Episode 48 - Devon Knows

📘 More Than Words – Epilogue: The Bit After The End 📘A retired man, a spreadsheet, an Apple Watch with separation anxiety, and 2,876km of Britain. One year later, the project is complete — Skaw to St Agnes, Shetland to Scilly, B‑roads to fjords, drainage ditches to dynasties. And because I’ve never once resisted unnecessary ceremony, the finale comes with numbers, awards, and a spreadsheet that is still open, blinking, waiting, refusing to believe it’s over.Featuring:📊 The Numbers — 2,876km, 346 days, 17 rest days the spreadsheet took personally🎙️ The Podcast — global listeners, accidental Kazakhstan outreach🏆 The Awards — Mousehole supremacy, Virgin Gorda glory, treadmill misery, Telford domination💪 The Injuries — golf balls, Quooker taps, and the shoulder that resigned mid‑sleep🇬🇧 The Discoveries — thundersnow, sambuca birdies, vinegar factories, pebble labyrinth ethics A year of history, chaos, weather crimes, accidental injuries, heroic lifeboat crews, hermits, smugglers, cannibals, engineers, saints, and settlements that absolutely should not be as interesting as they turned out to be. Britain hid the good stuff in the weird places. We found it.

🏁 More Than Words – Stage 52: The End of the Affair 🏁A whole year. Fifty‑two stages. 2,876km. From Shetland’s sideways wind to Cornwall’s granite theatre — and somehow the final kilometres were completed on a Norwegian mountaintop while my virtual self was bouncing across the Atlantic on a Royal Mail ferry. Geography, at this point, simply gave up and let the vibes drive.Featuring:🧊 Lysefjord RIB — survival onesie, 40 knots, questionable spine decisions🚡 Loen Skylift — 1,011m straight up in a glass conservatory on a zip wire🛥️ Scillonian III — a Royal Mail ferry with “buoyant enthusiasm”🐟 Mousehole — charm, pilchards, and a Spanish revenge tour🎨 Lamorna — artists, hermits, and a cove with main‑character energy🔦 Tater Du — a lighthouse that looks like a cliff‑edge utility cupboard📡 Porthcurno — a beach hut that accidentally became the Pentagon🪨 Carn Barges — granite older than most continents🌊 St Agnes — final landfall, final chapter, final kilometreTwelve months of walking, writing, swearing at weather apps, crossing seas, climbing ridges, chasing mileage, and occasionally declaring small boats to be geological features. And now: the spreadsheet is complete, the Apple Watch has stopped vibrating like an anxious bee, and the UK extremes expedition is officially closed.One more thing: a bonus post drops next week — a final curtain call for the whole project.

🌊 More Than Words – Stage 51: Rock, Paper, Scillies 🌊Penultimate episode: chaotic weather, 900‑ft moor climbs, Victorian gun‑mishaps, golf swing existentialism, and a 12‑pub farewell tour that dissolved my coherence somewhere around pub ten. Then Cornwall goes full granite‑theatre: witches, smugglers, cliff‑edge legends, and the Atlantic throwing mood swings at the map.Featuring:🌦️ Randomised climate — Met Office interns hitting “shuffle”⛰️ Ashway Cross — Victorian MP, accidental shooting, gothic skyline🍻 12 Pubs of Summer — colleagues, nostalgia, diminishing coherence🧙 Crows‑an‑Wra — “witch’s cross,” sacred stones, and a man born here who died in the Great Fire of London⚖️ Escalls — medieval lawyer/pirate/menace promoted repeatedly🏰 Mayon & St Aubyns — a dynasty collecting Cornwall like limited‑edition merch🌊 Sennen — surf, shipwrecks, RNLI heroics, and a smuggling feud with operatic consequences📍 Land’s End — granite cliffs, Longships lighthouse, and 10,000 years of “yep, that’s the edge”💡 Longships Light — storms so big they hide the lighthouse🪨 Penwith — stone circles, hillforts, and Atlantic‑powered mood swings🏡 Trevescan & Trethewey — quiet hamlets doing ancient‑waypoint energy🏴‍☠️ Penzance - actual pirates, operatic pirates, and copyright pirates Cornwall goes cinematic here — witches, cliffs, smugglers, granite, storms, shipwrecks, dynasties, and a headland performing “the end of England” with full theatrical commitment. One episode left.

⛳ More Than Words – Episode 50: Fifty Shades of Clay ⛳A milestone stage, celebrated in the only appropriate way: four rounds of golf, a shoulder that sounds like bubble‑wrap, hailstones in June, and a Strava art attempt that produced “Britain, but slightly melted.” Episode 50 didn’t so much arrive as throw weather, admin chaos, and cartography at me.Featuring:⛳ Seniors League — Ryder Cup energy, Saga ambience🌨️ June hail — British weather firing ice at golfers for sport🗺️ Strava Britain — recognisable… if you squint and accept that Scotland has melted🏘️ Mitchell — tiny village, huge political scandal🌬️ Carland Cross — wind farm, roundabout, 10,000 years of archaeology🐾 Zelah — bypassed twice, still judging everyone⛏️ Redruth — copper, tin, and gaslight invented in a terraced house🔥 Camborne — the world’s first steam vehicle, destroyed by Christmas dinner🌊 Hayle — rival foundries conducting a Cold War across an estuary🏡 Catchall — Cornwall stops bothering with metaphorIt's golf, hail, Strava chaos, political absurdity, industrial swagger, and Cornish place‑names that sound like someone dropped a Scrabble bag. A big, messy, brilliant milestone.

⛰️ More Than Words – Episode 49: Moor Than Meets The Eye ⛰️From supplement‑induced self‑respect to Cornwall emptying its entire historical junk drawer onto the route, this episode escalates like a county that’s lost the run of itself. Smugglers, Templars, panthers, hermits, lepers, ghost birds, diva stone — Cornwall is in full performance mode.Featuring:💊 Supplement shame — three bottles, a pill organiser, and a man crossing a line🍺 Walk‑pub combo — the only fitness plan that’s actually sustainable🪨 Polyphant stone — geological Mariah Carey: stunning indoors, tantrums outdoors🚨 Plusha Junction — Cornwall’s least cheerful landmark🤼 Fivelanes wrestling — 2,000 years of folding people into the landscape⛪ Wesley Cottage — Methodism, tiny rooms, and 18th‑century electrification🏴‍☠️ Jamaica Inn — smuggling, du Maurier, and paranormal evenings with a two‑course meal🐾 Beast of Bodmin — panther? rug fragment? government shrug emoji⚔️ Temple Templars — Cornish Gretna Green with bonus medieval banking🪨 Callywith Cross — medieval landmark repeatedly misplaced and reassembled⛪ Bodmin — saints, rebellions, plague, and a parish church that looks like it ate all the othersCornwall goes maximalist here — folklore, chaos, granite, ghosts, smugglers, and a big‑cat investigation that reads like a government department trying not to make eye contact. A stage that never stops throwing curveballs.

🎸More Than Words – Stage 48: Devon Knows 🎸From solo Pixies gigs (middle‑aged edition) to golf rounds improved by sambuca, then straight into Devon — where castles brood, ghosts commute, and folklore behaves like it’s on a zero‑hours contract.Featuring:🎧 Pixies at 40 — audience: mortgages, back pain; Debaser still unhinged🍾 Sambuca golf — marginal gains via Italian firewater ⛪ Cheriton Bishop — bishops, Celtic landowners, and a church judging your cushions🏰 Castle Drogo — Britain’s last castle, built entirely in “brooding granite cosplay”👻 Mary Whiddon — murdered bride, haunted house, and bad wedding‑day vibes🕊️ Oxenham white bird — a supernatural death‑omen with a very selective client list🚌 Okehampton Castle — Norman power flex, Tudor downfall, bone‑coach ghost🌉 Meldon Viaduct — Victorian ironwork doing full dramatic‑arch energy❄️ Sourton ice works — Victorian attempt to monetise frost 🥄 Lifton — Alfred the Great, rivers, and the world’s most famous rice puddingIt’s travel with sambuca‑powered golf, medieval melodrama, Victorian frost‑entrepreneurs, bone‑coach ghosts, death‑omen birds, and a castle that thinks it’s in Game of Thrones. Equal parts historic, eccentric, and gloriously Devonian.

🏖️ More Than Words – Episode 47: Devon Sent 🏖️From Spanish siestas so deep they require a full reboot of the operating system to Devon, a county so pleased with itself it named a geological period after its own vibe. This episode is sunshine, pork, ancient geology, Tudor chaos, Canadian chapels in fields, and a dog digging up Victorian murder evidence like it’s auditioning for Time Team: Pets Edition.Featuring:🍋 Almoradí’s grid — earthquake‑proof town planning and a market longer than most relationships🍤 Menu del Día — Spain’s “eat until horizontal” lunch philosophy🧵 Honiton lace — royal wedding chic made by 5,000 women who deserved hazard pay🔥 Hot Pennies Day — medieval tradition of throwing heated coins at people, because Britain🇨🇦 Wolford Chapel — a tiny slice of Ontario hiding in Devon like a polite diplomatic Easter egg⚔️ Fenny Bridges — Tudor rebellion, mercenaries, and a jester who accidentally cancelled a military advance🕳️ Swampy’s tunnel — Britain’s most famous eco‑protester living underground on Frosties🐶 Stanley’s poison bottle — Labrador uncovers Victorian murder artefact; local history loses its mind🏛️ Exeter — Romans, Normans, Luftwaffe, and a cathedral ceiling that refuses to endIt’s travel with Spanish naps, Devonian drama, Tudor bloodshed, eco‑protest tunnels, Canadian micro‑territories, and a dog solving cold cases. Equal parts sunny, surreal, and gloriously Devonian.

🛤️ More Than Words – Stage 46: Life in the Fosse Lane 🛤️From the world’s first powered aircraft to an alpaca facilitating a marriage proposal, via a church that forgot where the village was — because Somerset’s tourism strategy is apparently “Roman roads, Victorian overachievement, and a very confused Church of England.”Featuring: 🫘 Habas fritas: fried broad beans, one cold beer, and the nearest thing to perfection Spain will allow 🐴 The horse guy from Stage 17: back again. Still trotting. Still absolutely fine with all of it 🎺 Hornblotton: named after a Saxon was paid in land for honking at the king. Britain has always been like this ⛪ Hornblotton church: made one catastrophic navigational error and is still styling it out🏛️ Ilchester: where the MP once demolished opponents’ houses. Modern electoral law has thoughts 🍺 Lydford-on-Fosse: the pub that declared independence from the UK, and ran a border checkpoint made of bar mats 🛩️ Chard: first powered aircraft, 1848. The Wright Brothers arrived 55 years later and got all the credit 🦙 Cary Fitzpaine: ten houses, a post box, and an alpaca who helped close a marriage proposal Roman roads, experimental aircraft, rotten boroughs, sovereign pubs, alpaca wedding planners, and a hamlet officially registered as “Part of Huxham Green” because no one could think of anything better. Equal parts Somerset legend, Victorian overachievement, and quietly inexplicable.

🏌️ More Than Words – Episode 45: Grave New World 🏌️From oxygen labs to Roman villas to golf balls committing crimes against architecture — episode 45 is basically British history, Spanish weather, and Enlightenment science all asking to speak to the manager.Featuring:⛳ Boys’ Trip Chaos: one golf shot, two villas, and physics filing a complaint🏛️ Roman Ruins (Par‑5 Edition): Seve meets Time Team🧪 Derry Hill’s Big Reveal: the village where someone casually invented breathing📸 Lacock’s Camera Roll: BBC costume drama energy, and the birthplace of photography🏡 Whitley & Broughton Common: villages politely declining to be interesting🏰 Great Chalfield Manor: medieval grandeur with built‑in peepholes for recreational snooping⛪ Bradford‑on‑Avon: Saxon churches, Roman villas, tithe barns, and a surprise Buddhist monastery🍺 Norton St Philip: a pub that’s been serving ale since before the Black Death📜 Faulkland, Kilmersdon & Holcombe: folklore treated like a competitive sport🍏 Shepton Mallet: Babycham, prisons, and more history than seems strictly necessary⚰️ Cannard’s Grave: a destination that does exactly what it says on the tinIt’s travel with Enlightenment breakthroughs, medieval manors, Roman archaeology, boys‑trip physics, and weather apps improvising like jazz musicians.

More Than Words – 🍬Stage 44: Good Wilt Hunting 🍬From Yorkshire caves discovered by miners who were trying to find lead, to Wiltshire villages collecting eccentricity like Nectar points, episode 44 delivers subterranean drama, prehistoric glow‑ups, dyed pigeons, medieval barns the size of cathedrals, and a man that once invited a horse to tea.Featuring:• 🕳️ Stump Cross Caverns: Victorian “health & safety” = abseil into darkness holding a candle and a prayer• 🍰 Pateley Bridge: home of the world’s oldest sweet shop and afternoon tea capable of defeating a grown adult• 🏰 Hinton Waldrist — birthplace of Henry V’s mum and a Colditz escapee’s final resting place• 📸 T.R. Williams — Victorian 3D pioneer later rediscovered by Brian May because of course he was• 🫀 Buckland — home of a man who had his heart buried separately like medieval cloud storage• 🎨 Faringdon — dyed pigeons, frivolous signs, and a folly built purely out of vibes• 🐴 Lord Berners — the man who invited a horse to tea and meant it• 🏛️ Great Coxwell Barn — a medieval barn so huge it makes cathedrals feel underdressed• 🎓 Shrivenham — where someone is currently writing a thesis on buying tanks• 🌬️ Watchfield — a fog‑landing RAF school with the most perfect name• 🪦 New Zealand — Wiltshire’s most confusing place name• 📜 Bremhill — medieval widow, 15th‑century causeway, and a poet who rewired English literatureIt’s caves, clotted cream, Colditz, coloured pigeons, colossal barns, and countryside that refuses to behave normally. Episode 44: eccentricity with altitude.