Well apart from the party, the other and lesser milestone this week is that I'm out of my teens! I've managed to reach race number 20 reasonably intact. Also it happens to be the first triathlon of the season so after four runs, it's a welcomed return to multi-sports. One of the reasons or criteria for choosing particular races is that they are in beautiful places, historic areas, or just fascinating places to visit. I had worked to the west on Welland Marsh near Rye, 15 or so years ago on another road project which like the Worthing one, never got built. This race is no different being based in Lydd on the Romney Marshes in Dungeness. This area is steeped in myths and tales of smugglers. The coastline itself has changed dramatical (http://www.villagenet.co.uk/history/0000-romneymarsh.html) as one of Europe's largest areas of shingle has been built up over the centuries.
The economy and landscape of Romney Marsh was dominated by sheep as improved methods of pasture management and husbandry meant the marsh could sustain a stock density greater than anywhere else in the world. The specific Romney Marsh breed of sheep became one of the most successful and important breeds. Their main characteristic is an ability to feed in wet situations; they are considered to be more resistant to foot rot and internal parasites than any other breed. Romney sheep have been exported globally, in particular to Australia, to where they were first exported in 1872. A lot more of the history can be found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romney_Marsh
Lydd itself is interesting being one of the larger towns on the Romney Marsh, and the most southerly town in Kent. Actually located on Denge Marsh, Lydd was one of the first sandy islands to form as the bay evolved into what is now called the Romney Marsh. The name Hlyda, which derives from the Latin word for "shore", was found in a Saxon charter dating from the 8th century. Lydd is also birth place to Lyddite (picric acid), an explosive used to fire shells during South African War and the Great War. It was first tested at the military camp in Lydd in 1888.
( http://www.andrewleaning.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=53:lyddhistory&catid=51:villages&Itemid=66 )
- The 200 foot mirror is a near vertical, curved wall, 200 feet (60m) long. It is one of only two similar acoustic mirrors in the world, the other being in Malta.
- The 30 foot mirror is a circular dish, similar to a deeply curved satellite dish, 9 m (30 ft) across, supported on concrete buttresses. This mirror still retains the metal microphone pole at its centre.
- The 20 foot mirror is similar to the 30 foot mirror, with a smaller, shallower dish 6 m (20 ft) across.
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You know how I've been whinging a bit about the early starts? Well for this race I got up at 3am as registration closed before seven. I had the foresight to load the car and put out my gear the night before - but not the foresight to actually book somewhere to stay down there. So following an early night, set off in the dark through the streets of South London to get to the M20. There were a lot of people still around and a bit more traffic than I was expecting - much of it a driving a little "randomly". So I drove somewhat gingerly out of London to find the motorway virtually traffic free. I'm beginning to develop a theory as to the early starts - so lycra-clad hoards don't scare locals as they get their Sunday papers or walk the dogs. It is also fair to say that the roads are less busy on a Sunday morning so that cyclists and runners who are "in the zone" and possibly a little less careful about what is going on around them, are less likely to have problems.
Now an apology. I had virtually finished recounting the tails of this race - just needing to wait for the results - when the blogger site became 'read-only'. Its only now that its back up and running and of course virtually all the draft was lost. Oh well, I hope I can remember what happened especially with the memory going at my age!
Once off the motorway and onto the A roads, I followed signs to what was variously called Lydd, Ashford or even London Ashford International Airport - which is a misnomer if ever there was one. To reach Lydd you drive across the marshes and this particular morning the mist clung to the ground with just church spires peaking above. You begin to get the sense of where all the stories of smugglers come from.
Availed myself of a) a cup of tea and b) the facilities - which were impressive! Faux walnut wood panelling, framed b/w pictures of film stars, proper posh toiletries - all a bit of a pleasant surprise compared with the normal portaloos.
The main race started at 7:00, with another wave at 7:10, final at 7:20. Looking down the you suddenly realise how far a 1.9km swim actually is! Some of the top swimmers were fair motoring too. Our first wave started at 8:00 when most (but not all) the other swimmers had finished. My wave called the 'Dolphin' wave (I think they were being ironic as they had split the waves up on estimated swimming times) went at 8:05. Started pretty well free-styling but found I had to revert to my default breast stroke after about 100m as although I've been practising (a bit) this winter, pool swimming is very different to open water swimming as you can see the bottom, can kick off at either end, not wear a wet suit, its relatively calm and you don't have people trying to swim over you! So I ended up "turtle-ing" along near the back keeping pace with a lady doing the front crawl (I came 91st out of 99 in the swim).
Finishing the swim I encountered my next problem. Do you think I could get the blasted wetsuit off especially over the timing chip on my ankle? I hadn't thought to lube up before hand so it was a real struggle. Finally I was onto the bike and fair flying through Lydd - though things like roundabouts and junctions did have a tendency to slow you down a bit. Onto the open road which with the wind behind me meant I could push top gear (53:12 ratio for those of you interested and here's a bit of techie stuff - I've 'blinged' my bike with oval-shaped chainrings called Q-Rings. These do not eliminate the dead-spot but help to reduce its negative effects,moving the legs easier through the dead spot imitating a smaller circular chainring, and enabling the legs to remain in the power stroke for a longer period of time when compared to round chainrings. Q-Rings change the equivalent tooth size by decreasing it before the dead-spots and increasing it when the rider is in the power mode (when more power is available at the pedal down stroke). For instance, a 53 teeth Q-Ring (the one I have), around the upper dead-spot is equivalent to a 51 teeth, but as the pedal goes down and more strength is applied (just passed the maximum power moment), the equivalent chainring tooth size reaches 56 teeth. By now as you can't contain your excitement I've include the website which has access to all the tech bits, photos, videos etc.... enjoy! http://www.rotoruk.co.uk/qrings.html ).
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| Derek Jarman's garden |
So race finished just before 9:30 which meant that even with 40 winks in the M20 service station car park I was back home soon after mid-day. The into the shower with my wetsuit - not in a kinky way you understand - it's just the easiest way to clean it to ensure it doesn't smell too bad before the next race
Result: 37th out of 99 in a time of 1:23:12
Derek Jarman's Hideaway
by Howard Sooley
Derek Jarman in the garden at Prospect Cottage in 1992. Photograph: Geraint Lewis/Rex Features
The first time I met Derek was on the final day of filming Edward II Bray Studios near Maidenhead. I was sent to photograph him for a magazine article. When I arrived he looked tired and pale; as it turned out he'd been let out from hospital early especially for that last day of filming. He asked if I could photograph him in Dungeness, instead, the following week. I was happy to oblige. I'd always wanted to visit him there and see the garden he had made.
It was early spring in 1991, and a bright, crisp day in that otherworldliness that is Dungeness. As I pulled up to Prospect Cottage I could see Derek in the garden at the back of the house, busy straightening sticks pushed over in the night by the wind. Behind him in the distance, almost hidden in the morning mist, was the shimmering 'emerald city' of the nuclear power station.
There is something alarming about the 'ness for those unused to the horizon: it is endless, broken occasionally by telegraph poles pushing up from the verge only to be dwarfed by the magnitude of the sky above.
I stepped on to the shingle unaware that with those first echoing footsteps a three-year odyssey was beginning. The crunch of shingle announced my arrival and Derek came to greet me. Inside the house were Derek's partner Keith and a friend, Peter, making tea and mischief in equal measure. As Derek showed me round the garden they picked up my camera and set about making my contact sheets more 'interesting', photographing uncompromising pictures from the TV, and a portrait of Winston Churchill.
Derek and I set out on the first of many walks along the beach up toward the lighthouse. The photographs I took on that day are still among my favourites of him. I suppose they remind me of the start of a friendship, but also now help me to recollect what a strong and beautiful man Derek was, before illness wasted his body.
We made our way over the 'ness, past the fishermen's huts, to the sea. Derek started gathering pieces of driftwood in his arms to be used as firewood back at the cottage. We walked along weaving between the small fishing boats, the beach jewelled with starfish washed up by tide the night before.
Through the sound of the waves on the stones Derek started to reveal to me the treasures of the 'ness, the curious emerging purple shoots of sea kale anchored deep in the moving shingle with their long tap roots, the misty blue leaves of the yellow horned poppy pushing past the dry, dead spires of last years dock flowers, a maritime form of Herb Robert in a tight alpine dome and the entwining tendrils of a sea pea.
The native wild flowers of Dungeness are something special, though some are somewhat hard to see when you are blinded by the immensity of the sky and shingle.
I was to become a frequent visitor over the next few years, up and down the A2 or A21 from London, driving Derek to and fro. The back garden crept further in all directions as our plant treasures collected from the various nurseries along the way were given their chance to make a go of it in the shingle. I grew to love gardening there; the sea breeze cooling the heat of the sun, the fog horn sounding out of the mist.
We were always up early, breakfast in the kitchen at on old table pushed up against the windows, watching the migratory birds, who must have been thankful for the curious array of perches surrounding the cottage.
The garden looked beautiful at that time in the morning. The poppies still tightly closed, waiting for the warmth of the sun. The light there is special, the big skies reflecting back from the sea on both side of the 'ness brought life to even the dullest of colours.
Our days of gardening were punctuated by trips to Rye or Hastings, or up the road to Madrona Nursery, or more often a walk to the sea or down to the ponds at the back of the cottage. These are hidden by a small wood of shrubby willows which poke from the shingle through a carpet of lichen and moss. Just over the tracks of the miniature-gauge railway is a prickly tangle of twigs that, on closer inspection, is a forest of bonsai sloe trees, each only a few inches high and with a spread of about a foot, and when in flower or fruit there is no more precious sight.
Dungeness is a dynamic and wild landscape. A shifting spit of shingle jutting out into the English Channel, being fought over by the waves from two sides and encroaching grass from the other - and, right at the end, a nuclear power station.
Prospect Cottage sits more or less in the middle, parched by baking sun and drying winds in summer, with no shade to be had for miles in any direction. In winter, sea storms rage, while biting Siberian winds push through the shingle and up through the floorboards of the fisherman's cottages strung out along the road to the lighthouse.
You can't take life for granted in Dungeness: every bloom that flowers through the shingle is a miracle, a triumph of nature. Derek knew this more than anyone.
Our frequent trips from Derek's flat in Charing Cross Road and increasingly St Bartholomew's Hospital to Dungeness were plotted by zigzagging lines via the gardens and nurseries of Kent and East Sussex. I remember once picking up Derek from Barts, and driving down the A21 to Washfield Nursery en route to Prospect Cottage. He was quite ill by this point, and told me how the doctors had explained he was becoming progressively blind, and that it would not be long before all his sight was lost. I was feeling deeply sad, but he smiled back at me and started to tell of his plans as a blind filmmaker. By the end of it he was twitching with excitement; it was seemingly as much an opportunity as a disability.
To the front of Prospect Cottage is a quite traditional cottage garden of circular, square and rectangular beds defined by upstanding flint stones, made when Derek first arrived in 1986. It is planted with lavenders, santolinas, poppies and crambes, and provides a welcoming sight as you approach from the road, harbour lights twinkling in the distance.
The back garden is much less formal: the shingle allows you to plant without beds or borders. There's not even a fence (which doesn't happen often in England) so the garden stretches to a vast infinite horizon. People are free to wander through it, and, while Derek was alive, the occasional visitor at weekends or sunny days was, on the whole, a pleasure.
Those days in the garden at Prospect Cottage, with time suspended or off elsewhere bothering someone else, were as rich as days can be. Digging in the shingle, scattering seeds, cutting back the santolinas, breathing in the heavy scent of the sea kale. I can't think of a better use for my senses and soul.
But by the New Year of 1994 our trips to Dungeness were all but over as Derek's strength started to fade dramatically. He had more or less taken up residence in Andrewes ward at St Bartholomew's Hospital, where fluorescent-lit days dimmed to quiet linoleum footsteps in the night, and the chirp of birds was exchanged for the ping of drip machines.
We still took our walks though, usually around Smithfield's market. One day, passing the chapel, Derek wanted to go in and look up hymns that might be sung at his funeral. We sat on a pew at the back in the growing gloom of late afternoon and opened a hymn book. 'I remember this one from school. Great tune, shame about the words,' he said quietly. A few minutes later I looked up to see tears rolling down his face... I put my arm round him and could hear him reading the words of the hymn open in front of him: All Things Bright And Beautiful. Never has a hymn taken on such meaning to me; I understood in that moment the immensity of loss Derek was feeling as he could see the night fall on the light and life of Dungeness.
A couple of weeks later, Derek died silently in a bed on Andrewes ward with Keith, Karl and I by his side.
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