Blogs from Devon, England, United Kingdom, Europe - page 10

I last made a post on this site in 2009, at the time I was in Fiji in the middle of a trip around the globe. In the last 8 years I have returned to the UK, returned to work and now just retired again, I therefore thought it would be a good time for me to repost the variety of posts that I made whilst travelling, my daughter also completed a video diary which I will put up on You Tube, though a number of the videos need a bit of tidying up. When I put these up I will update this blog with a link to my Channel Whilst posting I will also make some suggestions regarding the equipment I am using now, and as a keen photographer I will start off with my ... read more

Our original plan was to travel further west along the coast of the UK, but we had to do some hard thinking about this as time was moving on. We had been told of other places to visit and that the Sicily Isles were wonderful, but that you had to be sure of a good weather window to do so. We hadn’t been having the best of weather and we had also wanted to travel east from Dartmouth where we first hit this coastline. In weighing everything we decided it was time to turn around and head east. Fortunately we had been in touch with some friends of ours, Leslie & Gary from SV Spellbound and heard that they were actually further east and would be getting to Dartmouth about the time we could be there. ... read more

Where else will the buses from Dartmouth take us? Plymouth was another destination we could easily reach, but we can also get there easily by boat. Should we take the time to explore Plymouth by bus when we can sail there? Our reports on Plymouth from others left us with mixed reviews – some said it was worth a stop and others said you could easily bypass it. We had some extra time in Dartmouth so we figured we could take the bus, see a new area and then decide for ourselves if we would take the time to sail there later as we move west along the coast. We could either get to Plymouth by taking the bus #3 which took us to Kingsbridge previously OR we could take a different route to Plymouth. Naturally ... read more

Another town that we had read some about was Exeter as we knew we could get their easily by bus. After finding out about the Exeter Cathedral and the Royal Albert Memorial Museum that are located there we had another day trip planned. With further research we found that they offer free 90 minute tours by the Red Coat Guides and that on the day we were going there was one being offered about the Tudor period. You didn’t need to make a reservation, just show up. The bus left Dartmouth at 7:55AM, had a short layover in Totnes (long enough to get a coffee) and then arrived in Exeter by 10:30AM. This gave us a little time to wander around a bit before we met the guide at 11:30AM. Fortunately it was a small group ... read more

Friday July 1 Happy Canada Day to all. In the morning I was dropped off in Winchcombe while the others did one of Ross' shortcut versions of the original hike (somehow was the same distance as the original). I spent the morning visiting local coffee shops, doing sketches, talking to shopkeepers and just walking around taking photos in the older part of town. We all met at the Lions Inn and had another good pub lunch then off to Cheltenham (bad traffic - definitely prefer the smaller villages). Back to Guiting Power for dinner at the Farmers Arms where they had our table reserved for us without us asking. Steps: 8074 Floors : 21 Sticky Toffee Pudding: 5 ( just a packaged version and not enough sauce or flavour) Saturday, July 2 Said goodbye to I&L ... read more