A quarter of the way along this route lies Aveton Gifford, a small village of around 500 inhabitants, served by a grocery shop - open five and a half days a week, an Anglican church and two pubs. One of the pubs, The Taverners, changes hands faster than its handful of customers can keep track of. The other, The Fisherman's Rest, has been managed by Jim Povey for five years.

"To watch him now, stooped over
his bench, slowly paring logs down
into kindling, he betrays a sadness
that this part of his life is over."

That morning, like any other, Jim Povey was performing the tasks necessary of a pub landlord.  There were guests wanting breakfast, ale barrels to be checked, firewood to be chopped and tables to polish.
A confirmed workaholic, Jim has difficulty tearing himself away from the pub on his days off.  Indeed, to his customers, he and the pub are inseperable. Many locals express their fondness for him even before the first drink of the evening; his relaxed and mischevious personality proving magnetic to many female parishioners. This makes his wife Mary, edgy.

Jim is a proud man, the father of identical twin boys, Adam and Wayne, now 21. Still a tall and vigorous figure, he is nonetheless showing signs of the winding down process of age. He wears half-moon glasses as casually as he can. Although he loves his pub and life in the village, he spends hours reminiscing over a time when he had less responsibilities; was more prosperous.
In the 1970s, Jim was partner in a coal delivery firm with his brother and father. He used to make sums of money that he says he cannot imagine now. His life was all fast cars and comical drunken capers until the business dissolved. To watch him now, spending the time between lunch and evening opening hours, stooped over his bench, slowly paring logs down into kindling, he betrays a sadness that this part of his life is over.

At lunchtime, that December 5th, Phil, an ex-policeman sat silently in the bar. He is a drawn, emaciated sketch of the rotund, obnoxiously loud man he was just months previously, before his wife left him. Rarely eating, and drinking soda water religiously - for which the bar staff do not charge him - Phil has had to buy two new sets of clothes as his weight plummeted. Several natives of the village returning for Christmas wondered discreetly whether he was suffering from cancer.
Suddenly, a customer who had been eating in the restaurant adjoining the bar, burst in. He told Jim that there had been a terrible accident on the road outside the pub and to call an ambulance.
A man had lost control of his bike, hit the roadside barrier and been thrown into the air. He lay on his side, motionless. Phil removed his helmet and checked for a pulse. When Jim came outside, Phil mimed a slit throat, as he had done in a handful of similar situations during his police career.
Graham Fletcher had died instantly. In the twenty minutes it took the ambulance to arrive, several local children had gathered around the corpse.

"The river Avon was cloaked
in a thick,crawling mist that
swallowed up the light
of the street lamps."

Two weeks later, after-hours in the pub, Jim recounted the incident to Jonathan, a young barman who had returned from college to work over the Christmas holiday.
"I 'ent never seen someone dead before. It was weird, like as if he was just lyin' on his side, asleep."
Outside, the clear frosty weather had given way to a milder, interminable drizzle. The river Avon, which runs past the pub at the end of the village, was cloaked in a thick, crawling mist that swallowed up the light of the street lamps.
Jonathan and Jim heard a noise from the end of the restaurant, as if someone was trying to get in. The staff of two hastily finished their late drinks, neither volunteering to investigate the noise. They locked up, sticking together as they left by the back door.

Christmas and New Year celebrations at the Fisherman's Rest were a sad affair. One of the highlights came when a young woman, enjoying her last blow-out before a long-procrastinated stint in a rehabilitation clinic, let everyone know just what she thought of them. Her parents had asked the bar staff not to serve her any alcohol, "but its Christmas," she kept saying, "Christmas for fuck's sake."
Profits were down considerably from the year before. When the disco was turned off to listen to Big Ben's new year chimes, someone had tampered with the radio, so the clientele of the pub greeted 1999 with static. When all the party poppers had been popped, and the silly string sprayed, some of the drunken parishioners threw the empty cans at each other. When this palled, talk turned to the death on the road, as it had so often during Christmas.
The last customer fell out of the front door at 2.30am on January 1st 1999.

A month on since the accident, bouquets of flowers still sit by the side of the road. Each day they are blown over by the wind or by the rushing air of passing lorries, and each day they are stood up again. Several times, visitors to the Fisherman's Rest have reported seeing a figure there, grieving.

Two weeks into the new year, Jim Povey heard that the pub was to be sold. He always knew that this might happen, but it seemed more unlikely as the pub stayed on the market year after year. The owner's high asking price had finally been met, and Jim's spell as landlord of the Fisherman's would soon be over.
"They says they wants to keep me on, but cut down my hours and pay me an hourly rate. I can't be no glorified barman, not after what I've done for this place; what this place's been to me."
The pub is his life. When asked what he will do with himself he just says "I don't know, I don't know," with that tinge of melancholy fatalism that is common amongst people here.

There were two great losses in the village this Christmas.

    Jim enjoys a drink on New Year's Eve