Sunday:
Morning dawned bright and clear, and even more so after something like eight good hours sleep. How good was that? Breakfast was good as well; grapefruit, pancakes and then as much toast and tea as any person could want. Fantastic.
Just enough time to load the car, and talk some more with John the wonderful owner, and apologise for not staying more and talking; but the open road beckoned.
We crossed Wiltshire and then into Somerset and eventually into Devon. The landscape was rolling hills with the occasional trees and lager groups of trees. Sometimes the road plunged down hillsides thick with forest, and it seemed we were driving along a green tunnel. There is something about the English countryside in summer. Nothing comes quite close. Even better was that the traffic for a Sunday morning was very light and we made good time towards Exeter.
In Exeter we stopped to visit friends of Nan, and to have lunch. Although it was very pleasant, and Pat and Dave could not have been nicer, we had itchy feet and longed for the open road again.
I had decided to head out to Dawlish, to see where the main line ran beside the sea, and to take pictures. It was a pleasant trip out to the coast, and made all the better by the purchase of an ice cream. The sun was out, the sky blue, and with an ice cream in hand it had to mean that we were on holiday.
Dawlish was as stunning as I imagined it, as trains thundered along the sea wall either to of from Cornwall; and so I captured it all on my wonderful new camera.
Then it was onwards and westwards to Plymouth and into Cornwall. We stopped off at the border to take more pictures of yet another triumph of IK Brunel, the Saltash Bridge over the River Tamar. When built, people did not believe its radical design would not stand up when the scaffolding was removed. Well, it’s still standing now, which shows genius knows best.
We travelled secure in the knowledge that we would not get lost as we had the sat nav; all was going well until we got within 10 miles of the cottage, and instead of looking at the directions provided with only listened to the magical electronic box of tricks on the dash. It decided to take us down the narrowest lane imaginable; the sides of the hire car scraped the hedgerows on either side, and the tarmac was hidden beneath grass and moss showing how little the lane was used.
We started to panic.
Our lovely new car was being scraped by trees and plants, each scrape I could imagine costing us the £500 excess when we returned the car.
Just as we thought that we had driven off the edge of the map we came across a farmer in his landrover coming the other way. Sadly for us he did not give us quite enough room to pass, and we ended up off the side of the road axle deep in slurry.
Nice.
So, I had to get out along with the farmer and girded our loins and ankle deep in cow poo pushed the car out of the shit.
We asked his advice on the direction of the holiday cottage; and although I can’t swear I understood every word, the gist of it was to keep turning left.
Hmmm.
I consulted the directions from the hire company, and just then we passed a landmark mentioned. After that it was just a case of making sure we turned into the right farm to find the cottage.
Our neighbours are on one side a herd of cows, and on the other a single horse. At least they’re not going to have a party.
Being a Sunday, we had no chance of doing any shopping, so we had no choice than to find a place to eat out. A couple of miles away there is a pub, the Rising Sun, which although looking like the Slaughtered Dog from An American werewolf in London, was very friendly, accepted credit cards and the food was very good: And the scrumpy very strong. We took a four pint jug back to the cottage and sat outside watching the sun go down.
Copy & paste to friend: (Click inside box; Ctrl + C to copy; Ctrl + V to paste)
|
|
read more blogs!
|