We ate cooked breakfasts
early at The Crown and Cushion and were back in our room and ready to call DVLA
as soon as they opened for business at 08:00.
This was the 10th
working day after our application for a registration number for Mabel should
have been received by DVLA, the time at which they will start to look into what
is going on (or not). In marked contrast to yesterday I got through to Daniel
who grasped the issue immediately, checked the record system without any luck
and tried to find someone in the appropriate office to try and help me. He
couldn’t, but said he would get someone to call me back.
It was a fine, but cool
day and we decided it looked good for a Cotswolds walk selected from a book of
walks we purchased yesterday. Our starting point was in the village of
Winchcombe, about 35 km away. En route we stopped at Morton In Marsh to get a
service wash of the laundry accumulated over the last week.
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| Winchcombe High Street |
Initially, our walk took
us through the village, it didn’t get off to a good start with Jane certain I
was heading off in the wrong direction and it took a while to convince her
otherwise. At the edge of the village we took to footpaths that climbed steeply
across farmland with good views over the rolling countryside. Ominously, we
could see rain showers in the distance and a strong wind made it feel quite
cold. The by now familiar collection of sheep and their new-born lambs filled a
number of pastures. Additionally, we came across a few horses and a herd of
Gloucester Old Spots pigs, no doubt destined to become the eponymous sausages.
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| Winchcombe Seen From The Cotswolds |
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| Gloucester Old Spots |
Apparently, the Gloucestershire
Old Spots is known for its docility, intelligence, and profligacy. Boars can
weigh up to 270 kg while sows can tip the scales at 230 kg. The breed’s
maternal skills enable it to raise large litters of piglets on pasture. As a
result of intensive factory farming the breed fell out of favour but consumer
pressure in the UK and changes to the law, both attributable to an increasing concern
about farming conditions, have resulted in pigs being increasingly reared
outdoors with more consumers looking for quality meat. The Old Spots produce
high quality meat and are quite rare with fewer than 1,000 breeding females
registered in the UK.
It began to rain shortly
after our route joined a country lane and the wind became even stronger. We had
decided against taking our puffer jackets, but regretted that decision,
particularly as we only had one waterproof jacket between us. We found shelter
under a tree and the shower passed soon enough. Leaving the lane on a dirt
track we passed an excavator that had been loading rock from a stockpile into a
dump truck. It was obvious to the driver that we were cold and he commented on
what a good day we had taken for a walk!
Shortly after that I got
a call from David at the DVLA who took a few details from me, checked his
records and advised there was no record of our application on their system. If
I could give him Mabel’s chassis number then he could check to see if that had
been registered. He agreed to call back in 10 minutes to give me time to find
the chassis number which was on an email somewhere on my iPhone. We decided to
stay put as phone reception was very patchy, I left Jane sitting on a stile and
backtracked to get the strongest signal I could. While waiting the excavator
trundled past and stopped so the driver could talk to Jane. The conversation
was ongoing when I walked back after 20 minutes without the return call.
Martin, the excavator driver turned out to be the owner of a building company who
preferred to be outdoors instead of sitting at a desk. He was currently
converting a barn on the Sudely Castle estate into a house. We told him about
our DVLA woes and he confirmed our view that the “service” was pretty typical
of the UK as a whole these days.
Shortly after resuming
our walk David did call back and apologised for the delay. Mabel’s chassis
number failed to shed any more light on things and he could only conclude the
paperwork hadn’t been received. That was two whole weeks wasted! We decided the
way forward was to get duplicate copies of the paperwork sent for David’s
attention. He would then process the application, he can usually turn them
around in two days. So, after wasting two weeks, we find that we should have
been on the road with Myrtle ages ago, and all because DVLA wouldn’t look into
the matter until 10 days were up!
A quick phone call to
Chris Maynard asked him to get on the case and I would email David’s name and
address once I had 3G coverage again.
Resuming our walk we came
across Martin, the excavator driver, again who did his bit for tourism by
showing us St Kenhelm’s Well which he had re-roofed last year. Kenhelm was King
of Mercia. As a young boy in AD819 and is believed to have been murdered by his
jealous sister. The monks at Winchcombe recovered his body and the legend
records that springs gushed out wherever they laid him on his journey back to
Winchcombe. St Kenhelm’s well is said to mark the final halt of the body before
it reached Winchcombe. The “well” was a disappointment, rather than being a
spring the water came from a nearby stream and flowed through a grubby chamber
set in the floor of the building.
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| Jane and Martin In Front Of Building Housing St Kenhelm's Well |
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| Cotswolds House Near St Kenhelm's Well |
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| Sudely Castle Gate House |
Shortly after leaving the
well we lost our way on the walk when the path petered out at a barbed wire
fence. By then we had been walking for well over three hours and we were cold.
We decided to follow a lane directly back to Winchcombe. There we went to the
Wine and Sausage pub to get warm, eat lunch and get email off to Chris Maynard.
The menu had a variety of pork sausages, including Old Spots, but I opted for
cauliflower and stilton soup, while Jane had a ploughman’s. The latter wasn’t
as good as that at The Albion at Arnside last week, the choice being cheese or
ham. Last week there was cheese and ham plus smoked chicken.
An email from Chris to
David arrived as we were leaving the pub. Chris had emailed David a copy of
only one of the forms required. I spoke to DVLA again to see exactly what forms
were needed and then phoned Chris. It turned out they hadn’t kept copies of two
of the original forms and were going to have to go back to Auto Trail to get
them. Is that any way to run a business?
Back in Chipping Norton our
evening followed the same pattern as last night but we took care to ensure our
boring companion was not around. While having a drink at a table in the bar a
woman who had been sitting at the bar on the same stool as last night said as
she was leaving “I see you have met the village idiot then”. She and her
husband went on to tell us the man had been banned from every other pub in the
town for boring patrons to death and, in some instances, for becoming abusive
after a few drinks. Apparently, he bales up every new face he sees with his
story and is so thick skinned that even telling him to Foxtrot Oscar has
absolutely no effect. The husband had tried it a few times when the man kept
interrupting his nightly crossword.
The East Ender builders
were back (they are staying in the hotel) and very subdued after what was
presumably a big night last night.
Dinner comprised
vegetable curry for me and lamb shoulder (again) for Jane.
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