Headlines
Breakfast, Pack, Leave: and a last attempt to geocache in Wales
Wales to England to Polperro: fast motorways, big bridges
Polperro at Last: fitting memories to facts
First Meal in Polperro
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Stream of Consciousness
Breakfast, Pack, Leave: and a last attempt to geocache in Wales
Another hearty hotel breakfast! Today, I have kippers. It seems so very... English. I have to try them, even though we're in Wales. Near enough...
Fishy.
I enjoy my kippers but would not have them again, not for a while, anyway. Deb asks, Have I tried kippers before? Yes, though not for years and years. Probably on an earlier trip to England.
Deb has the full Welsh breakfast. Today, I help her finish the rather large amount of food. I'm so kind :-)
Upstairs to our room. We pack, haul cases downstairs. I make sure that the hotel people know we're gone... And... we're gone.
It's a three hour plus drive to Polperro. A long drive. We'll still need to stop on the way, or arrive too early. No worries, we'll at least be stopping for lunch.
Oops! I take a wrong exit from a roundabout! The GPS recalculates -- and we're now travelling on less travelled roads. Still busy but two instead of four lanes. A good result. On these quieter roads, we decide to try for a Welsh geocache...
I've loaded some geocaches in the GPS, caches centred on Abergavenny. So we can look for caches within a 20km (or so) circle. We look for a convenient cache...
There's a cache a few hundred metres off to one side of our road. Seems to be on that little side road. We follow. The road becomes a single lane. Squeezes past a farm building. And the cache appears to be right on top of a most amazing bridge!
It's an old stone bridge, arching over a canal. The car climbs up -- and the road on the bridge dips down -- out of sight under the front of the car! I take it on faith that the road really does continue... and slowly move forward.
The road does continue! Steeply down the other side of the bridge. We park -- next to a no parking sign. A passing local stops, tells us than in about an hour he will be driving a lorry through where we are parking. We assure him we're just there for five minutes, to admire the bridge.
Dratted cache! It seems to be below the bridge. I start reading the hint -- and the GPS battery dies :-(. Back to the car, replace the batteries, read the clue. It's something about Florence and her ?Davids?? Local slang? Local names for flowers?? Who knows! We have another look under the bridge -- at least we now know that the cache is on the canal tow path. Then I notice... the last few attemps were DNF. We give up, drive back to the main road.
I decide to try another cache: right on the main road, next to a parking area. The last log says that he drove up and saw the cache from his car. We can't see it at all. But at least there's a public toilet to use -- and photograph :-)
We swear off Welsh geocaches and drive on.
Wales to England to Polperro: fast motorways, big bridges
Pretty soon, we're back on the motorway. It's smooth, it's easy, it's fast. I'm sitting on 70, sometimes 80. That's *miles* per hour. It's easy but I'm getting tired.
We cross the Severn Bridge -- wow! it's huge! And the railway bridge next to it -- designed by Isembard Brunel, if I understand the sign -- is enormous and a weird, unique design.
Finally: a sign says, Welcome to England!
Both Deb and I give a little cheer...Wales was fine, the hotel was great but there was nothing great in what we saw. We walked and drove and it was just a variation -- a pleasant variation -- on countryside. I tend to read every sign, often aloud. What a relief that the signs are now in just one language! A language that we can pronounce, too. It was a pleasant break in our journey but neither of us were absolutely enthralled by our short Welsh visit.
And, of course, we will now refer to unfound geocaches as having gone Welsh...
Now we're in England. Somerset. Time for a break from driving. Time for lunch.
I take the next motorway exit... Okay, we considerd eating at a motorway service area. After all, it's a quintessentially English experience! But we'd rather not... Our preferred motorway break is to look for a pub, well off the motorway, with easy parking.
Our exit points to Cheddar Gorge and Caves, and Wookey Hole and Caves. Almost 20km away but that's our fallback option.
btw: Road signs here are often vague about distance. ie They point but don't say how far. When they do, it's in miles. Our GPS is still working in kilometres. So when Deb told it to find Cheddar, it replied in kilometres.
We drive towards Cheddar. (It's a town or village. As well as a gorge and cave and cheese.) Suddenly I spot a Free House & Inn -- a pub -- with easy parking!
We pull in and eat lunch at The Lamb Inn, in Lower Weare. Close to the Axe River. Really, I have no idea where we are. It's a nice pub, cosy, expecting to serve locals. We have soup of the day (mushroom) with bread. Plus tea and coffee.
And so, refreshed... back to the motorway.
It's still miles and miles to go. The GPS says we'll be in Polperro by 4:30. That's a good time. The only memorable point is the Tamar Bridge. Another enormous bridge though not as enormous as the Severn. There's some rain, some shine and temperature ranging from 8 to 11.
We bypass Plymouth. The road gets smaller. We turn off towards Looe. The road is down to two narrow lanes or just one... I didn't realise Polperro was so out of the way! And finally...
Polperro at Last: fitting memories to facts
Polperro!
We miss the turnoff and hit the wrong end of the village. We can't get to our cottage from this end of the village, there's a stretch of one-way road in the way.
Turn round, back up the hill. Find the correct turnoff. Find Talland Hill... Wow! it's steep! And narrow! The road is two-way, so I guess cars can pass. There are not-very-wide spots for passing. Luckily we don't meet any cars. Just parents picking up their children from school and walking down the hill.
We creep down the hill... Not just because it's narrow... We don't want to miss our cottage! There! Garden Cottage! I can even identify the spot for us to park our car... The description is clearer now that I can see it :-)
I spend five minutes reversing the car into the very small parking spot. Backwards off the steep hill, try to miss the stone wall, ignore the reversing beeper so that I can back up to another stone wall... Back and forward a few times till I get it right. We get out of the car.
Then I get back in, to move forward -- so that I can open the boot to get the cases out! Reverse in again, ignoring the desperate reverse warning beeping. Which goes from beeping to continuous tone. Phew! Done :-)
It's even a steep walk back up to our front door!
We're here. It's brilliant !
I'll write more tomorrow... Now it's time for bed.
Written tomorrow:
We settled in, went out to dinner. I'll write a separate post describing Garden Cottage.
First Meal in Polperro
First, we need to stock up for tomorrow's breakfast. So we walk down to the general store. And I do mean that we "walk down". It may be less that 100m. It may be a 40 degree slope.
The shop is open till five... we still have time to shop. That's a relief! Bread, butter, milk, tea, coffee... and a few other odds and ends. Enough for a meal or two. Then a slow walk uuuup that hill, back home.
Later... it's a bit after six o'clock... out to dinner.
We have decided on fish & chips. Deb thinks that "we" have decided. I decided, as we drove towards Polperro. We go the the Chip Ahoy simply because we can see it -- across the harbour -- from our cottage. It's a cheap chippie. Top fish (that is, the cheapest) are cod and haddock. We select one of each. Plus chips. And take it home to eat.
And that's about it, for Friday. We're here, we're settled, it's good :-)
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Dr Nick Lethbridge / Agamedes Consulting
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"A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top."
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