Thursday, 2 July 2015 Week 45
Hello, so we are still in Paignton for the last week of Devon we went
on a steam train ride to Dartmouth and back. It was a lovely ride through
Agatha Christie land on an old 1930s first class Pullman coach. Currently
writing a novel in this time period so it all felt very exciting and a bit
surreal. Just wish we could have gone to look around Greenway the famous
crime writers holiday home.
I did I however get to look around Dartmouth's old
museum. It's not big but King Charles II visited the rooms and there were
plenty of interesting maritime stories of sir Francis Drake and connections
with Sir Walter Raleigh. The best thing I read at the museum was a ghost story
of Laura Dimes a sad wife of a rich merchant who was found in the garden lake
of the now burnt down house. (Shell still standing) she was found drowned,
standing upright with her hat still on and arms outstretched as if strangling or
fighting someone off her! The only room in the house that was not
singed by the fire a few years later is Laura's bedroom where people say she is
seen looking out onto the lake to this day! Spooky! I love a
good ghost story.
So then we went on to spend a morning at Paignton
zoo. The big kid in me loves the zoo. I
petted a Lima. Very soft and friendly.
And discovered that Giraffes in love like to taste their partners wee
wee!! I wished I was recording the
giraffes on video rather than photographing them. Could’ve won £250 on You've
Been Framed. It was gross to see though!
We
visited Torquay's famous Bygones museum. Streets set out like Victorian
times. A look into Victorian Edwardian life and a lot of interesting things
about life in World War Two. As I'm writing an historical novel era ground this
time I'd take lots of photos, but I won't bore you with them all. Some
were purely for research purposes. But I do really love museums like this so you can actually see what life would have been like.
A Victorian parlour set out for high tea... complete with man in chair with his foot up
on a rest stool for gout! Why I do not
know. Was gout rife in Victorian
England? I may have to Google.
The entire museum was started because a husband came home with a steam engine and his wife allowed him to start collecting all kinds of antiques. The collection got so big they decided to buy an old cinema and make it into a museum. Pretty cool? (Above) Del in said engine.
The creepiest thing in the museum though have got to be
these puppets (Across). Like the Punch and Judy puppets at the Guildhall Museum in Looe, I posted about recently, I
recently blogged about puppets similar to these used to be in a glass box at
Pontins when I was a kid. You put ten pence in and they'd dance about to some
creepy music and this was classed as entertainment for kiddies at holiday camps
back in the 1970s! No Barney Bear or Lizzie Lizard fan clubs... It's no
wonder I grew up with a fascination for witches and vamps and things that go
bump in the night! We
also stayed in Sidmouth for the last leg of the Devon part of the tour. Very
lovely in a God's waiting room kind of way.
We received a lovely experience gift for Christmas.
Tea For Tea at a posh place! So we held on to the voucher until we came across
this very posh hotel called Bovey Castle in the middle of Dartmoor. So we spent
the afternoon wandering about the stately home then had a very lovely High Tea!
Bovey Castle from the front.
On The way to Bovey Castle we stopped off at Buckfast
Abbey - the famous bee keeping and wine producing Abbey by their resident
monks. Sadly, the Bee Keeping Monk has left and they got rid of all the hives
and there doesn't seem to be enough of them left for the public to go round the
monastery part, which is a shame really. The gardens and grounds were
beautiful, but it seems everything is done by a workforce of civilians now and
the monks are hardly ever seen.
Our Cream Tea at the five star hotel. Del had Granny's
Garden Tea (Rubbard and vanilla fruit tea) while I had the Bovey Rose special,
which also had rose petals in the tea pot! So be careful my friends, when I get
home and invite you over for a brew, don't be surprised if you get some garden
flowers in your cup!
This was the cocktail bar. You can't really tell from
the photo, but there were fresh herbs and bowls of spices to make any cocktail
imaginable. It was amazing and all very... Perfect!
They also had the most amazing whisky, Brandy and Port
collection. This picture was just the Scottish Islands Whisky shelf, Mainland
Scottish Whisky collection was on the other side of the fireplace!! And the
most expensive drink was a glass of Remy Martin Brandy for £165 per shot!
So that's Devon. Last month of the trip and last county of Dorset to do.
