#widecombe

The Beatles head out for the first full day of filming for the Magical Mystery Tour on the 12th September 1967 and promptly get stuck on a bridge. They’d stayed the previous night at the Royal Hotel in Teignmouth, Devon and left for filming in Widecombe. There was an annual fair taking place in Widecombe and to avoid the traffic, MMT bus driver, Alf Manders took a shortcut - over this narrow bridge where the bus got stuck. The bus had to be reversed for half a mile and the trip to Widecombe was abandoned. 

Widecombe in the Moor, Devon, Anglaterra, des dels erms.

WIDECOMBE, ON DARTMOOR IN OCTOBER

BLOG October 21 21

By Lynne Pearl

 From our little bus 271 or 39 initially out of Newton Abbot, we can see the sea far below at Teignmouth.  We are climbing ever higher up the back our mountain Dartmoor.  There is a sparkling brook in  between black trees that are losing their leaves.  Ahead of us the Tors are outlined against the fall sky like so many teeth.  The hills are rust and grey over their crags, but far away in the distant blue are the hills of Somerset.  We are so high up we can see out of county.  I feel these are my mountains, from childhood I was brought here with my Dad. I remember that first winter we came from outer London, we got stuck in a snow storm on Dartmoor.  We had no idea what we were playing with.  But we put carpet under the tyres and together we pushed, kids and all, we got out of the snow and got home.  But that was a lesson for us all. 

Today we fly down the hill into Haytor Vale, approach Widecombe from on high, surrounded by rusty ferns, dry from the cold.  Around us is a range of the backs of the hills, the landscape is green conifers, deciduous trees turning colour hesitantly, interspersed with small white farm, small from up here.  We are now so high my ears pop, in that reassuring way, like when you descend from a long overseas flight and it means you are home, or nearly home.  

 The grey stone walls of the fields are interspersed with holly and craggy trees.  We are swimming down hill, like we are underwater now.  There’s a five bar gate, the sun cuts the tops of the trees and the lane becomes a tunnel as we enter Widecombe.  There are puddles, it has been raining and the river  had flooded across the road, but it is October.  I don’t usually mange to come so late in the year.  

 Our bus driver is truculent and surly, h e seems to hate the place.  He answers queries as to when he is leaving between clenched teeth and glares.  The passengers get off his bus and wait outside. Widecombe is not his favourite in the rain. The gold hands on the church clock are pointing the time, so we have arrived.  I won’t see this clock again till next year, it will be Spring by the time I am looking at the clock again, framed against a grey sky.  It starts to rain more.

 What will winter bring us?  Hold on, Keep the faith.  There is not much else we can do now; I realise riches are not what you have but how you feel in your heart.  Being on Dartmoor gives you the kind of clarity that you can see your truths for yourself. They seem to become clear.  It must be the quiet, the silence of the moor speaking through.  It’s not like the other places in the world.  It’s as though the world doesn’t reach here, Not here.  Certain places do that to you.  We used to understand these things, that the places teach you.  There was a study on it.

  There are experiences of the state of "oneness" with the rest of creation. This experience had a noetic quality for the meditator.  It can be experienced and described in a variety of ways.

 The following conversation describes in detail the onset of an experience and the effects in the individual's daily life:

Q:  As far as experiences go, are there any that stand out?

A:  There are probably quite a few.  There's been some quite remarkable.  I'll focus on two of those.  I know there's been occasions …and I totally lose track of myself as a separate individual.  Meaning that I don't believe that there's this person looking out at a room of people, people such as you …and everyone else around me and

And again:

One thing I have noticed about experience is that there is just no contraction, no limitation, no constriction, it's a very open, full, complete, unbounded sort of sensation or feeling to my experience and there's also a feeling of time, it's not significant, that the past and future are not really a reality but a concept in the mind but all there is, is this, this moment which is unfolding and changing constantly.  There's no movement in terms of a change, it's here, it's always now, that's just unfolding.  ...time is linear progression from past to the current moment and the future and there is a real feeling about that.  Whereas in these moments there's no sense of any time, any timeline of one changing event. And that's part of it too.  It's like not feeling this way, it's like looking at a picture and looking at only a fraction of it and not seeing the complete picture.  Whereas when I'm feeling open and this way it's like seeing a whole picture and even though that picture may be a landscape with a barn, trees and, you know, stream and people in it, before it would have been like being just focused on the stream or people and not realising that there was a bigger picture, that it was embedded in and at the time of the experience and there is no separation, fragmentation.  It's just one event and that event stays within my sensory domain and I see, hear, touch, feel and taste, they all seem to be complete and one and even some vaguer feeling.  

 So the corollary is that:

I get back on the bus as the rain comes on, but Dartmoor teaches you what you need to know.  It is at our backs everywhere here, so we can just look up from almost anywhere here and we can see it in the distance.  It’s always there.  It s not going anywhere and neither are we,.  We’ll make it.  Till next Spring and love and poetry and …whatever…