Yesterday while we were wandering inside Salisbury Cathedral, I was reminded of Ken Follett’s book “Pillars of the Earth”.  Interestingly, we are watching a news program this morning and Ken Follett is on, talking about his new book.  They also discuss the success of Pillars of the Earth.  I was moved to google Ken Follett and Salisbury Cathedral, and Wikipedia says that it is indeed one of two models for the fictional Kingsbridge Cathedral.  Interesting timing.  🙂

I just wanted to add a couple more photos of our apartment from last night.  We really wished we could have spent more time here and used it as a base to explore this area.

This is the kitchen wall

Surprise dishwasher 🙂

We caught our train, which was 9 minutes late.  This caused us to miss our next train from Fareham to Gatwick so we needed to go on a milk run consisting of two trains instead of one.  No big deal, we had no where else to be.

We arrive at Gatwick, which is much smaller than Heathrow.  Yowza!  This is a very confusing place.  We disembark the train and plan to find a bus called the Fastway 20, which is a public bus.  There are no clear directions.  We follow the signs to Buses, but it appears that they are just hotel shuttles.  We go back to the terminal and see sign that says “Taxi”, so we say “UNCLE“.  Taxi it is!!  We are quoted 10 GBP and told go out and stand by the road and a driver will call our name.  When we arrive our host says “you didn’t read the email I sent, as you would not have arrived in that taxi”,  hmmmm I guess I didn’t read it all,  🙁  We would have saved 5 GBP if we had read the email.  He arranges to call us a cab for tomorrow afternoon back to Gatwick.  We also had planned and arranged to store most of our luggage at a storage facility nearby.  We have been quoted 56 GPB for 1 bag at Gatwick Airport or 5 GBP per day for 1 bag at other places.  This storage place will give us 10 sq ft for 7 GBP per week.  We will be able to scale down our luggage, but because of what we are carrying, it will be difficult to get all we would like to store into 1 bag for these places, so the 10 sq ft place is a bargain.  Then our host offers to store our excess for free!!  Great place!!  We have not packed much in the way of summer clothes.  We will have to pick things up when we arrive 🙂

This is our room, again a family room

The twin bed side

The exterior

We head out for a walk and grab a few photos of interest in the area.

A grocery store with scanners at the front door. You pick one up and scan your groceries as you go!!

This a bit more info. Perhaps we will see this in our grocery stores soon 🙂

We see this Dodge Ram parked on the street. It has New York plates!! CRAZY!!!

Greg, you are everywhere!!

This is an interesting concept!

A cool building in the little town of Horley

This is an old pub built in the 1800’s. There was an addition later, but it is a very old building. It is hard to see from these angles, but the two end sections tilt in different directions.

Our flight to Sardinia is about 5pm tomorrow afternoon.  We have to fill some time tomorrow.  As we have been away for some time, I am finding that I need a haircut, so have booked that tomorrow.  We’ll see what else we find here.

We are the only guests in the house last night.  We knew that before hand and found it amusing that all of the guest houses on the terrace street had the “No Vacancy” signs out.  We guessed that they all wanted a little break after the Skittles and Agatha Christie Festival.  That was partly it, but they did mention that since they are right across the street from a pub, they turn the No Vacancy signs over about 6pm each night to discourage drunk people who have hooked up with someone at the pub and decide to grab a quick bed so bang on their door at 10 or 11pm!!

We leave our B&B after an even smaller breakfast.  🙂

At the train station we hear, for the second time since the most recent London attack, the “3 S’s”.  See it, say it, sort it.  They announce if we see something suspicious we should say something to a train employee and they will sort it.

Welcome sign

Pampas grass between the platforms

The walkway between the platforms

We arrive in Salisbury about 2pm.  Our accommodation, which is a small apartment is very close to the train station.  About a 5 minute walk.  According to the website it was built in 1800.  It is very nicely renovated.  We used one our “free nights” from Hotels.com (every 10 nights, you earn a free night), so we are only paying about $45 CAD which is the tax and a small amount that the value of our free night was short.  There is also a dishwasher and a laundry room available.  We are doing laundry since it is available!!

The living area

The table

These are the kitchen cabinets

Voila a small fridge!!

They even provide a few seasonings and olive oil.

The bedroom

We head out for a bite to eat and walk around this town.  It is a very very old city.  It’s 9 miles south of the iconic prehistoric stone circle at Stonehenge, which stands on the grassland of Salisbury Plain.  We are not going to see this however.  We saw the even older stones in the Orkney’s and feel pretty tired of being large crowds of people.   As we walk we see some of the oldest looking buildings we have seen on this trip.    The first photo in the next grouping is the Old Mill Hotel, located in West Harnham along the River Avon, was built in the mid-12th century. In the 16th century the house was converted from church property to one of the UK’s first paper mills.

The Old Mill House. Notice the wave roof

Sheep in the Water Meadows

A view of the Cathedral with the Water Meadows in the foreground

A house across the Harnham bridge. Notice how tall I am!! 🙂

A house next to the Harnham Bridge. The tiles are terracotta. We have never seen these before

Another tipsy turvey graveyard

The view from the Harnham Bridge. It was constructed about 1245

We do however walk over to the famous Salisbury Cathedral.  The first stones for this cathedral were laid in 1220.

The Nave of the Cathedral

Another view because it so beautiful

The Baptismal Font

The Organ

All along this aisle are tombs of very influential people of the times. If you look on the floor, the larger tiles are also tombs.

This one has his dog with him

The cloisters

This is Stu at the High Street Gate.  There are five gates remaining of the Cathedral Close.  There is a sign at this one that says “Please vacate the Close by 23:00 when these gates will be locked”

I see this shop very close to our apartment.  It gave me a chuckle, so I had to take a photo  🙂

Salisbury is a very beautiful spot.  We would recommend it anyone who will be in this area.  Tomorrow we have another train ride to our next stop near Gatwick Airport, where we will leave for Sardinia on Wednesday.

After a couple comments about Torquay and Fawlty Towers (Joan and Greg), I looked up some info on the connection.  This is a town of many many small hotels and guesthouses, so it is not hard to believe that Torquay would be the setting for the show.    Here is what I found about the beginnings of the show.  Too funny!!

Even though the comedy series Fawlty Towers was based in Torquay none of the show was ever filmed on the English Riviera. The one strong connection with the show was Hotel Gleneagles, but this property was demolished for redevelopment in 2016. This was where John Cleese and the Monty Python team first encountered hotel proprietor, Donald Sinclair, who would become the inspiration for one of comedy’s most famous characters.

During their stay at the hotel the Monty Python team experienced first hand the eccentricities of Donald Sinclair. Most notably Sinclair berated Terry Gilliam for using his knife and fork incorrectly and throwing Eric Idle’s bag over a wall believing it contained a bomb (it actually turned out to be a ticking alarm clock!).

While many of the Monty Python team decamped to the Imperial Hotel, John Cleese decided to stay on and take notes. He even invited his wife, Connie Booth (who later played Polly in the series) to come down and join him at Hotel Gleneagles. This was the beginning of one of the most famous and popular comedies of all time.

We have Skittles staying in our B&B.  Our hosts let us know that when we arrived.  They told us that they have had the same team here for a number of years.  We heard them come back at 3:20 this morning!  When we arrived in the dining room they were there too.  Hard to believe, after only 5 hours of sleep.  We learned then that they were the CHAMPIONS!!!  And that they had been celebrating  🙂  Some were a little wobbly.  But they needed to get up and get on the road back home and to work tomorrow.  Our hostess told us that we were the only ones for breakfast tomorrow.  So likely the only guests tonight.

Looking out our window we see Skittles leaving the numerous B&B’s in this area and on our walk to the ocean we see more.

We walk toward the Beach Huts that we saw from afar yesterday.  These are little colourful buildings that you rent and store all of your beach stuff.  Chairs, inflatable things, life jackets and any other items that are essential to a perfect beach day.  You don’t have to load up your car each time you come.  Just lock it in your hut.  They are very picturesque.

Beach huts with the Grand Hotel in the background

More Beach Huts

Elevated Beach Huts

This one secured in case Hurricane Irma arrives.

They pull up the “porch” for the winter and lock it up for security

Agatha Christie is a famous local personality.  It seems that there is an Agatha Christie Festival happening at the moment.  We see a number of people preparing to do a swim in her honour.

Erecting the banners

In vintage attire heading towards the water

In they go!! 🙂

We decide to take the ferry to Brixham.  A little town across the bay.  On our way we see more interesting scenes.  This is a very beautiful place.  We wish we had been here earlier in our adventure as we would have appreciated it so much more.

An interesting wall that was erected in 1928

A couple on the beach

The benches on the pier. A long pier, both sides have these benches

A sand artist. By the time we return his work is under water

Benches along the sea walk.

A nice view of the hill of Torquay

Interesting cliffs

Another view of the hill.

We take the small passenger ferry to the town of Brixham, just across the bay.  The bay is very bouncy.  The people on the boat are ooohing  and awing .  Stu says “they have never been to Disneyland”  🙂

Brixham is a nice little fishing village and being a beautiful and warm Sunday afternoon, is quite a bustling little seaside town.  Lots of restaurants and gift shops.  After a couple of hours we head back to the little ferry to go back to Torquay.

The harbour in Brixham

More boats here

The other side of the harbour

We have booked train passage to Salisbury tomorrow.  Heading towards London for our flight to Sardinia on Wednesday.

Moving day again!  🙂  Stu runs across the street for coffee and muffins while I pack up.  We have tickets on the 11:12 train to Torquay today.  All packed and coffeed up we head off on foot to the train station.  We are by now very familiar with the route.  🙂  We heard lots of sirens last night.  It was Friday night and things were popping in Bristol.  On our walk to the train we see multiple broken bottles along the way.  From what we hear that is a normal Bristol Friday night.

The train has started it’s day in Manchester.  Many passengers are already on board when we get on.  We thankfully have reserved seats, so we are good.  The luggage rack is full however, so we need to have one of our bags at our feet.  Some people need to stand with their luggage in the aisle.

After a bit over 2 hours we arrive in Torquay.  We were facing backward on the train and after a while I was feeling queasy.  Motion is not something that usually affects me, but today it did.  I was very happy to get off the train.  We walked about 1.5 km to our B&B.  We were greeted by Wayne and his wife Terry.  Very welcoming people. we We are shown to our room which is on the top floor, up 3 flights of stairs.   We feel that we are always on the top floor recently  🙂 .

The rain starts to pound down, so we wait it out in our room.  Once it stops we head out for a walk.  Down to the seaside.  We discover that Torquay is called the Riviera of Britain.  It does remind us of Nice.  A very Mediterranean feel.

The Marina

The posh houses along the cliff with a zig zag walkway

The railing along the sea wall

The beach

The Abbeysands complex. A mix of condos and restaurants and shops. A very modern building in Torquay

We stop for a bite to eat.  The sun is out and it MUCH MUCH warmer than we have experienced recently.  We have fish and chips again along with “Bluebeards Revenge”.

Bluelebeards Revenge Pale Ale

Brewed for “Real Men”!!

Here are some very large smooth river rocks along the sea walk.

I was able to find a geocache here as well.

We head back to the Chesterfield for a bit of a rest before heading to the pub across the street for dinner.  Our hosts mentioned that there is a Skittles Tournament in town this weekend and the town is quite busy.  We have no idea what Skittles is except for the candy type.  We are told that it is like 10 pin bowling, except they use 9 pins and the ball is the size of a 5 pin ball.  🙂  who knew!!

The pub is extremely busy.  As we are looking around a woman at a table asks us if there are just 2 of us.  We confirm.  She says we can share their table for 4 as they are also just 2.

It turns out that they are Skittles players.  They have come from Coventry for this Skittles weekend.  We really enjoy some great conversation with them.

Tomorrow we spend a day in The British Riviera.  All the Skittles people we be heading home, so the town will likely be much quieter tomorrow!

I forgot to add this photo to yesterdays post on Bath.  Found this display in one of the souvenir shops.  A condom tree 🙂  Too funny!!

We had a lighter breakfast this morning. 1 egg, 1 sausage, 1 rasher of bacon and beans. Along with our standard coffee and juice. We plan to have a castle day. Our very big car has built in NAV so we start with the South Stack Lighthouse. The road here is just as narrow as the Irish roads. The only difference is this car is much much bigger than our little Micra 🙁   A bit nerve wracking!!

The sun is shining brightly this morning. Apparently there was quite a severe storm a bit farther south last night. Lots of damage we hear.

For now Stu is happy with the light for his photos. He takes a lot as it is so much more satisfying than photographying things in flat dull light.

The sun shining on a rock wall and fence

A narrow Welsh road

A walking path through the fields

Looking to the south from the South Stack Lighthouse

The South Stack Lighthouse

Another view

There is a geocache nearby so after walking down to the tower we hike back up to the parking lot and along the road. I am looking on one side of the road, Stu, who just puts up with this activity, is hanging around the other side of the road, when he spots the cache!! Ha ha. He gives me a hard time about my geocaching skills! 🙂

We plug in Caernarfon Castle into our car’s NAV system and wiggle our way through the narrow lanes back into Holyhead and south off of Holy Island towards Castle #1.

The NAV system takes us through the very narrow gate in the walled city and up past the castle where we find a parking lot (5 GBP for the duration). As we walk up to the castle the wind and rain begin. We wander around a bit to check out where we should stop for some lunch after we visit the castle. It is a very nice interesting town. We spot a place that has a soup and half sandwich deal on. Make note of it as we head to the Castle.

We pay the “Special” rate for seniors which is 5.60 GBP each. Full fare is 8.95, so a pretty good savings for us! We chat with the cashier about the wind and rain and she says that “you blow our people away when they are in your country”!! We are quick to point out that we are not associated with Irma at all. Not us!! Them!! We get our tickets and the map of the castle. We start with a short film on the history of it’s inception. Lots of warring going on for centuries. Edward the 1st began building this castle in 1283.  He moved in and had a son also named Edward. The called him Edward of Caernarfon. They have a history going back to the 4th century. Welsh, English, Welsh, English, Vikings! Everyone wanted this hunk of rock!. The sun does peak out from time to time as we wander around the grounds, up and down the narrow steep spiral staircases. We do have some good shots.

Caernarfon Castle

From the wall walk

The city surrounding from the wall

Coming up the spiral staircase

More of the walls

The castle in the sun

We leave the castle and head to the little cafe for our lunch. We sit close to the door, which turns out to be a very draughty spot. Everytime the door opens we feel the chilly wind. I order the soup and Stu orders the soup and half sandwich, tomato and cheese. The dishes arrive and Stu’s sandwich is a couple of slices of tomato and shredded cheese!! I look at that and see that this is going to be very interesting!! Sure enough. Shortly there is cheese spilling out everywhere. I can’t help but laugh. 🙂

OK, we decide to move on to Castle #2. Our B&B hostess recommended this castle to us. We set the NAV and off we go. The roads are larger and is more like freeway driving, so it is pretty easy compared to the tiny lanes and streets of Holyhead. We encounter very little traffic on our way into Conwy. After we drive through the city wall we find that we are not alone! Very busy bustling little town. We guess that everyone just arrived before we did. We get through the tight city looking for a parking lot. We see a “P”, but are not clear on how to get to it. We go out of the town and use the first traffic circle to make a uturn. We find some street parking and decide to grab it and walk to the castle.

We learn that Edward the 1st was responsible for building this castle as well as Beaumaris Castle. So 3 castles for this English King in Wales. From what we read, this one was the only one that was actually completed and lived in. It is in a stunning location along the river. The castle was walled as well as the town surrounding it.

Route from Caernarfon to Conwy

Boats in the River Conwy

The town with the old towers and city wall

Many boats in the River

Turrets at the castle

The sun peaking from behind the clouds

This is an ancient spiral staircase, You can see the remains of the steps that have broken away

These 3 large windows allowed light into the Kings Hall. There are missing filigree type designs that were originally there but have since broken away

You can see one remaining arch here closer to the front there were about 3 arches that have fallen down

The bridges leading toward where we parked the car. Traffic on the left, pedestrians in the center and trains on the right

Walking along the pedestrian bridge

After we explore this castle we head back to the car. We cross over this pedestrian suspension bridge to our FREE street parking.

We plug our B&B into the NAV and head back to pick up our rental contract before we return the car. We stop, Stu runs in grabs it, and we are back down to the port to drop it off. We enter the terminal and go to the Hertz desk. It is closed!! OK, there is a key drop box. We drop the keys, all done! We booked train tickets online and need to pick them up. After we drop the car keys, I dig in my bag for my phone with the train confirmation email. hmmmmm no phone!!! I remember that it was in the little tray in front of the stick shift in the car. We panic a bit, we have dropped the key in the slot!! Oh no. There is a number to call at the Hertz desk. Without a phone we need to navigate the pay phone near by, picking out 60 pence from the collection of coins Stu has. I’m sure that this calamity has happened before as the fellow that ansered the phone just said “No problem, give me a few minutes and I will be right over” SAVIOUR!!! Within 10 minutes he arrives, hands us back the key and we now have my phone. Pheww! Disaster averted.

We head across a very cool pedestrian overpass headed back to our B&B. Along the way we come to the pub that we had dinner in last night and decided that we deserve a pint!! So we do. 🙂

For dinner tonight we walk to the west along the coast to a place near the marina called Langdon’s. We have a couple of starters, plus what they call cheesy garlic bread. That turns out to be basically a small cheese pizza. Again way too much food. We head out to walk home and the wind is howling. I have on my knitted hat from Peru and we walk very very fast.

A few other interesting shots  🙂

The route back to our B&B

Interesting sign. Film ?? really

Interesting sign. Winnie was my grandmothers name 🙂

The exterior of our B&B

Long train ride tomorrow. About 6 hours. Heading to Bristol and the south.

This hotel had obscenely expensive breakfast, so we declined the breakfast option.  We have had a lot of Fulls this trip, Full Scotish, Full Irish and Full English  We are happy to have a break from a Full, so we cross the street to the Cabot Circus Shopping center to the Pret A Manger for coffee and a muffin.  After that we head to the train station and take a few photos along the way.

Canal boats on the Avon Canal

Burges Salmon is a Law Office

The Valentine Bridge with modern tower behind

We purchase return tickets to Bath and one way tickets to Torquay for tomorrow.  We arrive in Bath.  The spa town to the medieval aristocracy.  It is a very welcoming city.

A creative re-purposing of the traditional red phone booth

Umberellas floating above the shopping district

Bath Abbey

From another side

Clever add for a comedy walking tour

We take a “Free Walking Tour” at 2pm.  There are a lot of people waiting to take this tour.  They do have 2 guides so the group is divided into 2 groups.  We go with Bill.  Bill is a retired Head Master is 80 years old and is passionate about Bath’s history.  Particularly it’s architecture.  He spends 2.5 hours showing us Bath’s interesting architecture that we would just have taken for granted.  Columns, Doric, Ionic and Corinthian!!

Lots of chimney pots

Houses designed by John Woods senior.

At the end of the tour Bill takes us into the Baths (which cost about $40 CAD to tour), the free sections where we can see the baths and the beautiful tea room.  We have taken free tours in other cities and it always ends with a tip.  Another Canadian tourist handed Bill something and he was very adamant that he would take nothing for this tour, that it was absolutely FREE!!!!  She was only giving him Canadian flag pins.  We were still wanting to give him something, but while we were looking at the baths, he disappeared!!

The hot pools

Another angle

These stones have been carved to create these patterns. There is a term for the effect, but I have forgotten what it is 🙁

Before he left us Bill pointed out some architectural features of the Cathedral.

The ladder with people climbing up. These are on both sides of the massive window.

An intricate carving on the side of the ladder

We notice many people in Victorian era costumes.  This is apparently a thing in Bath!!  It is in tribute to Jane Austen,  I manage to get a photo of one couple.

We head back to Bristol on the train and are amazed at the bicycles in the train station.  WOW!!

They go so far back!!

BREAKING NEWS!!!!!

We are cold.  The wind has been blowing and the rain has been falling.  We have decided to go to Sardinia!!  Why Sardinia???  Well it is warm!!  I have a friend who is there right now and we have seen her photos on Facebook!!  And it is WARM.  And it will be cheaper than staying in England for those 8 nights, with accommodation, food and drink!!

We will go from London Gatwick on Wednesday the 20th and return on the 28th as we have pre-paid hotel reservations in London for 3 days before we fly home.  Tomorrow we travel south to Torquay, a seaside resort town on the English Channel in Devon, south west England.

More adventures to come.

After our breaky and packing up our belongings we walk to the train station.  About 11 minutes.  We collect our tickets and wait for our train to arrive.  We will have just over 5 hours journey to Bristol.

As we are travelling east along the north coast of Wales we see a very large wind farm off the shore.  These are my photos through the train windows.

I take a few more countryside scenes from the train, but not much of a photo day today 🙁   Stu didn’t even take 1 photo!!!

We arrive in Bristol and start walking to our hotel.  It is just about 1.5 km from the station.  We got a pretty descent deal here $124 CAD.  We are here for 2 nights and plan to see Bath tomorrow, which is a 12 minute train ride.  Here is our modern spacious room  🙂

We have spent the day at a couple Welsh Castles.  Pretty tired tonight.  We are travelling on the train to Bristol tomorrow, so I will catch up then  🙂

We woke up to sunny skies this morning.  We have about a 90 minute drive into Dublin, including a stop in Bray to top up the gas tank.

We are returning our car to Dublin this morning so want to get an early start as we know that when we picked the car up, there was a huge line up  of people picking up cars and dropping off cars.  We have a lunch date with a couple lovely ladies that we met while on vacation in Croatia 4 years ago.  When we arrived there was one man picking up a car, and us!  Easy peasy.  We have 30 minutes before Niamh and Ciara arrive.  The sun is still shinning and the wind is blocked, so we find a spot in Our Lady’s Park while we wait.

We see Niamh and Ciara pushing strollers enter Fagin’s bar where we agreed to meet, so head over there.  It is just before 11 and after we are seated we discover that they don’t serve food until 12:30.  We decide to walk up the street to a little cafe.  It is really nice to catch up with them!  When we met them they were 2 childless couples, carefree and travelling.  Four years later between them there are three children, two of whom we meet today.  🙂

After brunch we wave down a cab to take us to the ferry port.  It takes about 2 minutes for one to stop and pick us up.  There are large lines at the port and the cab can’t get through to the departure terminal to drop us off.  He suggests that we walk the rest of the way instead of running up the meter in line.  Quite thoughtful.

We arrive very early and check our bags, go through what is called “Security”.  Really just getting us to put tags on our bags and telling us that the escalator is working, but won’t move until we step on it.  Very secure!!  😉   We sit in the departure lounge and chat with a younger man, about 45 we guess.  He is a Psychology Professor on a years paid sabbatical.  Travelling around Europe.  Nice!!  Here is a photo out of the window.

The ferry is 30 minutes late.  It was scheduled to arrive in Holyhead, Wales at 4:30.  We have reserved a car at the port and find that the office closes at 5.  We figure it will be long closed by the time we disembark and pick up our bags.  Pleasant surprise, we aren’t the only passengers picking up vehicles, so the very nice young woman is still there looking after us!!  Yeah HERTZ!!!

We reserved another small car.  Well this is what they give us!!  A Kia Sportage.  SUV!!  It does have a navigation system.  I guess Stu is now out of a job.  And a rear camera,  but it is way too big!!  We only have it for tomorrow, so hopefully we continue our great driving record!  😉

We check into our B&B and head out for a bite to eat.  We stop to buy a bottle of wine.  Yellow Tale for 5.99 GBP!!  Woo hoo.  This translates to $9.70 CAD.  In Ireland this would have cost 11 euros = $16 CAD.  We are not in Ireland any longer.  We find a pub, share an order of Fish n Chips for 8 GBP and 2 glasses of wine and spend 15 GPB which is $24 CAD.  It is much cheaper than Ireland.

We will be spending this evening planning out the next few days.  There is a storm blowing tonight.  Maybe it will be over tomorrow and we can drive the huge vehicle around in the sunshine!!  We will see where the adventure takes us next!