A Summer Road Trip
I’ve written this travelog mostly for my own pleasure, to remember all the places we visited in a two week trip but more to remind myself of the places I’d like to return to. If you find it interesting too that’s a bonus but its a bit long so feel free just to look at the photos.
Like so many people, my husband and I hadn’t seen our close family in the UK since Christmas 2019 so when travel restrictions were lifted in June 2021 we decided it was time to put that right.
With zero chance of going to Canada to visit our son — our main holidays for the past five years — we decided to visit his three cousins as they’re all about the same age and all living in the west country(ish).
Double jabbed and wearing Dress Code masks (Cursor for him, DNA for me) we felt ready to venture out into the world.
We planned a ROAD TRIP!
The trip was mostly in The West Country but took in some parts of West Sussex, Hampshire and Wiltshire as well as Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall.
The idea was to avoid the obvious tourist places (we succumbed to a few) and to explore new places as the mood took us.
The most important decision was to avoid motorways as much as possible so we set off from our home in Cambridgeshire on the A10 through Royston, Buntingford, Ware and Hoddesdon. It was interesting that while we were on the A or B roads, driving through pretty small towns and villages, we didn’t have the radio or any music on in the car. We just chatted and pointed out interesting things to each other and when we got to less familiar places we’d discuss the route and where we might go to eat or for a walk.
We avoided the temptation to drive through London and did a quick flip around the M25 via Dartford — only later discovering that our Dart Charge Toll account had been cancelled due to lack of use in the previous 12 months(!) with no notice so we got fined (now in dispute).
The only pre-arranged stops we had were where we’d booked places to stay the night. Everything else was fluid.
Our first stop was Brighton (Hove actually :)) where my brother in law and his wife have renovated a very dilapidated 1950s dormer bungalow that they bought in January 2020. They eventually moved in just before Christmas. It’s been a project to turn it into an eco-friendly dwelling with all the latest energy saving devices and its pretty stunning.
What was supposed to be a downsizing move turned out to be more of an update on the previous bungalow they’d turned into a family home 25 years earlier, including re-installing the snooker room. There’s still work to do including resurfacing the drive with a covering made of re-cycled plastic straws and getting the garden back into shape.
We had a cheeky visitor while we were having supper. Triple glazing stops the dog from smelling the fox which is why its very relaxed lolling about on the lawn.
The main attraction of this visit was to meet our six month old great niece for the first time as well as catching up with her parents and (now) grandparents! In between cooing and ahhing we had a walk along Brighton and Hove seafront to eat at the Ginger Pig, part of the group that includes The Ginger Man, The Ginger Fox and The Ginger Dog.
Along the way we spotted this remarkable house right on the seafront. The building was formerly a Turkish Baths that had been derelict for many years. It was bought by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, and transformed by architect Keb Gavarito-Bruhn into a stunning 15 room home, keeping many of the original features.
After a few days by the sea we set off on our journey across the soft rolling landscape of the South Downs National Park on the A283 and A272 through Midhurst and Petersfield leaving Sussex to cross into Hampshire.
The change in the landscape from our usual flat fenland was dramatic. Lush green rolling hills, interesting hedgerows, and, the further west we went, evidence of a very temperate climate that was good for growing a wide variety of plants — and of course, plenty of sheep and cows.
When we spotted the historic Winchester Cathedral we both spontaneously sang the song that was famous in 1966. No surprise that we later discovered that none of our younger relatives had ever heard it! Jane Austin is buried there and John Keats was inspired to write several poems about the countryside.
Winchester was the first capital city of England and Winchester College, the oldest public school in the UK is still using its original 600 year old buildings. This is one of the most expensive and affluent areas in the United Kingdom and I’m not surprised. The landscape is soft and lush but it’s only 60 miles from London.
It was a scorching hot day and we weren’t in the mood to walk around streets and battle for parking spots so we headed off to find a country pub for lunch.
The White Hart Inn at Stockbridge fitted the bill perfectly.
The original 12th century brew house is still part of the inn which was expanded to a coaching inn 400 years ago. Racing was very popular at the local racecourse, The Danebury, and made even more so by the patronage of Edward VII. Edward was a regular visitor to Stockbridge, where he conducted his affair with the actress Lillie Langtry. The tearoom on the High Street is named after her.
It was quite funny to watch the various “social distancing” measures that pubs and restaurants had put in place and the reactions of various customers as they meekly, resignedly, or obstreporously complied.
After lunch we left Hampshire and crossed over into Wiltshire. We drove over Salisbury Plain, famous for Stonehenge and tanks. Stonehenge was deserted when we drove past but there was plenty of evidence of tanks with warning signs and crossing places.
From Stonehenge we took the A360 to Devizes to visit Caen Hill Locks on the Kennet & Avon Canal. They were a huge feat of engineering, opening in 1810 and providing a much faster and cheaper route for cargo from London to Bath until the railways took over — ironically the canals carried the materials to build the railways that took over their traffic. There are 29 locks altogether and the 16 locks that form the steepest part of the flight at Caen Hill are designated an ancient monument.
Here we had our first ICE CREAM, spotted a nesting swan and a bug hotel as well as this very fancy narrow boat in the long term mooring. The views over the surrounding countryside were breathtaking.
From here it was only a short drive to our first AirBnB stop in Melksham, a pretty little town we chose because of its proximity to Bath.
We’d booked a night at Holbrook Farmhouse which was accessed by a maze of single track roads — a bit terrifying when you expect to see a tractor coming the other way at any minute, or worse a battered Landrover going way too fast. The Farmhouse was a mishmash of old and new and our bedroom a very incongruous conservatory tacked on one end. The unexpected black and gold sequined bed creaked in a very alarming fashion and we had to go through the main sitting room of the farmhouse (ceiling propped with what looked like part of a Stonehenge pillar) to get to our bathroom, so this is not somewhere we’d recommend!
We popped into Melksham for supper, risking the single track roads again and grateful that it didn’t get dark early, and found Casa, a very stylish Italian restaurant with great food and wine and delightful service. A bonus was watching the local lads as they scuttled up and down the main street and dived in and out of alleyways between buildings clutching cans of beer and takeaway boxes. The barbershop across the road seemed to have a lot more than haircutting going on and a couple of very exotic cars passed the window more than once and made us wonder what life was really like in this deceptively sleepy little town.
As breakfast wasn’t provided at the farmhouse we zipped into Bill’s Bath Restaurant for some very indifferent eggs florentine. It was the only restaurant in the whole trip that was a disappointment. We were conscious that most places had only just re-opened and many were struggling with lack of staff but we were mostly served by good natured, polite, funny, attentive and hard working people who were determined to do their best and provide great hospitality.
However, its hard to be disappointed in Bath and this gentleman playing beautiful music outside Bath Abbey just a few steps away from Bill’s reminded us that this amazing city is worth spending a lot of time in. Can you see the angels climbing the ladders to heaven? They’ve been there since the early part of the 15th Century.
We didn’t want to be tramping around buildings, however beautiful, so we went to Bath Botanical Gardens instead. We stayed there much of the day, having a picnic lunch in the Royal Victoria Park.
Just a street away from the stunning Royal Crescent, this is one of the most civilised family spaces I’ve come across in many years. It carries its history lightly, putting the needs of all its visitors ahead of most other considerations. Covering 57 acres, the park is encircled by a one way road that is also the car park and has something for all ages. Parking charges are reasonable (everywhere is compared to Cambridge) and you can move your car to other locations along the road without having to pay again. We were there midweek so it was very quiet, calm, beautiful and relaxing in the wide open spaces but the children’s play area is huge so even at weekends I doubt it feels crowded. Picnic tables have built in metal trays for disposable barbeques and there is a distinct lack of “Don’t do this …” notices which makes it all very welcoming.
From Bath we wound a lazy trail on B roads to the Chew Valley Lake and Blagdon Lake. Chew Valley Lake was created in the early 1950s and provides much of the drinking water for Bristol, taking its supply from the Mendip Hills. Blagdon Lake was created by damming the River Yeo in 1898.
This area is the home of the wonderful Yeo Valley Farms. I interviewed the owner, Tim Mead, in 2015 on The Business Hub radio show about the difficulties of running an organic farm when surrounded by the intensive agriculture and chemical-hungry crops of other farms. I was struck by his total commitment to his land, his workers and his animals and a desire to do what’s best for the future of farming at a time before it became fashionable. I was given an open invitation to visit at the time and as the farm now has a visitors centre open to everyone, I heartily recommend it.
From Blagdon we wound our way on more B roads through the Mendips and into the Cheddar Gorge where Britain’s oldest complete human skeleton, estimated to be 9,000 years old, was found in 1903. We stopped for tea in Cheddar and while struggling with yet another parking app that didn’t work a delightful lady who was parking at the same time proffered a tin full of coins and insisted we take what we needed and wouldn’t hear of being paid back.
The little town was full of tourist shops so we didn’t hang about and moved on to our second AirBnB, again out in the sticks, at Godney, just two miles north of Glastonbury.
More single track roads through Upper Godney, Lower Godney and into Godney itself and we were delighted to find The Old Dairy at Garslade Farm looking very inviting.
The Old Dairy was used to make Caerphilly cheese for over 100 years. The Cheddar makers of Somerset adopted it as a quicker-maturing cheese that could provide a steady stream of income while the Cheddars aged. The old winch that was used to bring the truckles up from the dairy to the cheeseroom (our bedroom) is still in place.
The Old Dairy has been converted into a lovely, comfortable B&B that will sleep six and we were very happy with everything it provided, including the stunning view at the top of this post. Our host, Bridgette explained that her husband’s family had farmed this land for over 200 years but their three sons were happy in other careers and not interested in carrying on the tradition. With all that’s happening in farming in the UK, who can blame them?
As there were no buildings visible for miles, no noise, no traffic, and very few humans we were convinced we were in the middle of nowhere, only accessible by single track roads so when our landlady recommended the local place to eat but warned us to book as soon as possible we were a bit surprised.
A mile down another single track road was The Sheppey with notices on all the neighbouring houses that opened straight onto the road not to park in front of their doors and windows. The whole road was full of cars — at 7pm on a Wednesday. It looked pretty uninspiring from the outside but we were in for a really pleasant surprise!
The restaurant is in a quirky 17th century cider house and has a huge bar, two dining rooms, very expensive artwork, an enormous deck overlooking the river seating 150, a drinks and food menu that would put many 5 star restaurants to shame and lots of very happy customers. The extensive drinks menu included this Glastonbury wine — one of only 1,000 bottles produced each year and it was delicious. We were served — and entertained — by the new owner, Ben Costigan, a freelance photographer who lives in a neighbouring village who bought the pub in March 2021 and had re-opened to some very dedicated fans just a few weeks before our trip.
If you are ever near Glastonbury, Bath or Wells, this place is only ten minutes drive away and well worth a visit but DO book first and take the time to walk around the whole palce and inspect the art on the walls: The Sheppey
The next day, after a lovely breakfast at The Old Dairy we set off to explore Wells. The Cathedral was closed because a film crew was setting up and the Cathedral Lawn was surrounded by pantechnicons — including Warner Bros — and huge lighting rigs.
We asked an operative what was being filmed and were curtly told “an advert” which we didn’t believe for a minute. Vicars Close, pictured below, is claimed to be the oldest purely residential street in Europe with construction started in 1348 and completed in the 1420s.
The Bishops Palace had a distraction …
From Wells we wound our way to Glastonbury navigating yet more single track roads to get up to the Tor (no, we didn’t try to walk it). The Tor is 158 metres above the Somerset Levels and has mysteriously symmetrical terraces all round it. At the summit is the roofless tower of St. Michael’s Church. Its thought that there was previously a timber church dating from the 11th or 12th centuries and before that a pre-Christian place of worship. It has many mythological and spiritual associations.
Glastonbury town has been inhabited since Neolithic times and has lots of Arthurian and New Age legends attached to it but on a sleepy Thursday it was just a bit quirky. We found a nice pub for lunch then took the A39 through the Polden Hills to Bridgewater then through the Quantock Hills to Watchet and along the coast to Minehead and Porlock, crossing into Devon and arriving in Lynmouth on the northern edge of Exmoor where we had more ICE CREAM.
The small towns of Lynton and Lynmouth are separated by a high cliff, and in the late 1800s, a water powered funicular cliff railway was built to join them. It has been in continuous use since. On the day we were there we watched a very ambitious building project creating luxury apartments built into the cliff with stunning views over the Bristol Channel.
From Lynton we continued through Exmoor Forest, skirted Barnstaple and continued down to our third Airbnb in the tiny hamlet of Roborough. Lots more single track roads eventually brought us to another chocolate box village where we failed completely to find our accomodation because it was a new development and there was no phone signal to find it even on Google Maps. A helpful local jogger directed us to a close of brand new houses where we were welcomed into the kitchen by our host, Kim, and given a cup of tea and her life history.
I guess there are lots of reasons why people become Airbnb hosts but Kim’s seemed to be to show off her perfect home. I didn’t take any pictures because it was just like a showhouse you can see in any magazine. Everything was brand new, expensive and immaculate with a bit of girly sparkle here and there. Not my taste but no complaints.
We hadn’t booked dinner at the only pub in the village and they were apparently full but a phone call from Kim got us a table. We later discovered that her son, who pre-pandemic worked on cruise ships, had a job there.
The New Inn, described as “A proper Devon pub” wasn’t full but with only one chef — the owner — they’d restricted their bookings. The thatched pub dates back to the 1600’s but the inside had been pared right back by the new owners. Chatting to them and their delightful five year old daughter after our meal we discovered that they had only moved back to the UK from Thailand a couple of months earlier when a family member tipped them off that the pub was up for sale. They’re charming and full of ambition and ideas and look as though they’re going to make a big success of it with lots of plans to make the pub the centre of the community again. Look out for Morris Dancers tho …
Back at the new build, after a good nights sleep, Kim had laid out breakfast in her immaculate kitchen that is so pristine it’s hard to imagine any actual cooking taking place there. She chatted as we ate, asking us to sign her visitors book and telling us about the 20 different homes that she and her husband had lived in. It felt as though they moved every time the bins got full but she was very hospitable and deserves her “Superhost” status.
We decided to explore some more of the north Devon coast, visiting Westward Ho! a village named after a best selling book. Charles Kingsley’s novel, published in 1855, was set in nearby Bideford and local entrepreneurs saw an opportunity to encourage tourism so built the Westward Ho!-tel and a number of villas in order to satisfy the Victorians’ passion for seaside holidays.
Continuing around the coast we stopped off at The Falcon Hotel in Bude where their “Secret Garden” was the perfect spot to pause. Built in 1798, the Falcon Hotel is the oldest coaching hotel in North Cornwall and has been run for seven generations by the Brendon Family. It was obvious that an elderly gentleman greeting a lunch party of people who knew him well was the latest member of the family in ownership.
Continuing down the A39 with various dives off onto B roads to explore interesting sounding villages, we had Bodmin Moor on one side and the sea on the other, with Tintagel, Padstow and Newquay basking in the sunshine.
We had a date to visit our youngest relatives in Perranporth the next day so headed off into Cornwall through St Austell to our next overnight stop at the gloriously named Fowey, “pronounced FOY to rhyme with JOY” as the posters told us.
And it was a joy. Vertiginous one way roads and 90 degree bends mean that every view is breathtaking. The town has been in existence since well before the Norman invasion in 1066 and the streets are designed for walking and pack animals, definitely not cars, and parking spaces are so rare that signs to the town centre take visitors to a car park above the town where a shuttle bus runs every 15 minutes to take them into the town itself — or you can walk down a flight of steps and very steep paths to the harbour.
This was our next Airbnb stop — the gloriously named St. Fimbarrus Road.
Finnbarr/Fimbarrus was an Irish priest who journeyed several times to Rome, taking a well known route through Wales, across the Bristol Channel to Padstow, up the River Camel to Bodmin Moor, across the Moor, down the course of the River Fowey and across the Channel to France. Fowey Church is dedicated to him.
Although the house was beautiful our room was tiny and the bathroom so small it required a bit of careful manoeuvering to use at all.
There are a lot of bars and restaurants around the harbour in Fowey and for some reason we ended up at The King of Prussia and had one of the funniest experiences of the whole trip.
The hotel had just been bought by Kristian Gourlay and Kelley Nangle who also own the Cornish Duck Company and the Cornish Mushroom Company. Staff shortages meant that Kristian and Kelly were working at the recently re-opened pub and it was immediately obvious that Kristian was intent on having as much fun as possible. He managed to give us his credentials, including 12 years as an investment banker, as he sat us down and took our order. The back story is worth reading — see the links to their businesses above.
Kristian refused to sell us a bottle of Chardonnay on the basis that it was part of the stock left by the previous owners and was rubbish. The ensuing conversation and antics resulted in us buying a bottle of “Pit Bull” as he called it.
The food was excellent and the wine was very good but the chat was the best part of the evening with so many laugh out loud moments it was hard to believe we’d only just met him. We didn’t notice the same interaction with other customers so not quite sure what got him going with us but we had a lot of fun and have great admiration for his entrepreneurial spirit. Definitely a place to go back to.
The King of Prussia? The hotel is built on the site of a much older house, which dates from the late 17th Century and is thought to be named after the smuggler and privateer John Carter, who was nicknamed the King of Prussia. No-one is quite sure why.
The next day we visited our young relatives in Perranporth and met their 3 month old daughter. Their very dilapidated house was bought for the view of this beach and they’re busy renovating it while enjoying the surfing and beach lifestyle!
We avoided anything west of Perranporth as the G7 Summit was talking place in St. Ives and we were aware of cavalcades of black vehicles with heavily tinted windows with an escort of police motorcyclists appearing unexpectedly as they moved VIPs around. As our next overnight stop was Haytor Vale in Dartmoor Forest we meandered through Truro, St Austell, Lostwithiel, and Looe, stopping for lunch at the China Fleet Country Club, Saltash.
The name of the club comes from a canteen built in the early 1900’s for Royal Navy sailors serving on the Chief China Station in Hong Kong that grew into a very profitable enterprise. It developed into a 23 story luxury building and in preparation for Hong Kong being handed back to China in 1997 the Hong Kong Sailors Committee and Trustees decided to build another club in the UK on the banks of the River Tamar at Saltash. This was opened to sailors in 1991 and to civilians in 1994. It’s open to the public and well worth a visit.
After lunch we explored lots of beautiful villages on the way to Salcombe where we may have had more ICE CREAM and spotted this lovely Austin- Healey 3000 from the 1950’s. The owner saw us taking pictures and when he’d finished his ice cream drove away, touching his cap in farewell. #fans.
We navigated lots more single track roads as we made our way back to Dartmoor and, noting Buckfastleigh Abbey for a future visit, arrived at The Moorlands Hotel in Haytor Vale where Agatha Christie is said to have created the Hercule Poirot stories.
Airbnbs are OK but not a patch on a decent hotel and it was great to sprawl out in a big room with huge bathroom and be served by very new, very young and very keen members of staff who were all delighted that the hotel had re-opened a few weeks earlier. Great food and lovely surroundings made for a very lazy couple of days on the terrace and wandering around the grounds.
We didn’t see much evidence of Agatha or Hercule so eventually tore ourselves away and set off for our next stop, the romantically named Ottery St Mary, close to Honiton. This tiny town has several claims to fame: not only is it the birthplace of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge but Harry Potter fans will know it as the inspiration for Ottery St Catchpole, home of the Weasleys.
St Mary’s Church is a magnficent miniature of Exeter Cathedral with stocks (not the flowers) in the churchyard and a view into a magnificent house with a rare Rolls Royce in the drive — more of that later.
The church houses this ancient astronomical clock. As well as telling the time, it also shows the age and phase of the moon, and it has done so for more than five centuries. It is about a metre and a half square and has two circular dials. The outer dial shows the hour with two sets of twelve Roman numerals. A golden sphere, representing the sun, moves to show the time. The inner dial contains thirty Arabic numerals with a gold star moving between them to show the age of the moon. Within the inner dial is a sphere painted half white, half black which rotates on its axis once every 29.5 days depicting the moon and its phases; the moon sphere also moves around the dial once every 24 hours. A black sphere at the centre of the clock shows the earth as the centre of the universe. The clock mechanism is visible behind the face.
The clock is thought to be from the 15th century because it depicts a medieval view of the structure of the universe where the sun rotates around the earth and this view was only superseded in 1543 when Copernicus proposed that the earth rotates around the sun.
The entrance to our Airbnb was almost opposite this church. I say entrance because the approach was a very narow lane — very, very narrow. Barely wide enough for our car. This opened into a couryard of tiny houses and another very, very narrow entrance that opened into a second cobbled courtyard of more tiny houses and one big house that had been divided up. Fortunately there was also a turning circle but once in, we didn’t really want to move the car again until we had to.
The double fronted house is Paxford House and it seems that the area was the site of an old hospital. The brick house on the right is where we stayed, in one of the rooms up in the roof. We haven’t found the history of the site yet. The host was a music teacher and we saw nothing of her but heard her giving lessons over Zoom.
Fortunately there were plenty of places we could walk to for supper as there was no way we were going to move the car and we chose the Volunteer Inn which gets its name from when it opened as a dwelling, hostelry and recruitment centre for the Napoleonic War in 1810.
I was amused to find these old adverts in the ladies:
Another rickety bed and pretty crappy breakfast in a basket with nowhere to eat it except sitting on the bed (and UHT milk -YUK!) along with the hair raising entrance means we won’t be re-visiting the accomodation although we’d definitely go back to the town.
Oh, that lovely house and car I mentioned earlier — this is what nestles behind that amazing church.
The next day we spend lazily exploring the Jurassic Coast, popping down to Sidmouth, failing to be admitted to the Victoria Hotel where Andrew’s family used to stay. A very polite young man in tails informed us that it was “open only to residents” even for coffee and drinks. So off we went along more hair-raising single track roads to Beer, a picture perfect village with a quarry that has provided stone for many historic buildings and also has one of the prettiest beaches with the best placed allotments ever!
We had lunch at Axmouth’s 800 year old Harbour Inn arriving close to 2pm to be told if we ordered quickly we could still get lunch. The staff were clearly overworked and trying very, very hard to keep everyone happy and they succeeded. We learned that they had only one chef and he was very new but they all did a great job. The whole holiday was enhanced by the charm and genuine care shown by everyone we met.
On to Lyme Regis where we were delighted to come across the Boat Building Academy. The smell of newly planed wood was delicious and the skeletons of the boats being built were fascinating.
After Lyme Regis we continued round the coast towards Weymouth to meet another nephew and his partner. They were temporarily living in one of the prettiest villages I’ve ever seen: Sutton Poyntz.
The village was known just as Sutton until the Poyntz family gave their name to it when they held the manor. The village is a liberty because it didn’t belong to the king . The last of the Poyntz family was born circa 1320.
Bisected by the River Jordan which is just 3 miles long, the village has evidence of Neolithic and Bronze Age activity and was documented in a Saxon charter dated 891 AD.
Looking inland, the White Horse of Osmington, depicting George 3rd, towers over the village and just off the coast is The Isle of Portland, famous for the Portland Stone Quarry and The Portland Bill Lighthouse.
After a lovely walk we went to check on the progress of the building works of our nephew’s house (another bungalow being converted!) which is right opposite the lovely Yalbury Cottage Restaurant in Lower Bockhampton, near Dorchester.
Our oldest nephew and his partner are keen bee keepers and the house they are renovating is adjacent to Kingston Maurward College so they have lots of interesting things going on in their back garden, which is where their cat will be living!
We’d booked dinner at The Kings Arms in Dorchester, another place worth a longer visit. The current bulding dates from 1720. Dorchester is the heart of Thomas Hardy country, the Casterbridge of his novels. The King’s Arms featured in his writing and his life. Robert Louis Stephenson stayed here in 1885 whilst visiting Hardy.
The last day of our adventure was a visit to a friend in Fleet, Hampshire and a very swish afternoon tea at The Aviator Hotel Farnborough — the only really modern building we visited in the whole trip!
As well as an amazing selection of food there were 15 kinds of tea to choose from!
And that’s the end. A quick trip to Waitrose on the way home and straight out into the garden to water everything (we’d had sunshine all day every day while we were away).
We hadn’t read, heard or watched any news while we were away and we didn’t play any music in the car either. There was always plenty to talk about and it was so different to any other holiday we’ve ever had. There are plenty of places we’d like to go back to so lots more to look forward to.
Everyone we met was charming, and all the hotel and restaurant staff were working so hard to please everyone so I hope they get lots more visitors throughout the summer.
The best part of the whole trip? Meeting our new great-nieces of course but also spending time with our grown up nephews and their delightful partners on an individual basis and discovering what lovely people they’ve all grown into — something you don’t always appreciate at a family gathering. It didn’t quite make up for not being able to visit our son in Canada but took our minds off missing him for a while.
I hope you’ve enjoyed our trip as much as we did!
