A visit to the Fleet Arm Museum

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This morning we packed up and left Ilfracombe. It was a good experience staying with Karen and Russ. Their hospitality was friendly and generous. We had decided to visit the Fleet Arm Museum at RNAS Yeovilton, near Yeovil in Somerset, on our way to Wells. We also needed to buy a suitcase for our excess baggage. After some googling, we found Debenhams were having a luggage sale, and there was one in Taunton on our way. We stopped and got our suitcase and kept going. The distances were not too great today, allowing ample time for a visit to the Fleet Arm Museum. The museum was quite surprising. It tells the story of aviation in the Navy. The area is divided into 4 halls, with Hall 3 being set up as an aircraft carrier. You are ferried over to the carrier by helicopter (a simulator) and then shown around the different parts of the ship by video. You walk onto the flight deck and see, by video, planes landing and taking off. Then you go into the storage deck, the ops room, the bridge, the quartermaster’s store, the control centre, flight briefing room and other places that are regularly visited by the people on board the carrier in the course of the day. It gave a really good impression of how these ships work, and how big they are. The other halls are divided more by date. There are planes to look at and information about what the Fleet Arm was involved with at different points in history. We definitely tried to out fox the gps today, trying to choose routes that did not involve very cosy farm lanes. We did a bit better, and only had to deal with one way traffic problems on a couple of occasions on our way into Wells. Wells is a small city, but it has a big cathedral. It can be seen from a distance, but doesn’t stand out quite as much as some of the other cathedrals because it is not on a hill, and doesn’t have huge pointed spires. Once you start to get close, it seems to take up a large amount of land. It also has more buildings in the close. The cathedral school has quite a number of buildings, and on one side is the Canon’s close and the other is the Bishops palace. I think we will need at least an afternoon to explore it. Our B&B is on the edge of the city, close to the cathedral. It is another large country house. We have a lovely room with dressing room and ensuite at the top of the house. There is a big garden (about 15acres) with some big trees. It also has a washing machine and drier for the guests to use - a very welcome first! We put washing in the machine and went out for a walk to explore. We located a gastro pub for dinner, and also walked a bit around the town, passing the cathedral. Walking back up the hill to our accomodation, we decided to drive the car to the bottom of the lane , park the car and walk the rest of the distance to dinner (this means we wouldn’t have to walk up the hill in the dark after dinner) ! Dinner was delicious. The Fountain Inn was certainly gastro, not at all like the other pub we visited on our trip. Great food! Our desserts were especially good. Perhpas we will return on Wednesday night to test some other parts of the menu?

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