Commercial Break

After eleven days away, and a really good time with family, today is the day to return home. I left mid morning, and arrived home late afternoon. It’s a long journey, made longer by travelling a lot of the way on foggy roads and (I could say as usual) collisions on the M6 causing delays.

I had a very early stop at Shaftesbury, which is only ten miles or so north of my starting point. Travelling from my sister’s my route always takes me around the edge, but I decided to have a look at the centre.

This view was made famous in the 1970’s by a television advert. As I recall a young boy walking up a cobbled hill, dressed in pre-war clothes, a brass band playing the slow movement of Dvorak’s 9th (New World) symphony, and a reassuring voice speaking in a Yorkshire** brogue. All intended to evoke a nostalgia for brown bread, and specifically the hovis loaf. Post war many of us were eating bland mass produced white bread - although my mum, a bakers daughter, always used a local bakery.

In reality this view is of Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset. The huge buttressed wall on the right forms the boundary of the grounds of an Abbey, one of Englands richest nunneries, abolished by Henry VIII. On a non-foggy day there are spectacular views from here of the surrounding rolling landscape. Not today.

** Update. I’ve just watched the advert (1973 onwards). It isn’t a Yorkshire accent - it may be the Dorset dialect (Memory is an odd thing). The lad is pushing a bike. And the advert director was a young Ridley Scott - Bladerunner, Thelma and Louise, Gladiator and many more.