More Wows Than You Can Poke A Stick At!!

Our first wow moment came on Friday night when we received an email from Penny to say that she is the sister of Linda who is is the owner of NB Mary H.  Linda is also a blogger and one of our blog readers, check out their blog here.  Penny and her husband, Jim live in the little village of Collaton Raleigh where we were moored up for the night.  The email came in at 23.17 Friday so we didn't reply straight away.  The next morning I was walking the dogs through the village when a chap said "Hi Paul"!  It was Jim, Penny's husband ... he recognised the dogs from the blog!

I went back to the van only for Elaine to say Jim had dropped by and invited us for a cuppa!

We popped in and had a good chat about boats, as they have had a few different types of boat, plus motorhomes as they now have a motorhome.  What a small world we live in.

It was great to meet Penny and Jim and their lovely very special little doggie ...

After our chat we headed off for Totnes.  I have been to Cornwall many times but have never really had a good look around Devon.

We checked into the site which is right next to the river in the centre of Totnes.

Wow moment number two, what a lovely little town....  

Straight away you know that this is a top little spot ... 

However we were speaking to one of the local tourist guides and she said that the Dartmouth Royal Regatta was on and at 18.00 the Battle of Britain memorial flight was doing a display. 

Elaine's sister, Julie and husband Paul were driving down from Kent to spend the weekend with us in Totnes.

We gave them a few minutes to settle into their hotel and then we were off to Dartmouth!   We drove to the outskirts of Dartmouth and parked in a farmer's field and caught the (laid on) double decker bus to the centre of Dartmouth.

Paul, Elaine and Bombo on the front row ... 

Me,  Sammie, Teddy and Julie opposite ... 

Wow a million times over, what a place!   Why had we never been here before? 

Stunning scenery, lovely houses, loads of boats of all shapes and sizes, a steam train to Paignton, plenty of shops, pubs and  restaurants.  Most importantly, even though there was a major event going on the crowd and locals were fantastic.  There wasn't a Chav in sight, they must still be attending the Tenby chav convention! 

A chinook did things helicopters shouldn't do! 

Next a Sea King displaying it rescue capabilities ... 

Then a big disappointment.  The Lancaster bomber had gone lame and wouldn't be appearing as it had an engine problem :(

No real biggie - we still had two spitfires to drool over ... 

I also found a deficiency with my wonderful little Panasonic camera.  Without a viewfinder it is very difficult to shoot fast moving planes in sunlight.

Next pic is for my good friend and blog reader Martin in Australia.  He reads the blog but hates the doggie pics.....today we have three doggies....enjoy Martin x 

The local kids were so impressed with the air displays they did their own ... 

Brave little buggers ... 

The Regatta officials were 'very groovy, baby' ... 

I have never in my life seen a ferry like these, where a tug pulls and pushes the pontoon across the river ... 

After the air displays we went for a walk around Dartmouth ... 

Check out these houses ... 

What a place, absolutely fantastic.  It is by far our most desirable liveable place we have seen since arriving here in March 2012.  This includes anything we have seen in Europe.

Not sure how the pensioners go - there are a lot of steps about.  

It is so impressive we are going to stay here until Wednesday! 

This scene is very similar to the upper reaches of Sydney Harbour ...

Posing for a shot ...

Finally, the fascinating ferries ... 

We left Dartmouth before the firework display as we didn't want to frighten the doggies to death.

We then had a yummy dinner back at a Totnes pub.

Today, the weather is fantastic, we have the chairs outside, so  we will do a bit of sightseeing and lazing around in the sun!

Down Devon Way

We checked the britstop book this morning and found a motorhome friendly pub at Colaton Raleigh on the south Devon coast.

It was a nice easy drive with no motorways to contend with.

We arrived at the pub after lunch, where a local said there was a nice walk nearby that followed the river down to the sea.

It was quite warm when we set off ...

It was a lovely river with a few little beaches ...

Is there anything as pretty as the English countryside ...

We stopped for a break (and found some yummy blackberries to eat) and checked the map!  We realised that the outlet to the sea was still miles away, so we did a U Turn and headed back to the van.

Another local said if we go behind the village church there was a nice walk that followed a bubbling brook back to the pub ...

It was a lovely walk with heaps of blackberries, so we had another good scoff as we walked ...

Once we got back to the van we drove down to the beach at Budleigh Salterton.

It was a lovely little beach side town with hardly any tourists, the carparks were virtually empty. 

We were too knackered for a good walk around so just had a little explore ...

It was then well into Friday night drinking time so we headed back to the pub and popped in to introduce ourselves and I had a lovely pint of Doombar.

Here we are moored up for the night in a secluded corner of the carpark ...

Tomorrow we head off to near Totnes where we are meeting up with Elaine's sister and hubby who are driving down there for the weekend, should be fun.

Clean in Bath!

We have been in Bath the last couple of days.  We are moored up at the marina / caravan park a couple of miles outside of the city centre.

The main reason for the visit to Bath was so that Elaine could catch up with her old friend Julie, who she lived with in the Middle East a few years ago.

We all went out to a local pub last night (The Dolphin) for a good old catch up and dinner ...

Whilst we are at the caravan park we have made good use of the facilities and have caught up on loads of washing using the site laundrette.  It's also nice to give ourselves a good scrub with unlimited hot water in the shower block!

Elaine took the dogs for a long walk along the towpath this morning and returned with a big bag of rubbish, as is her wont!  She often 'does a Maffi' and cleans up as she walks!  She then set about organising the dogs' rabies certificates from the vets (£175 worth!), which had to be sent to the Shipper, so that they can arrange the import permit and then book a spot for them in the quarantine kennels (£411).  She also made arrangements to get our boxes shipped back to Oz a bit later in the year  (approx $2000) ... so it is all happening - the bank account is taking a battering though!

I decided to give the van a good wash today.  I haven't washed the exterior since we were in Portugal, which was also was at a marina.  It is hard to give it a wash as a lot of sites do not allow it, but this one was fine with it.  I climbed up on the roof and started with that then did the stern, sides and bow.  It didn't really get dirty in Europe as there was hardly any rain till we hit Switzerland, but back in the UK it has been a different matter.

I didn't realise how dirty it was ... check out the stern, when I had cleaned only half of it!

It took me nearly five hours to bring it back to pristine condition.

There is not much to blog about so here is a pic of the yummy lunch Elaine made ...

The finished product, all nice and shiny again ...

Later in the afternoon we walked down the towpath to Julie's house.  I love her house - it's right next to the railway line!  We had a cuppa and a chat and then headed off for dinner again.  This time we went in the other direction and went to the Boathouse, which is quite close to the caravan park.  Really nice pub and dog friendly too.

A really cool mini was in the car park -  it is a John Cooper Works All4 Paceman ...

It was a big lump of a mini and is good for 140 MPH...love it!

Tomorrow we will have to leave our lovely electric / hose-pipe hook up again and move on!

All Shipshape and Bristol Fashion.

We left Wales yesterday in brilliant sunshine, but by the time we hit Bristol the clouds had rolled in but at least it didn't rain ...

We parked in a Park and Ride carpark and caught the double decker into the city.

The boys enjoyed the view from the top deck ...

We started our walking tour off at the St Mary Redcliffe church ...

We stopped by a kiosk-cafe for lunch whilst watching a cormorant drying his wings ...

We started our walk around the docks but were held up by a selfish narrowboat owner who insisted on holding up the pedestrians and traffic just so he could swan around the docks ...

And there he goes,  the selfish bugger!

No sign of Wallace, but his side kick Grommit was waiting in the side car ...

It was a lovely walk with plenty of nice boats to look at ...

Multi coloured houses on the cliff ...

Another narrowboat, well it is a narrowboat blog!

Dockside pose with a very tired dog ...

Another Grommit ...

What I found fascinating was the right of way through working ship yards ...

Whilst in Bristol one must get a pic of SS Great Britain ...

Superb Ketch for sale ...

We did a complete circumnavigation of the docks and ended up back in the city centre by a strange dog sculpture, which the boys were most interested in ...

When you photograph a sphere ...

,,, it makes you look really fat!

The spoons is in a nice building, as usual ...

We really enjoyed out time in Bristol.  We were heading here down the K & A last August when we had to turn back at Devizes ...

We were heading to Bath after Bristol so we picked out a pub at Stanton Drew for the night, which was very close to Bath. 

We popped into The Druids Arms to introduce ourselves as customers from the Britstop book.  It would have been rude not to have a beer, so we did ... although to be truthful I had been feeling a bit crook all day so wanted an early night!  An early night it was, I was in bed at 21.00!!!  The last time I went to bed that early was when I was 12!

Elaine stayed up to a ridiculous hour and took a strange pic in the direction of the church (and standing stones) from the window of the van ...

This morning (Wednesday) I was feeling much better. 

What we didn't realise when we moored up last night was that we had moored up in a significant historical spot!

This is the view from the van this morning.  There are three big stones in the pub garden but I will pass it over to my assistant, Elaine to explain what they are about.

El here ... 

Well, what an amazing place we came across!  Thanks Britstops!  

The stones in the pub car park are collectively known as the 'Cove' and are pretty old ... about 3000 to 2000 BCE to be more precise - maybe even older!

Further round in the village are ancient stone circles, which are the second largest stone circles in Britain after Avebury.  Who would have known! 

I went to look at the stone circles myself as dogs aren't allowed in, due to their being cows roaming in amongst the stones!

I didn't realise until I got closer to the stones, but there were quite a few people in the field, most of them propped up against the stones checking out the energies ... so I joined them for a bit !

What an amazing place it is.  There are three stone circles in all.  One of the myths of the stones, is that the devil, in the form of a fiddler, attended a wedding and (encouraging the bridal party to dance on into the Sabbath) turned them all to stone.  The moral of the story is to watch out for random fiddlers at a wedding!

Actually on the way in, we were chatting to a chap who OWNS a site of his very own standing stones, somewhere close by.  He had come to check out the stones here to see how they compared to his own stones.  Imagine owning your own standing stones?  Awesome!  He said his mum would never enter the field where these stones were for fear that the myth was true!! 

It was such an amazing place - just loved it!  On the way back to the van, Paul snapped this cottage that he took a fancy to ... could it be because it was next to the pub?

It had just been sold for £250,000...bargain.

Then, I got him to try and push a stone over in the Cove before we set off ...

He failed, so we headed off for Bath!