the knock continues, well past three consecutive times, the knocking carries on all night and all through the night she remains huddled in terror within the automobile. Until finally, daylight arrives, the women gathers her courage and exits the vehicle…to find the severed head of her beau bouncing atop the car, suspended by a rope of intestines hung from a tree above. 

Hardly a subtle psychological thriller 😀 but I remember the shiver it gave me and the way it stayed with me long after the tale was told. I have enjoyed ghost stories ever since. 

So when Kate at Torre Abbey asked if Taleblazers wanted to put on a guided tour of the Abbey, focusing on the more spooky and supernatural stories that have grown up around the site we jumped at the chance and “The Terrible Tales of Torre Abbey” was born (Cue flash of lightning and roll of thunder). 

The remit: A 45 minute tour around the site for 2 nights tours, 3 tours per night, spooky but family friendly. 

Kate and Matt provided me with a whole heap of information including accounts of ghostly goings on stretching back through the Abbey’s 800-year history. There were regular sightings of apparitions, reports of poltergeist activity, horrible tales from the past and a few observations and feelings claimed to have been experienced by psychics on the occasions where they were allowed to survey the site. 

A lot of the information was very useful, I immediately saw potential in several of the accounts and fables but I found the psychic stuff left me cold – It might come as something of a surprise to hear that I am a sceptic…I don’t really believe in an afterlife, an immortal soul or the notion that the dead can communicate with the living. However, I am fascinated by the paranormal and further to that I enjoy stories, folk tales and mythology from all around the world – many of these things require you to suspend your disbelief and just roll with it for the sake of the story, something I am more than happy to do. 

I decided I wanted to include as much as I could that would complement the activities we already do with the fine folks at Torre Abbey, so I made sure I wrote sections that covered the Spanish Armada of 1558 and the Siege of the Abbey in 1351 – the two workshops we currently have available running at the site – and linked those into the ghost sightings. There was a wonderfully grisly tale of a fellow called William Anning who had his leg amputated in the Cary dining room, some various other reports of ethereal figures and I ended the tour in the Undercroft with a straight up Ghost Story that I wrote many years ago called “Blood and Gold” It has no basis in fact nor does it contain anything remotely historically accurate but it’s a great yarn in my opinion and well tested as I have been telling it for more than 15 years. 

I heartily enjoyed the two nights and the event bought in some lovely people (many who dressed up for extra spookiness) – we have some email addresses and hope to send out a little questionnaire later this month, all in all a great success, many thanks to the Torre Abbey crew and everyone who attended – I hope we can do it again next year, bigger and even scarier. 

I Love To Write Day 2021

black text on gray background

Today is I Love To Write Day, one of several ‘named days’ which have been started in recent years to try to re-engage people with writing. It was started back in 2002 by a Delawarean writer called John Riddle (anyone who describes themselves as a Donut Eater on their LinkedIn profile is ok with me). The story of how I Love To Write Day, complete with public service announcements from Chubby Checker, can be found on the Southern Literary Review website.

I find writing a real pleasure. This is partly because a number of things need to come together to allow me to write. I need feel creative, have a bit of time on my hands, a clear head, a bit of excess energy, some peace and quiet and no – or at least only occasional – distractions. So I’m usually in a pretty good state of mind when I sit down to write. If I can inhabit this Zen-like state for half an hour or so, I’ll usually come up with a snippet of writing that I’m pleased with. I don’t consider myself to be a great writer, but I enjoy finding the right words to describe a moment or experience. It always feels like I’ve achieved something monumental, even if those words will only ever be read by myself.

The flip side of this of course is that for fairly long periods, I don’t write all that much. I’m currently working on my John Muir Conserver Award and as part of that I’m keeping a diary of my visits to Hembury Woods, but that aside I’ve been in a bit of a dry patch. Perhaps I haven’t been in that sweet spot where I’m able to write easily for quite a while. My own blog (gratuitous plug – it’s at blaggers.blog) hasn’t been updated for six months now. So it’s nice to get a nudge occasionally, to be reminded of the pleasure of just sitting down and doing a bit of writing, and I Love To Write Day has given me that spark. Maybe tonight is the night!

If you’re a lapsed writer like me, why not do the same? Grab your laptop, tablet or pen and paper, find yourself some quiet mental space, and take a few moments out to do some writing. Let us know if you’ve joined in below!

Summer of Geology 2021

On our first Geopark walk of the year at Babbacombe beach

Wow. Geology really does rock!

A lot has happened since our first geology walk back in June. The Geopark were looking for organisations to run events as part of a small post-lockdown mini Geopark Festival. It was a bit last-minute but we cobbled two events together for that week: an evening geology walk at Babbacombe, and an open ‘Meet A Geologist’ session at Torre Abbey. These being early days for Taleblazers, we didn’t have much reach and responses were slow. We nearly cancelled the geowalk a couple of days before because we only had a couple of bookings, but I remembered some advice from somewhere that when starting a new business you should never cancel anything and we went ahead with an audience of half a dozen hardy enthusiasts. I was really nervous but stumbled through my explanations, we had a pint afterwards and decided that everyone seemed pretty happy so we should probably do another.

My two little Taleblazers at Torre Abbey

A couple of days later, I seemed to be facing a quiet day at Torre Abbey before my two sons, on half term from school, intervened and politely charmed in 100 people to look at my collection of rocks and maps on the open day. It wasn’t the last time I would glad of other people spreading the word on our behalf. Our next walk was planned for a few weeks later at Goodrington, and word was starting to spread. My amazing first group of walkers were busy on social media, telling people how much they’d enjoyed it, inviting friends, telling people on websites I’d never heard of about the next walk. It sold out.

We were up and running. From then on, much to my astonishment, every walk sold out. Together we got our eyes in peering at the fossils at Hopes Nose, slid on our bums down the precipitous little slope at Triangle Point, puzzled over the Neptunian dykes at Shoalstone, and I loved every minute. In July I nervously gave a presentation to the English Riviera UNESCO Global Geopark Management Group, and was thrilled when we were accepted as Associate Partners at the end of the meeting. The walks continued and seemed to sell out quicker every time. We finished on a high, returning to Goodrington on a super-low tide to take in the unconformities and mysterious burrows around the intertidal headlands. It was just brilliant. Geology to me is endlessly fascinating: an eternal record of past environments and landscapes, the drama of volcanic eruptions and the slow violence of mountain-building, a window into a past so distant and different our minds can barely comprehend the scale of it all. I hope I managed to get some of this across over the weeks of our walks.

So thank you to everyone who took a punt and came out to find out what it was all about. I hope you all learned something new about our amazing Geopark and the geology found here, perhaps gained a little insight into why it is internationally important, maybe even gained enough knowledge to share a bit of the love with your friends and family. And thank you in particular to those first six people who did so much to spread the word and perhaps even believed in me a little bit more than I did.

The walks are now finished for the season, those long sunny evenings on the coast seeming so far away now, the coast altogether more blustery and less hospitable. We’ll pick them up again as soon as the clocks go forward, but in the meantime there is our winter course where we’ll be learning about the geology of the Geopark in the warm at Torre Abbey. I’d love to see you there.

Medieval Masterchef

Taleblazers has worked closely with Torre Abbey to produce a series of Medieval Masterchef videos.

It was a day in August when we went to Torre Abbey to film a series of videos for the Heritage Open Days. The Heritage Open Days is England’s largest festival of history and culture, bringing together people and organisations to celebrate heritage, community and history. We had so much fun filming these videos at Torre Abbey with plenty of laughter and a good few re-takes. The Merry Monk introduces you to four repulsive recipes from the Medieval times. These vile videos have been made for educational entertainment and, even if you really want to, we do not encourage you to recreate them at home.

The weather was nice and the spirit was on top. Kate helped us by setting the scene she even made a hedgehog, a swan, and a rooster. The sheep was borrowed from Torre Abbey. However, we would like to point out that all animal participated freely and no one was hurt. Please see the four videos below:

We would like to thank Kate and Matt at Torre Abbey and Heather from Torquay Museum.

#HeritageOpenDays #Taleblazers #Heritage #MedievalMasterchef 

Chelston Heritage Map

Do you know where the Bigge Fountain is located in Chelston? Where the home of Chelston’s first fire station was? Or who built Cockington primary school in 1892?

Taleblazers have been busy with our Chelston Heritage Map project, for which we received funding for from the Torbay Small Grants Lottery Fund and the Localgiving – Magic Little Grants. We had been researching places in Chelston to feature on our map and engaged the community to have their say on which historical places of Chelston to include. We started to draw multiple versions of the map and write up the text to go with it and we are pleased to say that we are nearly there. However, with the Covid-19 pandemic we had to delay the launch and we hope to have our launch day in the late summer or early autumn. The Chelston Heritage Map day would be a chance for the community to walk around Chelston on a free guided tour where we will share the history and story about the selected places. If you are interested in this guided walk, please email us at; rich@taleblazers.org.uk

Once we have a launch day, we will share this information with you all and in order for us to keep the numbers suitable you will be able to book onto the free event via Eventbrite. We aim to run 3 guided walks on the launch day for up to 12 individuals per walk. An additional of 3 free walks will be added on Eventbrite in the autumn in case you missed the walks on our launch day.

The pictures below are from some of the places we have picked for the Chelston Heritage Map, can you spot where they are in Chelston?

Finally, we hope you are enjoying the last bit of summer sunshine and that you will come along to our launch day!

#Taleblazers #Devon #Torbay #Torquay #Chelston #Outdoor #Nature #Map #ChelstonHeritageMap #TorbayCouncil #TorbaySmallGrantsLotteryFund #Localgiving #MagicLittleGrant

Sundews and Stonecrops at Cornwood

In a previous blog post, we introduced you to our National Plant Monitoring Scheme square at Cornwood, near Ivybridge. Last month, we returned to our square and completed our first survey of the year.

Rich introduces us to the survey plot

On our previous visit, we had identified the plots we were going to use, so now it was a case of finding them again, laying out a survey square and recording what plant species were there. Our first square was high up in the NE corner of the square, along the edge of a earthwork dug into the ground. The square was heavily grazed, and we only found four species there: gorse, wavy hair-grass, tormentil, and heath bedstraw. All of these species are indicators for heathland, but key species such as bilberry and heathers were completely absent, presumably munched away by the local sheep. This was the case across the site, and we found hardly any heather even when walking between our plots.

The second plot was more fun. This was a wet area (or ‘flush’) that we had identified on our recce, an area of wet ground high on the hill that fed a small stream cutting across the site. The area was dominated by more wavy hair-grass, soft rush and sphagnum, but the real find was a plant I knew to be carnivorous but couldn’t recall the name of. Fortunately Kev had an app that stepped in and took the word sundew off the tip of my tongue:

Plot 2
Kev reading a poem called The Sundew, by Victorian poet Algernon Charles Swinburne

After this excitement, we had two more plot to visit and recorded more species that were positive indicators for both acid grassland and dry heath: heath bedstraw, tormentil, wavy hair-grass and a bit of bilberry on the higher plot. We recorded both as acid grassland, because the hair-grass dominated and there was no heather at all, and the presence of a couple of sorrel species confirmed this classification:

A look at one of our last two acid grassland plots

One of our favourite finds emerged right at the end though, when our eyes were drawn to a small succulent plant with beautiful pinkish-white star-shaped flowers. This was English stonecrop sedum anglicum, and we found a tiny little patch of it growing among the moss in the crevice of a boulder. It was once of those plants that once you had spotted it your eye was in, and we found a lovely patch of it on a bare sunny rock on the walk back to the car. It looked like a starry map of constellations laid out on the ground, a stunning and beautiful sight that we’d have probably walked past if it weren’t for the NPMS.

It was a really good day out and, even though we only found a dozen or so species, we learnt quite a lot just through having to look closely and identify plants. We signed up for the NPMS with a little bit of trepidation because we’re both interested amateurs who have never really studied botany, but we had quite a lot of fun and it felt great to be contributing to this important national monitoring project. We’re really pleased to be involved and can’t wait to go back to our site later in the year.

If you want to know more about the NPMS, visit the National Plant Monitoring Scheme website where you can learn about survey methods and even sign up for your own square!

Trails Day & Chelston Heritage Map

What a beautiful weekend it has been and we were celebrating Trails Day which took place on Saturday the 5th.

What is Trails Day you may wonder? Well, in 1968 American president Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Trails Act into law which established a network of trails for people to use. Trails Day celebrates the explored and the unexplored by getting out into nature to discover and to rediscover. This could be by walking, hiking, cycling or on a horse back. For example, we have the South West Coast Path which one could follow to discover hidden gems and beautiful views.

Taleblazers is a CIC which focus children and young people as well as the communities of Dartmoor and south Devon, we are passionate about storytelling and the outdoors. In April, we were awarded our first grant from the Torbay Small Grants Lottery Fund for our project the Chelston Heritage Map. Our own trail which you could walk. We have been researching places in Chelston to feature on the map, we have drawn multiple versions and we have engaged the community of Chelston to have their say on which historical places of Chelston to include. We are soon to launch this project so stay tuned!

#Trailsday #Taleblazers #Torbay #SouthWest #Devon #Outdoor #Nature #TorbayCouncil #TorbaySmallGrantsLotteryFund