Deeper Marsh

Spitchwick, River Dart

May 21, 2014

‘What a difference a day makes’ – or so sang Dinah Washington.

Now multiply that by seven.

Seven sun-soaked, blossom-laden days.

A week that has transformed Spitchwick from a place of quiet beauty into a post-apocalyptic landscape of litter and contempt. Where the pristine grass has been seared into a chess board of barbecue burns. Coals and foil tossed aside. Cast-off cartons and cans creaking in the heat.

But the blossom and bluebells have survived the weekenders and on this Wednesday noon the turf is warm and the air pristine. ‘Spitch’ is still a site of sunshine and solace – albeit shared with two couples who lay pressed close together; roasting flesh on an undersized rug.

I lay my own blanket far away; on a small sandy beach, set in a dense dappling of leaves beneath the bank.

The Dart chatters and sparkles all about me as I settle down to Roger Deakin, a sandwich and luke-warm pasty.

Roger’s words are deep and clear and charged with the energy of experience. The pages turn themselves, rushing by with the impatience of a river in spate – surging and pressing from his pen.

An hour passes. The sun sears through the lens of her sky and I hear footsteps: A woman and child. They pass, smile and head towards the river.

But they make a mistake. They break the cardinal canine rule:

‘NEVER SPREAD A PICNIC BETWEEN A SPANIEL AND WATER’

Thirty minutes later they pass again. The smiles are forced this time…

By now lunch has settled and I hear the call of the Dart – a needy cry that demands only one answer.

So moments later I am tip-toeing past the sleepers. The dreamers. Not a murmur. Their dream goes on.

And my clothes come off.

At the water’s edge; a cool clear embrace – ankles, calves, knees, thighs.

I slip. The kiss of the river and I am swimming. Weightless. Carried in her current. Yesterday and tomorrow are left behind. All is now – condensed into this moment.

And still no movement from the sleepers.

I slide off my shorts – tuck them into the bank.

Securely wrapped in the blackness of the deep, I drift with Mother Dart, probing the bank. What mysteries lie within her burrows – these dark places? The water sings. My ears strain. Can I know her secrets?

Buoyed by our embrace, I spin lazily …. and meet the gaze of eight eyes!

Dreaming no more and watching my every stroke. A shout, a giggle.

I groan and head for the far bank where I languish until interest is lost and all four fall supine again.

But now I have been joined by an unwelcome spirit – the pulsing beat of their boom boom boom box.

It bores, erodes, pummels my skull, skull, skull.

I am trapped in the rhythm. An irresistible pressure. Words squeezed from me. A tortuous sinew stutters and cries out. An involuntary rap – conjured from somewhere I hope not to visit again:

It is May and the mercury’s high / Dandelion seeds are drifting by / but the Dart is wet / Yes the river is cool / And I am needy for her midday pools / Crossing the common, with silent tread / Past the heads of the sleepers – four to a bed / Snug as a bug on their rug in the sun/ In shorts and bikinis that will never know the fun of a plunge / In this place. Dark eyes to the sky / Grilling and searing, close together they lie / As I pass by, to their side I glide / Then into the green and ochre I slide, striking out / For the depths, for the shade I aim / Lazy and slow ’til the sound of a name / Of a laugh and a shout – and my secret is out! / For I am unclothed, alone and laid bare / And the couples on the bank they sit and stare / Eating their lunch while the water I tread / Until they lose interest and sink back to their bed…

Somehow, somewhere in the strains of the rhyme I find an exorcism, a freedom. Released and at large, I drift on down until the shallows claim me and my knees grind on their arresting stones. All is silent again.

My towel scatters sand on the remnants of lunch as teeth chatter and cold skin claws.

Roger smiles – this was once his bread and butter too.

The hawthorn blossom has burst through and my path back is a marriage of confetti and birdsong.

But within this idyll is scattered man’s detritus: Bottles in the bluebells. Coke cans crush the campion.

The Council has turned away. Fifty bags of rubbish in one day was simply too heavy a burden.

At the laneside, a newly carved sign commands ‘No Open Fires’

The original is long gone.

Broken up.

Burned on a barbecue…

Spitchwick

May 14th 2014

There are two things that wild water enthusiasts know about Spitchwick:

1. It’s a good place to swim.

2. It’s a bad place to swim.

You see, it’s all a matter of timing. On an August bank holiday it’s a sprawl of bodies, boom boxes and barbecues – (more on this another day) – and if not hell, then it’s certainly getting pretty toasty!

Which is why we chose a Wednesday morning in the middle of May for a dip in the Dart.

Wherever I lay my hat…

Spitchwick, or Deeper Marsh as it appears on the OS map, has been a popular bathing place for countless generations. Situated on a bend in the River Dart, the large flat grassy expanse of common faces up the wooded hills of Holne Chase with its iron age hill fort. The pretty nearby village of Holne was, appropriately enough, birthplace to Charles Kingsley, author of ‘The Water Babies.’

The moorland ‘lawn’ at Spitchwick

And the water here flows fresh from the moor – pure, peaty, cold and clear at this time of year. The river bed is liberally strewn with boulders, hewn from the granite tors over millenia and then coated with a slippery green sheen. My first taste of the Dart came ealier than planned thanks to this – despite wearing swimming shoes, my grip was lost and so was my dignity!

The ochre waters of the Dart

Luckily we were the only folk around, so there was no need to pretend that my sudden descent into the depths was no accident and had been perfectly planned!

I swam across to the far side of the river, partially shadowed by cliffs where tomb-stoners line up to leap into the menacingly dark waters.

A water baby

Here I swam against the current for some time before my toes numbed – (the left fourth toe is always the first to go and has become my early warning system.) Drifting downstream and into the shallows, I half stood, half stumbled, emerging awkwardly from the water like some freak of evolution before sploshing my way onto the picnic rug so carefully laid out by my partner. A hefty kick of sand added to her disapproval so I sat in the corner, in the shade and in disgrace.

But less so than Marley Bone.

Like Sal, he had spotted the misleadingly named grey wagtail that had perched tantalisingly close to us on a large broken and bleached bough that had floated downstream in a wintry spate. It’s yellow underbelly almost glowed and the long tail dipped repeatedly, lightning fast.

As was our spaniel… For somehow, in the split second between Sal’s finger pressing the button and the camera shutter releasing, MB managed to spring towards the startled bird. Not just once – many times. We now have a fine collection of photographs displaying the blurred tail of a bird and the nose of a dog!

MB – villain of the peace!

Close by, a solitary white tulip meandered downstream and into the shallows where, in a moment so poignant that it could not have been engineered, the lone flower draped itself over a heart shaped rock.

Simple and beautiful.

No words were spoken.

Beyond words …

No doubt, further up the river at someone’s once favourite spot, their ashes had been scattered and flowers recently laid.

It reminded me of a time when we lived in a cosy rented cottage that nestled in a woodland clearing alongside the River Meavy. This too was a moorland river, smaller than the Dart, but no less beautiful. We knew every inch of its banks, every bend, every boulder. We knew every rocky fall where there was a noisy and joyous union of white watery effervescence and mossy greenness.

Here too it was not uncommon to find ashes and wreaths – and I was reminded of some words that I once penned after making such a discovery on a cold February afternoon.

Wet Lemon Clouds
(For Alice)

Wet lemon clouds of watercolour wash
Angry river – wild and raw, claws
The shore where summer sticks were tossed
And pebbles thrown, drone
Of ferment, flood and flow o’er
Rocks and rolling stones, sugar brown
The bank’s deposit, settle and shift
Swift the current’s pulse, live
And charging …
Cerulean flash!
The fisher’s king sparks bright
In flight both low and true
And through the spume’s pale veil
Where death has left his wreath
And ash, beneath the oak’s
Soaked roots and shoots of daffodils.

But these were warmer times and, walking barefoot across closely cropped grass, dotted with daisies, we paused frequently to gaze at the patriotic red, white and blue of campion, may blossom and bluebell.

Salute to the red, white and blue

But the warmer times had not yet reached my extremities. I may as well have been walking across hot coals in some Fijian ritual, for my feet had become bundles of cotton wool, numbed and senseless.