Broadway, Baskervilles and Goodbye to the Exe

Well, our hols are more or less over. We are en route to God's own county (Yorkshire!) but have broken the journey in half, overnighting in Broadway in the Cotswolds, half hour from the M5 motorway and the final two hour stretch home tomorrow.

Broadway is a long Cotswolds village, peppered with mansions and listed sandstones. James Martin has an old huge gastro pub here. It's an affluent place but we still found four charity shops, from which I sadly garnered nowt.

We stayed here one Winter years ago, twinkling with Christmas lights and decidedly quiet, where we visited Snowshill house.

Not so today. It's rammed to the Grade 1 rafters with tourists: big coaches of Japanese folks on a grand tour and fleets of slick black SUV's housing retired couples in loafers and pastel pullovers draped over svelte shoulders. The difference is startling. It's a honeypot of dosh.

Being retirees ourselves we have retired to our room in an old, modest, crooked inn, kaput and ready for our evening grub at 7pm. Hopefully we'll have scoffed and retired once more before the football starts on the pub telly when England take on Holland and things get tense.

In our cozy room is this old print hung on the wall. It immediately reminded me of one of my favourite Hammer horrors, the Hound of the Baskervilles and the opening scenes, where the jilted Baron, hell-bent on revenge, screams that immortal line,

'Release the hounds!'

Sherlock Holmes aka Peter Cushing eventually solves the case but only in the nick of time, the current Baron coming frighteningly close to the sulphurous maw of the Hell Hound.

It was a true shocker when I was a kid and only shown post-watershed after 9pm. These days I've watched it mid-afternoon on the telly!

I was always surprised there wasn't more merchandising made of the story. I can't recall any games, jigsaws or toys at all. It would have made a great Aurora model, especially the glow-in-the-dark feature, perfect for the beast's fiery jaws.

Maybe Sherlock Holmes licences were difficult for model and toy companies to acquire?

I do recall thinking about the Baskerville curse as we drove through Devon's darkling lands between the Exe and the Dart and in particular heeding the warning at its heart

'to forbear from crossing the moor in those dark hours when the powers of evil are exalted.'

Do you have a hellish hound near you?