Kate Spicer: I needed a new home, a new life — and a new wardrobe
Move to a more affordable bit of west London, meaning the 'burbs. Ditch the dogs and live a more compact high-rise central London life. Or surrender west London life entirely and move to the country. These were the options; I chose the country.
When people asked, 'Where?' I gave them three guesses. The first was usually Bruton, and they were right.
It's a migration route from west London so well trodden now that to move to the Somerset town is 100 per cent cliché. 'What is it about that place? What's wrong with Yorkshire?' asked my friend Grev. He had a point, but now was not a time to be taking risks. I'd recently split up with my long-term partner and could no longer afford
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BBC News
2 hours ago
- BBC News
TV chef Rosemary Shrager starts 450-mile charity bike challenge
TV chef Rosemary Shrager has begun a 450-mile bike challenge to raise money for food poverty 74-year-old started her journey on Sunday at Land's End in Cornwall and plans to cycle through Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Wiltshire, Hampshire and West Sussex to reach the White Cliffs of Dover in Kent by 18 is aiming to raise at least £100,000 for the Hendry Foundation, which will give all of the money received to food poverty and food welfare charities in the south of chef said: "I visited a foodbank in Hastings and I was really, really upset and I thought, 'this is not fair, we need to do something to help'." The chef, who had to relearn how to ride a bike for the challenge, said: "I've been wanting to do this cycle challenge for more than five years and at last I have found a wonderful group of people who believe in me."It has been quite a journey so far, but I'm proud to be doing this challenge for such a worthy cause that is so close to my heart."On designated rest days, Shrager will do live cooking demonstrations and give talks, including at Kingstanding Business Park in Tunbridge Wells on 16 will also be visiting charities that will benefit from her Two Wheels for Meals fundraiser. Rebecca Hendy, chairperson and trustee of the Hendy Foundation, said Shrager's determination was "truly inspiring"."It's wonderful to see her so committed to making a difference to such an important cause that sadly affects millions of people," she has featured in cookery shows and reality TV programmes, including Ladette to Lady, The Real Marigold Hotel, Royal Upstairs Downstairs and I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!.Since it launched, the Hendy Foundation has given more than £350,000 to almost 250 charities in communities local to Hendy Group car dealerships across Devon, Dorset, Wiltshire, Hampshire, West Sussex, East Sussex, Surrey and Kent.
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
My day drinking in Britain's biggest Wetherspoons
A pie-eyed 60-something lady blows me a kiss before collapsing on the backseat of a cab outside The Waterfront pub. It's 5pm and she's peaked too soon. But haven't we all? Alcohol consumption is in terminal decline, apparently. It's all bubble tea and kombucha from here on in, people. Not in this town it ain't. Not in Ramsgate. The quayside pubs are heaving on this sunny Saturday afternoon, literally overflowing with red-skinned drinkers clutching fags and pints. Talk of the faded British seaside feels wide of the mark here. Ramsgate is pumping. I watch a white-aproned man pack his seafood kiosk up for the day as wide boys drive their bulging biceps and Botoxed babes around in Beemers. Bronzed families with the sand between their toes flip-flop home from the beach, past pretty yachts in the marina and hipsters sucking roll-ups outside the Queens Head. Dapper pensioners pick a path through the eclectic human traffic with a smile. They were young once. I head to the Wetherspoons for a pint. The Royal Victorian Pavilion is not just any 'Spoons – it's Britain's biggest, a cathedral of a pub, and fresh from a £750,000 refurb. Not that the punters have noticed. 'I'm not sure what they've done apart from plant these flowers, which look nice – I might slip them into my handbag,' says Lin Brown, who's drinking on the rooftop terrace with her friends. The girls are here for pre-drinks – 'we'll shimmy into town later' – and life admin. 'We're booking tickets to see Spurs in the Europa League Final,' says Brown (who won't regret that purchase). 'We booked a holiday to Egypt last week.' Why the 'Spoons? 'It's cheap,' they say, in unison. They're not wrong. My pint of Ruddles cost an almost laughable £1.79. It's like being in the Eighties again. Shame about the atmosphere, though, which inside the pub was flatter than my ale, forcing me out onto the busy terrace where I pulled up a pew near the girls. 'I thought you were a stripper when you came over,' says Jen Cavelle, or 'Mrs C', clutching my arm. 'It's my birthday tomorrow. I thought these girls had got me something.' I can't work out if Mrs C is disappointed or relieved that I'm not a stripper. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if I'm flattered or offended that she thought I might be. The girls have been coming to the Pavilion – originally a concert hall – since before it was a 'Spoons. 'It used to be a nightclub,' says Mrs C, who went on the pull here. 'The lights would come on at the end of the night and I'd think 'f****** hell, who's this?' Beer goggles!' While other British seaside towns have withered since cheap flights pulled the beach towel from under their feet, Ramsgate is holding its own, reckon the girls. This despite being in Thanet, one of England's most deprived regions. 'It's got a buzz,' says Brown. 'The pubs are busy, even in winter. It's vibrant, there are always bands on.' The g-word inevitably rears its head. 'It's gentrifying,' says communications officer Natalie McAleer, who moved here from the capital. 'There weren't many London-type places a couple of years ago but now there are more wine bars, more coffee shops. I think it's following in the footsteps of Margate, which is basically Shoreditch-on-Sea.' Ramsgate's liberal London blow-ins make for odd bedfellows in a region that has traditionally shown strong support for Nigel Farage's party du jour. The town's dichotomous demographic was brought into sharp focus in May's local elections, which saw Reform take the largest share of votes – followed by the Greens. It's two-party politics, but not as we know it. One certified vote winner would be to reinstate the Ramsgate to Dunkirk ferry. 'We used to do 'flasher trips' to France, didn't we girls?' says Mrs C, to a hum of approval. 'You'd get on for a quid, flash your passport, have a disco and a smorgasbord, then stock up on duty-free and sail home. We didn't even get off in Dunkirk. Happy days. They need to bring the ferry back.' That's the plan, only attempts by Thanet district council (rated 1.8 out of 5 on Google) to entice a new operator have hitherto failed. The region's nascent wind industry has at least got going, bringing jobs to a region where the once-thriving fishing industry clings on like a limpet. Doing my bit for the local economy, I head across the road to Pete's Fish Factory, which lures me in with the smell of deep-fried delights. I order cod and chips to eat near the marina. Mick Huggett has the same idea. 'I'm here on a beano,' the Londoner tells me. A beano, for the uninitiated, is a traditional Cockney daytrip to the seaside, usually involving pub visits and sunburn. Watch the Jolly Boys' Outing episode of Only Fools and Horses and you'll get the gist. 'We got off the coach at midday and were straight in the pub. We've been on it since. It's nice to get out of bloody London,' says Huggett, a technical services coordinator. 'We've done Brighton a few times, Margate, too. I'm pleasantly surprised by Ramsgate. People said it was a bit rundown, but it's lovely.' It's hard to disagree as I walk around town, which Van Gogh wrote fondly of during his brief stint here as a teacher. Ramsgate's Victorian architecture is charming. I lose myself down narrow lanes, lingering outside antique shops and art galleries, and pretty pubs like the Horse and Groom, where leather-clad punks share space with pensioners wearing Reform badges. Acting on an earlier recommendation from McAleer, I walk uphill, following the giant Victorian arches overlooking the marina to Seabird, one of her favourite bars. I'm passed three times along the way by a bloke driving a flatbed Transit, with branches in the back, techno on the stereo and a beer in his hand. But that's Ramsgate. 'You could walk down the street wearing a bin bag on your head and nobody would bat an eyelid,' says Seabird's manager Ellie Dobson, while a flat-capped DJ spins funk. Seabird, which sells 'killer cocktails' and small plates, is new to Ramsgate and a welcome step change from the raucous old town. 'Everything is made here,' coos Dobson, tickling my palate with fragrant potions which slip down with notes of fresh mint and coriander. Seabird's owners Damian Williams and Stuart Langley are hospitality veterans from London, which is not a dirty word in here. 'There are two types of DFLs,' Dobson explains. 'You've got your down-from-Londons and your d***s-from-Londons.' Her colleague Frankie Alphonso belongs to the former camp, but encountered plenty of the latter in nearby Margate, where she moved on an impulse, but never felt accepted by the cliquey 'cool kids'. She feels more at home in Ramsgate, where she lives now. I'm minded of a sense of belonging later, walking past the Red Lion, where a band covers Creep by Radiohead. 'I'm a weirdoooooo, what the hell am I doing here?' the singer wails. He's in good company. Plenty of weirdos in Ramsgate, thank heavens.
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
‘You don't build a medieval manor house with a great hall to sit on your own'
Charlie Courtenay, 19th Earl of Devon, has been having a clear-out. At his home, Powderham Castle near Exeter, 'up in the attics and roofs there's what we refer to as the 'wild archives',' he says, 'just a bunch of stuff that we never really get to'. Now the wild archives are no more. Next week Dreweatts auctioneers will sell 209 pieces from the Powderham attics, as well as 172 lots from the Earl of Yarborough's Brocklesby Park in Lincolnshire. It isn't a downsizing sale; more of a consolidation. 'Powderham spends a lot of its time being used for public events, and every time you do that you're lifting and shifting, so it's not nearly as fully furnished as it once was,' says Lord Devon. The castle is open six days a week, nine months of the year, with a vibrant events calendar. This summer it will host Duran Duran as well as comedian Frank Skinner, food festivals and Shakespearean productions. This is exactly what it ought to be doing, says Lord Devon. 'You don't build a medieval manor house with a great hall to sit on your own and not see people. You build it for the purpose of entertaining and bringing people together. I'm strongly of the view that Powderham does today what Sir Philip Courtenay intended to do when he built it in the 1390s.' The auction is an eclectic mix. Lots range from a pocket telescope (est. £80-120) to a George VI coronation chair (est. £300-500), a pair of three-metre tall mahogany and parcel-gilt cabinets (est. £5,000-10,000), and a pair of rare Chinese imperial Qiangjin and Cloisonné sedan chair poles (est. £8,000-12,000). Lord Devon has long had 'a bit of heartburn around sales'. In August, it will be a decade since he succeeded his father to both the earldom and Powderham, and the same week he will turn 50. With this has come a realisation. 'It's very easy to sit there and do nothing, and hold on to everything like the dragon in Lord of the Rings,' he says. 'But that's not creative. I've done a lot of work retaining stuff and it's time to get my arms around the collection and responsibly manage it. That requires letting some stuff go to make room – and hopefully raise some funds to assist in our programme of works.' Lord Devon's father Hugh was born in the state bed at Powderham in May 1942, on the night the Luftwaffe bombed Exeter. Since it was wartime, no beacons were lit nor cannons fired in recognition of his arrival, and his mother Venetia was heard to remark: 'poor little heir. No church bells. No fireworks.' Post-war, Venetia and her husband Christopher Courtenay, 17th Earl of Devon, poured all of their efforts into Powderham. First, they established a finishing school, before in 1960 the house opened to the public, with Powderham's 116-year-old tortoise Timothy in tow with a label attached that read: 'My name is Timothy. I am very old. Please do not pick me up.' 'They were very enterprising,' says Lord Devon of his grandparents. 'I often think that I run their business, which my dad did a great job developing.' The Devons were totally wedded to their titular county. Christopher never once spoke in the House of Lords in his 63 years as a member, nor did he partake in much of aristocratic society – possibly since his 1939 marriage to Venetia had been preceded by scandal. The pair had met when Christopher was still at prep school, and Venetia was the young bride of his second cousin, Mark Pepys, 6th Earl of Cottenham. After Venetia attended Christopher's coming-of-age in July 1937, the pair fell in love, and when Mark Cottenham sought a divorce from Venetia, he cited Christopher as a co-respondent. Following both this, and his experiences in North Africa – where he was shot through his helmet on Christmas Day – Christopher retreated to Devon with what would likely be diagnosed now as PTSD. He pursued a policy of never opening any of his post and, as his stepdaughter Lady Rose Pepys remembered, 'set about becoming an old man,' in his 30s. Finances were tight. By the time Christopher succeeded his father the Reverend Frederick Courtenay, 16th Earl of Devon, in June 1935, there had been a succession of deaths meaning that Powderham came with triple death duties. The Devons' estate, which had been over 53,000 acres in the 1880s, was severely reduced. Today, it is just 3,500 acres. The Courtenays' legacy is ancient: they were founding members of the Order of the Garter; fought at Poitiers, Agincourt and Bosworth; and had William of Orange to dinner on the first night of the Glorious Revolution. Lord Devon is the 19th earl dating from the fifth creation in 1553, but his ancestors have been earls of Devon, one way or another, since the 1140s. When both his father and aunt Lady Kate Watney died within two months of one another in 2015, Lord Devon became not only head of the family but also 'the authority,' he says. 'I was always the one asking the history questions and I thought, 'there's no one I can go to to tell me whether that's right or wrong'. That was a big loss.' He is also almost the last of the line, only his 15-year-old son Jack, Lord Courtenay, is in line to succeed him. 'Despite being a very long-established title, the earldom of Devon is a very weedy one.' He feels strongly about his role, and was elected to the House of Lords as a cross-bencher in 2018, becoming the most visible Lord Devon for several generations. 'I had a real interest in what the earldom meant and it wasn't until I got into the Lords and started offering some of the stories in the context of providing perspective to our legislative process that I realised there aren't many of us who are feudal earls with that sort of continuity,' he says. He believes that part of being a hereditary peer is to have a role in the Lords, though when the remaining hereditaries exit the upper chamber, he will remain a 'flag-waver' for Devon. 'I am fortunate to live in and run a business in the county of which I am the earl,' he says. 'We call Powderham 'the home of Devon'. Just because I'm not able to contribute to the legislative process, there's still that ability to provide a sense of perspective for the country – and a sense of identity for the region.'
