It is a good example of England's Green and Pleasant Countryside. Lots of rolly green hills and pleasant valleys and well worth the trip, which was a good five hours or so from home.
At the advice of several child bearing friends, we headed off at about 6pm on Friday night. The idea of this is that we can beat the traffic, and the boy would sleep through the entire journey. Alas, it was not to be. Timbo (bless his cotton socks) woke up at about the half way mark and stayed that way. To his credit he was good in the car, but by the time we arrived at Exeter he was, er, not in a good mood and screamed the hotel down until about 1:30 in the morning.
Never again... Still, we got to see a nice sunset while stop-starting on the M4 (note the brake lights).
The next day Tim insisted on waking up at 5:30 (ugh), though Eve managed to convince him to only complain quietly until 6:30. Bleary eyed we plodded down to a hotel breakfast that was really very good.
Somewhat refreshed we went for a wee walk in Exeter before Tim's scheduled snooze. Eve enjoyed the shopping and we picked up a couple of Christmas gifts for notoriously difficult relatives.
Here is a couple of pictures of the grand local Cathedral:
In the town we found something we've never seen before. There was a shop where you make your own teddy bear. We got sucked in and made one for the Foozle and another for the Foozle-to-be. The idea is that you pick an empty bear casing, get it stuffed, put a wee "heart" in it, buy it some clothes, give it a name and print a birth certificate.
Here is Tim helping to put hearts in a bear. He was a bit keen and his new sibling's bear has more than one heart.
The snooze didn't happen, so we jumped in the car and headed south to:
The English Riviera.
Yep, welcome to Faulty Towers land. We simply had to go to Torquay. Alas the Gleneagles hotel on which the series was based is no longer here. Though we did drive up near one of the hotels on the hill. The view looked like this:
Sure enough the sea was there in between the land and the sky.
(The wildebeest image by Lince)
Once we finally found somewhere to park we went for a stroll along the waterfront. Note the groovy change booths on the sand.
After that we headed towards plymouth towards Buckland Abbey, which was once the home of Sir Francis Drake, the first Briton to circumnavigate the globe.
From there it was a drive straight through Dartmoor to our next destination. Sadly all the pretty spots had nowhere to park, but these are still nice. Eve liked the wild ponies that are scattered everywhere in this park.
And then we arrived at Castle Drogo. It might look old, but it isn't. Infact it was built in the early 20th century. Wikipedia has some information here, but not heaps. The speil we got from one of the attendants was much more interesting.
Apparently the story is something like this (IIRC). It was built by a chap named Julius Drewe, who otherwise a commoner made a whole bunch of cash in selling groceries. He built this castle because while he was fabulously wealthy, he didn't have a particularly noteable lineage. So he built this castle to look old and filled it with antiques to make it look like he had a long and wealthy family history. It is built near a medieval graveyard which strengthens the connection a bit, and he built it near a village called Drewsteignton, probably hoping that folks would think it was named after his family.
It's easy to poke fun, but it is a very impressive building in a very impressive place - he did rather well. If we hadn't been told we could easily believe that this was the long standing home of a rich family. The formal gardens were very pretty and the views top notch, and the foozle had a good time frolicking about.
This is pretty nifty - this canopy is made of tree, guided along wires that run along the line of the roof. Probably not so effective in the winter when the leaves are gone...
Then off to the cafe for a cream tea. The don't bother calling them Devonshire teas here, naturally. Clotted cream is probably fiercely unhealthy but it is very good.
Thankfully we had a much more restful night. In the morning the breakfast was again excellent. We packed up and started the trip back.
On the way we thought we'd drop into Cheddar Gorge. Here we find the village of Cheddar, which is indeed where the cheese comes from.
Alas, when we arrived it was absolutely crawling with tourists. There were so many folk that we didn't even bother to try to find a park (we probably wouldn't have). So we contented ourselves with driving through the gorge. It was nice enough, but the plague of humanity (of which we were a part) didn't endear us to the place.
Then home. The Foozle was happy to be reunited with his toys.
