Did you know June 4 happens to be Devon Day? If you aren’t from British climes, it’s penultimate English county of the South West corner, ie the one just before Cornwall.Â
Becoming official in 2016, the annual celebration, also known as St Petroc’s Day, is a national day of recognition initiated to encourage local pride and to highlight its distinctive identity, landscapes, culture and heritage.
Communities across the West Country county come together to organise a mixture of local events and cultural activities.
The event is also seen as an opportunity to support tourism, local businesses and communities.
The date is linked to the feast day of St Petroc, a 6th Century Celtic saint associated with Christianity across the South West of England, and to whom the Devon flag is dedicated.
Food is a large part of the day too. Devonshire, to use the county’s historical moniker, is renowned for its regional rural produce, and many Devon Day events showcase local cheeses, scrumpy cider and naughty-but-nice cream teas. If that all sounds a bit Jam and Jerusalem here’s a slightly more visceral history lesson.
In 2012, I filmed an episode of a BBC comedy called Lady Garden with Edina Monsoon’s real life daughter Beattie Edmondson, who grew up on Dartmoor land that had previously been owned by my family, naturellement. It’s down the road from Torquay, the ‘English riviera’ Fawlty town where not only where we were overlords and masters for a time but — and my parents let slip this slightly TMI factoid only a couple of years ago — it was the location where I was also almost certainly beautifully conceived in 1968. That is without Bambi, Purdey or even a knitting needle, on their first and indeed last holiday as a couple before I was allowed into the world.
When Mother was kind enough to uncross her legs a second time, my sister Stella followed three and half years later, in 1972. Two years on, and in August 1974, Devon was where we headed to for our first holiday as a family of four — a surprisingly roomy static caravan in Instow, on the north shore, albeit with a larder rather than a refrigerator.
Bizarrely, 12 years later, in August 1986, Devon would turn out to be where our last family holiday occurred — all four of us at any rate — when we ventured to the east of the county, to a charming costal village called Beer.
Enter the rowing boat, the West Highland Terrier and those dreadful Deirdre Barlow horror specs that take up half your face.
We didn’t even realise at the time we were quite literally setting up camp — albeit another static caravan job, this time with added fridge! — at a sloping grassy knoll that was once ours.
By then I was unsweet 17 and about to undertake my second year at college at Bletchley Park. So when the other three decided to spoil themselves with a second holiday in Cornwall the following month I opted to stay behind, having become friendly with Gary the local shopkeeper and his stash of under the counter videos (cough).
Oh, the depravity. She said people use it in the lounge.
Steve Pafford
