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| On the M5 for the beautiful sunset |
Winter in the UK (think short daylight hours, cold and grey)
is actually a good time to take short breaks. With hotels and B&Bs outside
of the main centres relatively empty, there are some amazing deals to be had.
We subscribe to sites like amazon and travelzoo which regularly drop tantalising
holiday deals into my inbox in time for a breakfast read. We took advantage of
having one of the owners’ daughters at home recently to take a 3-day break to
Devon. The deal we took was £99 ($200
NZ) for two nights for the two of us in a good hotel, inclusive of breakfasts,
use of the gym/pool/sauna, and an evening meal for one night. Given that the evening
meal was half of this price, they were almost paying us to stay!! We augmented this
with a special-rate £39 for B&B in another hotel for our first night.
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| Me enjoying the seaside ... |
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| Hotels everywhere |
So this is how we ended up in an adequate, but tired hotel
in Torquay, on the “English Riviera”. Torquay,
Paignton and Brixham seem to run together on the south coast, but they have all
seen better days before cheap package holidays to Europe became the norm. Still
full of hotels, from the grand through to Fawlty Towers and smaller. I imagine
the place is packed in summer, presumably with families and those not wanting
to fly overseas. But at this time of year we only saw pensioners. Hence we shouldn’t
be surprised to end up in an American-themed diner at our hotel with only a
couple of other couples. Which was better than the bar we shared with the barman
later for a nightcap, after saying goodbye to the main chef who was leaving
early, only having had three people for dinner. And this was a large hotel.
Shouldn’t complain – we were very lucky to be there at all. The
week before leaving our car developed a “get gearbox serviced now” warning
light on the dash along with intermittent gear-changing issues. Some Googling
told us that it is a common problem and typically cost £600 to repair – quite a
bit on a £1600 car. On the morning of our departure Vicki took the car to a
local ex-Renault mechanic who diagnosed an errant ABS sensor in the front wheel
giving the wrong signals to the gearbox. £100 and an hour later it was all
sorted and we headed off down the motorway somewhat gingerly, though with
increasing confidence over the next few days.
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| Houses overlooking Dartmouth |
Torquay in the daylight was not a great improvement so we
quickly headed down the coast to Dartmouth, which you approach from the other
side of the Dart River and take a small car ferry to. The views are glorious
looking up the river to the Dartmouth Naval college, and downstream to the
castle at the entrance to the harbour. We met an 86 year old who pointed out
his house on the wharf. He said it still impressed him to think that the house
was there when the Mayflower docked outside before heading to America in 1620.
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| Dartmouth from the car ferry |
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| The River Dart with the Naval College |
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| Where the Mayflower docked |
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| Our turn next |
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| from a noticeboard on the river edge |
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| 400 years later the fort & houses still stand |
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| Totnes High Street |
Our final tourist stop on the day was Totnes. It is set in a very
pretty location on the banks of the river and, with a long history, it is still
full of many old buildings, indeed it has the most listed buildings per capita
in the country. These days it is better known as a centre for New Age lifestylers.
Apart from all the hippies wandering around, there are numerous interesting
shops, not at all like the typical main street of an English town where almost
all the shops are part of national chains. Strangely we spent half the time we
had left there in the Army Surplus Store – a treasure trove of interesting paraphernalia.
Not just the full Bear Grylls survival collection, but also telescopes,
binoculars, proper outdoor clothes and … camera tripods. We are looking for
another camera tripod and they almost had the right one. Almost. Sigh.
It is essential to have a GPS here where there are so many addresses.
We have a borrowed one that is a bit out of date, occasionally leading us
astray. We were quite sure that our big new hotel was not in the middle of a
housing estate but Gary (Gary Garmin – get it?) wouldn’t be convinced
otherwise. So good old Google on the smartphone found the very obscure lane
that was their main entrance.
Our last full day away involved a trip up onto Dartmoor –
the high and rugged area that takes up a significant portion of Devon. Lots of
very narrow lanes with stones walls either side – not somewhere you want to meet
a car or tractor coming the other way. A midweek winter morning was probably as
quiet as it gets. The scenery is wild and spectacular, lots of big trees,
rugged hillsides, lonely farms, little stone hamlets that time has passed by,
stone bridges over wild streams, wild horses and wild weather. Actually, we
weren’t wild about the weather as we had a bit of hail and Arctic wind-chill. A
complete contrast to the quaint and gentle towns of the previous day but
equally as interesting and photogenic.
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| An ancient "clapper" bridge |
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| Wild horses |
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| Buckfast Abbey church |
We made a small excursion to Buckfast Abbey on the way back to the
hotel. It is the home of Benedictine monks so is quite a complex. Inside
everything looked in remarkably good condition, but made sense when we read it
had only been built in the 1930s!
Heading home the following morning meant getting onto the M5
motorway and sitting at 70mph for hours on end. Luckily we found a reason to go
cross country – a visit to “Clark's Village” in Street. This is the home to the
original Clark's shoes. It is a small town with a huge shopping centre containing
an outlet store for Clark's and dozens of other outlet shops. A good place to
stop and shelter and shop. One new pair of bargain boots [for Nigel] later we were on the
road again for home and back to work in the afternoon. Ahhh …
