Road trip to Devon and Cornwall

April 7-13, 2007

Our first stop on the way to the south west corner was at Pete and Jess’s place in Reading. We didn’t stay long since we were seeing them again the following weekend, but we did stay long enough for Jess to cook us a beautiful roast dinner and to polish off a decent number of Easter eggs!

We couldn’t drive past Stone Henge without stopping for a look with hundreds of other tourists. We also checked out the nearby village of Avebury which is famous for similar ancient stone arrangements as Stone Henge… and also for a good pub to stop for lunch called the Red Lion.

Driving through Wiltshire we saw a handful of the famous hill figures, massive chalk drawings of horses and stuff carved into the hillside. OHHH!!! Massive highlight… we met some Wiltshire Horns in Wiltshire. Fi was pretty stoked.

Our base for the next few days was Jaz’s auntie’s place in Torquay (Devon). It’s one of the sad realities, learning that a lot of Australian town names are not original at all. But this Torquay was a bit different to our Torquay. We had amazing Devonshire teas and discovered the best food ever, chip butties. Basically a bun with butter and loads of hot chips in the middle. Simple and effective, especially for the walk home from the pub at the end of the night.

There were no waves in Torquay though, so we went for a day trip to the surfing capital of England, Newquay (Cornwall). The beaches lived up to the massive reputation they’ve got over here, but the town was a bit tacky. We enjoyed beautiful sunshine, chilling surf and of course a Cornish pasty for lunch, followed by a Cornish clotted cream icecream.

We had fun being tourists for a few days. We caught ferry to Dartmouth, the home of the English navy and also a very beautiful English town and jumped on a steam train home again. Fi and Jaz spent hours one day in their favourite shop on earth… Primark.

Next stop on the road trip, East Sussex.

It seems a long way in the wrong direction to be going, but we had good reason… to meet up with our favourite travelling duo Pete and Jess for a weekend.

Since we were driving pretty much right across the south coast of England from west to east, we saw a bit of the country side and made a few stops along the way. One of our stops was the beautiful town of Salisbury (Wiltshire), which hosts the church with the tallest spire in England. All the churches over here are nice, but this one was special. The neighbouring town, Wilton, also harboured a beautiful church and although it wasn’t as grand as the Salisbury cathedral, it was unique in structure and we were given a very warm welcome by a lovely old lady. It was a bit like we’d landed in a story book.

We probably found our new favourite shop in the world, better than Primark because this one sold food. It was called the Udder Shop and sold all sorts of fresh produce, very ‘goormett’. And it wouldn’t have been a proper English road trip if we didn’t stop at a pub for lunch on the way. The Tippling Philosopher won our service this day.