This latest update covers from the 28th of May to the 4th of June (today).
We left off having just finished with Cornwall and off to Devon. We took a train and then bus to Dartmouth. A change on our original plan which was to go to Plymouth. It had been suggested to us that Plymouth was no good and we had a tip about the Dartmouth area.
We stayed at a place called Little Cotton caravan park for three nights, are some twisting their arm after they said they were full! We ended up having a very large area to ourselves. Another observation about the camps so far is that the sites are large, so it generally seems quite spacious ever this week which has been school holidays here. Not like somewhere like Kaiteriteri which gets packed for example.
The day we arrived in Dartmouth we walked to Dartmouth Castle and back.
The second day we took the Paignton and Dartmouth Steam Railway because they were having special heritage displays. These displays included a spitfire, US WII vehicles, history of railway in the area and model railways. We had our first Sunday Carvery on this day.
On the 30th be bussed to Totnes to visit Totnes Castle and came across some cycle racing. They were doing it in the centre of town, doing laps around a small area. We saw a mens race that was an hour long (we caught the last twenty), then we watch the kids up to 14 who had a 20min race. Nicky thought they were very cute, there was some very young ones. One was helped around by his Dad, he may not have even been at school yet (starting them young). The race looked like it could have been a recipe for disaster but only one spill which ended in tears as one young kid took out 2 of the 14 year olds. Who were very resilient and got going again ASAP. This afternoon we had our first Devonshire tea, very enjoyable.
The next day we visited Gran’s pen friend Dorren in Dawlish. Talked to them and they very kindly took us out for a carvery lunch at their local, ice cream in the town and out to the Dawlish Warren. They also very handily drove us up to Exeter where we caught our bus to Lyme Regis.
Here we were taking a risk as we had identified the camp we wanted to stay at the night before, a couple of miles out of Lyme Regis but didn’t ring ahead as we suspected we would be told they were full. So we trudged out there massive bags and all and sure enough they said they were full but found a spot for us because we had walked with our bags. Calculated risk which came off really.
In the morning we took a scenic walk down to Lyme Regis, looked around quickly at the beach, town & museum before rushing back to pack the gear and run/stagger (heavy packs) for a bus to take us to Dorchester where we visited a fully excavated Roman House and the Tutankhamun exhibition before catching a train to Bournemouth, were we took a walk down to the pier and around the main shopping district.
While in Bournemouth we visited Poole and went on the ferry to Brownsea Island, a nature reserve which has endangered red squirrels (yay we saw one) and is the founding home of the boy scouts, needless to say as it was school holidays it was busy and there was lots of scouts. We also checked out Poole Pottery and the old town area.
Our second day at Bournemouth took us to Christchurch, bought some lovely strawberries at the farmers market, checked out the priory which was very impressive I took lots of photos, saw the river Avon, then went to the museum of electricity before returning to Bournemouth to catch a coach to Chichester. The coach ran about 45mins late which was a pain as it was getting late by the time we got to the Chichester Lakeside Holiday Park where we are staying until Sunita returns home on Monday.
I had on our schedule to go to the Heavy Horse and Working Animal show which is on at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum at Singleton nearby and that is what we did today. Very interesting kept us busy for about 5 hours, I’ll be posting at least a couple of youtube videos for this event, so check them out via the youtube bar on our blog at http://dalenickyoe.blogspot.com/
Tonight is dedicated to writing this, processing videos and pics and trying to plan ahead.
Hope this finds you all well and we look forward to updating you again soon.
