Day 25: Knock knock knockin' on Devon's Door....

Before we begin: font is all over the place like a mad bloke's breakfast.  Sorry.

Today dawned gloriously warm and sunny – probably the best day, weatherwise, since our arrival over 3 weeks ago.  What a pity we had to spend it driving.  It took us seven hours to get to Tavistock, Devon (located in stark and mysterious Dartmoor National Park) almost one hour of which was spent heading in the wrong direction, relentlessly west, towards Wales.  It was only the signage  (Croeso i Cymru!) that alerted us. 

I will get back to Tavistock in a minute but must first return to Liverpool. As mentioned in my whiny, hastily re-cobbled post last night, all of my, and all but a couple of paras of Geoff’s contribution, simply disappeared.  When re-writing my bit, I left out a couple of things that have suddenly come back to me today.  So we will revisit them now!  First! Congratulations to Geoffy, who came up with the name of that post, after 24 days of having his suggestions rejected by the blog Editor, whose decision is final. An HD for “You'll Never Walk Alone on the Ferry 'Cross the Mersey".

 

And speaking of, here she is!  The 'Snowdrop'.  We were a little disappointed that this was actually a tourist ferry, rather than a commuter one, and the pre-recorded, on-board commentary was DELIVERED FOUR TIMES AT 20,000 DECIBELS, with a couple of loud, scratchy, distorted bars from Gerry and the Pacemakers' seminal hit to top and tail it.  Never mind.  A ferry ride is a ferry ride and I'm always happy about that, even if it was very cold and windy and the River Mersey was a less than appealing shade of taupe.

 

The Liverpool dockland area was rather nice, if a bit touristy.  And we saw yet another enormous seagull which was probably not a seagull but some other type of gull.

                                                              

A gull nevertheless. Geoff has previously described such gulls (in this blog and our previous one) as being the size of a small Jack Russell and (more recently) as having the proportions of a medium Yorkshire Terrier.  I disagree.  I am of the opinion that this gull here is roughly equal in size to a well-fed but diminutive and possibly cross-bred Kelpie. 

 

 

 

 Another highlight of the Liverpool Docks was this tribute to '60s rocker, Billy Fury:

 I don't remember a great deal about him (being jist a sprog in his heyday)  but always thought he had an excellent name. So I was disappointed to learn yesterday that his real name was Ronald Wycherly.  He died in his early 40s in 1983 and one of his fans later had this monument installed on the waterfront but facing the street, where he will be thrusting his nether regions at the passing traffic for decades to come.

I liked Liverpool - it helped that we stayed in a nice part of town I guess. We visited the Maritime Museum but eschewed any Beatles stuff. What more could there possibly be to learn about the fab four? Although a guy on Hoylake beach did tell us Paul McCartney had family in Hoylake. Probably a third cousin once removed.

But back to Tavistock  – it’s a beautiful old town - we were here briefly two years ago and vowed to come back, both to see the town and to further explore Dartmoor, which captivated us last time - Dartmoor ponies (that Geoffy named Misty, Dobbin and Neddy) and the fabulous, 5000 year old avenue of Merrivale standing stones.  Today we had just finished marvelling that Sat(an) Nav actually did a pretty good job (our detour to Wales was human error) when, close to the Tavistock CBD, she suddenly and urgently demanded we turn right up a 3-feet wide, pot-holed goat track which went for 4 kilometres, with no possibility of exiting.  Of course, it was two-way traffic and yet again, only Geoffy’s superlative driving skills enabled us to come out the other side successfully.  The really annoying thing is, we travelled to Tavistock down the same A-road last time using a proper, old-fashioned road map  and we managed to go right around the mulberry bush without ever once ending up on a goat track.  Furthermore, we could have stayed on that same A-road and reached our destination today quite effortlessly – a left turn at a roundabout and then 10 metres up the hill.  Not the first time this spawn of Satan, this whore of Babylon, has lead us down the garden path and up the creek without a canoe.

 

See that winding narrow goat track in the top half of the pic? It's two-way. And it's like that for 4 kms! Sat(an) Nav loves setting us challenges like this.








Over now to Snorkypants for his take on the day:





I have to confess that last night's loss of most of what we had composed was my fault, although I still don't understand how.  One of life's little mysteries really.  The only thing to add about Liverpool, and Hoylake where we stayed, is to marvel yet again about the beach at Hoylake.  Absolutely extraordinary, and not to be missed next time you’re in the vicinity.

Our hotel was a Marston’s, which is a chain (like Wetherspoons and the like) that seems to specialize in family friendly atmosphere and hearty pub fare.  Maybe a bit better than pub fare actually.  Anyway, we quite liked it, even though we agreed that one night was enough.  This might have had something to do with the fact that Thursday night was quiz night, that started at 9 and went til 11.  We know this because we heard most of the revelry from our room.  And then heard some of the revellers staggering back to their rooms next to ours.

Here in Tavistock, we’ve already discovered the Cornish Arms, which has some decent beers, from the St Austell brewery in Cornwall (we stayed there last time). [In St Austells, not in the actual brewery - Ed.] I had an IPA and pale ale, if anyone’s interested – both excellent.  We also enjoyed some pub tucker which we thought was just about the best we’ve had anywhere in England.  And better still, it’s dog friendly, like a number of other English pubs.  Here’s Meg, the Labrador-Pointer cross, who was celebrating her 5^th birthday.  We helped the celebrations as best we could.  And you can see a happy patron the background enjoying himself greatly. 

 

 

I think that was the pale ale being enjoyed at that particular moment.  And we also walked through a church yard in the centre of Tavistock, that has a small section of the remains of an Benedictine abbey that dates from 1318.  We’ve included this because we haven’t displayed any ruined abbey photos for at least 2 days, and we know you’re hanging out for more.

And that's all from him.  I'll just have he final word by posing the question:  Guess who destroyed the abbey?  If you said that fat Tudor bastard you'd be right!