History – turnrightoutofportsmouth

Tavistock – Ancient Stannary Town and Birthplace of Sir Francis Drake. Absolutely charming!

What’s a stannary town? Read on to find out! Tavistock is absolutely charming and has the added benefit of being on the route of the N27 cycling route

We have moved on from Cornwall; not far though, just as far as Tavistock on the western edge of Dartmoor.

There’s an awful lot to say about Tavistock. First of all, it’s absolutely charming with many of the Abbey ruins dotted around the town. The 10th century Benedictine Abbey must have been huge as the ruins are so well spaced out – some in the grounds of the church, and then the Still Tower (where medicines were made) still standing alongside the river, as well as the gates. The museum is housed in one of these gates, but was unfortunately closed during our visit.

The town was granted it’s market charter in 1105 and a market has been held there continuously since then. Nowadays this is mostly held in the purpose build (1860) Pannier Market with many regular stalls. We were drawn in by 2 of these stalls and bought a few gifts (a couple of which were for us!) Around the outside of the market building there are many cafes serving local produce (including, of course, pasties and cream teas).

Speaking of cream teas, Tavistock is apparently the home of the Devon cream tea (cream with jam on top – of course!) The story goes that a group of workers making repairs after a Viking attack in 997AD were rewarded with bread, clotted cream and strawberry preserves – the rest, as they say, is history 🙂

Devon Cream Tea (at Badgers Rest, Dartmeet)

Tavistock’s most famous son is Sir Francis Drake, and there are many nods to this around the town – from street names, shop names and statues to the cycle path winding through the town.

The N27 cycle path goes through Tavistock on it’s way from Ilfracombe to Plymouth. The section from Tavistock to Plymouth is known as ‘Drake’s Trail’. We used it to cycle from our campsite in Peter Tavy (Harford Bridge) and were really impressed (this was 1 of 2, mainly off road, cycle routes into town – and the easiest of the 2 we used). There is ample cycle parking near the town hall (opposite the Abbey Church).

On arriving in town Calv continued cycling along the N27 with me desperately trying to rein him in – ‘You’re on your way to Plymouth’ finally worked! The park alongside the river (which contains tennis courts, a BMX track and, of course, a bowling green) is rather lovely and brings you back, if you walk along by the river, to the wharf and the start of the canal, some of which is underground.

We ate lunch in the EastGate Bistro, again alongside the river, enjoying local produce, including beer and wine 🙂 Very nice too!

We returned the next day to make our purchases in the Pannier Market (we wouldn’t have been able to carry them home on our bikes). We parked up on the top road near the road up to the hospital (and the town steps) where it was free. On the way back we took the long route – completely unintentionally, especially considering we didn’t just have our purchases to carry, but those of fellow campers who were on their bikes! This resulting in a steep climb up the town steps and a steep descent down them back to the car – Calv wasn’t impressed with me…

By the way, I promised an explanation of what Stannary Town meant. Stannary means this was where mined metal (tin and later copper) was weighed, stamped and assessed for duty. Click here for more detailed information.

All in all I would definitely recommend a visit, or 2, to Tavistock. We will very likely return 🙂

Walking in Exmoor – Lynmouth, Lynton, West Lyn

A ride on the Lynmouth/Lynton cliff railway has been on my bucket list since way before I knew what a bucket list was! Recent appearances on travel programmes re-ignited my interest, plus a walk on Julia Bradbury’s Great British Walks ignited Calv’s interest too – so was the 1st stop on our UK mini road trip decided 🙂

After a slightly stressful run-in to Lynmouth (don’t take the A39 – read why here), we settled down for a few days of walking.

We arrived the day after a big storm and the weather was still a bit dull, but the following day was much better, and we set off, pretty early for us, at about 9.30am. The main reason for this is we were looking for somewhere to treat Calv to a big English Breakfast on his birthday 🙂

We found the footpath out of the site and set off down the lanes and across the fields to head down the hill. Some wonderful views greeted us even at this early part of the walk.

Once we hit the path we weren’t sure which way to go, so we headed left as this seemed the most logical direction. We were wrong as this took us back up the hill and around a gorge back downhill, before heading back up to meet the road skirting Lynton – meaning a walk along the road (some of it on the road) steeply downhill into Lynmouth. It wasn’t a problem, at least we saw more of the countryside!!

Arriving in Lynmouth we headed down towards the main area where there is a good selection of tourist shops, bars, cafes and pubs 🙂 We were here at the end of July so everything was open with social distancing protocols and masks in use.

At the far end of parade of shops we found The Ancient Mariner, just the right degree of quirkiness and a simply wonderful breakfast. We liked it so much we returned a couple more times during our trip 🙂

Revived by our breakfast we set off in search of the cliff railway that I had spent so many years wanting to visit. We first found the seafront and the Rhenish Tower (originally built in 1860 to store salt water for indoor baths, it had to be rebuilt after being destroyed in the disastrous flood of 1952). The historic cliff railway cannot be missed (both literally and figuratively), carving it’s way at a seemingly impossible gradient up the hill as it does! And it is still completely water powered.

At £3 each way for an adult (£2 per child, £1 per dog) it was well worth the total cost of £12 (we came back down later on in the day). A childhood dream finally realised!! I can’t wait to go back and do it again. And again. And again 🙂

Looking up the Lynmouth and Lynton cliff railway

At the top we took a walk around Lynton which is a bigger town than Lynmouth with more choice of shops and eateries. Perhaps not quite as charming though.

Completely by chance we looked at a info board in front of the town hall (and cinema. Apparently Lynton is the smallest town in England to have it’s own cinema) and decided to follow the walk up Hollerday Hill to find the old Hollerday House. There really was no evidence left of the house when you got there, the most complete area left was where the tennis court had been, although there is a really good information board.

Once you have walked up (and I mean up) as far as the house it is definitely worth walking the extra 5/10 minutes to the summit of the hill and the site of the old Iron Age Fort. It was VERY windy on the summit, but what a wonderful view we had – to the east the bay in front of Lynmouth, to the west ‘Valley of the Rocks’ and to the North the Welsh coast. We really wanted to visit The Valley of the Rocks, but simply ran out of time. Yet another reason to return 🙂

Once back down in Lynmouth we popped in for a drink in the Ancient Mariner before visiting the Glen Lyn Gorge . This perhaps feels a little expensive at £6 per adult, but it is privately owned and they have provided plenty of pathways up to the waterfalls, together with the loan of a mobility scooter that can get the less abled up to see these. The little museum is brilliant. Once the families left we had the place to ourselves (in these Covid times we waited for them to leave) and we were in there a fair while!

You learn a fair bit about the flood of 1952, which devastated the town, here. The other place is the Flood Memorial Hall which is near The Ancient Mariner. It’s free to visit but was unfortunately closed when we were in town (due to Covid no doubt).

So now we had to get back to the campsite. We knew we had to go uphill, but asked the guy in the Gorge what was the best way. The answer is to go to the right on leaving the gorge, and very soon there is a pathway up through the houses (we missed it at first, but I really don’t know how!!) You start off following the Two Moors Way (Devon’s coast to coast walk).

It is very steep, right from the start. And it doesn’t really get any better for a good long way…. Once off of the tarmacked path and into the trees you zig zag for what seems like miles (and not helped by people coming the other way telling you you’ve still got a long way to go!) before hitting the flattish path near the top. Here to get back to the campsite (Lynmouth and Lynton Holiday Retreat), you need to turn right. Then you will find the gate into the field waymarked for West Lyn. Good luck 🙂

This was a really long day and I’m sure you can imagine our legs were really tired, having walked over 11 miles – half of it up really steep hills. So we didn’t do much more that evening (not even a quick drink in The Beggars Roost...)

With tired legs the next day was spent visiting Ilfracombe. It’s so memorable that I forgot I’d been before….

Damian Hirst’s Verity in Ilfracombe Harbour

In my next post I’ll tell you about our walk to Watersmeet and back to Lynmouth (the same walk that Julia Bradbury did on the telly).

We stayed: Lynmouth Holiday Retreat

Lynmouth to Watersmeet walk

Our Next Stop: Greenacres Campsite, for Symonds Yat

Walking and Kayaking at Symonds Yat

Nuevalos – a visit on the way home via the Somport Tunnel

A final Spanish stop on our way home. Another little find; another place to revisit (especially as we missed the best part of the Monasterio del Piedra – the park itself)

Our final stop in Spain before our run through France to catch the ferry home. We chose Nuevalos via the ACSI book mainly for it’s proximity to Calatayud, not realising it’s a lovely area in it’s own right.

The drive was interesting with the SatNav taking us along a narrow, bendy road through the mountains for the last 20 or so kilometres. Luckily we didn’t see too many other cars, and when we did we were close to passing points (with the little car on the back it’s not so easy to reverse). For most of this section there was nowhere to go on the right hand side of the road. Calv would have loved it if we had just been in the little car; in the van – not so much! Anyway, we survived and made it to our campsite on the lake, Camping Lagos Resort, Nuevalos . This is a nice, terraced site overlooking a beautiful lake. Quite steep in places and unfortunately, at the time we were there in mid-March, there were alot of little, annoying, flies 😦

We stayed 4 or 5 nights and were lucky to enjoy some beautiful weather (although we couldn’t really sit outside the van due to the flies). We visited Calatayud, a pleasant town about 10 miles north, where we were able to stock up on groceries. We also wandered along the lakeside, around Nuevalos itself and took a longer walk to the Monasterio del Piedro.

Calatayud Continue reading “Nuevalos – a visit on the way home via the Somport Tunnel”

Sunday in Tarragona

Amazing city with a rich Roman history – also a strange tradition of building human towers..!

One of the places on my list to see whilst in Spain was Tarragona – so for just the 2nd time this trip we managed to actually tick something off of the, admittedly very short, list (the other being Carcassone).

From our campsite we had about an hour drive. We took the non-pay road. Well we fully intended to, but accidently ended up on a pay road for about 2 mins – we came off as soon as we realised – but it still cost us 2.13 Euros!! This was the C-32, and it happened as we believed that all toll roads began with the designation of ‘AP’. We now know we were wrong on this! The fact that it was a ‘peage’ road was shown by a small sign next to the road name with ‘peage’ running through the middle – if I could find an image for you I would, but let’s just say it wasn’t an ‘in your face’ kind of sign! Anyway lesson learnt we carried on along the C31 through Cubelles and beyond.

About 1/2 hours out we realised that whilst we had remembered to put our hi-viz jackets in the car (this time – we keep forgetting), we had left all the other documentation AND our passports and driving licences in the van – doh!! This caused the stress levels in the little car to rise somewhat, as the police in Spain have a habit of stopping cars, pretty regularly, at the entrance to roundabouts for spot-checks.

We’ve been stopped twice, once on the way to Tarragona…. Luckily though, as soon as they realised there was no steering wheel when I opened my window, they waved us on (this happened the first time as well) – phew 🙂

Once there we took a left by the ‘ampifeatre’, following the road towards the train station and the sea and found a car park immediately. We were right in the centre of things and ended up paying 10.75 Euros for about 6 hours – we were happy with that (even though we hate paying to park!!)

So our first stop was to see the ampifeatre. To be fair you get a really good impression of it without paying to actually go in, but it is worth wandering Continue reading “Sunday in Tarragona”

Castello Dali and a climb to see Castello de Montgris

Our first stop in Spain – loving the discoveries of the partially completed Castello de Montgris and the Castello Dali (bought by Dali for his wife, and restored for her).

Cycle Ride around l’Estartit

The next day we stayed local and used our bikes. There are many opportunities for cycling around this area and numerous cycle paths (we tend to make up our own routes!) We first headed right out of the campsite, finding la Gola, where the River Ter meets the sea.

Unfortunately, due to the recent storms, the beach area was a bit untidy. However, there were people there busy clearing it all up.

We then headed back up towards the campsite and the other way towards the marina. This entailed cycling through the floods (we weren’t meant to, but I followed Calv – although I but managed to hit a large bit of debris and ended up jumping into the water to stop myself from falling off completely! It was deep enough to come up to my ankles, so the rest of our ride was completed with me in sodden trainers….)

Any upset was alleviated though when we found a bar open near the marina. A coffee soon turned into 2 glasses of wine and 2 beers sat out in the sun. Continue reading “Castello Dali and a climb to see Castello de Montgris”

Discovering new places in Spain

The day that we came across the border from France into Spain was, it’s fair to say, a bit stressful…

Firstly we were affected, twice, by the fuel protests happening all over France. First as we tried to leave Narbonne, and then as we tried to get onto the motorway at Perpignan. I simply cannot imagine anyone getting away with protests like these at home – making a point and then letting people through, fair enough; burning tyres at the side of the road and not letting anyone through (as happened to us on Saturday) would not be tolerated. On Sunday they were holding everything up for about 15 minutes and then letting a few vehicles through – I guess thereby keeping the police off their backs. We were probably held up for a total of about 1 1/2 hours.

Then, once in Spain, we had heavy rain (yay, welcome to Spain!!) and started noticing increasingly bad floods in the fields alongside the road. As we neared our chosen site we suddenly came across a road closed sign (no diversion or anything…), so we stopped to find a new route, only to have the same thing happen again. It was due to flooded roads and this time we were sent off on a diversion by the police manning the closure. A very interesting diversion it has to be said (it was a road, but not really if you see what I mean!) – anyway we made it through and stayed 1 night at a different site (which was actually very nice – Mas Patoxes, Pals) before heading to L’Estartit and our chosen site, les Medes, in the morning.

Approacing l’Estartit via Toerella de Montgris we could see a castle sitting high atop the mountain – every time we passed it over the next couple of days we would look at each other and say – ‘We’re going up there!’ (and we did 🙂 )

But before we did we visited Empuries at L’Escala, a little way up the coast, cycled around l’Estartit – through the floods and getting waylaid by a little bar open outside the marina (oops) and also took in Dali’s castle in Pubol.

Empuries, l’Escala

This is a really interesting site – it is, in fact, 2 ancient cities that have been unearthed (this is actually on-going) – 1 Greek (this came 1st) and the other Roman (bigger, but only 20% so far unearthed).

For just 5.50 Euros each we spent a couple of hours wandering the 2 cities and learning of their history, via the audio guide included in the price; visiting the museum and also having a quick drink in the cafe (2 drinks and 2 cakes for about 6 Euros). We would probably have stayed longer but our feet were aching!

This had been a particularly busy day of exercise for me as I had been out for my 1st run in over 3 weeks that morning, surprising myself with how much I enjoyed it! I had also taken advantage of the indoor pool at the campsite the afternoon before – so I was feeling very smug with myself.

I don’t want to go on too long in 1 post so will write about our cycle ride, visit to Pubol and climb up Montgris to see the castle in a separate post. (See Castello Dali and a climb to see Castello Montgris)

Keep travelling 🙂

A visit to Carcassone on the way to Narbonne

Looking for a site around Carcassone we were struggling to find somewhere that was still open at this time of year. So we decided to just visit on the way to the coast – we’d found a site at Narbonne that was open, les Floralys.

What we neglected to do was to decide on where to park when we got there! So we ended up following the signs for ‘La Cite’ before taking a wrong turn and ending up on a dead-end outside a school. There was plentiful parking available so we stopped there! Much to the amusement of the school children milling around. (What we discovered when we left, after having to get the van turned round and the car re-hooked up, was that if we HAD carried on around the roundabout there was an actual parking area right there!!)

Anyway we unhooked the car and went off in search of parking closer to ‘La Cite’. We drove around and around the narrow one way system looking – any on-street parking is covered by permits it would appear, but we eventually found a car park by the river where we parked for free. From here it was about a 10 minute walk up to the medieval city.

Entrance to the city and it’s outer walls is free, but once inside you will pay to visit the castle, school museum and any other attractions of interest. The streets are delightful and the church (see main photo) is beautiful. There are the usual souvenir shops in abundance and many, many eateries. There is also, apparently, a haunted house. Close to the castle.

Carcassone. Look closely – there’s a photo-bomber in there!

Back to the van for a quick bacon butty (cue more curious stares from the school kids…!) and then we were back on the road headed for Narbonne.

At this point it was lucky that I’m in the habit of following our route with the map as our Aguri tried to take us down a road that didn’t exist and I realised we were heading away from our destination, so we took over with the 2 phones on Google maps until the Aguri eventually caught up with us.

We chose to stay 2 nights, but it turned out we had little choice anyway as we were affected by the mass protests on fuel duty across the whole of France. We couldn’t even get to the supermarket for milk 😦 And it didn’t stop raining, pretty much, the whole time we were there.

When we couldn’t get to the shop we headed in the opposite direction, towards the sea. At the first roundabout we came too I said ‘we need to go right’, but Calv said ‘I want to go that way’ – up into the mountains! So we did, to see some stunning scenery as we wended our way up, and then back down, the mountain road.

Back at the roundabout we took the road towards Gruissan and Narbonne Plage. We spotted flamingoes out in the lake and a castle up on the hill – so we had to go have a look didn’t we?

Parking up we found our way through the narrow streets to the church and the steps behind leading up to the castle. At first we thought it was closed, but a quick push of the gate and we were in. There’s not much to see but there are wonderful views from the top. Whilst there the wind picked up and the rain didn’t let up, so we headed to an open bar for a quick drink. This particular bar was a sports bar that actually had a betting office on-site!

The umbrella stayed the right way round for once!

On the way back to the site we managed to get milk in the garage as we headed out of Gruissane. We did look to see if the protestors had abandoned their post underneath the bridge, but they hadn’t. They had when we popped out a little later though, but all the shops were shut – we’re not entirely sure that they bothered opening to be fair.

The protestors stopped us from driving in to see Narbonne, and the rain stopped us from cycling, so unfortunately we missed out.

The protestors were still out on Sunday when we left for Spain. We thought at first that they wouldn’t be as they weren’t at 10am, but they soon started appearing. We were held up for about 20 mins whilst trying to get out of Narbonne (tyres burning and everything), and then again around Perpignan – this time for over an hour 😦

Everything seemed to go smoothly after this; even the tolls weren’t overly expensive. It’s best to take the toll road from Perpignan into Spain as otherwise you have to deal with very mountainous terrain – the total cost in tolls from Perpignan to Figueres was 11.50 Euros and it took a whole hour off our journey time!

At this point we started noticing the floods on either side of the roads, whole fields under water. Then about 10 miles away from our site we were barred from taking our required road by a police blockade – that’s all you get though, no diversion or anything! So we had to stop and re-calculate a route, which we did, only to be stopped again. This time the police directed us around the floods, which made for a very interesting 10 minutes or so 🙂 We’d already changed our destination by now as we thought we couldn’t get to l’Estartit, and we were very relieved to pitch up for the night. Ready to head the 10 miles to l’Estartit in the morning.

Discovering Chateau de Chenonceoux and Amboise nearby

We moved on towards Tours after leaving la Ferte-Vidame. This route was chosen after much deliberation regarding our route – resulting with us eventually, and reluctantly, deciding to abandon our plan to cross the Millau Viaduct (boooo….); mainly due to the seeming lack of campsites open for us on that route 😦

Having decided on Tours, I thought that we might actually stay for 3 nights, having seen a weather forecast suggesting full sun and a high of 21C on Monday. Sadly it turns out that there are several towns called Tours in France, and my app had decided to provide me with information for a different one, rather than the main town of Tours located in the Loire Valley. So we just stayed for 2 nights after all.

We could have hopped on the cycle path and ridden into Tours to visit the old city (about 4 miles away, with the cycle path passing within about 50m from the site – albeit across a busy road); but we didn’t…

Instead we used our 1 full day there to visit the Chateau de Chenonceaux. There are so many chateaux to choose from to visit; we chose this one as it actually spans the river Cher. It turns out that it is actually a Unesco World Heritage Site.

We paid 14 Euros each to visit the castle and gardens – other attractions within the grounds include a maze, wine cellar (caves), gourmet restaurant, tea-room, self-service restaurant, 16th century farm with carriage musuem and donkeys 🙂

But the main draw is without doubt the castle itself, where many rooms are open to the public. One of the interesting facts we learned was that Continue reading “Discovering Chateau de Chenonceoux and Amboise nearby”

Perfect Port Sunlight and Crosby’s ‘Another Place’

Following our day out in Liverpool (see here for relevant post) our friends arrived onsite and we took the car to visit Port Sunlight (an obsession of mine for some years since seeing it featured on various TV programmes).

Port Sunlight is a model village (not ‘miniature’ model, but ‘ideal’ model) conceived by Lord Leverhulme to house the workers for his Sunlight Soap factory (much like Bourneville was built for Cadbury workers). The houses and surroundings must have seemed like a little slice of heaven for those who were lucky enough to have the opportunity to move there!

Lord Leverhulme also believed in work/life balance (he was years ahead of his time!) and as such provided numerous leisure facilities for his workers and their families – there were schools, social clubs, parks, sports & recreation areas and even an open air swimming pool. There was (is) even a pub, The Bridge Inn, although no alcohol was initially served here. Continue reading “Perfect Port Sunlight and Crosby’s ‘Another Place’”

Cycle ride to Portchester Castle

This is the 1st time we have actually cycled to Portchester Castle (despite the fact that we only live a couple of miles away…)

And what a beautiful day we chose to do it! We headed off down the hill and took the road towards the water. We first visited Wicor Marine from where you can access the Salt Café, sitting directly on the shores of Fareham Creek and well worth a visit for a cuppa and a slice of cake (or perhaps even a glass of wine 🙂 ).

(There is actually a lovely walk around Fareham Creek that can be started from the café (or the castle itself), that takes you around the golf course at Cams Hall (covering much of the Fareham park run route). Click here for details.

Having stopped by Calv’s sister’s for a cuppa and some oil for Calv’s bike chain we took the path along the shoreline as far as Hospital Lane where we emerged into the heart of old Portchester. The path was good (although there is a bit with steep drops on either side, 1 down to the shingle beach, the other a grassy ditch, so if you’re not very confident on your bike you would probably get off and walk here!) The views are just lovely, particularly on a beautiful sunny day (which we are experiencing so many of at the moment 🙂 )

View from our ride along the shore of Fareham Creek towards Portchester Castle

At the end of the path you can continue straight to the castle along the shore – although a short section is on the beach so it’s not really suitable for cycling. Therefore when you get to the end of the fence separating the shore from the lane down to Turret House, turn left to go up Hospital Lane, where you will found a couple of lovely old houses. The view of Castle Street when you get to the top is lovely 🙂 (I didn’t take a picture as on a sunny Sunday afternoon the cars have sort of taken over!)

From here it’s just a short hop to the castle (about 20 seconds on bikes, maybe 2 mins if you’re on foot. Continue reading “Cycle ride to Portchester Castle”