Last Leg of our Motorhome Adventure - Swanage - Corfe Castle - Sandford - West Bay - Dorset - Week 47

Week 47 15^th July 2015 

We are on the last leg of the adventure trip around the UK. We are now further along the Dorset coast at West Bay. What a lovely little seaside village this is, and the Park Dean Caravan Park we are staying at is right by the coastline.

We were on the fourth tier of the camping bit, so although it was a bit of a trek up and down the hills to the toilet block and entertainment complex, this was our view from Amethyst every morning when we got up. We have already decided that this could be a great camping spot for summer holidays again sometime.

Thought I'd just throw this picture in of Del filling Amethyst up with water as it was a beautiful hot day and I just thought I'd get a few more photos in of the van before it’s all over. Boo Hoo. *sniff*

We had some family come over and camp for a couple of days at the weekend. This is our Great Nephew Harry enjoying Sid and Lizzie disco time in the club house, he particularly liked the multicoloured light-sabre toy we bought him.

Harry, Del, Sarah and Nick enjoyed the bracing wind on West Bay Pier. West Bay Harbour and Jurassic Cliffs behind. I actually went to a visitor centre this week and received a free Geography lesson on igneous, sedimentary, and Metamorphic rocks and how they are formed in Britain. God, I felt like I was in First Year at High School again!

Some more pretty pictures of West Bay. Before Park Dean arrived. I think this was just a few fishermen and their cottages. We moved on to Sandford, further along the Jurassic coastline. Here is Corfe Castle from an old diesel train. 

Del is taking me on an old train line? Again? No!

 The train journey was actually very pleasant except for two babies screaming until my ears bled! But the scenery was very pretty.

Corfe Castle was a ruin, so we didn't bother going up to see it. Del discovered he had a phone signal at the end of Swanage Pier!

I know some of you may think this is a bit odd, but I thought it was very artistic and creative. It was the old Pier Head Café and sort of Art Deco style building that probably was the place to be seen in the 1930's, but sadly like so many seaside towns we've seen over the past twelve months has fallen into a state of disrepair.

However, some clever creative person has decided to paint some very realistic murals on the boarded-up windows and doors. This one shows how the café looked in its prime. And this one depicts what it probably looks like now behind the bricked-up and plastered entrance. It's so realistic, I found it quite creepy - even haunting to look at. But I was utterly fascinated just the same.

Even the dog eating a discarded bag of fish and chips on the windowsill looks so real, but it's all part of the 3D artwork. What I find so odd is that the council obviously commissioned or allowed this work to be done, so why not spend some similar time, effort and money restoring the building to its former glory? Just an idea!

A lovely view of Swanage Beach and town. Swanage Headland and Coastline - very pretty and another place I would like to return to.

Don't forget to go to my YouTube Channel for more Travel VLOGS 

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or if you prefer crime and suspense, why not try The Mancunian Tales

My New Book Lemurian Dimensions, is due out on sale on 1st May 2025 - You can pre-order the paperback by contacting me, or order on Kindle Here.

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A Year in a Motorhome Adventure - Dorset - Jurassic Coast - Charmouth - Lyme Regis - New Forest - Sherbourne, Week 46

 Monday, 6 July 2015 Week 46

This week, we have moved out of Devon and into Dorset, stopping first in Charmouth, a charming little village just down the road from the pretty seaside town of Lyme Regis. Because it was raining, I couldn't get great pictures, but I think this gives you an idea. Dorset is famous for its Jurassic coastline, and Lyme Regis is full of references to this, with Dinosaur heads and fossils decorating a lot of the shop windows. This T. rex skull was enormous and took up most of the shop window, very impressive.

 

I joked that this was where I first found Del! He didn't find it funny... Teehee!

I couldn't resist this. A Bear shop in Lyme Regis has a Teddy Bear and Doll hospital at the back of the shop. Each Bear has its own bed and a little monitor graph at the end of the bed. All Bears and Dolls are genuine cases and are rushed there for treatment from all over the country.

The guy who fixes them is also referred to as Bear Doctor!  It's really cute and just reminded me of when Cabbage Patch Kids first exploded onto the market, and they were born from actual cabbages as a marketing ploy!
We had a drive inland one day and went to Sherbourne, but on the way, we stopped off to look at the Cerne Giant. A white chalk painting of a nudey dudey holding a club! 

Some say it's from ancient Britain, others think it's only from the 1600's and is a caricature of Oliver Cromwell, as historians have only found a mention of it in historical documents since civil war times. This was the best view of the Giant, apparently, it's been linked to the White Horse and the Long Man of Wilmington, Sussex.

Although some people believe it's a depiction of Hercules and others say it’s a Saxon or Celtic Deity, but no-one can really agree!

This is the Almshouse of St John the Baptist in Sherborne. We went to Sherborne on a Friday, and the Castle was closed, this Almshouse was closed, and the church/abbey was also closed for a private service! Hey ho, we still had a wander around the town, and it was as they say, one of the most picturesque towns in England. The Sherborne Church and Abbey, which was closed. 

But we could wander around the pretty grounds and gardens.

The Elizabethan Square and Sherborne's Museum was here. It was cute, I think it's the best way to describe the place. Not much of interest to me except the folklore and witchcraft section which explained where some of today’s odd folk-tales and superstitions come from. We moved on further into the New Forest for a few days and took an open-top bus trip around about a third of the New Forest, which took a whole day. We stopped off at this quaint little village of Burley, which is famous for Smugglers and Witches - Sybil the witch used to walk around with a crow on her shoulder.

This was a fascinating shop in Burley. Loved it. Lots of witchy and new age stuff in there.

A beautiful view of Isle of Wight from Milford on Sea on our open top bus tour... 

New forest ponies. Very calm and not frightened around humans at all. We could walk right up to them to take pictures. Lovely.

The Views over the New Forest.

on the Bus tour. I suggest a helmet for some areas where one gets whacked in the face by overhanging branches through the foresty bits. 

Inside the Coven of Witches shop. Very cool place.

Don't forget to go to my YouTube Channel for more Travel VLOGS 

And my book Links here for The Beyond Series of Epic Urban Fantasy

 

or if you prefer crime and suspense, why not try The Mancunian Tales

My New Book Lemurian Dimensions, is due out on sale on 1st May 2025 - You can pre-order the paperback by contacting me, or order on Kindle Here.

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Travelling UK Coastline in a Motorhome - Week 45 - Paignton Railway - Agatha Christie - Bovey Castle - Buckfast Abbey - Torquay

 Thursday, 2 July 2015 Week 45

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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 writer's holiday home.

I did, 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, the 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 wish I recorded the giraffes on video rather than photographing them. Seeing is believing It was gross to see, though!

We visited Torquay's famous Bygones museum.  Streets are 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 a historical novel era 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.

Below is a Victorian parlour set out for high tea...  complete with a man in a chair with his foot up on a rest stool for gout!  I do not know why.  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 that they decided to buy an old cinema and make it into a museum.  Pretty cool?  

The creepiest thing in the museum, though have got to be these puppets (below). Like the Punch and Judy puppets at the Guildhall Museum in Looe, I posted about recently, I recently blogged about puppets similar to these that 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 Two 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 beekeeping 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 (which was a raspberry and vanilla fruit tea) while I had the Bovey Rose special, which also had rose petals in the teapot! 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.

Don't forget to go to my YouTube Channel for more Travel VLOGS 

And my book Links here for The Beyond Series of Epic Urban Fantasy

 

or if you prefer crime and suspense, why not try The Mancunian Tales

My New Book Lemurian Dimensions, is due out on sale on 1st May 2025 - You can pre-order the paperback by contacting me, or order on Kindle Here.

My Link Tree QR Code: All social media in one place.