The road out of Widecombe was a single-lane track, part buried by bristling hedgerows. I was fortunate that the first car to pass pulled up - it’s often the way on remote country lanes. The man at the wheel wore a dog collar and his wife a purple macintosh. Though I’d not seen them earlier, Reverend Gordon had just been giving the service in Widecombe’s church.
Never had I met a finer caricature of a village vicar and his wife. Rev Gordon’s voice was earnest and deep and he peered over his glasses officiously at me. “Now…” he began slowly, not taking his eyes off the rear-view mirror as I got in the car, “Why aren’t you using your legs, young man? You should be walking! Much better for the soul.”
I explained how I was hitchhiking through Britain.
“Well”, he began seriously, “My daughter walked 26…”
“Our daughter, Gordon!” piped Mary angrily from the passenger seat, slapping Gordon’s wrist as he clutched the gear stick.
“Ouuur daughter,” he continued even more earnestly, “walked 26 miles yesterday and is walking another 26 miles today!”
“Very impressive,” I replied.
I discovered Rev Gordon had an immensely dry sense of humour. “Well, if you want to be a writer,” he advised sternly later in the conversation, “There are many genres to choose from. You could write comic strips…or monoliths on Henry VIII. No, that’s been done. Or politics perhaps… Yes, you could write about how wonderful Donald Trump is. You’d sell thousands of copies to his fans, you’d even make some money. You could call it…Trump Tower is Heaven…” He eyed me through the mirror, “Would that be up your street?”
I said it would be right up my street, playing along with the joke.
“Yes…I thought so.”
Nobody said anything for a while. It was the first joke I’ve ever been involved with in which nobody considers laughing.
We drove on and the car revved loudly as it begged in vain to be put in a higher gear. They were on their way to another service which they were late for. I imagined the poor parishioners quivering under Reverend Gordon’s peering gaze as he berated their sinful ways. We turned off the road to the village and I got out on the corner.
I walked for a while down the track before trying to hitch again. After a while, a pickup pulled up with an old farmer at the wheel. I opened the back door to fling my bag in but was startled by a yelp from the front, “Get in the fockin’ front!”
I followed his orders and squeezed in with my rucksack on my lap. “Oh fuck!” he cried, “That’s a big fockin’ bag. Right, let’s get the fuck outta here!” He put his foot down manically and we lurched off up the hill.
His name was Andrew and he was on his way back from a morning’s fencing. His four Jack Russells hopped about in the boot. The work hadn’t taken too long and he informed me satisfactorily how he then went to the pub, stifling a burp as he said so. I’d just walked right past the only pub for miles, the Tavistock Arms, but had decided 11:30 was a little early for a beer.
“What did you drink there?”
“Oh, just one or two pints.” From his driving, I guessed that was a modest understatement.
Andrew knew the lanes well and despite obviously being inebriated somehow I wasn’t the least bit worried. These were his lanes and this is what he did on a Sunday. Whenever a car came the other way he’d jerk suddenly to the left and as bushes whipped the wing mirrors he’d explode loudly, “Get on your own fockin’ side!” followed by a string of other expletives.
About 40 years ago Andrew used to live in Totnes. He grumpily told me, “Now it’s all a bit weird an’ fockin’ hippy.”
“Did you used to live there in your hippy days?” I asked a little tongue in cheek.
“Nope, I never did ‘ave no hippy days, always been sensible, me.” He flung the car over, “Ahhh! Get on your own fockin’ side o’ the road, you TWAT!”
I was heading for Buckfast Abbey and Andrew had offered to take me right there. All I knew about it was its infamous tonic wine, mostly drunk by Scots who become both very drunk and incredibly hyperactive thanks to the copious amounts of caffeine in it. Unsurprisingly, Andrew knew the wine well. He explained how you see lorryloads of it driving off to Scotland. About 90% of it goes up there where usually it causes chaos. “They drink it an’ wanna foight the world,” he said shaking his head. He couldn’t understand the urge to fight but liked the drink occasionally.
“When I do drink it,” he explained proudly, “I drink it in pints. Don’t mess around with no small glasses nor nothin’.”
With that, we pulled into the carpark of the abbey and I got out. “You take care now!” he called out warmly as he swerved off back up the track.
Buckfast Abbey was a beautiful place. The abbey itself was tall and slender, its sand and grey stone receding dramatically into a tower topped with pointed finials. Lush green lawns languished comfortably while herb gardens hid behind yews and lavender beds sweetened the fresh moorland air. There was, I noticed, no sign of the tonic wine and I discovered a little disappointed that it was made in a plant up the road.
Despite the fact that most of the buildings are relatively modern (the abbey was only completed in 1936) the site itself is very old. The first records show a Benedictine abbey opening here in 1018 though some believe there were monks here before that. Like all abbeys in England, it was destroyed by Henry VIII during the Reformation. Despite there being only ten monks in residence at the time, over 1.5 tonnes of treasure were carted away. The land was later used as a mill before a rich industrialist built a large gothic manor on it. In the late 19th century, French Benedictine monks, fleeing their own persecution at home bought the manor, turned it into a monastery and began to rebuild the abbey. They brought their medicinal wine recipe with them and began to produce large quantities to fund the project. To put its age in perspective, the period after the Reformation when Buckfast wasn’t an abbey was only about a third of its thousand-year life.
I cut down through the gardens to the porticoed entrance of the abbey and pushed open the heavy wooden door. It was quiet and cool inside and as I stepped in a steward hurried over to remind me to take my hat off. We got chatting in that hushed whispered tone only spoken at the back of a church and we got along well. His name was Mark and I discovered he had been a keen hitchhiker in his youth. We spoke for a long while about it and he was very glad to see it still practised. He and his friend, who sadly died earlier this year, used to see how far they could hitch in a day, the only rule being they weren’t allowed to tell a single word of truth. He chuckled as he fondly remembered the tales they’d spin.
Mark was keen to help out a fellow hitcher and suddenly had an idea, “Why don’t you knock on the monastery door and ask if you can stay the night?” He explained excitedly how it’s an ancient Benedictine custom to put up travellers, so he was sure they’d give me a room.
He was right. The rule of St Benedict, written in the 5th century by St Benedict of Nursia himself, states that all wayfarers should be treated as Christ himself. I rang the doorbell to the monastery, by an even heavier wooden door, and was greeted by the Guest Master, Brother Daniel. He told me that I could stay in the room for wayfarers named suitably after the patron saint of travel, St Christopher.
His black habit rustled as he led me away around the monastery to a small room at the back. The room was tiled in red terracotta and the walls were whitewashed and bare. There was a wooden desk with a bible, a shower and a toilet but no bed.
A few moments later a little hatch opened and Brother Daniel handed over a tray of food and a big bowl of hot tea. A couple of moments later he passed through a towel and a bottle of shower gel. Then the hatch closed again and I was left on my own.
I took the opportunity to explore the grounds fully, slipping into the pristine private gardens and admiring the flowers that flanked the striped lawns. I was totally alone, all the visitors by now had gone home and besides these bits weren’t open to the public. I crossed a footbridge into the oak forests across the river Dart where, out of sight of the grounds, I slipped off my clothes and lowered myself into the icy brown waters. A sentinel cormorant watched me curiously. I hoped no monks would come round the corner and see my bare behind as I pulled myself onto the bank.
I spent the evening under a field maple by a small stream and as I walked back to my room I saw a monk sitting relaxedly on a bench, smoking a cigarette. His name was Dominic and he’d been a monk for 35 years, “Too long really,” he added with an airy titter.
“Not much has changed though,” he cast his eyes off to the tops of the distant trees, “Not much has changed at all.” He spoke with a soft purr and as I joined him on the bench he reclined gently, resting his head on his elbow.
We spoke about monastic life, its trials and tribulations, the different orders of monasticism and what they practise. “The Cistercians are silent aren’t they?” I asked.
“No,” Dominic purred, “They can speak on the weekends. Ha! But the Trappists, they’re the hardest of them all. They never speak. Les Trappes! Oh Nico I couldn’t!”, he pulled a face at the thought, “I’m a soft Benedictine really.”
There are currently 8 monks from another monastery, Downside, who are temporary residents at Buckfast. I asked why that was, “Ahhh,” he wafted, “It’s complicated, it’s complicated. But mostly numbers. Ah, numbers, Nico! When I joined there were 50 monks here. Now there are only 8. Downside has the same problem you see.”
Monasticism may not play a central role in our society these days but it certainly once did. Its impact on medieval Europe was enormous. Counterintuitively, given how isolated from the world they were, monks were in fact a bastion of progress. They invented all manner of things like spectacles, Champagne, wheeled ploughs and double entry accounting. They were diligent scholars and we owe them many of our great universities like Oxford, Bologna and Paris. Their libraries enabled the Renaissance and monasticism was central to the Reformation too - after being struck by lightning Martin Luther had become an Augustinian monk.
Its impact is still seen today and Max Weber believed the roots of the modern ‘spirit of capitalism’ lay in monasticism and monks’ tenacious labour and accumulation of wealth. ‘Ora et labora’, pray and work, was a Benedictine motto. The more money made, the grander the abbey and the more glory paid to God. The only difference with modern corporations is that the shareholders are God and they have no abbeys to keep.
Buckfast tonic wine is a prime example of this business acumen and it’s exactly how monasteries used to make money before the Reformation. All revenues are fed back into the monastery, hence why the lawns are so pristine. In a roundabout way, the brawling Scots are funding it all.
As a light dusting of rain began to fall I bade Brother Dominic goodnight. “Come back and see us again,” he added with a wave, “We’ll put you up properly then!” I went back to St Christopher’s and spread my sleeping bag out on the floor. I didn’t sleep very well, the floor isn’t the most comfortable place to sleep and I had my alarm set for 6:30 for Matins. In the abbey, I was lulled in and out of semi-slumber by the meditative hum of Gregorian chant. It filled the nave with a riverlike flow enriched by the knowledge that the same chants have been sung for centuries. I noticed one monk yawning, struggling to keep up with the others and I wondered if he, like me, had originally arrived here thinking Buckfast was all about the tonic wine.
Suddenly the Abbot broke the trance with a thunderous reading, jerking both me and the yawning monk to attention. “…and Saul said run me through with my sword or these uncircumcised fellows will come and run me through and abuse me!”
Feeling suddenly very awake and a little shellshocked by the reading, we all shuffled out of the abbey to breakfast. I joined the monks under the low, long arches of the dining room where we ate in silence. Then Brother Daniel guided me back through the narrow stone corridors to my room.
I signed no visitors’ book when I left a few hours later and apart from a goodbye and thank you to the steward, Mark, to whom I owed the whole experience, I found no one to check me out. I left no trace. The terracotta tiles were unmarked and the waters of the Dart refreshed. The monks were in their rooms, hidden away in their desert-like cloister, practising what had been practised since the days of St Benedict himself. I, the wayfarer, had simply skated across the edge and glimpsed in my haste a deep and rich past still flourishing on the edge of Dartmoor.