Average Holidays; Home Edition.
Prologue:
We should have been in Venice this week but I won’t dwell… to much. The Italians, quite rightly, won’t let us British in anyway. We did contemplate Edinburgh but quite frankly when we costed it up we could have had a ‘proper’ holiday. We did think about a few nights in Paris but of course the rules got changed yet again.
So here we are, a week off in North Devon [drums fingers on the desk and pulls a thinking face 🤔]. It shouldn’t be that hard, people come here all the time! For us the purpose of a holiday is to see and do things we haven’t done before but after 20 years of living here there’s not that much we haven’t seen. However after some wine and cheese we’ve opened up the bank account and come up with the following activities:
A sea safari from Ilfracombe. Lyn has been tempted to do this for the chance to see some dolphins.
A hot air balloon ride! This will be in Somerset as it was the only place that still had a space. Also there’s a stuffed bear shop in Taunton that Lyn wants to go to after to get a ‘prize’ for doing it.
An open air evening presentation of Romeo & Juliet at Hartland Abby. We’ve ordered some camping chairs because I’m not sitting on a blanket for hours. I’d never get back up!
A vineyard tour from a local grower. I tried their wine a few years ago when they had a stall at a food market and it’s okay.
Padstow. We did try and book a table at Rick Steins restaurant but it’s fully booked until September. We’ll just go anyway as we’ve never been.
A fairly full week of stuff we’ve never done and the weather 🤞🏻should be good.
Day One: So Fari So Goodie
Today was the sea safari so the first decision was what to wear. Not having a ‘sailor’ outfit (shocking I know) or even a sea captain hat [I need to buy one for my hat collection] I went for long trousers and a long sleeve T-shirt. I immediately regretted this decision as soon as I walked out of the front door but I don’t like to second guess myself and be dammed the consequences. The consequences on this occasion was instantly exploding in sweat. On the plus side you’re always upwind of your own stink. Obviously a buffet breakfast would have been nice but we settled for a Costa toastie and coffee instead. Then on to Ilfracombe.
Our boat ride wasn’t until 12 so we had a bit of time to wander around the harbour. I’ve always said that Ilfracombe scrubs up nicely and if it wasn’t for the fact I spent several years working there and desperately trying to leave, I would probably visit a bit more often.
There seemed to be an over abundance of children [don’t give me ‘schools break up at different times’ BS]. The little F’ers have hardly been in school for 18 months and shouldn’t be allowed out for a holiday until they’ve caught up. On the plus side I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of football shirts. I didn’t see anybody wearing one. Maybe there’s a sense of shame (if not there should be) not about the team but events during and after. Maybe it’s because as they aren’t surrounded by ‘foreigners’ they don’t feel the need to hide behind a ‘uniform’. Whatever the reason it made a nice change not to feel slightly embarrassed about the British on holiday.
The boat ride was very good. The only downsides being the lack of any wildlife (seagulls don’t count) and the… I want to say Russian couple? In front of us who ignored every instruction and then stood up as the boat was going along. The pilot eventually told them to sit down and I added “Yeah, we’ve paid for this as well so would like to be able to see”. They behaved after this.
Well worth doing even if it’s just to see the coast from a different angle. Lyn enjoyed it so we’ll book a longer trip at some point, hopefully one that’ll include animals.
We stopped at the Muddiford Inn for lunch. They use to have a very good and interesting menu a few years back but, at least for now, have gone to a basic but overpriced selection that everyone seems to be serving up at the moment. I understand this, the last 18 months must of been hell for people in the pub/grub trade but £30 for a very basic ploughman’s, fish and chips and a couple of cokes is a bit steep.
Onwards and upwards, literally. Tomorrow it’s the balloon ride!
Day Two: UP!
I had put zero thought in to going on a balloon ride past ‘I want to go on a balloon ride!’ If I had, some fairly obvious things would have sprung to mind. The first is picking a day and location. I assumed, wrongly, that you go to a balloon website and just say ‘I want that one’ from a proffered selection. How it actually works is you buy the tickets first THEN find out that where and when you want to go is fully booked. So plan ahead.
The second issue was the time of day. We had picked, when paying and prior to finding out the above, a morning flight as we thought that would be cool, in both meanings of the word. However despite me saying plan ahead, you can’t. Everything about a balloon flight is last minute. You have to phone up 6 hours before the flight to find out where or even if it’s going to take place. Our flight could have taken off anywhere between Tiverton and Glastonbury and we would have only found out when we woke up.
As our flight was at 6am I set the alarm for 3am and then did my normal thing of waking up an hour before the alarm. Phoning the hotline unsurprisingly the flight was going ahead from Taunton but there was a bit about wearing walking boots which got me slightly concerned.
I was expecting to turn up to an already put together and inflated balloon. However despite paying £128 pp it’s more of a DIY thing. There were 16 passengers all together and everyone at least made a bit of an effort with a few notable exceptions. I shall call them ‘Tattoo Twat’, ‘Camera C***’ and ‘Lazy Bitch’. The first two eventually got embarrassed enough by their female partners badgering them to do something but ‘LB’ was made of sturdier stuff and wouldn’t shift of her arse or put her fag out for anything. It took about 90 minutes to get the thing together and then another 90 minutes to pack it away at the other end with about an hours actual flight. On to the flight itself.
We only flew about 4 miles and reached about 3000 feet. We could see Glastonbury Tor and even Lundy from that height. It was a little cramped and slightly awkward to stand but the views were great. In between the blasts of the burners which felt and sounded like a dragon was going to have its way with you, whether you wanted it too or not, it was even quite tranquil.
Landing, as you would expect, is random. As there was no wind our landing was very gentle and we stayed upright which is a bonus. They try and pick a grass field and hope the farmers isn’t a ‘get orf my land’ type. Apparently they bribed the farmers wife where we landed with a bottle of gin.
We then went to World of Bears to get Lyn her ‘prize’ for doing an activity that she ended up enjoying. Apparently she was very ‘brave’.
Would we recommend it? Yes, it should be on everyone’s list. Would I do it again? Yes but not in the UK. If we ever get back to Morocco I’ll definitely be doing it there (I bet I wouldn’t have to help there) and Lyn agrees which should be recommendation enough.
Day Three: It’s No Avengers End Game.
We had planned to go to Padstow during the day and then Romeo & Juliet in the evening but DPD hadn’t bothered to follow the delivery instructions to leave our camping chairs with the neighbour yesterday so we had to wait in for that.
We did go to Otters on the quay for breakfast at about 9 and it was already starting to get uncomfortably hot. I don’t now why but the UK can’t seem to handle any temperature above 24 degrees. 24, happy days! 25 and it’s just unbearably hot and wet. To quote Good Morning Vietnam ‘That’s nice if your with a lady, ain’t no good in the jungle’ or North Devon as it turns out.
As the day cooled we got our stuff together and including a Morrison’s shopping bag (I did suggest to Lyn we take the picnic basket but she said what’s the point) filled with snacks and most importantly wine and made our way to Hartland Abby, somewhere neither of us have ever been. Lyn thought we’d be the only people there but I told her she’d be surprised at the things people will do and pay for and as we trundled along the drive we saw about 100 people already camped out in front of a makeshift stage.
We picked a spot, at the back a nice distance away from other people and set up. I went off for 5 minutes and when I returned we had got surrounded as people arrived, one family (man, woman, 11 year old child and dog 🤷) sitting so unnecessarily close behind us it must have been difficult to see. It must be Lyn, I do my utter best to exude an air of ‘Don’t come near me’.
As we looked around it became clear what amateurs we were at this as Prosecco corks popped and was then poured into flutes, thermos’s of curry and rice with other ‘soft’ foods where opened and cushion for the camping chairs were brought out. I looked into our shopping bag which contained the noisiest snacks imaginable [I did stop Lyn opening a packet crisps during the second half much to her disgust] and thought I’d better use the glass we had remembered at the last minute for the wine instead of necking it straight out of the bottle.
I have a confession to make. I’ve never seen Romeo & Juliet, I’ve not even watched Westside Story. Despite this I know the plot, almost every scene and a ridiculous amount of the words. Not as much as the woman in the pink thigh length dress and white knickers (that was the wrong choice of dress to wear and then sit on the floor) in the family to our right who was even laughing at the ‘jokes’. Speaking of families if you dislike your children enough to take them to see something like this you really shouldn’t of had them, but I digress.
So was the performance any good? Honestly I have no idea. I was ‘entertained’ for a couple hours. I think this is why actors like Shakespeare. It’s almost ingrained in to us that his plays are masterpieces and that good, bad or indifferent we HAVE to like it and if we don’t the fault is with us. Shakespeare is okay, there are some good bits but it’s no Marvel Cinematic Universe. While I’m at it I might as well get hung for a sheep as a lamb… Citizen Kane is a shit movie.
What we did enjoy was the experience. The whole being entertained while sitting outside and being able to eat and drink. We need more comfortable chairs and quieter food but we’ll definitely be doing this sort of thing again.
Day Four: Coals to Newcastle.
Not much of an update today. Sorry 😞
As Lyn drove us back from Hartland Abby [I’d had the best part of a bottle of wine] I looked across the rolling fields to the sea with Lundy in the distance and said ‘I’ve always liked the view from this bit of road’. I then grabbed the dashboard as we narrowly missed a bit of hedge and shouted ‘For God Sake Don’t You Look!’ Lyn said ‘You shouldn’t have said it’s a nice view!’ Obviously my fault… Lyn then said she’d not seen the sunset at Westward Ho! Im fairly certain this wasn’t true but that was tomorrow night sorted.
We hadn’t planned anything for today as Lyn had arranged a coffee morning but we went out for lunch and discussed what we were going to do for the rest of the day. I had a look on the plough art centre website where we had got the tickets for the play. There was a Hidden History guided tour of Westward Ho! that evening. We normally do local tours when we are on holiday. Meh, why not…
WH was fairly rammed, we normally avoid it during the summer for this reason and I wondered how much of a good idea this was. Nevertheless we went to the meeting point which was outside Tea on the Green. There were about 20 people for the tour including a young couple who I assume had either booked it by mistake, won it or were given it as a present.
This definitely felt the oddest activity we’d done. Going on a ‘tour’ of somewhere you’ve lived and worked for 20 years is a ‘Coals to Newcastle’ situation. I’m not going to repeat any of the tales, quite frankly I have some better ones and our walk took us to the most un-photogenic parts of Westward Ho! It was supposed to be 90 minutes but turned out to be an hour for which I was grateful. On the plus side I now have photographic proof of Lyn and a sunset at WH.
Day Five: Show me the Owls!
The morning was spent dealing with real life. This is the biggest disadvantage of holidaying at home. However we had booked a wine tour for the afternoon at Tor View Wines which is located near Sheepwash.
Sheepwash is dullest and therefore the most farmery name for village I know of. If you can think of a better one answers below. There’s lots of ***ford or ***cross or ***ton or ***combe and where the name comes from is fairly obvious (a combe if you didn’t know is a valley) but for Sheepwash it doesn’t even have a geographical feature worthy of naming and the best they could come up with is that someone washed some sheep there. It’s almost Australian in its simplicity [you have to read this with an Aussie accent] “Well this is ‘Two Shark Bay’ which is about 3 miles from ‘One Shark Bay’… there’s a lot of sharks here.”
We’ve done a wine tour in California, the vineyards there are exactly what you’d imagine them to be, large, professional, purpose built. A vineyard in Devon is also exactly what you’d imagine it to be. A converted sheep farm with the vats and bottling plant in an old lambing shed. Don’t get me wrong, Tim the owner/tour guide has just as much passion and professionalism about his wine as anyone else but looking around the farm yard it did make me chuckle. You never know in 100 years, if it’s not underwater or a desert it will probably look exactly like those vineyards in California or Bordeaux.
The tour was supposed to be an hour but was closer to two. There were 12 people which is the maximum number he has per tour at the moment. We actually got to walk among the vines which was nice. Tim went through is methodologies and seemed keen that everyone understood what he was trying to do. This is one of the nice things about seeing a business in its early days. I say early, he bought the farm in 2006 but in wine terms it’s an infant.
Tim mentioned he had 3 Barn Owls on the farm and this finally got Lyn’s attention. As we moved in to the lambing shed she asked where the owls where only to be told that he doesn’t tell people that. Further disappointment was heaped on when she found out he only makes red wine.
The wine was okay. I’ve had a bottle of his Dornfield a few years ago when I bought it at the Barnstaple food festival. We had a Rose’ which is nice if that’s your sort of thing. A sparkling red which was just wrong. And then a couple of his reds and that was that. We bought some wine when we left. Lyn wanted me to try and withhold payment unless he showed her the owls but I thought that was probably a none starter.
That’s our 2021 summer holiday. Although we have a couple more days off, real life and the weather has put a bit of a curb on that. Also I’m looking at the laundry basket and I’m sure its starting to look back. It’s been surprisingly fun and while I obviously like where I live, I’m hoping we won’t have to do this again. Fingers crossed 🤞 we’ll be able to get away in the autumn.
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