We arrived in Ilfracombe late Saturday afternoon. We have been sticking as close to the coastline as possible and Ilfracombe is another of the beautiful little harbor towns which come one after another along the Dorset, Cornwall and Devon coasts. We always have a little adventure finding where we are going to stay as streets are very narrow, very steep and not always very plainly marked. But sooner or later we always make it. After unloading the car we set out to take a quick look at the harbor and also to find sustenance. We decided we were all in the mood for Chinese and found a Malaysian-Chinese restaurant on the High Street that looked promising and sure enough, we were not disappointed.
On Sunday morning Jenny needed to spend some time on her project. I'm not sure exactly what she's doing but it has something to do with a project she is doing for college. So in order to give her some peace and quiet Bob and I left to explore on our own. Plan A was to take a boat trip out to Lundy Island, but when we got down to the pier there was a sign outside the booking office that said "Try Monday." Plan B was to find the Tourist Information office and see if there were any other boat tours going. We found the office but no trips were going on Sunday. We thought up several other options that didn't work out but somewhere around about Plan F we decided to take the "Scenic Tour" on the double decker bus that was running.
We had about an hour wait for the tour to start so we played a game of miniature golf (I won, I won) and forced down one of those decadent cream teas. The "Scenic Tour" was about one and a half hours long and followed the coast line up to Waterstone Castle which was a children's Theme Park. (There are lots of those around). We had a very good tour guide who told us tales about pirates, smugglers, wreckers and invaders who all pillaged the coast along the tour. She was also a great quoter of Omar Kayham, the Persian Poet who wrote the Rubyiat. What does that have to do with anything you ask? We wondered as well. I never did decide whether she was simply eccentric, trying to impress us, or since there were American's on the bus she was being patronizing. Brit's love to patronize Americans. They think we are all illiterate. In any case I never did tell her could recognize Omar Kayham's poetry when I heard it. Why spoil her fun.
More practical information was gotten from the lorry driver from Plymouth who was sitting in front of us. He pointed out a very picturesque 500 year old pub with a thatched roof as we drove past and told us the food there was very good and the prices very reasonable. Apparently it makes not a bit difference what country they come from, truck drivers always know where the best places to eat are.
On Tuesday, we once again loaded up the car and continued around the coast. We went through a bunch of little villages, each one prettier than the rest. I started to wonder when the ultimate pretty place was going to appear. Each time I thought, "this is the prettiest one I've seen yet. Then when we got to the next once I'd think, no, this is." I never could make up my mind. The flowers over here are simply incredible. I can understand why they call their yards gardens. And the Roses!!! There are also hanging baskets hanging everywhere. On walls, on lamp posts, sign posts, fence posts, anyplace they can stick one, they do. We've taken about a zillion pictures of them.
One of the real interesting things we did was to ride the Cliff Railway at Lynton. The railway has two tram cars that run on parallel tracks to the bottom of a VERY high cliff (500') . One travels down to the bottom as the other travels to the top. The unique thing about them is that they are powered by water. Each tram car has a large water tank on the underside. The car on top
fills up with water, (gravity fed) which makes it heavy enough that when it starts down it pulls the bottom car to the top of the cliff. The top car, which is then the bottom car empties out its water, and the bottom car which is now the top car fills up and they are ready to go again. At the bottom of the cliff is the rest of the village and the harbor.
Finally after once again getting a little bit lost we found our B&B for Monday and Tuesday nights. It turned out to be a lovely farm house called Courtmoor Farm. The couple who ran it were extremely nice and my room had the best shower I have ever used, anywhere. I asked how old the farmhouse was, I am fascinated with the age of buildings as you have probably noticed by now, and the woman told us that it was a relatively modern building, only being about 200 years old. Oh well....practically brand new then. In return for such a lovely stay I promised Rosalind that I would plug her place on my web site. So here it is....the plug. Courtmoor Farm, Rosalind & Bob Buxton, Tel: 01404 861565. Highly recommended
She did have a big oil burning Aga cooker in her kitchen, a time honored symbol of English country life. Although I have read a lot of books in which the characters had one, this was my first close up and personal look. This Aga had started life as a wood fueled kitchen stove, and has now been converted to a oil fueled kitchen stove. It's very pretty in a kitchen stove sort of a way. It's also very functional. It had four ovens, one for roasting, one for baking, one for simmering and one for warming plates. It only had two "burners" one for boiling and one for simmering but they both had hinged, insulated covers. But it also heated the kitchen since it's "on" all the time, and also served as a hot water heater. There is an Aga shop in Helensburgh and I dropped by after we got back to see what those little darlings cost. Let me put it this way, the cost of putting one of these cookers into your kitchen costs on a par with the cost of the average heart transplant. Well, maybe I'm exagerating a little, but not by much. That must be why they call it the "heart" of the English Country Kitchen.
On the advice of our Innkeepers, we drove "just down the road" to the little bitty village of Upottery and had dinner at the local pub. It was a bit older than the farmhouse, parts of it were about 500 years old. Once again we had a great meal and I somehow managed to down three glasses of wine!! I really felt good until I woke up about three in the morning with a splitting headache. I never learn. (sigh)
On Tuesday we drove up to Tiverton and took a 2 and a half hour ride down the Grand Western
Canal on a horse drawn barge. This was an incredible trip and was at times incredibly serene. It would have been a lot more peaceful had it not been for Isobel, who was about three years old and had no business on a small barge with nothing to do for two and a half hours. In places peoples back gardens come right down to the edge of the canal and almost everyone has landscaped to take the best possible advantage of it. What a place to live!
Today, Wednesday we reluctantly left Cortmoor Farms and drove up to Taunton, which puts us in Somerset now. Jenny and Bob have good friends who live here and are kindly putting us up. I managed to get on line via Thelma's telephone line and discover that my Dad has had surgery in my absence and my car, which I had left in the garage for a tune up needs more work than I had thought. Oh well, there's nothing much I can do about any of it. My Dad is recovering, and I don't have much choice about the car. Tomorrow I am going to take the train up to Bath. Jenny and Bob are going to do something with Thelma and "don't fancy" taking the Jane Austen or Georgette Heyer tour in Bath.
I will write an entry covering Bath tomorrow night and e-mail it before we leave here. I may not be able to send any more e-mails after this one until I get back to Scotland. I am not too sure I will find telephone connections available in Plymouth or London as we will be staying in Royal Navy Transient Quarters in both places and as I am continually reminded..I am definitely not in Kansas anymore. Phone lines where people will let you plug into the Internet are far and few between. Basically, they don't understand what it is you are really doing, and also there is no such thing as a local call here. Every call is a toll call. That makes things sticky.