devon

oops… okay, so I’ve been careful to be fully aware of how extraordinary things are, along this adventure now, day in and day out, and I’ve done a pretty good job since the last post. Not so good at the whole putting said extraordinariness into blog form, but I guess you can’t have everything. So here’s my belated Devonshire post. (Other belated posts to follow).

Devon: so polite. Really. So very polite. I’ll distill my impression of politeness to one city. Exeter. We didn’t spend very much time there – just the Monday of our delayed weekend, but for that whole day nobody pushed in front of anybody else, everyone said ‘please’, ‘thank you’ and ‘excuse me’ where appropriate, and random strangers stopped to give helpful directions if we looked in the least perplexed by our surroundings or uttered the words ‘where’ and ‘is’ in sequence. Goodness. It was like manners heaven. Which is good, because for tourism, I’m afraid York has Exeter beat. Please don’t tell that to anyone from the south of England, because then I might get beat. They’re very serious about the south being ‘better’ than the north. Almost as serious as I am about using quotation marks in this post. But back to the subject at hand. Exeter, like York has cool old city walls, although not as complete – they’ve been perforated by the years (did we post about the city walls of York? If we didn’t I’ll have to catch you up in a subsequent post.) (Why are you chuckling? Don’t you believe that I’ll post every single impression I’ve had on this trip eventually someday?) There are also fun little streets with quirky stores and old establishments. The tourist brochures are all geared toward the shopping, though, because they’ve just spent a lot of money to revamp the pedestrianized city-center into a contemporary architecture open air shopping haven that has the usual suspects - and by suspects I clearly mean stores – and a little marooned section of ancient wall encircled by cool new tile so that it looks like an odd recreation with an identity crisis. Nice, but not so good at imparting a specific sense of place. Luckily, while I was lost in H&M – they were having a £5 sale and I’m, well, susceptible to that kind of thing – Joey found the old Roman gatehouse or whatever as well as city squares with views of the surrounding town. At least one of us is cultured. So I got to enjoy it without actually having to work to find it (nice). We also had the best cream tea ever that afternoon (for the uninitiated ‘cream tea’ is what you call afternoon tea with scones, jam and clotted cream) at Hanson’s across from the Exeter Cathedral. And that’s pretty much all I have to say about Exeter, aside from this picture, which is of Joey on the old city walls with little row houses in the background.

As you may have seen in the slideshow, we got to other parts of Devonshire with Nicky and her progeny, which was probably more representative of the county (county? region? shire?) On our first full day, Nicola, Joshua and Lucas took us to Hay Tor, which is gaelic for ‘one of several hills on the moor that happens to be topped by a large pile of rocks. Climb it and enjoy lovely views while you try in vain to catch your breath’. That’s a loose translation. Joshua and I made it all the way to the top while Nicola watched from the safety of the grassy area under the rocks, where there were ponies roaming. (Joey and Lucas made it most of the way to the top of the rocks, but went back early – to Lucas’ chagrin – because while we were sure he could make it all the way, we were worried that we wouldn’t be able to handle/catch him if his excitement level got any higher. He was disappointed. He got over it.) That day they also took us to the little village they used to live in, and to another moor village for lunch. We also got to see the cottage they're fixing up to rent out, and to chat about Nicky's website, vettalk. Delightful.

The hidden highlight of the trip, though, (aside from forcing Mark to have his picture taken) was the town where they live now, Budleigh Salterton. Our first introduction to Budleigh Salterton was of having its name echoed around the dining table of our house by our housemates. None of them had ever been there, but they all knew and loved the name. They declared it the most typically Devonshire name there was and said that going there was probably the most typically English thing we could do. So I guess we can pack our bags now. Kidding. Budleigh is on the coast and has a little high street than runs parallel to it, with some tea shops, a few restaurants, a fruit and veg (that’s what they call it and that’s what it sells) and an ice cream shop that sells Devonshire cream ice creams. Of course, the ice cream shop was closed when we walked by. It’s apparently a theme with me and iconic English shops. Incidentally, here they aren’t stores, they’re shops. Anyway, we didn’t have Devonshire ice cream, but we do have a picture of me pouting in front of the shop that sells it. I didn’t pout for long though, because right behind the shops is the beach. It’s a pebble beach, and we got to it at the very end of what had been a cloudy day, just as the sun was at an angle to make the clouds dramatic but shine out from behind them, and the gulls were all congregating in formation. The pictures more or less speak for themselves. Needless to say, I liked it a lot. And then, after a fabulous dinner with Nicola and Mark, we got on the train sans excitement, nailbiting or hair-greying. All in all a delightful weekend. The end.

Us on the (cold) beach at Budleigh Salterton

Us not on the beach at Budleigh Salterton