What I did on my holidays

Well, some of it anyway.

Whenever we visit the DSM's ma, I like to nip down to Charlestown for a wander round. Not that it takes long, the central bit is pretty small. But there is something about it that fascinates me, and a year or two back we rented a cottage there. This time, we went back to the same one, as there were four of us. It's too big and on the pricey side for just us two.

I think one of the attractions of Charlestown is that it was built all of a piece, and is largely unspoiled. The harbour has been kept in good working order, and is the home of a number of sailing ships which nowadays are mainly used in film work. If you have seen "Poldark" or "The Onedin Line", you have seen Charlestown. One of the most recent incarnations was as the home of Fanny Price's family in "Mansfield Park". Quite unmistakeable if you knew the area, and could then laugh as the coach and four galloped off in the direction of a dead end (the other way would have taken them smack dab in to the briny.......)

There are a few mentions on the web, including this.

There was filming going on this time while we were there, and I spent many a happy half hour hanging over the wall watching, along with a small and decorous crowd of other film crew manque. I would have been a location-spotter in a different existence. Or continuity. I find it endlessly fascinating.

Apart from anything else, they had two of the ships out in the bay, and at one point on Saturday night must have been filming a battle scene, because we kept hearing cannon fire. That felt strange... but we got to see them both come back in to harbour, under power not sail, but exciting none the less.







The weather while we were there was super, which does just about show in these photos, even though it was getting on towards early evening. The ships had to get in through a fairly narrow harbour entrance, and the rope sat neatly laid out, rather than coiled just where they came through. It was a very skilful job, not one bump. The director was buzzing about in a little rubber dinghy, very self-important.

There were so many incongruities - a disreputable-looking old sea dog slouching on a sea wall...mobile phone clamped to his ear. A woman in a crinoline scooting up the road to the commissary, coming back clutching a plastic cup of coffee. Two palm trees in pots, being moved around the place to increase the illusion of being in the Caribbean. (Got the weather right, anyway.)

The plot seemed to be about slaves and the relationships between other blacks and then the white "masters". Possibly a drama-doc, I never saw much "acting" going on. At one point I came upon a gruesome scene where a slave was being branded, with attendant ghastly screams of agony - the weird thing was that if I had seen that on the tv, I would have looked away and felt queasy, but seeing it acted in front of my very eyes, somehow I knew that it was not real and I could watch - weird, how the brain works.

A few more photos and then I will stop.







There are more on Flickr - and I am amused to see that there are some ads adjacent to my photographs relating to "Charlestown" - sorry, chaps, wrong one!

Enough for now.