LOCATION: South Cornwall Coast to Plymouth
What's happening?
Perhaps we found our English home today. Could easily live here - somewhere around Ashbury where where you can access a country village, roamed the moors and visit the harbour. Oh, and eat pastries at The Library.
This day was so full of stories - our heads and ears are ringing. Think at some stage we are going to have to find an off button - definitely approaching a level of sensory overload
The Adventure
Such a day of contrasts but here are a few of the places we visited today.
Ashburton: such a little village - it isn't a place you tour - it is so small, you just "drop in." It’s tiny, quiet, and wrapped in farmland and ancient hedgerows, has narrow laneways, just a scattering of cottages, a church, and a pub and a small ex library, now a cafe, with the best coffee and pastries! The sort of place where everyone knows everyone and as outsiders, you were instantly recognisable but were included in the conversation.
Yes, we were here for the ritualised morning coffee for @Mac and @Nigel but it was the recently refurbished and painted pub that we were here to talk about. Not surre how they got away with black and gold - but there you go.
The Old Exeter Inn built in the 12th century, makes it one of the oldest freehouses (we know what this means now!) in the world, and the fifth-oldest pub in the UK.
This little incongruous town and pub was where:
- Sir Francis Drake drank in the late 1500s
- Sir Walter Raleigh was arrested in 1603 and
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stayed while researching The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Each knight had a fabulous story! And incredible that part of their story transpired across 300 years in this Inn that sits on the Mariner's Way and the King's Highway.
Jumped back in the car clutching our pastry purchases - hoarding them to eat on the moors with the ponies.
Dartmoor National Park: So weird here - the National Park is not owned by the government or the National Park Authority - in fact, all land within the park is privately owned. The biggest owners, is the Royal Family - specifically the Duchy of Cornwall - meaning currently, it is owned by Prince William. There are also many private estates and common land owners along with forestry, water, trust and park ownership.
But above all that it is magically beautiful. Acres of open, rolling green hills, interspersed with the ricky outcrops of the tors (apparently 140 of them in this park) on this day day under blue skies and covered with "trampers" or "ramblers" or "walkers." Green fields, sheep and cattle and the feral ponies. It was alive and magical.
On a different day in winter, we could have been shrouded in low lying scudding clouds, in freezing windy condition dodging oing the mist and the bogs with horizontal rain, hail, ice and snow!
This winter landscape explains the site selection for Dartmoor Prison. The landscape and conditions were part of the deterrent to escape. @Nigel woven great stories around the construction of the Prison, its horrific conditions, its inmates, escapees and its possible future. And again, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle popped up here as the Prison and the Moors provided inspiration for his Sherlock Holmes stories.
Had a little bridge tour on the moor. @Nigel introduced us to the medieval clapper bridges - apparently there were about 30of these across the Dartmoor area. This one was right where the east and west tributaries of the Dart River converged. A beautiful spot.
A clapper bridge is a type of stone bridge built from large flat granite slabs (“clappers”) laid across stone piers. This design appears mainly in Devon and Somerset, where granite is abundant. The slabs rest on piers or directly on riverbanks, creating a low crossing ideal for packhorses and foot travellers and formed part of the route for the trade of tin on the 1300s. According to @Nigel their simplicity was their genius: no mortar, no timber, just granite slabs placed with medieval manpower using rollers, sleds, and pulleys. Amd best of all, Granite doesn’t rot, warp, or rust. Even floods that destroyed other bridges often left clapper bridges intact.
Pulled up a chair beside one of the medieval clapper bridges and munched our way through two pastries - a cinnamon swirl and a creme Brulee pastry and without doubt have declared them as the two best of any pastry anywhere in the world! Would travel back to Ashburton just to try again! But, we did have to keep moving forward so pulled in for quick lunch at the "Happy Belly Larder." Sort of felt we ate our way around the Moors today.
Plymouth Harbour: Headed back to Plymouth for the tour of the harbour. Stopped in first at the Royal William Yard, a vast 19th‑century naval victualling yard built from pale limestone. It’s all arches, symmetry and perfection being repurposed today as a residential area.
Reloaded and moved into the busy part of the harbour - the Branabic and The Hoe.
How clever were we to be at the Mayflower Steps on July 4?
So much to enjoy in this precinct and true to our word to @Nigel, we had not explored any of it last night! We had been on the same trek as the 50 Harley Davidson riders for the day and right on schedule they fired up their bikes (complete with their leader stopping all traffic so the convoy could continue) Created a wonderful roaring introduction for us and helped to clear a bit of a path for us through this busy precinct.
About 75% of Plymouth was destroyed during the WW2 bombing but the medieval/Elizabethan quarter of the Barbican escaped most of the devastation. Its narrow lanes and old houses weren’t near the military dockyard, so they remained intact.
We spent three hours exploring here with @Nigel taking in the old and the new. Really enjoyed the stories of the Mayflower and the Pilgrim fathers, Smeaton's engineering prowess (he was the civil engineer at Charlestown Harbour) an̈d his tower lighthouse, the atmosphere of the Hoe (a big parkland on a hill), and the statues - including Drake and the defeat of the Spanish Armada (couldn't interrupt his biwls game) and Nancy Astor, Britain's first female MP.
Finished up by taking up a spot on the BeatleBums - bronze bum print and footprints from where the Beatles sat on the Hoe. We had already had a bit of an introduction to them on the making of their movie The Magical Mystery Tour. We'd crossed the bridge in the Moors earlier today where their bus had been stuck and had to be towed backwards through the hedgerows.
@Mac took up a spot on @Paul. I sat on @Ringo's spot. We were both a little inelegant trying to roll over and stand up after a long day of walking. But we managed.
Anyway, we still had another half an hour of highlights to go and wandered back acccompanied by @Nigel's commentary.
At the end of the day and waiting for our gear, I asked @Mac about his top pocket being unzipped. He tapped the pocket and said "That's for my glasses." And then raised the query a decibel or two with "WHERE ARE MY GLASSES?' His pocket was empty, the prescription glasses were missing. Emptied his man bag - no luck.
We retraced our steps by checking the camera roll - and the last picture where he had the glasses was, thirty minutes ago, at the BeatleBums.
He left me in his wake and sprinted across the Hoe. There, carefully placed under the signage for the statues, someone had found his glasses and propped them open to keep them safe. Crisis averted!
Went for one last walk in the evening, back to the waterfront to the fish and chips place we had spotted in the afternoon. Happy to report that we finally discovered the best batter in the UK and successfully warded of the determined attempts of Jonathon Livingston Seagull and all his mates, for a leisurely dinner overlooking the harbour.
Have also discovered, that every cloud has a silver lining. Now understand that the "tiny room" with the "tiny shower" did have a decided advantage over the spacious double shower of Plymouth with its slippery floor. (It is ok, only close calls) There was no way you could possibly slip over in the shower in Penzance - that tight space was a silver lining.
A moment 💋 for our vicarious adventurers the @Littlens
Survival Barometer
Steps: 14 235
Weather: 17 degrees - cold on the Moors - warmer in the afternoon
Can you believe that?
A little background from Co-Pilot.
🌄 Why was Dartmoor Prison built here
Britain was overwhelmed with French POWs during the Napoleonic Wars. Prison ships (“hulks”) in Plymouth were overcrowded, disease‑ridden, and insecure.The government needed a remote, escape‑proof land prison.
Dartmoor Prison was built between 1806 and 1809, and its construction was shaped by war, weather, isolation, and sheer practicality. The short version: it was built from the moor itself—local granite boulders and stone from a nearby quarry—under harsh conditions, to solve a crisis of overcrowded prisoner‑of‑war ships
Today's Spot the J clue - including the one below ... there are two
...the J had been "misplaced" but now found
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