As Britain marks the centenary of explorer Captain Scott's arrival at the South Pole, BRIAN PEDLEY visits the rejuvenated maritime heritage of his native city

I MAY be biased but I believe my home city of Plymouth has some of Great Britain's most spectacular panoramas along its waterfront.

The grandest of these is occupied by one-time local and polar explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott.

His bronze figure, crowned by a winged angel, looks out from the high redoubt of Mount Wise on to the Hamoaze, the shimmering expanse of water where the Rivers Lynher and Tamar meet Europe's greatest natural harbour, Plymouth Sound.

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Scott hoisted the Union Flag at the South Pole, with his companions Evans, Wilson, Bowers and Oates, 100 years ago on January 17, 1912.

On the return journey all five perished. Unveiled in 1925, Plymouth's National Scott Memorial looks appropriately due south towards the Antarctic, more than 9,500 miles away. For me, Scott, clad in his full polar rig, was always a towering presence.

I remember being forced to run up the gruelling green slopes towards the statue, on bitingly cold January days, as part of school football training.

Today I was relieved just to stand and take in the sheer splendour of the setting.

Scott, who trained as a Naval officer at nearby Dartmouth, is one of a succession of explorers and seafarers to have sailed out of Plymouth Sound.

Notable fellow shipmen include Sir Francis Drake, the Mayflower Pilgrims, Captain Cook and, more recently, the forces who liberated the Falkland Islands in 1982.

A century on from his death, Scott of the Antarctic would be proud of his reborn, regenerated maritime city.

As a sailor he would have been familiar with the Royal William Victualling Yard, the complex of stately Georgian-style buildings that occupies its own 15-acre peninsula, at the entrance to the historic Plymouth Sound.

Completed in the reign of The Sailor King, William IV, the yard was butcher, baker, brewer and grocer to Britannia's Navy before falling into near-dereliction.

Now it lives again, as Europe's largest collection of restored Grade I and II-listed military buildings.

The major difference from Scott's time is the Royal William is now home to restaurants, bars, offices, studios and luxury apartments, some available for rent to holidaymakers.

My rented pad, with its 180-degree views, was in a former bakery which once sustained the Relief of Khartoum with 600,000lbs of ship's biscuit.

In the waterside brewery building that once produced enough beer for sailors to go through eight pints a day, I ate mussels and locally caught pan-fried pollack at Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Canteen & Deli.

Outside, life-sized glass fibre cows "grazed" on the ornamental lawn, a wry nod to the time when hundreds of cattle were slaughtered here each day Across the city, at the Elizabethan Barbican and heart of the original sea port, I enjoyed a mighty breakfast baguette of egg, bacon and sausage at Cap'n Jaspers outdoor cafe.

Established by businessman John Dudley as a way back from bankruptcy in 1978, the cafe has evolved from a plywood hut to a quayside eatery so beloved of the people of Plymouth, or "Janners" as we are known.

I stopped also for a lunchtime pint of Doom Bar at the quayside Dolphin Inn, the pub immortalised by the Plymouth comic artist Beryl Cook.

Later from my capsule at the top of the 195ft big wheel that revolves on Plymouth Hoe, I had a seagull's view of the heart of the city that has risen from the destruction of the Blitz.

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I walked along the tree-lined Armada Way, the boulevard that is the crowning triumph of a rebuilt city centre, recently acclaimed by English Heritage for its "heroic" architecture of white Portland stone.

At Plymouth City Museum, I toured the new exhibition, From Plymouth to Pole, that commemorates Scott's life and achievements. His team arrived at the Pole to find that Roald Amundsen's Norwegian expedition had preceded them.

From the artefacts and photographs, we learn how Plymouth supplied much of the Naval manpower and scientific expertise for the expedition.

These men had the dash and defiance but they succumbed to starvation and frostbite in blizzards of -40C.

"Had we lived," recorded Scott in the notes, "I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman."

My school training runs beneath Scott's statue, on the slopes of Mount Wise, were a doddle by comparison.

THE KNOWLEDGE

Blue Chip Holidays (0844 704 4987/www.bluechipholidays.co.uk) offers seven nights at Apartment 59 Mills Bakery, Royal William Yard from £759 (six sharing), self-catering.

River Cottage Canteen & Deli Plymouth, Royal William Yard (01752 252702/www.rivercottage.net/plymouth-bookings).

From Plymouth to Pole, Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, until April 14, 2012, admission free. VisitPlymouth: 01752 306330/www.visitplymouth.co.uk