Devon village goes on a pub crawl

Press, 27 May 1978, Page 15

Devon village goes on a pub crawl

By

GEORGE SHORT,

of NZPA-Reuter

Motorists driving through the small country town of Torrington, England. the other day were astonished to see a column of men and women hurrying along in the rain on their hands and knees, while the police held traffic to let them cross the streets.

It was part of a series of eccentric local events, some new and some dating back centuries,, which are staged in this comparatively remote pocket of countryside to mark the month of May. ‘•lt has been a hard winter,” explained one local resident in this town of 2700 among the hills of North Devonshire, in south-west England. People have been dancing around maypoles in the streets, causing alarm among crowds with homer tp f>re-and-noise gadgets, drinking gallons of i <r and strong locallybrewed cider, and doing other things.

The surprised motorists learned from the local police that the people on hands and knees were taking part in a “pub crawl”, ignoring the usual unsettled weather. A pub crawl in English jargon means an outing in

which a group of friends go from pub to pub, drinking. But in Torrington — celebrating the end of a winter in which deep snowdrifts and blizzards killed thousands of sheep and cattle — the idea was taken literally. Some 30 men and women entered a race in which they crawled one mile through the town, stopping for half a pint of beer at each of the 12 pubs.

A lot dropped out of the contest, but the male winner, Timothy Worrall, aged 23, completed the course in 35 minutes, 10 minutes ahead of the female winner, 28-year-old Jane Heard.

Small home-made pads were allowed for hands and knees, but Mr Worrall was treated in hospital for cuts.

The town competed with neighbouring villages in a strange contest in which people ate piles of pickled onions.

Torrington’s chief representative, Mr Eric (Tubby) Colewill, a thin, middleaged man, claimed that distractions from spectators prevented him eating more than 53 pickled onions in 10 minutes.

The winner, Cass Retter, of Langtree Village, ate 87 onions in 13 minutes 14 seconds, and claimed a world record. On the more solemn side of May fair time, children went through an ancient ceremony of

crowning a May queen with a crown of flowers and dancing around her throne at the seat of a tall maypole, originally a fertility rite objected to by religious puritans in Tudor England. Extra squads of police moved into Torrington for the carnival that followed, because pubs are open all day during fair time — in contrast to England's usual strict legal limits — and carnivals tend to .be boisterous.

This year the star attraction among the floraldecked floats dragged through the streets was a pair of home-made fire engines, manned by scores of “firemen” who chased a “chef” through screaming crowds, trying to douse his blazing frying pan.

They burnt a makeshift wooden house in the town’s ancient square, worrying the authorities, and scattering crowds while the “firemen” hurled buckets of water at each

other and pumped hose jets at the spectators. Dozens of police Closed in but took no action, despite their getting wet. A few yards away, farmhands were throwing horse manure frontjJieir float, and a man dressed as a woman solemnly whipped a colleague chained to a bed.

The police say they always try to keep a “low profile” during the peculiar local events staged in the towns and villages in North Devon.

But they admit they often get nervous. On a previous occasion, a local bank manager made a bad error. He left his bank’s doors open when he came out to smile at the locals who were acting the part of seventeenth-century soldiers during a carnival. The “soldiers” brushed him aside, ran a huge ancient cannon into his bank, and began firing blank shot. The manager nervously beckoned to the

police as orange flashes, bangs, whoops, and smoke came from inside his bank. No money was taken. The seventeenth-century “soldiers” were acting out a part of Torrington’s real-life history. The town was the site of the last major battle of the English Civil War in 1645, when Oliver Cromwell was among the Parliamentarian leaders who came there with an army to defeat Lord Hopton and the remnants of the Royalist forces.

A battle was fought in the streets and the church tower was blown up, killing all 200 Royalist prisoners who had been locked up there. The Royalists had previously used the tower as a store for gunpowder, and the Parliamentarians claimed the explosion was an accident. Consequently, the town has a fourteenth-century church with a "new” sev-enteenth-century spire.