Yesterday we
- Visited Lyme Regis
- Travelled to Salisbury and left the tour to pick up our hire car
- Found Salisbury Cathedral and visited
- Drove to Barnstaple and then to Shirwell
As you can probably see from this rough map of where we went-we ended up doing a lot of km effectively just to see Salisbury Cathedral. This was because we (I) really hadn't looked very hard at the geography of where we would be the night before and where we wanted to end up. We probably could have made thing much easier on ourselves by getting dropped off earlier, but we would have missed seeing Lyme Regis and Salisbury.
As it was Lyme Regis was interesting because we got to see the rocky beach and the bathing boxes and to see the wild sea doing what wild seas do at the seaside all over Britain-crash in on rocks in the wild weather in the middle of Summer. We started our walking tour of Lyme Regis under a clear sky, but ended up skipping out on some of the seaside promenade and hiding in a tea room, drinking a cup of tea. I know it was wimpy ... but the English seaside is not a nice place when it is cold and wet and windy. I didn't even take a photo of the crashing waves because it was too wet to take out the camera.
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| It was great to finally see bathing boxes at an English seaside town-but only one was being used. It think the rest were being used for storage only as it was not a bathing type of day, and the cost is £100 a week at this time of year! |
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| I loved the many varied pebblessed on this beach-but I was glad I had my shoes on, and wasn't heading for the water in sensitive bare feet. |
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| We've seen stands like this at many shops in the last week or two. The weather may be rainy , cold or cloudy, but it seems that a crab net, a bucket and spade are essential for every kid at the seaside. |
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| What is it about cathedrals and clocks? This is the second extraordinary clock we have seen in a cathedral in the last week. This one is said to be the oldest working clock in the world. It has no face or hands, but chimes on the hour. It was once in the bell tower of the cathedral, but is now housed inside it. |
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| The baptismal font is also unusual. Water runs continually out for each corner and it is very still and reflects the beautiful windows and architecture (if no-one is disturbing it).I could have stood and watched the reflections for hours if we didn't have to be somewhere else. |
As we headed from Barnstaple to Shirwell on our last little leg of this trip we were stopped by a police road block. A lorry had tipped over on the side of a hilly road just ahead, and they were trying to get it upright and out of the field. This meant that we needed to use some very tiny single track lanes, ford one creek and back down a hill at one stage before finally making it the back way to our B&B. The Spinney is an 1800s house with five guest rooms, and they have been fantastic. The welcoming cuppa on arrival, the cooked breakfast and happy chatter and loan of walking map have been a just great. It's a pity we don't have a few more nights here.
Today we
- went to Barnstaple
- Went to Bideford
- Went on to Torrington and the back to Barnstaple
- Did our washing and dried it
- Drove on to Ilfracombe via the coast.
- Back to the Spinney at Shirwell
We were hoping to chase up some family history in Bideford as both Trev and I had family who came from there. It ended up being a pretty fruitless each though. The local history section was closed and no-one else could help.
We headed for Bideford anyway to see the town and hoped we might have some help there, but they weren't really helpful either. Had to turn around because of some problem on the road ahead. It's always fun to try to find another way when you are not familiar with the roads. We took a wrong turn which took us past a whole series of houses using rubber boots as decorations, sculpture etc on their front verges, walls and fences.
We visited the Methodist church in Bideford (where the relatives probably all worshipped) but there is no churchyard or graves and we couldn't get in to the church.
We visited the old cemetery which was sadly unkempt, with many broken and/or overgrown grave stones-it just made us quite sure that we would like to be cremated when our time comes.
Next to the old cemetery is a park and around the edge of the park are gravestones!!!
We found one possible relative there.
The old catholic cemetery also turned up no familiar names.
Next stop was Torrington -where my Peace relatives came from-just to get a feel for the place. Then we gave up the search back in time and headed off into more narrow lanes ...including a great surprising view of a solar array as we came around a bend. We never saw a sign of it again, even though we looked. These hedgerows hide a lot of views.
After a bit of a break to do washing at the local laundrette we headed for the coast further north , stopping for tea at one of the seaside towns before heading home via the narrow roads in the rain.
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| there were a couple of good looking surf beaches. |
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| This is blurry-but that's how it was.. skinny little lanes, rain, dark, wet... I can see why people move to Australia where you can have some space. |
Tomorrow we head for Oxford and will be there for a couple of nights.
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