An Unearthly Bookshop

We went to Bere Alston today, in search of a second hand bookshop.   Bere Alston is a large village in the middle of the Bere Peninsula, which is an oddity in that it is a sort of fully-retracted peninsula in the middle of a land mass.  It is separated from Cornwall and the rest of Devon by rivers that bend round to make it almost an island.   So Bere Alston has oddly few connections to the outside world, and feels quiet and isolated.   The core of the place is tiny nineteenth century miners cottages, all huddled together around the few shops, and then around the outskirts there are sprawling estates of ugly twentieth century bungalows.

When we arrived,  a small group of children (the girls dressed in oddly timeless long skirts and boots) were cheerfully flying supermarket plastic bags on the end of long strings, like kites.   But this was not the odd part.

( The odd part. )