In search of Basil in Torquay

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Saturday 1st August
In search of Basil in Torquay
Today we are off to visit and stay in a town that has been top of our list since 1975 and that wonderful TV series Fawlty Towers.For those readers who don’t know it and haven’t seen Basil and Sybil try to run the perfect British seaside hotel then you have missed classic comedy at its very best.Basil played by John Cleese is a bumbling but very likeable hotel owner while Sybil,his wife(played by a name that just escapes me for the moment)is ‘a would be if she could be’type and tries to keep Basil in order.Together with a Spanish porter and various guests they create mayhem in each half hour programme.
Anyway its not that we expect to find that the proprietors of our hotel tonight will be like Basil and Sybil but it will be fun just being in the town where the hotel in the TV series was located and remember all those famous lines from the programme as we take in the sights.
The weather isn’t too bad today and prospects from the forecast look promising for a drive in dry conditions.It really chucked it down overnight so perhaps that may be it for the rain for a while.
The local gulls made sure we didn’t sleep in for too long again and we think we shall be happy in a way to eventually have a night away from the seaside so that we can get back to hearing a more pleasant dawn chorus of land based birds greet us in the morning.
We took the A394 across Cornwall heading east and at the outset we seem to have avoided the holiday traffic that bugged our progress yesterday.Perhaps it was the early start on a Saturday morning too.
This main route passes through or close to the centre of most of the towns and soon on our journey the traffic volume starts to build as people head out to do what they plan on this nice Saturday and so our progress slows.
One of the things that we remembered about Cornwall was that TV series ‘Poldark’(it seems so long ago now)and the main characters beautiful woman called Demelza.We are sure she came from Truro and as we entered the town we thought we might like to take a stroll through the attractive town.However the traffic was just too busy to trying to get off the main road and hoping that there might be some parking close to the centre of town,so we kept going.
The countryside across this southern part of England was rolling low hills with either sheep or cattle where there were animals to be seen .The road didn’t follow the coast but at times you could see it in the distance and get the feel that Cornwall is very much a county with a lot of seaside.The air also had that fresh smell you get at the coast.
We avoided the city of Plymouth and drove on the A390 a gorge at the end of which was the small village of Gunnislake where a festival was underway.The topography here was different to that we have come across in our driving around England with a steep sided gorge reminisant of New Zealand.
We took the B3357 which climbed steadily up towards the main feature on the landscape in this area,Dartmoor.
The name Dartmoor has always conjured up a dark,forbidding place in our minds but our experience wasn’t like that at all and that may be why we felt a bit let down by what we saw.
We took lunch at the lookout where the road flattens out after climbing up on the plateau.The view,even given the hazy sky,was still very extensive and with the help of one of those marker things that point out the various places on the landscape we got a feel for where we were.
On the road again and we were looking for an ancient stone structure that was noted on Stans map but there was nothing actually signposted,or that we could find,although we did spot in the distance groups of large rocks.With no apparent path to them and the given the rain of the last night we thought that tramping across what was wet ground to see if these were the structures mentioned on the map might be fruitless.
The road cut across the middle of the moor and it seemed like no time at all we were out the other side and heading back down towards sea level again.
Just before Moretonhampstead(how is that for a name)we passed a large stately almost castle type house where people were preparing for a wedding.As we drove on we soon found that there were a number of guests who were either late for the wedding or they simply just liked driving at excessive speed on the narrow and sometimes single tracked raod!!!We have become very wary of people here who drive Audi’s!!!Somehow we avoided them and made it onto the road that took us into Torquay.
Our destination for tonight is the Seabreeze Hotel at Paignton which one could describe as a suburb of Torquay and certainly appeared to have a nicer beach than what we could see as we passed through Torquay.
We weren’t of course disappointed when we discovered that the Seabreeze and its proprietors were not at all like Basil and Sybil and in fact were a very nice Welsh couple who made us feel very welcome and even helping Gretchen up the stairs with her suitcase.
We had arrived relatively early for us as the drive across Cornwall hadn’t taken that long and we had ample time to take a walk along the promenade amongst the holiday fairground that was set up with all the rides you might expect to find with families having a lot of fun.
The lower end of the high street was the usual amusement parlours,souvenir and cheap summer clothing shops that we have come to expect to find in the seaside holiday towns we have been to.
With a lovely early evening in prospect we took the cliff walk around to the next bay and met up with a couple who were just locking up their beach hut.We had been fascinated by the long row of brightly coloured huts along the beach front before the main beach at Paignton and wondered what if anything was kept inside them.The couple gave us a run down of how they used their hut for keeping them sustained during a day at the seaside from providing shelter if the weather turned rough to being able to boil a kettle for a cup of tea.They also stored most of the equipment such as deck chairs etc that they use during a day at the beach.
Further along we came across a family stretched out on the concrete path of the promenade in deck chairs catching the sun which was still quite warm.We guessed that this was how they had to enjoy their day at the beach as there was precious little sand on the beach itself at high tide.It seems that anywhere you can find somewhere to put out a chair you just had to do it!!
With breakfast tomorrow at the hotel included in the tariff we didn’t have a need to unpack the microwave so we located a Weatherpoons pub and took the GBP3.99 meals on offer from their menu for dinner.
At 9.45pm we joined the throngs down on the grass above the beach for a fireworks display which we thought turned out to be one of the best we have seen for some time.We don’t know if it has just been our good fortune but we have not seen any unruly people when there have been crowds gathering and our impression is that at family type occasions the young hoons you would probably see at a similar event in NZ are just not welcome and don’t turn up.And its not as if there is a big police presence around either.
It had been another long day but one that we didn’t spend too long in the car and we have been able to mix in with the summer beach scene at the end of the day.

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Comments

[Rin]

Got your postcard from Torquay on the weekend :-) So no mooseheads on the wall or drunken war veterans in the bar or amusing German guests at the hotel then??

[Leebee]

What, disappointed with Dartmoor? Maybe thats because you didnt see it in the rain....on the day we were there it lived up to its spooky reputation as it was all shrouded in mist and it rained frequently! Sounds like you stuck a lucky day in Torquay though!