I know you thought I’d abandoned you all in the depths of Cornwall but no! There is still more to reveal, it is just that the job I must not mention has kept me busy for the past few days. We move sites again and are now (well not now this minute obviously but we were when I wrote this) just outside Looe, I bet you never even noticed, did you? The journey was uneventful and with the aid of our special caravan sat-nav, we miss the roads that the instructions warn us to avoid. Once pitched, we set off for a supermarket near us. We have told the sat-nav we are now a car, so it takes us up the shortcut. This is clearly the no-go road for caravans as our wing-mirrors are touching the hedges on either side. There are occasional passing places should something be coming the other way, which inevitably it does. Heading up hill towards us is a jeep pulling a large trailer that is wider that the car. We know the drill, give way to things coming up hill, especially when they are bigger than you. All this narrow roads lark is a doddle to us anyway, we are used to it and we go to reverse. Behind us is another car that clearly needs to reverse first. By this time, there is a car behind the trailer too. No one is moving. Eventually, the car behind us begins to go backwards, into the hedge, she drives forward again (I hate to admit it was a female driver). Backwards a couple of yards, into the hedge again, forwards a yard, she repeats this numerous times. The jeep driver and I are exchanging ‘good grief’ gestures. In all she is going to need to go back 200 or 300 yards, we could be here all day. In the end my travelling companion gets out and offers to drive the car for her. She insists she can do this. It is not clear on what experience she is basing this claim. She thinks the car with the trailer should be reversing instead. Granted he was nearer to a passing place but trailers do make reversing difficult. To be fair, it isn’t clear why he is on this road (and I use the word advisedly) in the first place. Eventually, the inept reverser manages to travel backwards sufficiently to tuck into a passing place. After all this, once back in the van we decide to stay there watching Simona Halep slaughter Serena Williams in the Wimbledon final, followed by an incredibly close and lengthy men’s doubles.

Meanwhile, I am preparing for a family history tour tomorrow by revisiting some of my southeast Cornish ancestral lines. Most of these branchlets of my family tree have been lying dormant for forty years, a long while B.C (before computers – or before home computers at any rate). Time to take them out, dust them off and revisit them. A quick look at what is now online, including the super-useful Cornwall Online Parish Clerk’s website, suggests that I can potentially add several new ancestors. It will need checking out in the original records when I can get to the soon-to-be-opened new Cornwall Records Office but it looks like my 11x great grandfather was one Henry Speare of Lezant, who would have been born about 1515. If this stands up to scrutiny, he will be the earliest ancestor on my tree. It is likely that he was born about thirty years before my previous earliest ancestor (also an 11x great grandfather) William Elford. Coincidentally, they are both ancestors of my great grandmother Fanny Thomasine Bishop.