The views along the road are stunning: farmland, Exmoor and open country with only the occasional house; I used to wonder at the fact that I was being paid to drive up and down it in my working days. However, it is one of the most dangerous roads in Devon with a high number of accidents. Those who planned the road in the late 1980s did not imagine that easing access to the coast would encourage more visitors to the area. Well, they are not paid to use imagination, are they? So, they condemned us to long tail-backs behind tractors, caravans and ancient camper vans and frustrated drivers take dreadful risks in trying to overtake them.
Outside the holiday season, we may lose the caravans but the tractors are ever present as are the Glumphs. I first encountered Glumphs around 1970. They were middle-age men who wore flat caps (sometimes trilby hats), smoked pipes and drove Austin A40 cars.
If the speed limit was 30mph, the Glumph would drive at 25. As he approached a section of road where one might safely overtake, he would put his foot down to prevent you from passing and then slow down again when the opportunity had been lost. He always used hand signals as well as indicators and usually his car would be fitted with brown nylon seat covers.
This morning, I drove behind the modern Glumph. This creature drives a Nissan at 32mph in a 40mph limit and 52mph on the Link Road. He drives close to the crown of the road to prevent overtaking, speeds up on the short stretches of dual carriageway so that he can stay ahead and brakes sharply when the lanes merge into one again.
My murderous fe
elings towards the Glumph blocking my progress this morning were assuaged somewhat when Sounds of the Sixties came on the radio. Singing along with The Dennisons (Walkin' the dog), Joanne and the Streamliners (Frankfurter Sandwiches) and The Sandpipers (Guantanamera) took me right back to those days when I used to follow the old A40 Glumphs in my first car - this beloved Ford Anglia.
Does the steam coming out of your ears get in the way of your enjoying the scenery? We have the some kind of drivers here and they are infuriating. Especially when they speed up and slow down to maximize their level of being annoying.
ReplyDeleteHaha - I think passive aggressive people plan all of their trips around single lane roadways! Full points to you for finding your own happy and not letting a Glumph give you a grump!
ReplyDeleteOh what a fantastic car! I remember being desperate for my father to get one of these because they looked soooo cool and trendy!
ReplyDeletee, yes there are times when the windows get steamed up! Do you think the Glumphs study ways of causing maximum frustration to other road users? Perhaps they have a club of their own.
ReplyDeletetattytiara, the car radio has probably saved me from many fits of the grumps or even Road Rage!
J, I sincerely hope you mean my Ford Anglia and not the Austin!
I remember my first car very fondly indeed, an Austin A40. But I did find I used to get stuck behind a Ford Anglia as often as not; generally one in that curious shade of turquoise, close to the colour used for those ghastly 3 wheeled invalid cars and not much faster; what colour was yours, M?
ReplyDeleteSorry, I've grasped now that it was actually your Anglia in the photo. Not you then!
ReplyDeleteQuite right, Stephen! I was a bit of a tearaway in those days so I wouldn't have held you up. I trust you didn't wear a flat cap and smoke a pipe while driving your Austin?
ReplyDeleteIt would have been a gitane Maureen. I didn't possess a pair of string-backed 'driving gloves', let alone a flat cap.
ReplyDeleteLearnt to drive in my A40. A fortnight in the Highlands with a friend; we slept in the car too - must have been mad even in those days.
Ah, gitane! The memories!
ReplyDeleteI know that road well and fear grips my heart at the mere mention of it.If I know anyone (especially my sons!) is driving on it I get twitchy. As for glumphs I meet them every time I cross Roborough Down into Plymouth, they can't even manage the 40mph moorland speed limit and they are all driving cars with ten times what my little Fiesta has under its bonnet. In the end I have to tell myself it's best to arrive alive than not so I take deep breathes and like you admire the view!
ReplyDeleteA friend used to complain that the Gitanes made my car smell like a French brothel. Never dared ask how he knew!
ReplyDeleteDGR, I've never worked out why people want to own a powerful car when they don't want to do above 35mph. One of the many mysteries of materialism!
ReplyDeletem. because they can.
ReplyDeleteYes, M, it was the Anglia I wanted, with those go-faster 'wingy' things at the back. So hip and groovy!
ReplyDeleteM - when they're not meandering around near you, they're en route to Minehead, crawling down the Exe Valley road, which also specialises in caravan convoys, motor cyclists en masse and cycle rallies. Not a happy combination.
ReplyDeleteD, I once saw one of those motor cycle convoys in your neck of the woods. When I drew close, I saw they were escorting a bike with a sidecar containing a glass coffin, presumably one of their colleagues. It was rather moving to see them riding slowly and solemnly. Not the usual ear splitting zooming past.
ReplyDeleteJ, I thought I was queen of the Lancashire highways when I drove around in my Anglia. Cars really were cars and there weren't too many of them back in the Stone Age!
ReplyDeleteOh! the joys of the North Devon link road. And Sunday afternoon drivers wearing hats... Don't get me started! We used to have friends in Barnstaple who were local politicians and they used to say that a lot of the problems with the link road were due to Lady Thingymejig (at South Molton - I forget her actual name, begins with F) who wouldn't sell them the land to do what they wanted. Whether this is actually true or not I couldn't say. Just that they couldn't have produced a more dangerous road if they'd tried.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting, Cath. My children both attended the school built on "that Lady's" land. Her grandfather, I think, donated the windiest, most remote and unuseable land to build a boarding school for the sons of local farmers. The nature of the school has changed over the years but perhaps the public-spiritedness of the family hasn't!
ReplyDeleteHere I am, not being me but regular visitor Margaret P, who still hasn't resolved the Google issue:
ReplyDelete"As you know, I can’t post comments because of dratted Google, and I’m now past trying. So here is my comment on today’s posting:
We have Glumphs in South Devon, too! They don’t just come on holiday here, either; some of the blighters actually live here, present company excepted of course! You describe your Glumphs as flat-hatted or Trilby-hatted men in Nissans, but what are their female equivalent? Little Old Lady Glumphs in Ecco shoes and Edinburgh Woollen Mill pleated skirts, perhaps, who appear to have the steering wheel strapped to their chest, they sit so close to it? Perhaps readers of your blog could describe their female Glumph?
Margaret"
This is the real me!
ReplyDeleteBefore anyone responds to Margaret's request for descriptions of female Glumphs, I'm off to hide my Edinburgh Woollen Mill skirt!
I am going to try - yet again to leave a comment. If this works, I will cheer so loudly you will hear me!
ReplyDeleteGalant - that is me, Margaret. Did you hear me cheer. Galant is the name I must've given myself ages ago, I'd forgotten that! But at least I've managed to change my password and it's worked this evening! I just hope that when I try and leave a comment again it will also work!
ReplyDeleteCongratulations Galant (Margaret)! I am very pleased to see that the problem has been solved and look forward to seeing more comments from you in person!
ReplyDeleteGlumphs, eh? Add them to the Index, along with the chavs, magpies and grockles! How thoroughly un-British!
ReplyDeleteThe Sandpipers! How wonderfully maudlin, as Brit would say! I remember them well, as my father bought one of their albums in the 60's. "Try to Remember", "Come Saturday Morning", and of course "Softly as I Leave You" were memorable tunes that wafted through the Duck household in those days.
I am not so nostalgic for my first car, a 1978 Plymouth Volare. Mechanically it was a piece of crap. I had to unload it in 1982 before it had 40,000 miles. But it was the car that I drove across the continent in, when I was transferred from Camp Lejeune, NC to El Toro, CA in the spring of 81. That was a wonderfully memorable journey.
Hi, Duck. That sounds like a journey worthy of a post on the DD. I will look for it very soon!
ReplyDelete