Blighty Bound - Day Sixteen, By The Seaside

 

A late start had us motoring over to Exmouth, very familiar ground for me as my parents lived there for many years, and prior to that we all lived just about ten miles away for many more years. We were off to visit my side of the family, and to stroll the seafront there, as that's always a pleasant experience. Following that, we were slated to head over to another seaside town, Torquay, for a chinwag with DW's family.

The weather was certainly set fair. The run across the River Exe and down it's eastern side was lovely, all bar the traffic queue getting into Exmouth itself. I had forgotten the roadworks on the Dinan Way extension, so we sat in a long line of cars for ten minutes or so while everyone negotiated the section of single lane running. I made a mental note to take another route out of the town.

We pitched up in St Andrews Road, down in the old part of town, and spent a happy day with said family members. We ate at an Italian-style restaurant on the Strand, then strolled along the refurbished seafront to Maer Rocks, and the RNLI Lifeboat Station. Given that it was a weekday, there were still a lot of people about, although the very fine weather was the obvious reason for the crowds. There were people on the beach, some even in swimsuits, which is quite unusual for late March in England. Being the Spring Equinox, the tide was out a long way, making the beach look even bigger than usual. Severe winter storms had altered the beach quite a bit, though, with the sand dunes completely disappeared, but Maer Rocks mostly covered with sand. Maybe the dunes moved? Exmouth is prone to the occasional reshaping of the beach, largely because it is subject to big storms in the winter, but also because the River Exe flowing into the sea there can do some strange things with silt and sand. 

The Lifeboat Station was looking lovely in the sunshine, and the small inshore lifeboat was launched while we were there, although it looked more like an exercise rather than an emergency given the lack of haste the launch team displayed. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) operates lifeboats, and now lifeguards, all around the coast of Britain. It's a charity that receives no direct government funding and relies almost entirely on donations to operate. We have always felt it a worthwhile cause, even though we've thankfully never needed its services, so we do donate and that was why we were there today. Money was spent in their very fine gift shop. If you've never heard of the RNLI, here is a link to their website: RNLI

Exmouth has changed a lot in recent years, but it's mostly for the better, albeit that I had to pay 40p for Jimmy Riddle in a bowl that the unit's previous user had not flushed. Still, it was an excellent visit, as most trips to Exmouth are.

Heading to Torquay, I went "over the common" rather than take the Exeter Road, to avoid the queues at the roadworks. Over the common means a drive over Woodbury Common, an area of high ground just to the north of the town. It has few trees but lots of Gorse and Bracken, and has commanding views of East Devon and of the Exe Estuary right up to Exeter. The trouble was that the Gorse was very tall, and when we could see over it, it was very hazy, so no commanding views, really. It was a nice run, though, but took a fair bit longer than I'd anticipated. But we didn't get stuck in the traffic.

We did get stuck in the traffic at Newton Abbot, though, where a car had broken down at the side of the road. The AA recovery van was part of the cause of the delay, as was the Police car with its blue lights on. The broken down car was off the road!

In Torquay, we took an interesting although not unpleasant route to our destination, and then I was deputed to assist with the purchase of fish and chips, which entailed being driven to a tangle of streets in West Torquay and waiting in a very long line. It was for family, though, so no problem.

A nice evening ensued, although we left Torquay very late, and I was on my last knockings by the time arrived home. Tomorrow's events are also family related, but I'm sure I will have something to write about.

Blighty Bound - Day Fifteen, Some Apple Success

 

This day was marked down as a "help the folks" day, transferring some apps from an old iPad to a shiny new Kindle Android tablet, but first we were on a mission.

When we'd arrived in the UK, we'd dropped DW's dad's Army medals in at a place called The Bigbury Mint, where they were going to clean them, replace the ribbons, and mount them in a presentation frame. Today we went to pick them up, and goodness what a good job they'd done. The run down to Ermington, just south of Ivybridge was OK, but the mile or two to the village was on those lovely narrow Devon roads, and there seemed to be a lot numpties about this fine morning. In order to make any progress, you have to drive co-operatively, backing off when the road gets too narrow to pass oncoming cars, and not being a dick about it. Today people were not being too co-operative. I was not happy.

This time at the Bigbury Mint, we drove down the vertiginous hill to the workshop rather than walk, and that cheered DW up no end. As I said, the medals had been prepared, and the woman at the workshop showed us how the medals were mounted in the case, and how to remove them so they could be worn. If you have any medals you want refurbishing, I can heartily recommend the Bigbury Mint.

On the way to Roborough, we stopped at Chris' Crafts again and picked up a few little bits and bobs for Charlie's model railway, then we drove around to the Plymouth Barbican and ate our picnic lunch while overlooking the entrance to Sutton Harbour, and Millbay. Although windy, the sun was shining and it was a very pleasant pause in the day.

Up with the folks in Roborough, I managed to successfully port an Apple iCloud email account onto the Android Kindle, which I was quite pleased about. They claim security, but the process that Apple demands in order to run an iCloud account somewhere other than on an Apple device is painful. Still, it was mission accomplished. I even paired up some Bluetooth earbuds to the Kindle, so I was on a roll. I also looked at updating the map on one of their car's navigation system. It's a Garmin, in a Honda, the same as we have back home, but whereas I've been able to update ours regularly, Honda UK says that the updates have to be performed by the dealer. Ah well, nice try.

We headed home at about 8:30, not least because we were both absolutely shattered. These past two weeks have been catching up with us. That didn't stop us staying up to watch the BBC's Question Time programme on TV, which was more a political debate than anything else. We did get to laugh at the knobishness of the Reform Party spokesman though, as did the audience. 

Tomorrow is a visit with my family, and hopefully a walk along the beach at Exmouth. The weather's looking set fair, so it ought to be a good day.

Blighty Bound - Day Fourteen, Somerset

 Today was for exploring, for family tree work, and for family, so a busy schedule.

We had planned to visit Bishops Lydeard in West Somerset, as some of DW's rellies hailed from there, and then to motor on up to Wedmore to visit with DW's nephew and his wife. As we were going to be in Somerset, I suggested that we visit the medieval village of Dunster, which isn't a million miles from Bishops Lydeard. At the last minute, we flipped the plan, so were were to go to Dunster first, Bishops Lydeard second, then finally Wedmore, and that turned out to be an inspired decision.

So it was that we found our selves coming off the northbound M5 at Tiverton and taking the North Devon Link Road towards Exmoor National Park. The route that the navigation mapped out for us looked a wee bit squiggly, and so it proved to be. At Bampton we joined the steep sided valley of the River Exe and followed it's snaking course for mile after mile. The road was narrow and twisty, and there some precipitous drops down to the water at times, where the road climbed away from the narrow valley floor. Water meadows hugged the river, the steep sides of Exmoor closed in and the whole route was dotted with little thatched cottages, straight out of fairy tales. Oh, and the Pheasants, seemingly hundreds of the things. 

It was a lovely drive, even if I had to be at my driving best to avoid going off the road at every sharp turn. The navigation system sent a couple of confusing messages and at one point we ended up climbing away from the river, and then being set on a route to recover the original road. That was all fine and dandy except that the route contained a weak bridge that had a width limit of 6' 6". I demurred and chose not to take that route and I'm glad I didn't, because it turns out that the rented car was 6' 3" wide without the mirrors, and 6' 11" with the mirrors. That was way too tight for me to risk it, even with folding mirrors. In the end I turned around and retraced our route to get back to where I'd originally gone wrong. I compounded the error by immediately taking another wrong turn, but this time I didn't bother with the alternative route; I found a turning spot, and went back to the road we were supposed to be on.

As we slowly closed in on Dunster, the navigation system kept trying to send us on the route intended for heavy goods vehicles, away from the gorgeous valley floor, but I stuck to the road that was signposted to Dunster and in due course we arrived at our destination. Never forget, the Satnav is only a navigational aid, not necessarily the final word; discretion is your friend!

I'm not going to say too much about how lovely the village was, especially in the sun that shone in a clear blue sky, suffice it to say that I can see why the place is so popular. We found parking at the North End of the main street (GBP2.50 for two hours, which is at the low end of the scandalous parking charges in Britain), and took a slow walk back to the village's famous main street. With a castle at one end and a folly at the other, the broad street looked like a postcard picture.

We ambled down, past the castle, and fell upon an antiques shop that we thought might provide a little housewarming gift for DW's nephew. The lady in the shop was very nice, but very loud. So loud, in fact, that I had to turn my electric ears down a bit.

Heading back towards the car, the castle grounds provided us with some toilets and a National Trust gift shop, which were both well received. It was a bit pricey to actually go into the castle, especially as time was limited, so we spent some money in the gift shop instead, always happy to show willing. A slow walk back up through the village was made slower by some more money spending in one of the local shops, and then it was time for a pasty and a cup of coffee from the little bakery right next to the car park. There's not much can beat spreading pastry crumbs down your front in the car while eating a delicious hot pasty. The car, I hasten to add, was not moving at the time.

Apart from the beauty of the village, the big thing about Dunster on this fine day was the lack of people. Yes, it was a midweek day in March, but the weather was glorious and I'd have thought the place would have been throbbing with visitors, but no. It wasn't quite deserted but it was delightfully easy to move around. The lady in the bakery said that it was likely due to the road works just north of the car park, and we were about to find out the truth of that.

Leaving the car park and heading north towards the Minehead road, we immediately hit a line of stationary traffic. It stayed stationary for what seemed like an eternity, and when it did move I realised that the temporary traffic lights were controlling a major intersection, and in each direction they were holding the traffic for quite a long time. The queue on the main road, east and west, was very long; yes, that might make approaching Dunster a wee bit difficult from that end.

Then we were heading south east towards the little town, or large village, of Bishops Lydeard, home to a few more of DW's long-dead rellies. I didn't realise at the time that it's the southern terminus of the fabled West Somerset Railway, one of the original heritage railways in the West Country, running steam for decades. When I mentioned Bishops Lydeard to people, they'd heard of it because of the railway, but I never had.

There's not a whole lot to see in Bishops Lydeard, so we spent some time browsing around the handsome church there, and it's very large graveyard. Generations of DW's family had been christened, married and had funerals there, so it was good to go in and stand on the same floor that they did. It was a touch cold and damp in there, as I found out when I went to sign the visitors book and discovered that it was a fraction away from being wet.

There's an odd feeling when you're doing the family tree thing and going to the same places that your ancestors went to. I like to stand and absorb these places, and wonder what those rellies would think if they could see their old haunts now.

After Bishop's Lydeard, we set the navigation system for Wedmore, some way to the north-east of us, on the other side of the Quantock Hills, a broad eminence in an otherwise flat terrain. Good old Google, it took us straight over the hills, up some steep and narrow lanes. You can always rely on Google to find you a direct route, even if it's down the odd cart track or two, and that's what happened with this route. Halfway to Bridgwater, I was directed down a road with a sign at it's entrance that said "Single track road with passing places". I'd had enough of single track roads with passing places so, remembering that the navigation system is only part of the equation I rebelled and carried on the road I was on. 

The actual sign, on Enmore Road.

Sure enough, we ended up in Bridgwater, even after having been stuck behind a horse box for some miles. It was school kicking-out time, so of course the traffic was horrible. It took forever to find the northbound M5, and when I came to leave the motorway, just a couple of miles further on, there was a queue on the slip road that tailed back onto the fast-moving highway, which was not good, even in what I assumed was a sparsely populated part of rural Somerset.

The road to Wedmore was long and winding (like the Beatles' song), and frequently narrow, but mercifully flat. It crossed the Somerset Levels, a vast area of reclaimed land that resembled The Netherlands in more than a casual way. We had the dubious pleasure of passing the Sexey Arms, a pub in Blackmore, and Sexey's School, surely the best named centre of learning ever. Both are named for Hugh Sexey, a Royal Auditor in the court of Queen Elizabeth I, who was born in the area in the year 1540, although that date is subject to some debate. Who says that this blog is not educational?

We arrived in Wedmore, to visit DW's nephew and his wife, and to approve their new house, but first became slightly befuddled in the maze of little streets in their housing development. Little streets with bends and dead ends are a feature of these developments, to discourage people from driving too fast through them, which isn't a bad idea, except when you take a wrong turning like I did.

A jolly evening ensued, the house was duly approved, and we headed back to Devon quite late, weaving through half-a-dozen sets of road works on the M5; getting work dome before the Easter rush, I think. As the traffic was light, it was no big deal. We were quite tired when we arrived back at Little Orchard, it had been a very long day. But, of course, that's what you do on vacation in March.

Blighty Bound - Day Thirteen, off to Kernow

 

It has been a family day, and a family tree day. DW determined that a line of her dad's family hailed from Cornwall, or Kernow, England's most south-westerly county, so we decided to head down there to see some old family haunts. We took DW's dad and stepmum for the day out, too.

Cornwall is where I spent a lot of childhood holidays. Being an extremity in England, the place always seemed a bit remote, and because it sticks out into the Atlantic Ocean, it always seemed windswept. We have been back in recent years, but I haven't driven beyond Liskeard and Looe for nigh on thirty years, so the first thing I noticed was some vast improvements to the road system. It was a bit squirrelly for the first twenty miles, up hill and down dale, but once on the main A30, it was all plain sailing. That said, this was a Tuesday in March, not a summer Saturday, so we were seeing traffic at its lightest, thank goodness. Speed enforcement is a serious business in Cornwall, because the accident statistics were horrible, so we kept our speed down, not wishing to get caught by the myriad fixed cameras and the mile-upon-mile of average speed cameras. Not that it mattered, we were in no rush.

We were heading to Truro, Cornwall's largest city, its only city, and its administrative capital. But first we were stopping short of our destination, at the village of Tresillian, conveniently on the road to Truro. There was a house there listed in one of DW's census records and we knew it was still standing from looking at Google StreetView. It had been a smithy, a blacksmith's shop, and was marked on the 1892 historic map. Well, we drove past the house, but couldn't stop thanks to the busy road, but we'd seen it, which was the aim. About half a mile further on we did stop, only this time to visit Marys Pastys (sic), a purveyor of locally made Cornish Pasties. If you've never had a Cornish Pasty then I can genuinely say that you've missed a treat. It's a melange of potato, Swede (Rutabaga), onion, and a little meat (usually beef skirt), seasoned with ground black pepper and wrapped up in pastry. In my view it's best served hot, but it doesn't have to be, and can be eaten from the hands. There are many variations on the theme, but a good traditional pasty is very hard to beat, even though it tends to be flaky pastry and not shortcrust these days, and they put far too much meat in. I say that because the original pasties were supposed to be meals for working men, who would wrap the newly baked pasty in a cloth, pop it into their shirt and keep it there until it was time to eat; at the tin mine, or in the fields, wherever. Meat was expensive so there was usually very little in the pasty, but I suppose modern times require modern solutions. That may be an apocryphal tale, but it sounds plausible to me.

Anyway, Mary came good with the traditional pasties, but had no vegan offerings left in the oven. That was a triple shame because one, they didn't normally sell out of vegan pasties, two, there was nothing for DW, and three, these vegan pasties were the best, apparently, because they weren't gussied up in any way, just a regular pasty without the meat. No peas, no sweetcorn, no curry powder, just the original ingredients. Mary (it wasn't really Mary, just the woman working in the shop) suggested we drive up to their production facility in Grampound Road, about ten minutes away, because they were sure to have vegan pasties. She was right, because a quick ten minute diversion (past the aforementioned smithy again) to a little industrial estate, and DW came out of Mary's workshop armed with a couple of vegan pasties. We devoured them in the car, there and then, and they were very, very good.

Then it was on to Truro (past the smithy for a third time), which is an 'andsome town indeed, with a fabulous little cathedral right in the centre of the city. We parked up and had a wander around. Leaving the folks to finish their coffee in Waterstone's book shop, DW and I legged it up to Andrew Place, a short walk away, to look a a house once occupied by her 3 x great grandmother. The census of 1911 had listed the house as number eight, but there wasn't a number eight. We put our detective hats on and decided that number seven was actually numbers seven and eight knocked together. The houses had once been a part of the Truro Union Workhouse and were very small, all in a terrace, so I can well see how two could have been made into one, especially as number eight had been on the end of the terrace. Whether we were right or not didn't matter because we were there treading on the streets of DW's direct relations.

Truro is a lovely little city, and we decided that if we were ever forced to return to England we'd like it there, not least because some of the houses looked to be affordable. That's often the case in extremities. We're not planning on fleeing Canada, but you can never be certain of these things.

Before heading home, we went for a drive to Old Kea, another place mentioned in the Census. The drive, just a mile or two south of Truro, took us through some tiny, tiny lanes, all worthy of Devon. We were unfortunate enough to have to pass Kea School at kicking-out time, and those tiny lanes were lined with the parked cars of parents picking their kids up. If ever there was a case for a school bus, this was it, because the roads were all but impassable. Old Kea was a collection of ramshackle farm buildings and an old church tower, not particularly exciting in itself, but exciting to think of the rellies living right there in times past.

We had to negotiate the school again on the way back, with open car doors blocking the lane, people walking in front of our moving car, and a massive dump truck insisting on coming up the narrow lane when there were cars coming down it. I had to effectively park in the muddy bank to let that bugger by. Thankfully, the rest of the run back to Plymouth was uneventful. The weather had been dull and overcast all day in Cornwall, and had moved to low cloud and drizzle by the time we were on the road, but as we approached Saltash, the Tamar Bridge, and Devon, the clouds melted away and the sun shone beautifully. DW's stepmum had predicted exactly that, too. 

So nice was the evening that after we'd dropped the folks home, we decided to head for Ashburton by going across Dartmoor. The view from atop the moors was just stunning, and although the navigation system took us along some narrow lanes, even by Devon standards, some steep hills and even a ford, the run was lovely. Lots of sheep and semi-wild ponies all over the place, including in the road, and very few other vehicles. Dartmoor is a beautiful place, especially when the sun shines, and we were feeling very content as we came down off the heights to our little cottage.

That had been a lovely day in the extreme south west. This may be a small country, but there's so much to see, and we are very lucky to be able to explore, even just small parts of it.

Blighty Bound - Day Eleven, a Down Day by the Sea

 It was mothering Sunday, and as the family were concentrating on other mothers, we decided to go for a holiday down day.

A down day for us is not having anything planned, and quite possibly just sitting around catching up with ourselves. It being March, there wasn't much possibility of sitting out on the patio, but it wasn't so bad that I couldn't don my walking boots and head off for some exercise. 

We'd bought a couple of the very excellent Ordnance Survey 1:250,000 scale Land Ranger maps and I was delighted to see a marked national footpath, or trail, going pretty much past our front door.  I put some layers on, sweatshirt, rain jacket, neck warmer, gloves and hat, and headed off through Lower Whiddon Farm and the trail. Well, it's a good job that my boots are waterproof. It's barely stopped raining here since Christmas and it was certainly wet underfoot. This section of the trail was what's known as a Green Lane, a pathway that has historical vehicular rights. It's a public right of way, and it's technically possible to drive your car along it, only it's very narrow and pretty much just a muddy track, not least because it's used by tractors to access fields, and by horses. Obviously tractors can make a mess with their mighty tyres, but horses can be particularly destructive because their hooves cut up the track's surface and rain sits in the resultant cuts, turning everything to sloppy mud. So it was that I ended up picking my way along ankle deep mud and similarly deep puddles of water that stretched across the track. There's no escape, either, because this being Devon the track was bounded by eight-feet high hedgerows. Still, that's what I came for.

The pathway led down into a steep-sided, wooded valley with a gurgling stream in its base. I could have carried on down the track as it followed the stream, and very fetching it looked, if a tad muddy. But Opted to cross the stream and gain some height using the road on the other side. Because the path I'd just come down is, theoretically at least, a road, it had a ford across the stream. If you don't know what a ford is, you've never lived in Devon. It's a road that goes through a stream or river, not over or under it. There used to lots of them on little back roads here, but they're mostly gone now, but it was nice to see this one.

I headed north up the proper road, asphalt at least, if not much wider than the pathway I'd just come down. This is a feature of roads in Devon, they can be just wide enough to drive a tractor along, but it'll be all but touching both sides of the road, bounded as it will be by a bank, low stone wall, or hedgerow. There are the occasional passing places, but if you try these roads, the chances are you'll end up backing to a passing place, on many occasions. As a pedestrian, I had to flatten myself against the bank, and face the oncoming vehicle to make sure I was not going to get swiped by a wing mirror. The speed limit on these roads is the default 60mph, but you'll be lucky if you can do 20mph. The marker of these "Devon Motorways" is the strip of dirt, moss, and even grass, down the middle of the asphalt. I have to say that driving these roads is not fun.

The road certainly gained some height, and was in the 10% region for much of the time. Still, while the going was slow and I was puffing like an ancient steam locomotive, it was great to climb out of the wooded valley, through the incredibly green fields and the occasional farm yard. At the point where I was to head home, I could look down on our cottage and it's surrounding buildings from the other side of the valley, and very fetching it was, too.

The home leg was on a slightly wider road (no green strip down the middle and mostly wide enough for two cars to pass), and as was downhill, my legs felt like springs after the climb. Of course the rain caught me the, but I was prepared, even though all my warming clothes were proving a bit too warming with all the exercise. It was on the road back into the farm, back on the national trail, that I saw an early middle-aged couple dressed in expensive hiking Lycra, or Spandex, and I thought I must have looked quite amateurish next to them. That said, you can keep your Lycra, I just don't have the legs for it.

Back at the cottage, I clocked my walk statistics; only an hour and a tad over 4Km, but the uphill section had been way more exercise that I'm used to.

Back to the down day, and as the weather had looked like it was brightening up we decided to go for a walk along the sea wall at Teignmouth. I have history with that South Devon resort at the mouth of the River Teign as it's where I started school, way back in September 1963. My brother escorted me daily on the bus from Dawlish, and I have some quite vivid memories of the school, and the town. The best place to park for the walk was right opposite the site of the school, which had been the church hall attached to the Catholic Church of Our Lady and St. Patrick. The church is still there, the terrace where the school was is still there, but the school itself is not. Indeed, it's been left to re-wild itself, I suppose waiting for someone to build on it. To access the school, we used a little doorway in the retaining wall of the terrace, but it opened straight onto the busy road between Dawlish and Teignmouth, and while you can still see it, it's long been bricked up. As we made our way from the car towards the sea wall, I took in the view that I'd enjoyed from my school, oh so long ago.

The car park was Pay and Display, and payment was through the RingGo smartphone app that I'd installed a last week. Time was bought and paid for while sitting in the car, which was handy. 

We walked towards the sea, over the railway, and down past the Coastguard station. The slope down afforded great views of Teignmouth beach, looking south west across the river mouth and over to Shaldon, and the Ness, a great red sandstone cliff that guards the entrance to the estuary and the harbour.

Teignmouth's beach has very coarse, dull, red sand that will stain absolutely anything that comes into contact with it, which is why it's not a great place for a beach holiday, albeit that the green, grassy area immediately behind the beach is full of interesting diversions like Mini-golf, and other exciting things. The town's famous Grand Pier, a Victorian cast iron structure jutting a fair way out into the sea, is a very sad shadow of its former self. When I was a kid there was a pavilion thing at the end of the pier, but fire and the intervening sixty years of English Channel storms has reduced it to a few forlorn iron posts, at least where the pavilion was. The remaining structure attached to the seafront is still functioning, as an amusement arcade of course, and it pretty much mirrors the fate of so many of those Victorian piers England's south coast.

Back to the sea wall, Brunel's Great Western Railway runs right along the edge of the sea from Teignmouth, where we stood, to Dawlish Warren, and is one the England's great railway journeys. On one side are towering red sandstone cliffs, and on the other Lyme Bay and the English Channel. The railway goes through a series of short tunnels and runs on a built up terrace just above the beach. Every year that terrace gets pounded by stormy seas, and there have been some major collapses of both the cliffs and the terrace. But, this is now the main line between London, Plymouth, and Cornwall, so vast amounts of money have been spent to rebuild and shore up the railway corridor. As we walked along the wall towards Dawlish, feet from the railway, but fifteen feet above the beach, we were crunching through a layer of red sand, lifted from the beach by the sea.

It's a great walk, with views along to Exmouth in the east and Brixham in the west. The railway, even on this Sunday, had a constant stream of trains; seven heading west and three heading east. We took photos because the grand baby will be very keen to see them. I don't know how long we walked, but we went beyond Sprey Point before the rain came rushing in and forced us to turn around. There were lots of other people about, and with their dogs, which was nice too. Beaches tend to send dogs into a delirium, and those we saw all seemed to be madly dashing about. Dogs are not allowed on the beaches in the summer, so I guess they like to make the best of their time.

As we were about to turn for the car park, we had a look in the open snack bar, and what a great selection of stiff they had, not least for the vegans. We weren't in the market for snacks, but top marks to the enterprising owners who opened up on a cold March day, and were rewarded with lots of customers who were, like us, out for a stroll.

With my morning exertions, and now the walk along the sea wall, I felt I had done some good exercise.

Just to close this episode, I had remarked to Dear Wife that I always thought of Teignmouth as a rusty looking town. As we walked past the seafront buildings I realised that the pervading colour was not rust at all, but the red of the sandstone that gives the beach its distinctive hue. Teignmouth is washed in the stuff and it's only taken me sixty-odd years to realise it. 

Blighty Bound - Days Nine and Ten, Strictly Family

 On day nine, we motored over to Plymouth, then onto Peter Tavy on the edge of the moors, and the Peter Tavy Inn. It really is a little country pub as you have drive through a farm yard to get there, slaloming through the farm machinery and dogs. Still, the pub is popular, does good food and good beer, so it's worth the drive. Lunch there is becoming a tradition with the family, so I have no doubt we'll go back soon enough.

Day ten saw us heading to Plymouth, then to Torquay, for more family gathering. It was quite a nice day, too, if a little long, but we had no fear because we've booked day eleven as a down day.

Let's hope the weather gets a little better because it's been uncommonly cold (by UK standards) for the past few days.

Blighty Bound - Day Eight, Going East

 

We'd promised ourselves a couple of Family Tree days, and today was the first with a trip eastwards to the Dorset town of Bridport. DW's mother's side of the family were there in the mid-nineteenth century and we thought we'd see where the "Rellies" lived.

The weather, though, was awful. High winds and lashing rain, at least as we prepared to leave Ashburton Down. Naturally we met another vehicle at the narrowest part of the road leading to the main road, but we're getting used to that.

I opted to head a mile or so west on the A38 to Ashburton first, then to use the intersection to turn east, thus avoiding many miles more of Devon lanes and backing up to allow other vehicles to pass. You get to learn from experience here. With the rain hammering down, we took it easy on the fast road to Exeter, then headed away from the city towards Lyme Regis. That road is well known to both of us because DW's mother lived in the village of Beer, just a few miles short of Lyme. The weather wasn't the best, but we enjoyed the run through the red-soil and dumpling hills of East Devon. Back home, the biggest hills are the bridges over the highway, but here we were up hill and down dale all the time.

The drop down into Lyme Regis is steep, and the sight of the heavy seas crashing in on the shore at the bottom of the hill was quite dramatic. The climb out of Lyme is also very steep, but our fancy Volvo just gobbled up the gradient like it wasn't there. It was a far cry from me driving my first car, a turd-brown Mini, up there and wondering if I'd actually ever make it.

Bridport is a few miles beyond Lyme, both in the County of Dorset by the way, and it was a first time visit for both of us, at least I think it was. Bridport is on the A35 to Dorchester and now by-passed by a decent road, but I can't believe that my dad hadn't driven through the town with us in the car when I was a kid. We opted to drive through the centre today and were pleased that we did, because Bridport is a handsome town, with a broad and busy main street. But we'll come back to Bridport because we were actually heading to Bridport's port on the coast called West Bay, just a mile or two to the south.

I'd never been to West Bay, either, but had wanted to go for a while because it's where the TV series Broadchurch was filmed. West Bay's harbour may be small and quirky, but the cliffs either side of it are dramatic to say the least, and I'm sure that's why it was chosen a good TV show location. The cliffs certainly featured prominently. The trouble was, or maybe the good thing was, there was a Force Nine gale blowing in off Lyme Bay and the English Channel, and the waves were piling in on the beach with greats amount of spray and noise. It was perfect! We sat in the car facing the pounding waves and with the rain lashing across the windshield and had our sandwiches, recreating many a family lunch we both enjoyed as kids. It seemed almost to be a right of passage for kids from Devon to have their picnic lunch in a car that was rocking in the wind and the windows were streaked with rain and sea spray. 

Of course, I had to load another parking app on my UK phone so that we could pay to park in the storm. Still, I never once had to get out of the car, not involuntarily anyway.

Lunch completed, and my glasses covered in salt spray from when I left the car take a video of the waves, we meandered back to Bridport. I say meandered because I opted to drive the wrong way out of the village and ended up driving through a lot of muddy Dorset lanes to get back on the correct road. We did get to see a nice village or two, and a few of the many "Caravan Parks" in the area. I put that in quotes because I don't think they exist in Canada. They are collections of Park Homes, many for seasonal rental, some owned, that people take their annual holidays in. West Bay is a very popular place to visit in the summer and the Caravan Parks allow cheapish stays in the gorgeous Dorset countryside.

*I Googled "Bridport Dorset" for a photo and nearly all the pictures offered were of West Bay. but this is definitely Bridport, the market town, and not by the sea.

Back in Bridport and away from the worst of the wind, we parked up on the edge of town, using that parking app again, and walked up South Street towards the town's centre. As I said, it's a handsome little place and it's broad streets exist for a significant reason; rope making. I hadn't known until we started with the Family Tree thing  that Bridport had been a major manufacturer of ropes and nets. There must have been a glut of flax and hemp, vital ingredients of rope, that made Bridport a great place to manufacture it. When you look at an old map, there are dozens of "Rope Walks" marked, long thin strips of land where the strands for the rope was pulled out along holders to keep it off the ground, and then twisted to generate the strength of the rope. Rope making took place in the main streets of the town, hence the length, width, and straightness of the two main roads.

Of course, DW's family were involved in the rope making process, her great great grand-father being a Flax Dresser.

Having browsed some of the shops, including a brilliant toy shop packed to the ceiling with stuff old and new, we had a coffee break, then drove out along North Allington road, past an address that had occurred on a couple of Victorian census records. The street was lined with little stone cottages which I'm certain were occupied by the myriad workers employed in the rope and net industry 150 years ago. Just driving the street gave us a real sense of where DW's rellies lived and worked, thus making the trip well worth the effort.

The run home was slow as the wind, rain, and now fog, was slowing the traffic somewhat. The tree fallen across the road just outside Bridport didn't help, either. But we rolled back to our cottage unscathed, having met a big van on the narrow part of the road between here and the Expressway of course. The Law of Sod works well here.

We have a couple of other Family Tree excursions planned, so watch this space for true tales of ancestor hunting, and lovely drives out in the gorgeous south west of England.

Blighty Bound - Day Seven, An Unusual Pub

 

It was a nice slow start for us as we were expecting family guests, followed by an excursion into Buckfastleigh to the Valiant Soldier pub. 

The Valiant Soldier isn't a regular pub, it's actually a museum.

The museum's website sums it up well:

The Valiant Soldier was an active pub in Buckfastleigh which closed in the late 1960′s and never re-opened. Everything was literally left as it was and today, it’s open as a museum, giving visitors a glimpse into the past.

The current building which houses the Valiant Soldier dates from the 1700′s and the earliest mention of it as a pub is in 1813.

It had various landlords through the 19th and early 20th centuries and in 1939 its last landlord, Mark Roberts, became the tenant. In 1965 the brewery withdrew the license and Mr and Mrs Roberts promptly downed tools as the last customers left the premises, leaving everything just as it was.  The doors remained closed even after the family purchased the property from the brewery. After Mr Roberts died his wife, Alice carried on living in the upper part of the property until the mid-90′s.

When the family left the area, the pub remained untouched – the living quarters with its furniture, the bar with the optics, glasses, and brewery ephemera – even the change in the till! Also a huge number of bills, invoices, letters and photographs were left behind giving an insight into the workings of a small mid-20th century town pub.

Website here. 

DW had contacted the museum to see if they would be open in March, and while normally they would have been open one day a week, various difficulties had prevented the staff there from keeping their regular hours. However, after a bit of e-mail traffic, we did manage to secure a tour of the Valiant Soldier on an irregular day.

Buckfastleigh is a cosy little town lying in the steep folds of the Dart Valley, and has a long industrial history, despite it's agricultural surroundings. Mining, of tin and other local minerals, wool milling, and textile production were predominant. You'd hardly believe it now as the town very is quiet, largely I suspect because the main trade now is tourism, built up around the local Benedictine abbey and the heritage steam railway, both on the edge of town. It being a couple of weeks before Easter, the tourists had yet to arrive, except us of course. 

There are only a couple of working pubs left in Buckfastleigh now, but the Valiant Soldier stands as a testimony to a once thriving pub trade that saw dozens of drinking establishments, serving the workers from the mines, the mill and the railway.

The Valiant Soldier has been left pretty much as it was found. Old furniture, old flooring, old bottles, old barrels, you name it. It really is like stepping back to the 1950s. Obviously there has been some modern work to deal with the maintenance of the building (it struggles with damp, unsurprisingly), but the bar, the Snug, the kitchen, and the living accommodation have been preserved, and it's quite the experience to stand in among it.

The tour also took us into the tiny Buckfastleigh Museum, which managed to have a staggering amount of interesting artifacts crammed into a couple of rooms. As all good museums do, it informed me of a load of stuff about the area that I didn't know about. All for GBP6, too, which was quite excellent value.

If all goes to plan then we'll be heading, unusually, eastwards tomorrow, although the the weather doesn't look too promising. It'll be what it'll be I suppose.

Blighty Bound - Day Six, Tavvy

 

Today we motored over to Plymouth, picked up the family, and proceeded to Tavistock, known as Tavvy to the locals.

Tavvy is also known as "The Gateway to Dartmoor", and is an ancient Stannary town. If you have never heard of a Stannary Town, here is Wikipedia's take on it;

"A stannary was an administrative division established under stannary law in the English counties of Cornwall and Devon to manage the collection of tin coinage, which was the duty payable on the metal tin smelted from cassiterite ore mined in the region. In Cornwall, the duty was passed to the Duchy of Cornwall; in Devon to the Crown.

With the abolition of tin coinage in 1838 (following extensive petitioning by the Cornish tin industry for simplification of the taxation rules), the principal purpose of the stannaries ceased. In Cornwall, however, they retained certain historic rights to appoint stannators to the Cornish Stannary Parliament."

I'm not sure why I included that, other than the facts are mildly interesting. Next time you're in Tavistock you can proudly tell people what Stannery means.

We had come to visit Tavvy's Pannier Market, the indoor market that has different themes for each day of the week. Today we were visiting Bob's Trains' stall to see what second-hand model trains we could pick up.

But first we parked the car. It's a busy little town is Tavvy, and parking is at a premium. However, we found a place in the main car park and I set about adding another parking app to my UK phone so that I could pay remotely. Apart from the longish process, it all went well and soon I was poorer to the tune GBP3.20, but allowed to park my car for four hours without penalty. That was a result.

In the market, which was busy as usual, we consulted Bob the train man and came away with a small haul of excellent stuff. Bob and his friend (who's name I didn't catch) remembered us from our visit two years ago, which was a turn up. I suspect that we'll be back in two week's time to pick up more things that we should have bought today.

After a swift drink in a little, cramped, café run by two women who appeared not be on this planet a lot of the time, we headed back to the car and made the drive up on to the moors, and to the highest village in Devon, Princetown.

Princetown was once home to a maximum security prison, built from Dartmoor granite atop the inhospitable moors, in 1806. It's first prisoners were men captured in the Napoleonic wars. It remained in use until 2024, when major repairs, concerns about sanitation, and with the build up of Radon gas in the structure, forced its temporary closure. The buildings that form the prison are Grade II Listed, and the closure is supposed to be temporary, but I guess that time will reveal its fate.

The pub we were aiming for was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, so we drove down off the moor in and found a pub that was open, the Rock Inn in Yelverton, and enjoyed a meal and a drink.

Apart from a quick stop at a Marks and Spencer Food Hall on the way home, that was pretty much that. The weather behaved until we were on our way back, and we achieved what we had set out to achieve, so that was good.

Tomorrow sees us at Buckfastleigh, and another pub, although a pub with a difference. Stay tuned, dear reader.

Blighty Bound - Day Five, Fine Weather

 

We awoke to the now standard fog, but the forecast was for better weather. We had a slow start, but managed to get a batch of laundry done before we slipped out and made our way to the village of Ermington, just a little south of Ivybridge.

To get there we only had get to the A38, the fabled Devon Expressway, and that involves a couple of miles on Devon's ordinary roads. If you're not familiar with Devon, you won't appreciate what Devon ordinary roads are like. I will say that the road near us isn't particularly hard work, there are far worse, but along most of it it's only just wide enough for two cars to pass each other, and for some stretches it's only wide enough for one. There are little passing places, and you may well have to back up if you meet another car coming the other way. To add a little excitement, all the roads are bounded by hedges, it can feel like you're driving in a trench, and there really is no leeway at all when you do meet that oncoming vehicle. The Law of Sod always comes into play as well, meaning that you'll only ever meet things coming towards you on a bend, so you have no advanced notice, either. I'm always extolling the virtues of this lovely country to my Canadian friends, but I do wonder how they'd cope with these roads.

Back to Ermington, and we were on a mission. There's a little business there that will clean up and re-mount military medals, the Bigbury Mint, and we were heading there to drop off DW's dad's old medals for a bit of a spruce up. DW had arranged it all from Canada, and it was serendipity that the Bigbury Mint was so local to us on this visit. Once off the Expressway, we meandered through some Devon roads and Devon villages before coming to Ermington Mill. Rightly or wrongly, I parked near the road, and there was a precipitous slope down to the industrial buildings surrounding the old mill. It was hard walking down, let alone up, and we did it twice because I misunderstood the directions. Anyway, the medals were duly deposited and we set out for Plymouth along the lesser roads. Actually it was a nice little run because, as forecast, the weather had perked up. 

We made our way to Chris' Crafts and Models, in Exeter Road, Plymouth. He's an ex-Royal Marine who has a stock of used, and new, model trains and we were on a mission for young Charlie. Chris is a nice fellow, if a bit of a talker, and we left with a bag of goodies and some GBP350 lighter! Still, there will be a happy little chap in Ontario at the end of the month.

After the model trains, we made the short drive down to Plymouth's historic Barbican, found a very central parking spot and then made use of that UK mobile phone number again by loading the Ring Go parking app onto the phone and paying for parking that way. It wasn't cheap to park there, but it was a perfect position.

We made our obligatory stop at the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) shop on South Street, not only because it's a great charity to support, but they do some fabulous branded merchandise. One of the volunteers there told us about her regular trips to Regina, Saskatchewan, to see her son, so we spent a good deal of time in there and spent another GBP45!

As the weather was glorious now, especially given that it's still early March, we bought chips (the French Fry variety) from Harbourside, and ate them while sitting by the Mayflower Steps, looking out across Plymouth Sound. Goodness, it was lovely in the sunshine.

We had a short walk around the Barbican area, formerly home to generations of mine and DW's ancestors, then made a quick run out to the big Sainsbury's store at Marsh Mills. This was good for a number of reasons, for a browse, to get some petrol, and to use the much vaunted Nectar card that I'd spent so long activating on the UK phone. All things were duly achieved. The petrol was hugely expensive of course, the equivalent of nearly CDN$3 a litre, and more that it would have been last week thanks to the Mango Mussolini's war of choice in Iran. *Sigh*.

We were back home at a sensible hour, and decided on a TV watching evening, catching some old and some new British TV shows. However bad Brits think their TV is, it's a billion times better than most the dross we get in Canada, which is almost all from the USA. Be grateful! Oh, and watching the commercial-free BBC is bliss.

We're back with the  family tomorrow, and a little excursion to Tavistock, another of our regular haunts when we're in the Westcountry. Let's see what the weather does, because two glorious days are almost unheard of these parts.

Blighty Bound - Day Four, Fog.

It's been a dank old day. We set off from Little Orchard in slight rain and mist, and I managed to get the rear wiper on the car going. That's all good in shitty weather, but I didn't know how I'd activated said wiper and therefore didn't know how to turn it off. DW found reference to the problem using a Google search on her phone, and it turned our to be a tiny toggle switch on the end of the right-side control stalk that I couldn't see because of the position of the steering wheel. It's a lovely car but intuitive it's not. It must be the Scandinavian mind because I had an Ericsson phone years ago that defied all logic when it came to operating it. Maybe we've all be become used to Japanese design?

The run to Plymouth was in alternate drizzle then mist, which some would say was standard fare for Devon in early March. It was quite busy, too, but then Sunday has become the big shopping day for a lot of people, and they're all on the road in the middle of the day. 

We did our humping and dumping for the parents, then returned to their place for something to eat and a bit of iPhone and iPad repair. I also set up another store loyalty card on the spare phone, and had pretty much all the same problems that I had endured the day before. Registering for the card, Nectar this time, was a pain as I went through the entire process only to be told there was a problem. Going right back to the beginning, I tried again with a different e-mail address, and this time there was no problem, so I'm guessing that I had used my first e-mail address when I had a Nectar card eons ago. I also had to load the app, and the apps for GMail and Yahoo! Mail so I could verify the processes. Just to make things more difficult, I loaded the Tesco Mobile Pay As You Go app, which also required much checking and verification. But like yesterday, I did win in the end.

We opted to head back home while it was daylight, and it was a good job we did because the fog was worse than yesterday, but easier to deal with during daylight hours. 

We both felt cold, this despite it being around 10-12 degrees Celsius, which is significantly warmer than at home. It must be the dampness in the air, and believe me, there's lots of that.

Tomorrow is a day of tasks, family oriented for sure, but a little more indirectly. Perhaps I can do more on that in a future post. The weather looks to be less foggy tomorrow, but we'll see what actually happens as the day progresses. Snow is a possibility next week, which will be nice...

Blighty Bound - Day Three, The Holiday Begins

 I woke in the night at about 3am and it was totally dark and totally silent. We're not too far from the main road here, but far enough to be away from the madding crowd, and that silence was lovely. It being 3am, I rolled over and went back to sleep and didn't wake again until nearly nine, so a good night's sleep was had.

Our bedroom opens onto a patio and a rising green field, and this fine morning the field was populated by a couple of inquisitive sheep. The cottage's owners live next door and they maintain a pair of bird feeders on the field fence, so we watched the Sparrows and the Blue Tits having their breakfast, which was very nice.

Feeling very much restored, we headed further west, to the family homestead in Plymouth, but not before stopping off at the big Tesco in Roborough. We needed to get some some more stuff to supplement the basics we'd bought the day before, and to get a SIM card for our spare phone. We have a package on our Canadian phones that allows us to use them in the UK at a not too prohibitive cost, but you retain your Canadian number of course. However, we've found on previous visits that quite a lot of things require a UK phone number, hence the UK SIM.

Tesco Mobile does a good deal for GBP10, which is a lot cheaper than the SIMs they try to sell you at the airport. I could have put the UK SIM in my Canadian phone, but it's going to be simpler to have a dedicated UK phone, so we brought an old one with us. I bought the SIM, with the UK number, fitted it in the phone and everything was ticketyboo. 

One of the big things that a UK phone number can get you is grocery store loyalty cards, and the significant savings they bring, so I set about signing up for a Tesco Clubcard. It was then that all my good humour was beaten out of me. A combination of Google accounts, regional issues, and my inability to remember a password, fought me while setting up the damned Clubcard and the app to use it on the phone. I was at the task for the best part of an hour in the Tesco Café while DW did the shopping, and I was at the end of my tether when DW said she'd not been getting my messages. The penny then dropped, I went outside and all of a sudden a heap of e-mails came through and I was able to verify the cursed Clubcard. I had won the battle, but I was ready to kill.

Things improved a wee bit when we paid for our shopping, had the phone-based Clubcard scanned, and reaped the discounts (GBP8.20, nearly the cost of the SIM card) we'd been after. We both felt much better after that.

The rest of the day was spent with family, and the only excitement was on the way home when we hit some pretty thick fog. It was OK on the main road, but on the little lane leading to the farm, about three miles of it, we were down to 10mph and searching for the edge of the road in the murk. Corners and the crests of hills were particularly bad. The unfamiliarity of the route was a big issue, but we kept it slow and made it back to Little Orchard without running off the road. 

Tomorrow is earmarked helping the parents with some humping and dumping, so it'll be off to Plymouth again. Let's hope the fog doesn't make a reappearance. 

Blighty Bound - Day Two, The Arrival

 (That's London City airport, not Heathrow, but you get the idea about a panoramic view of the city) 

I left you as I was peering out of the aircraft window over Ireland, so the next part of the trip was the descent into Heathrow Airport, after the obligatory stacking over Sussex for a while. The pilot had said that the cloud base was low, and we were yards from the airport before we could see the ground, so the weather had deprived us of the panoramic views of London as we approached the runway from the east. Ah well.

Heathrow Terminal 5 is pretty good as airport terminals go, apart from the little transit train that goes from Gates B and C to the arrivals area. It gets very crowded and there seems to be big gaps in the service. You can walk instead of taking the train, but it's quite a hike, so we crammed onto the transit carriage for the short trip. 

At the border, we went though the automated gates without an issue. We'd only just heard about the need for dual-nationals to have a British passport with them, so we travelled on our UK documents this time, and were admitted - to the country of our birth!

Then it was baggage reclaim, and onto the SIXT hire car desk in the Sofitel hotel attached to the Terminal. I'd booked a specific car, but we allowed ourselves to be talked into a bigger and better car, a hybrid Volvo XC-60, at great expense. I have to say that the service at SIXT is always exemplary. The agent we worked with was excellent, and the people at the car pick-up area similarly so, and in what seemed like just a few minutes, we were driving out of the airport and heading west on the M4. 

The car is excellent, by the way, and while it's blown the budget a bit, given that we're going to be using it a lot, I don't mind at all. It's not as economic as a lot of European cars, but still better than all the North American cars I've driven.

We had a couple of stops on the motorway, not least to prevent falling asleep at the wheel, but managed to get ourselves safely down to the big Tesco store in Newton Abbot to pick up some key supplies. Neither of us were in the mood to browse, so we blagged what we needed then made the short journey through the rolling green hills of Devon to Whiddon, and our converted barn, Little Orchard. 

I'll do a separate post about Little Orchard, but suffice it to say, it's very cosy.

Having hauled the luggage out of the car, I sat down in an armchair and slept for nearly an hour. That's what an overnight flight will do to you. But we eventually hit the hay at 9:30, which was only 4:30 for our bodies, but it was dark and we needed the sleep.

It had been a long day and a half, but a successful day and a half, and we both crashed out very happy.

The family visits start tomorrow, so stay with me dear reader.

Blighty Bound - Day One, The Travel

Here we are again at Toronto Pearson Airport, ready for a run across the Atlantic. We're stupidly early, but any travel involving travel on Ontario's Highway 401 requires you to build in some slack.

The aim this time around, only nine months after our last trip, is to visit DW's dad and stepmum, given that with older parents, you never know which trip will be the last time you see them. We're booked into a little cottage near Ashburton in south Devon, about half an hour's drive from the old homestead. Sometimes that little bit of distance can be beneficial.

We'll no doubt get out and about, but our primary aim is family.

I won't be publishing any of these blog entries until we're back in Canada, just to make sure that family stays front and centre

So, back to the trip.

We've spent an anxious few days fretting about travel, thanks largely to the situation in the Middle East. However, everything looked OK for transatlantic travel, so we decided to press on. We always talk about packing lightly, but we never do, so this morning I loaded up the car with THREE suitcases for the TWO of us. To be fair, the combined weight of the three could have been split between two cases, but we tend to bring stuff back, so now have a "spare" case.

We haven't done a road trip in a while, so it was quite a treat to be heading out on the highway towards Toronto, even with the rain. This is the first rain we've had since November, which sounds bad, but precipitation has been exclusively of the snowy variety, so it's not like we've been parched. Highway 401 is a busy road, full of eighteen-wheeler trucks and people ignoring the speed limit. I set the cruise control to about 104kph, to keep pace with the trucks, and was doing fine until one of those trucks tried to pass me. Between Tilbury and London, it's just two lanes each way, so for what seemed like hours, this truck crept past. It started signalling to come into my lane when it was only half way past, and I think that was the driver saying "I've messed up, I can't get by and I'm blocking the traffic, slow down and let me in". Well, I'm all for cooperative driving but this numpty had tried a pass when it wasn't on, and I wasn't going to slow down to correct his mistake. Truck drivers drive all day and they really should be aware of their truck's ability to pass others, and it wasn't like I was doing anything wrong, I was on the cruise control on a constant speed. He did eventually get past, but I didn't fancy being in his cloud of spray for the next twenty minutes, so I passed him and set the cruise a little higher so we wouldn't get into the same situation again. Having held a commercial drivers' licence, I felt fully qualified to not only stick to my speed, but to call him a right knob end. 

We stopped at the Service Centre in Cambridge, and I availed myself of a Tim Horton's coffee. It was fully a dollar more expensive than in a normal Tim Hortons,  but worse, I had to order through an electronic kiosk, and the woman serving the drinks just dumped the cup on the counter and walked away; no order number called, no call at all, and she even covered up order sticker with the paper cup sleeve. I'd paid an extra dollar for that lack of service. I said to another worker that the first one should have called out something, and that worker agreed, but t'was a bit late by then.

Back on the road, we encountered the standard queue of traffic at the airport exit on the 401. Not that everyone was going to the airport, but you have to change highways, and that intersection is right at the point where the "Collector Lanes" join the Express Lanes, so you have multiple lanes of traffic trying to cross. It's always bad there. We also experienced Canada's dislike of informative road signs. There are precious few signs for the airport on Highway 401, and in fact the first one you see is after you get a full, panoramic view of the airport itself just by looking out of the window. You may not like London's M25, but all the airports are very well signposted on that particularly road system.

Then it was on to one of my favourite parts of the whole mechanical process of going on vacation the Park and Fly at the airport. It's run by a private company and it offers three levels of service; park off site and have you bussed into the airport, park on site and have you bussed to the airport, or drive to their site, have them park your car for you, then bus you to the airport. We like the third option, where you just leave your car on their secure site, right by the office, go in and register (or use an app like I did), get on their bus and go right to the terminal. When you arrive back, you let them know when you've landed, get on their bus at the terminal, and by the time you get to their office, your car is sat outside ready for you to drive home. It's long-term valet parking and I love it. It doesn't sound cheap when you look at the prices, $425 for three weeks, but by the time you apply all the discounts (CAA, or whatever) you only end up paying about a quarter of that. Compare that to the cost of parking at UK airports and it's a steal.

We were scarily early at the airport, as I said, but we dropped our bags having already checked in online, and made our way to the far distant end of Terminal 3. It wasn't hugely busy, so we located a quiet spot and broke open the sandwiches. The whole airport terminal, or departure lounge, idea has been changed over the years to provide an array of food and drink outlets, as well as the usual duty-free emporia. While that's not a bad idea, the prices charged at these places are beyond ridiculous, and given that there is theoretically no 13% sales tax, then it makes the price gouging even worse. As a result, we get all grumpy and bring our own food.

I can't remember how many hours we had to while away, but it was quite a relief when they started boarding for our flight early. We had, as has been our trend for a while now, bought seats in the not quite Economy/not quite Business section, so at least we had just the two of us in the row. The aircraft was a Boeing 787, the plastic 'plane, and the seats were OK, certainly better than the ones on the British Airways Airbus aircraft. At least there was plenty of leg room, which is why we choose these more expensive seats.

The flight departed bang on time, but disappointment followed, though, when I found out that the proprietary headphone sockets on the entertainment system didn't like my Bose adapter, so I was doomed to using the rubbish supplied by the airline rather than my very nice Bose version. The offending sockets were also damaged and they wouldn't hold the jack-plug in place, and allowed sound from only one side of the earphones unless I held the jack-plug in place. Then I found out that the touch-screen that was to show the movies and whatnot had a dead area across the top and down the right-hand side, which limited how I could use it. There was a remote control thingy tucked into the seat arm, but that allowed only basic functions. Between the screen and the remote I managed to get most things to work, but not all. I get it, the airline doesn't break these things, but it's disappointing all the same.

Anyway, I did manage to snatch a bit of sleep, although not nearly enough, and I did get to enjoy seeing the sun light up the starboard wing in the wee small hours, though the fancy LCD filter on the window that these 787s use rather than a pull down blind. Sadly, at 40,000 feet, above some dense cloud, I didn't get to see Cork (in Ireland), the land of my fathers.

I will close this entry now, as technically I was in day two of the trip as we flew over the Emerald Isle. There will be plenty more to write up, but so I'll do my best to keep each entry slightly less than the entirety of War and Peace.