My wife's cousin lives in Plymouth, and so when we visited her last summer, our route by train from London passed through Dawlish, shown above, which was hit hard by recent storms. The rail line in Dawlish was utterly wrecked. Further down the coast, at Looe, there was epic flooding.
Dawlish and Plymouth are in Devon, and Looe is in Cornwall, right across the river from Plymouth to the west. Along with Dorset and Somerset, these counties are referred to as the West Country. I'd never traveled in these places prior to 2009, and have become quite enamored of them in two journeys since.
Jeff Gillenwater made sure I saw this commentary by a Cornwall native, which places the storm-driven transport infrastructure damage in a wider context. Permit me to add that life in a devolved Cornwall would be entirely acceptable for an exile like me, so long as St. Austell and Skinner's continue making fine ales.
Note: "Proper job" is an expression of satisfaction in regional vernacular, and also is an ale brewed by St. Austell.
Proper job! It's England that's cut off from Cornwall, not the other way round; We look west for our weather, scrutinising the Atlantic storms for surf. Without a rail link to London we're more Cornish than ever, by The Kernow King (Guardian)
... Then I spotted the tweet, the one I had been waiting for: "The bad news is Cornwall is cut off from England. On the other hand, the good news is Cornwall is cut off from England". Wuh! Hell up!
You see, we've always felt different in Cornwall. Not just cut off. The majority of us don't feel especially English, which really winds some outsiders up because they think it means we don't like them. It's why squillions of people come to Cornwall every year! Our history, our language, our culture, our sports, our people … we're Cornish before we're anything else. Without that rail link, we may well be cut off, but because communities pull together for each other, we're even more Cornish now.
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