Competition | 25 June 2011

In Competition No. 2701 you were invited to take the opening line of ‘Adlestrop’, substitute a location of your choice, and continue for up to a further 15 lines.

The result of a brief, unscheduled stop at a Cotswold station just before the first world war, ‘Adlestrop’ has spawned many imitators. Jimmie Pearse’s fine parody, ‘Willesden Gree’, prompted me to set the comp — ‘We sat in silence, face to face/ (For that is what the British do),/ While over all the air, apace,/ Stole twilight scents of North-West Two.’) — and for especially devoted fans there is an entire anthology, Adlestrop Revisited edited by Anne Harvey, ‘inspired by Edward Thomas’s poem’.

Not surprisingly, then, it was a popular assignment. Commiserations to unlucky losers Noel Petty, Brian Murdoch, Bernadette Evans, Frederick Robinson, Bill Greenwell and John Beaton, and congratulations, for the second week in a row, to Gerard Benson, who nets the bonus fiver. His fellow winners, printed below, pocket £30 each.

Yes, I remember Odelstrap ─
A simple country railway halt
With wild flowers and singing birds
Unless my memory’s at fault.

Or was it, rather, Eidelestrip?
(That still seems wrong.) It was quite hot.
We stopped there once. I’m sure of that.
I think about it quite a lot.

Some fellow had a dreadful cough,
While we just sat in Ogglestrup.
I was quite moved, with all those birds
And everything. It cheered me up.

I won’t forget that sudden stop
And how I felt in Applesprot.
I’m haunted by those minutes spent
In, now I’ve got it! No I’ve not.
Gerard Benson

Yes, I remember Melbury Osmond,
For the wordcraft that could dub
That fair village ‘Melbury Osmond’
Also gave us Melbury Bubb.

Sterling coiners they, who minted
Minterne Magna free of dross,
Sixpenny Handley, Fontmell Parma,
Frome St Quintin, Harman’s Cross.

Dorset hamlets tagged in trophees
That have long withstood time’s test:
Sandford Orcas, Bishop’s Caundle,
Chaldon Herring, Chaldon West.