Disclaimer
This article contains German visitors, British public transport, competitive board gaming, Somerset cider and recreational sheep. No Upper GI emergencies occurred during the writing of this post, although the combination of pasties, fish and chips, Belgian beer and a barbecue would normally justify at least baseline bloods and a cautious abdominal examination.
Despite being on annual leave last week, it was still a remarkably full-on week.
Annual leave is, of course, the period during which NHS employees temporarily stop doing their paid job so that they can concentrate properly on all the other jobs they have been neglecting. It is traditionally associated with rest, relaxation and occasionally sitting down. We chose a slightly different model involving international visitors, board games, open-top buses, sheep trekking, a barbecue, an emergency collection from the Somerset countryside and the preparation of an Upper GI handbook.
So, essentially, a quiet week.
The main event was the arrival of our friends from Germany. Dawid, his wife Katrin and their two children came over for a holiday divided into three carefully selected geographical sections: London, Taunton and Amsterdam.
This is the traditional European grand tour, only with fewer Renaissance paintings and more time spent examining the British rail network.
I grew up with Dawid in Plettenberg, and we played chess together for many years. Eventually, I left Germany for England and Dawid went to university in Bremen. This was the point at which our lives separated geographically, although neither of us managed to escape chess completely, which is often the case with people who have spent too many childhood evenings moving small wooden pieces around in silence.
We both tried to stay in touch over the years. Nowadays, this mainly happens through WhatsApp, where we exchange messages and record voice notes roughly once or twice a week. Voice messages are particularly useful because they allow two middle-aged men to have a conversation without either of them having to be available at the same time.
It is essentially correspondence chess, but with more discussion about children, work and whether our backs hurt.
Despite our regular digital communication, I had not actually seen Dawid in person since 2017.
We were supposed to meet in Cologne last year. Unfortunately, the German transport system—or possibly the entire German economy—was on strike, and we had to fly home a day earlier than planned. This meant that the reunion did not happen.
Germany is generally admired for efficiency, although anyone who has attempted to use Deutsche Bahn during the last decade will understand that this reputation is now largely historical, rather like the Roman Empire or affordable energy prices.
This time, however, Dawid and his family successfully reached England.
They spent the first part of their holiday in London, the second part in Taunton and the final two or three days in Amsterdam before returning home. They had not planned a particularly detailed itinerary for their time in Somerset, so we arranged a programme for them.
On Friday, we met them in Taunton.
On Saturday, we attended the board game day at Taunton Library.
On Sunday, we travelled to Lynton and Lynmouth on the open-top bus from Minehead.
On Monday, they went sheep trekking.
Somerset had been comprehensively deployed.
Cultural Exchange Through Cardboard
The board game day was, as usual, a great success.
My wife managed to play Tenby and thoroughly enjoyed it. She enjoyed it so much that she asked how much the game would cost to buy.
This is the moment every board gamer recognises as both a triumph and a serious financial risk.
There is a significant difference between someone saying, “That was quite a nice game,” and asking, “How much is it?”
The first is a compliment.
The second is the beginning of an acquisition process.
Dawid and his family already own Azul, but they were not entirely sure how to play it. This is quite common in modern board gaming. Purchasing the game is merely the opening phase. Understanding the rules may happen several months later, usually after watching three YouTube videos and discovering that the person who taught you originally had misunderstood one crucial scoring rule.
As they had mentioned Azul the previous day, we brought our copy to the library. Stephen taught them how to play, thereby providing an important international educational service that remains scandalously absent from most government cultural-exchange programmes.
Their youngest child then won the game quite convincingly.
This was ideal.
Nothing helps adults understand a new board game quite like being systematically defeated by a child who heard the same explanation they did.
More importantly, Dawid and his family now know how to play the game they already own. This is an important milestone in any board game collection and places them comfortably ahead of many experienced hobbyists.
The Exmoor Expedition
Sunday required an early start.
We collected Dawid and his family from their accommodation in Taunton and drove to Minehead, where we planned to catch the open-top bus to Lynton at around 9.30 a.m.
An open-top bus journey across Exmoor sounds wonderfully scenic, and it is. It also provides passengers with a detailed practical demonstration of wind exposure, ultraviolet radiation and the surprising temperature variation between Minehead and anywhere situated three hills further west.
Nevertheless, the journey was spectacular, and the day was a great success. Dawid and his family enjoyed exploring Lynton and Lynmouth, two places that manage to be joined together while simultaneously existing at dramatically different heights.
Lynton sits above the gorge, while Lynmouth is down beside the sea. Connecting them is the cliff railway, presumably constructed after local residents concluded that repeatedly walking up the hill was an unreasonably long-term strategy.
The beauty of Lynmouth conceals a tragic chapter in its history.
On the night of 15 August 1952, exceptionally heavy rain fell across Exmoor. The East Lyn and West Lyn rivers burst their banks, carrying water, trees, boulders and debris through the valleys and into the village. Bridges became blocked and then collapsed, releasing further surges of water. More than 100 buildings were destroyed or seriously damaged, 28 of the area’s 31 bridges were lost, 420 people were left homeless and 34 people died.
It remains difficult to reconcile the peaceful village we visited with the scale of the disaster. Today, the rivers appear picturesque and entirely suitable for postcards. In 1952, they demonstrated that even the most attractive parts of the English countryside occasionally require a major incident response.
After absorbing some local history, attention naturally turned towards food.
South West cuisine was required, which meant either fish and chips or a pasty.
Both are, of course, English delicacies.
The pasty is particularly efficient because it combines meat, vegetables and pastry in a portable format. It is essentially a complete meal wearing protective clothing.
Fish and chips, meanwhile, remain one of Britain’s most successful contributions to world cuisine, especially when eaten near the sea while defending them from increasingly confident seagulls.
Everyone was fed, nobody was carried away by a large coastal bird, and we eventually returned to Minehead.
Another successful day of annual leave had been completed.
Sheep Trekking: Apparently a Real Activity
On Monday, Dawid and his family went sheep trekking in Pitminster.
Before their arrival, I had looked at the activity online. My immediate conclusion was that sheep trekking appeared to be the kind of rural experience designed mainly for city residents who do not encounter sufficient livestock in their normal daily environment.
Living in Somerset, we see sheep regularly.
They are in fields, beside roads and occasionally standing in places where they appear to be reconsidering all their previous life choices. Paying to go for a walk with one seemed slightly unnecessary.
I therefore gave Dawid a certain amount of grief about the activity.
This was fair and proportionate.
However, when I collected them afterwards, they were full of praise for the place. They had thoroughly enjoyed themselves, the children had enjoyed the sheep and the entire experience had apparently been excellent.
I am therefore forced to issue the following reluctant recommendation:
When visiting Taunton, consider going sheep trekking in Pitminster.
There. I have said it.
Their original plan had been to walk back from Pitminster to Taunton. This plan was based on the map rather than on direct experience of English walking conditions.
A route may appear perfectly manageable on Google Maps, but Google Maps does not always adequately communicate mud, gradients, narrow lanes, hedges, questionable footpaths and the psychological effect of discovering that the next mile is also uphill.
They eventually decided that collection by car represented the more sensible option, and I happily went to retrieve them.
This did slightly weaken the expeditionary nature of the sheep trek, but everyone returned safely and with a greatly improved understanding of rural Somerset.
Beer, Cider and a Medically Unsupervised Barbecue
That evening, Dawid and his family came to our house for a barbecue.
The weather was glorious, with the heatwave still firmly in control. Britain was continuing its annual tradition of spending eleven months complaining about the cold, followed by several days complaining that it was far too hot and that nobody had designed the houses correctly.
The barbecue was accompanied by Belgian beer and Somerset cider.
This was an appropriately international arrangement. Germany supplied the visitors, Belgium supplied part of the alcohol, Somerset supplied the rest and I supplied meat cooked outdoors while repeatedly insisting that everything was nearly ready.
The combination made their final evening in England highly successful.
The children played, the adults talked, and Dawid and I had the opportunity to catch up properly after nine years of communicating mainly through recorded WhatsApp monologues.
It was genuinely wonderful to see him again.
Nine years is far too long, and the intention is that we will meet again rather sooner. I may be travelling to Essen in October to attend SPIEL with CGE, which could provide the next opportunity.
The original sentence was going to be that “next time it should take nine years to see each other again”, but that would represent a fairly poor reunion strategy.
It should not take another nine years.
By then, our children may be at university, our conversations will mainly concern blood pressure and Dawid and I may require longer time controls simply to remember whose move it is.
Departure, Cornwall and the Return of Actual Work
The following day, Dawid and his family took the train from Taunton to Bristol and flew to Amsterdam, where they stayed for another two or three days before returning to Germany.
Their departure marked the end of the German section of our annual leave.
There was, however, little opportunity to recover because we then had to prepare for our own short-notice holiday in Cornwall.
Olga had decided to book a few days away at relatively short notice, which was an excellent idea and required the usual relaxed preparation involving bags, chargers, clothing, snacks, sports equipment and repeated questions about whether anyone had seen a particular item that had been in someone’s hand five minutes earlier.
More about Cornwall will follow in the next article.
At least, that is the current plan.
I am also in the final stages of completing the Upper GI postgraduate doctor handbook because the new F1 doctors and CT1/CT2 trainees start tomorrow.
Nothing says “annual leave” quite like writing an educational handbook for newly arriving doctors.
In addition, our son played in a Grade 3 tennis tournament yesterday, which my wife attended with him. That event will also require its own report, complete with the usual analysis of scores, tournament organisation, emotional resilience and parental blood pressure.
Therefore, there are currently several articles in the pipeline:
The Cornwall holiday.
The Upper GI handbook.
The Grade 3 tennis tournament.
Possibly sheep trekking, should I eventually decide that it deserves a full clinical evaluation.
The only remaining challenge is finding the time to write them.
Fortunately, I have now returned from annual leave, so things should become much quieter.
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