Village Street
It is believed that the street is the longest village street in England, but this is actually a myth. It was recently measured at around a mile and a half long. The actual longest street is Stewkley, Buckinghamshire. The myth has several possible origins:
- Combe Martin has the Guinness world record for the world's longest street party, this can easily be confused as longest village street (or, indeed, the longest high street).
- Many people measure Combe Martin from one "you are entering Combe Martin" sign to the other. One of the signs is placed an unusually long way from the village (approx 1 mile and one half) which can lead to confusion.
- Combe Martin has several very active pubs. There is a saying in Combe Martin that "At the George and Dragon they talk about my sprained thumb, at the Dolphin they talk about my broken leg." Basically saying is that at the pubs at Combe Martin stories really have a chance to be exaggerated and maybe such is the case here.
Read more about this topic: Combe Martin
Famous quotes containing the words village and/or street:
“A village seems thus, where its able-bodied men are all plowing the ocean together, as a common field. In North Truro the women and girls may sit at their doors, and see where their husbands and brothers are harvesting their mackerel fifteen or twenty miles off, on the sea, with hundreds of white harvest wagons, just as in the country the farmers’ wives sometimes see their husbands working in a distant hillside field. But the sound of no dinner-horn can reach the fisher’s ear.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What are you now? If we could touch one another,
if these our separate entities could come to grips,
clenched like a Chinese puzzle . . . yesterday
I stood in a crowded street that was live with people,
and no one spoke a word, and the morning shone.
Everyone silent, moving. . . . Take my hand. Speak to me.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)