Fifty-odd years ago Devizes was our stopping point on camping holiday trips to the West Country – only because it had public toilets. I think I had a flash of recognition as the bus came to an open green; for a moment I felt myself raising my sleepy nine-year-old head from the back seat of the Renault 4 to see where we were.

The bus from Swindon passed through Avebury, so from the upper deck I had a good view of the ripples of stones. Devizes itself – in 2024 rather than in a mist of childhood impressions – is handsome and a bit shabby. Time is nibbling away at its soft stone and the modern world is taking great bites out of it.

I am currently listening to a reading of ‘Cranford” on the radio; I had forgotten how delightfully gentle and kindly its tone is. Anyway, the hotel here has a wonderful extension at the back – a kind of Georgian assembly room – which immediately made me think of Cranford’s decaying assembly room, built on the coaching inn, where Signor Brunoni performs his magic show. (And where the old Cranford ladies momentarily relive past balls and assemblies as they re-enter it for the first time in decades.)

(“Providential Dolphin”? Some kind of masonic lodge . . . but “Providential Dolphin”!!)*

It’s intriguing to travel in parts of the country that I’m unacquainted with. To encounter the change in accent, geography, vernacular architecture. Also to find myself in unfamiliar territory: how are the trains formed, where is the bus station, how friendly are the natives? (The answer is generally “very”.) And also to discover the levelling-out similarities from one end of the country to the other.

Things to remember:

• Discovery of fossilised skull of Taung Child (Australopithecus africanus) in South Africa in 1924 proposed as the “missing link” between apes and humans.
• The (misleading) idea that humans developed bigger brains before becoming bipedal held sway until the 1960s.
• All dates and divisions are very open to revision with new information and theories, but here goes:
• Last common ancestor 7-4 million years ago.
• 4-2 million years ago Australopithecus africanus (Lucy, found in the Rift Valley, with 40% of her skeleton).
• 2m – 300,000 years ago modern humans developed. Homo habilis.
• Homo erectus, 2m years ago, bipedal, bigger brain. Survived till ca 40,000 years ago. Did they have hunting and fire?
• Palaeontologists have lots of bones that look different, but hard to say if they come from different species.
• Homo heidelbergensis in UK 50,000 years ago? Ice Age, so land bridge to continental Europe.
• Pits of bones found in caves in Atapuerca, Spain. Cannibalism?
• Ca 35,000 years ago Neanderthals died out. Did they have language and art?
• Denisovans discovered in 2010 in China, but no skulls yet.
• We were “us” 200,000-300,000 years ago and migrated from Aftica.
• Indigenous Australians (arrived from SE Asia 50-65,000 years ago during last interglacial) have lots of Denisovan but no Neanderthal.
• End of last Ice Age 12,000-11,000 years ago.

* Later I saw an inn in Devizes called the Dolphin.