Truro Beckons, Sunday July 21st

We are due in Truro for a birthday lunch. That is one of the wonderful things about Cornwall, everywhere is so close together on this little peninsula. Two tin cans and a bit of string are all you need for communicating from South to North, East to West.
As we enter Truro we are delighted to see there is 'A New Hydrotherapy Suit' at the local vets. Surely this augurs well. Is it a one-size-fits-all suit? Come Cornish creatures great and small - gerbils, giraffes, guinea pigs, Great Danes. What wonderful new material shrinks and stretches like this? Perhaps the magic suit came out of the same stable as the robotic milker, another amazing new invention.
Listen to this, and I swear it's true, I heard it on Radio 4, and if that isn't Gospel these days, what is? No longer does the dairy farmer have to be up at the crack of dawn for his cows. They now have their very own milking parlour on tap 24 hours a day. Whenever they feel the urge to be milked, they wander into the robotic milking parlour, check in at the desk, and get milked by robots who never sleep - or smell of tobacco. The milk is pumped straight into containers, all without a human hand in sight. This means they often get milked thrice a day, and the net result, as any lactating mother knows, is an increase in milk production. How about that for a spot of genius? There has to be a dark side to this little ray of freedom for cows, but I have yet to discover what it is. Will they wear out quicker? Answers on a postcard.

We are received with joy at the birthday lunch, feasted, entertained, and then given a challenge working on the knotty problem of cats and seagulls. What problem and whats is the link between fur and and feathers - other than the usual sneak and squawk afflicting this charming town? It all comes down to the bins. Well, to be precise, the lack of them. Truro does not provide these handy items for its residents. Want a bin? Buy it yourself. No doubt the well-healed think nothing of buying a few bins, but for the rest of the town it is a weekly fight to keep black bin bags from the claws and beaks of night time marauders. An old curtain is recommended as a deterrent, but who has an old curtain? Not many it seems. To add insult to injury the Esteemed Council not only refuses to en-bin its residents, it also prosecutes them if their bags are ripped. There is something reminiscent of Pol Pot in this thinking, which is further seen in evidence at the local Tesco's - what is it about this otherwise delightful town?
To wit: would-be shoppers are instructed in large print that genuine Tesco customers can park for the first two hours for free. Regulation Superstore practice, so far so good. But this is stretching the truth from here to John O Groats: the small print below advises the shopper that free parking is only available for those who pay £3 shopping in-store.
'What!' we cry. 'What's free about that?'
Nothing, it turns out. The small print further reveals that your number plate is automatically recorded, so should you fail to spend £3 in Tesco and receive a parking ticket from the checkout, then feed this into a machine before you leave, they will fine you £40 rising to £70.

Now on this in auspicious day I was introducing BB to the delights of shopping with a scanner, something he has never had the good fortune to experience. As a result we are not issued with the requisite parking ticket at all: you have to go to Customer Service and request one. We rage helplessly. It is only by the merest good fortune that BB's suspicious ferrets insisted he investigate further. He got out the binoculars to read the smallest print before we left the car park and spotted the trap. Those less wary are tracked down via a Satanic pact with the DVLA. All very sinister. BB trots off, cursing, into Tesco again, has to find a man to issue a ticket, feed the parking meter and finally, out we go, never to return. From now on it's Sainsbury's, Aldi, anywhere - except Big Bully.
Don't get me wrong, Truro is a delightful town to visit, just steer clear of this car park. Sainsbury's on the other hand has genuinely free parking for 2.5 hours, no catches. They even let us park the Duchess sideways across three bays to avoid her delicate proboscis sticking out and blocking the lane - what more can you ask?
Right, back to the seagulls...
The task is to design a poster for local residents to encourage them to cover their bin bags. We need a simple catch phrase. BB says, why fix what ain't broke?
'Cats and Seagulls spread diseases, Cover up your bin bags please!'
I wanted to write Pleases, to rhyme, but was outvoted.
So that's the words, now the pictures.

This is the result: one happy host, two chuffed guests and a partridge in a bin bag.

Sunset calls along the river below the house, and photos are taken...

The Doc and His Number 1 Fan July 11th 3013

A quiet night in our Brit Stop, up early to photograph the exquisite river Exe and the other pub on its banks (drink there, eat here we were advised by someone at the Trout last night).
The Fisherman's Cott, has to be one of the prettiest pubs in England. We suspect its flood damage was even worse than at the Trout's. The thatched roof is certainly less golden, but with a huge willow tree,

and purple hanging baskets suspended above a lawn clippered within an inch of its life, this is Henley-eat-your-heart-out country.



Under the picture-book bridge are Ophelia-like swathes of green hair tugging to get free. This movement in the river, reflections, shallows breaking over rocks, set against the intermittent but careful cultivation along the banks is truly exquisite.

We move on towards Cornwall, BB at the wheel - this is serious knee-jerking territory.
'Look, small horses!' he exclaims.
I look.
'Aren't small horses called ponies?'
'They're Shetland horses.'
'And there was I thinking they were called Shetland ponies...'
Silence from the driver, then a giggle. BB has rebooted his positive hard drive. Hurray!
We pass through Half Moon, yes it is the name of a village, and it has a giant lay-by and a bacon sarnie cafe. Must remember that for another time, but for now we have a date with Cornwall, need to move on down the A30. After ten minutes there is a sign,'Long Delays!'  No doubt Kuala Lumpur Man at it again, but we'd better check as the sign didn't happen to mention which part of the A30 was blocked. With about a hundred miles of it ahead, we are spoilt for choice.
'Use your new App,' I suggest. I made BB buy it when we got marooned on the M5 yesterday, It is the sort of App you need to buy before you hit a Lumpur, not once you are stuck in its jam like a wasp.
We check. The entire A30 is red from a couple of miles ahead all the way through Bodmin and out the other side. So much for the A30 then. We exit and escape, make for Port Isaac, not Lanhydrock. (No, it doesn't have two lls, this isn't Wales. Keep up.)
PORT ISAAC:
We find a rare Cornish layby about two miles outside Port Isaac, stop off, unload the bikes and pedal off. It is a lovely day, sea regulation blue, cliffs rocky, cliff tops green - the sort of coast we only dream of up north.

Chaining the bikes at the top of the steep descent into Port Isaac we wander off down the hill.
'Does this path take us down to the village?' I ask a seafaring chap with a white beard and a salty look.
'No idea,' he replies, his accent is not Cornish - got that one wrong.
I ask the next couple.
'We only went a little way.' They are equally unhelpful, slightly apologetic for their lack of knowledge, but at least I have now located the source of their uselessness. They are Scottish.
'The coach leaves in five minutes,' they remind me kindly. I thank them, wondering what BB would make of it if I transferred to another tour, but I doubt I'd enjoy one of those where you get just enough time to pee, never enough to see.
Slightly anxious that what goes down, has to come up again and in such fierce sun, we  descend the steep path into Port Isaac.

Sea a deep green, a tiny little place, quaint, full of shops to buy ice cream, fish, souvenirs, pottery - all on the expensive side. A small loaf of pretty standard bread is £1.75, probably justified by the historic logic that if you make it into Port Isaac at all, you will feel pretty much marooned, and therefore willing to pay helpful natives far over the odds for your survival.

There is a lifeboat, and the cottage where Doc Martin lives. We know this because over a pint of cider we got chatting to a man from Lowton/Louton/ Loughton (take your pick on spelling we are not on Google today) no, not Luton - I made that mistake too. For this cheerful fella, think Piltdown Man and fast forward 15,000 years. Looking the authentic old grizzled sea captain, it turns out he's a computer man from Essex. Well, that's about right for a modern Piltdown person. He spends all his holidays in Port Isaac waiting to find the courage to boot out his adult kids so he can sell up and buy a place down here. He is at a loss how to do this and feels his life is draining away.
'Charge them rent,' I suggest, ' And write out a list of terms and conditions they have to abide by, or lose their roof.'
He looks at me as if I'd just invented alchemy. I do believe he actually had no strategy of his own until that point. There is an expression of relief, even revelation. Let us hope epiphany.
'I like a woman who comes straight to the point,' he says. 'Most women are a mystery to me, they always seem to want you to know what's going on in their heads. Leaves me in the dark.' He sounds puzzled, wounded.
'No chance of being left in the dark here mate,' BB chips in with possibly a little too much feeling. But he is right, there isn't a chance. After how many aeons of women waiting for men to decide every detail of their lives - still so popular today in parts of the world today - it's now or never girls. It isn't Alchemy or even a mystery why we are a mystery, it's the unhappy result of being forced to play a complicated game of social chess resulting in expedient dissembling and reticence. If this survival tool got us a name for being mysterious, aka devious, manipulative, hard to read -. just playing by your rules, mate. So don't give me the old, 'Can never work them out routine.'

Seagull extra, fine profile. 

Of course I don't dump this lot on Loughton Man, it's not exactly his personal fault that the entire mind of Woman has got a bad name. He looks quite sorry for himself, feels a victim of some female plot. It would take too long to explain that his ancestral heritage backfired.
''I could do with a woman like you,' he says with feeling.
'Nice of you to ask, afraid I'm taken.'
'No, I didn't mean....' He looks anxiously at BB, things like this can get you into a lot of trouble in Loughton. BB is grinning.
'Good sandwich?' he asks.
Loughton Man is eating a delicious-looking crab sarnie, but leaving the soft crusts in neat stripes across his platter. His mum probably taught him to do that in 1952. Why break an old habit if it works I say. BB finds it quite astonishing behaviour in a grown man, but unlike me, finds himself able to keep his thoughts from popping out of his mouth in anything above a mutter. He goes to order a sandwich, comes back from the bar, eyes popping.
'At £9.50 this had better be brilliant.'
Fortunately it is, and the salad is actually dressed, but Loughtom Man is a hunter not a gatherer. He eats the bits of raw onion, leaves the rest. Must be a Loughton thing, no crusts and raw onion. Effectively he paid £9.50 for four tiny triangles of bread. The streets of Loughton we begin to suspect, must be paved with gold. Wrong. We learn all is not an idyll, his life will only be complete when he lives in this particular Cornish retreat.
'Oh, so you have friends here?'
'No, not really.'
'What will you do here when you move then - will you get a boat?'
He looks a trifle surprised by the question, it appears he hasn't thought further than moving house from the Big Bustle to this tiny salted tourist-trap-on-sea. He shakes his head, looks alarmed.
'Oh no, no boat! The tides are too dangerous round here.'
'Perhaps you'll take up fishing'?' I was struggling to understand the attraction of living in a place like this without spending some time in, or on the sea. Loughton Man helps me out.
'Lovely people here, they're friendly to dogs.'
We are very glad to hear it, wouldn't want the RSPCA prosecuting the natives.
'Ah, so you have you a dog then?' we ask, looking down at the mutt under the table.

'No, no I don't, that isn't mine.'
The conversation threatens to stall, we have run out of ideas but Loughton Man has warmed up, is on a roll.
'When I move here I'm going to get a dog like they have inside the pub. A cockerpoo.'
Words fail us. BB is inwardly convulsing, I know the signs; he thinks the pub owners are taking the piss. He doesn't get to Crufts much.
'A cockerpoo, how lovely!' I exclaim, wondering which genius thought that would sound better than a Poodlecock.
'Lovely dogs,' I'm assured by our happy new friend. 'Cost quite a bit you know.'
'I'm sure they do. I once had a Springolurch, mind you I was paid to take it away.'
BB murmurs in my ear,
'Didn't they used to be called mongrels, free to a good home?'
I keep a straight face and am rescued by Loughton Man pointing across the bay,
'See that cottage there, that's Doc Martin's! I was an extra in the latest series.'

By accidental good fortune, at the far right is the Doc's cottage - we think.  Or we might have missed it altogether. Fans feel free to put us right..

He is very proud of this. We wonder how he will cope when the glamour of TV crews and famous actors have gone home for good, but he is very animated telling us the nitty gritty of film practice.
'Doc Martin never goes inside the cottage you know, you see him open the door, but the interiors are all shot in a studio over the hill.'
A ripple of shock goes through us. In spite of the fact that we never watch this programme, we felt cheated on behalf of those who do.
Sadly it is time to leave Loughton Man, we feel certain if we return, he will be there to greet us in 15,000 years time, but now it is time to visit the local pottery shop situated inside an old chapel where The Fisherman's Friends - no, not the lozenges - practice their Cornish music. At least the place has found a new use, and it isn't a Bureau de Change. We aren't the table turning types anyway, we leave without a purchase - not disapproving trade in a church, but the price tags are beyond us. Was that the problem all along?
Probably the maximum time an average visitor (with the sole exception of Loughton Man) would want to spend in Port Isaac is about one hour perambulating, one hour eating. Allow a further half hour for finding and looking at the exterior of Doc Martin's cottage if required. Then it is time to ascend the hill past the metal sculptures and head back to the coach/car or electric bikes.

Port Isaac sculpture - we didn't check the price tag

A possibly more interesting sculpture (NFS)

We set off to find a spot to park up for the night and head towards Padstow. Somewhere between St Columb and St Merryn, BB finds the ideal site in an unused farm gateway overlooking a waving barley field, with windmills on the horizon.
Yes, I know some of you out there prefer to call them turbines, but we like the word windmills, finding the name romantic, their action compelling in often bland rural scenes. they are a dramatic POI. We have yet to find a turbine romantic though many are magnificent, and suggest that anyone who has an antipathy to these elegant giants changes their nomenclature and then sees how they feel about them. You never know, it might help.

To us they bring the same joy as a wave to an ocean, a fountain to a fishpond. The perpetual motion drawing the eye, and the sheer scale of those pristine columns quite humbling. Windmills also have a secret life of their own. We have yet to see an entire cluster in full working order. (Is cluster the collective for a group, or is it a ripple, a roundness?) There is always one windmill refusenik. They always say that is due to maintenance, but we came on an entire roundel of windmills on strike, on a very blustery day. Ten of them stuck in space with nary a twirl between them. What's that about, wind blowing, windmills wedged? To see something designed to spin, refusing to do what it was made for, is as strange as seeing barley refusing to ripple in gale force 10. Windmills are creatures of mystery, possibly magic, so here we are, almost hidden from sight by honeysuckle and rose hedges within photographic shot of a huge Windmill Wedding.  Tall ones, small ones, dissenting ones, consenting ones, towering over us. What more can we want?

Spot the duchess

A heavenly spot somewhere - no idea where. That is the magic of wild camping, you think you will find nowhere to stop as it is getting dusk, slight panic sets in, you note five possible places if nothing else turns up and then, there it is, the perfect pull-over. You know you will never find it again, so the moment is all the sweeter.

Wild Sunrise

Westward Bound July 19th 2013

This is a sample of Things to Come: The Trout Inn, somewhere in Devon - just asked and it's Bickleigh near Tiverton.

After a long day in the scorching saddle, we have found heaven at this beautifully thatched and coutured pub where we can stay overnight in their car park for nothing. More of that later...
Back to the Beginning:

Irrifutable evidence of 2013 heatwave

The Duchess threw a wobbly on the motorway today. We think she was just objecting to a change of driver in the middle of a traffic jam on the M5. I surrendered the wheel to BB as my knees no longer respond to the calf-high clutch with joy. The moment the swap was made, the Duchess faltered and stalled in the middle lane. We suspect it was in deference to her age and status, that  the rest of the traffic stalled too. We pulled over and had a 2 hour cooling off period - for the Duchess and our melting feet.
As we wait for rescue, with traffic streaming past in tight formation,  BB's newfound positivity visibly wilts. It's mixture of heat-stroke and hope-loss.
It wasn't that he thought the Duchess was terminally doomed - he feared our holiday was: that we would be transported back from whence we came only this morning, ignominiously on a trailer. Having deeply celebrated leaving both work and home only four hours earlier, the anticipated humiliation was making him miserable. I have to say he is a very fine worrier when the opportunity presents itself.
It is wonderful to be gifted with a quicksilver brain, but if you have ever tried doing one of those puzzles tipping the slippery stuff down a labyrinth, you will know how hard it is to control those jiggly little blighters, rolling and splitting off all over the place. Give me a good old lava flow of a brain any day. You know exactly where it is going, how long you've got to empty the bins, rescue your photos, and still have time to phone a friend. I am prone to worrying after the event, not before, which is why we complement each other like a pair of perfect Plum Duffers. In fact I recommend installing single-line panicking tracks into any union. Check them out before you set off anywhere, even up to bed. If you both panic in unison it is unlikely you will get much further than the first iceberg. You could sing a rousing song as the ship goes down, but don't expect serviceable lifeboats.
Perceiving signs of a weary body and ferreting mind, I read BB extracts from previous holiday blogs long forgotten, mostly in the hope of distracting his ferrets. I am hoping that like the spurious motorway signs from Derby to Bristol prophesying doom on the road. ahead, our problems will be just as ephemeral. It turned out that the forewarned traffic problems only existed in the mind of the traffic controller - probably based in Kuala Lumpur. Perhaps he didn't know he had post different signs for North and Southbound traffic. Whilst the Northbound traffic stalled for twenty miles, ours hardly faltered, and kindly arranged its sole fit of hiccups to coincide with the Duchess's.
Finally when I was beginning to run out of distractions, a Little Green Flag Van draws up behind us, and out steps a little green man - who as BB observed, was aged possibly twelve and a half. More to the point he wasn't waving any sort of flag. That was quite disappointing. We like a flag.
The green boy looked totally lost when we described the problem (engine runs, but power fails) however since he was only in Year 8, his lack of ideas was hardly surprising. More surprising was the fact that his Headmaster had allowed him to cover his arms in tattoos, and drive a van.
Given that he was obviously bunking off from double science we didn't actually expect him to diagnose anything, but he obligingly unscrewed an air pipe, screwed it back on again, and the Duchess came to back life at the first ask. We suspect she just got overheated and needed a couple of hours off piste, she's an old girl and the temperature was up in the 90's so she can be forgiven.
Relieved to say goodbye to the little green lad and his little green van, we set off again, travelling rather later than we'd hoped, down the A38 from Weston-Super-Mare (cue Psalm 115, 'The sea saw that and fled') towards Tiverton. But tempus had flown too, so back onto the motorway hoping to reach a pub in time for grub, and find a spot to park up for the night.

Trout Inn Car Park - aka campsite

Tiverton seemed dead, so with dusk falling we drove into Bickleigh, saw a spacious car park for the Trout Inn and went inside.
'Greetings!' cried the man behind the bar. 'And what can I do for you?'
'Answer me questions two,' I reply - feeling like someone in a fairy tale. 'First, are you still serving food?'
'Indeed we are!' says the cheerful host.
'Second, could we park our van in your car park overnight please?'
'Indeed you can! For free! We are a Brit Stop.'
'We aren't after a ten-second tyre change...'
He grins.
'Like on the continent, you can stay over for free in certain places, and we are one of them. There's a sticker on the door.'
'Very cheery, isn't he,' I observe to the waitress who is passing, hands laden with the most scrumptious looking grub. I have to restrain BB from following her.
'Hmm, it's just an act,' she confides. 'Wife's covered in bruises...'

BB and I suspect this is heaven. Food, bed - and a sticker - offered just when the sun is setting and we have had more than enough of this day. We order the most wonderful, interesting fish dishes, lightly spiced squid for BB( £9) and panfried fresh mullet fillets with new potatoes in an oily, lemony, minty, caper sauce with green beans for me (£11). Both utterly delicious, and the same price as the Yorkshire Bridge Inn, which wasn't. The best meal out we've had on our travels, and a chocolate mousse to finish with.
The owners, Nathan our cheery host, and wife Emma (unbruised - we checked) opened the pub with friends Rob and Fi last August. They re-thatched and renovated it, got flooded to ankle height in November, undaunted, got themselves an ace chef, and were opening for Christmas when the heavens opened, the rivers, drains and all hell, rose up to hip height on Dec 22nd. Christmas was drowned, but they got back to business by Boxing Day. A remarkable story, and a remarkable menu.

 This is a 4x4  job. Bring magnifying glass.

On top of this they provide public toilets for, well, the public, and free overnight space for motor homes under a relatively new scheme called Brit Stop, the sister of France Passion. (Do try to use a French accent, it sounds naff in English.) The idea is for businesses to attract punters with motor homes, (not caravans, god forbid, they're a totally different sub species, don't get me started...) by offering overnight accommodation, in the hopes you will purchase their wine, cheese or other commodity. And, as everyone who has watched the Tour de France knows, France has the best line in posh Motorhomes this side of the Atlantic - clever move.
You aren't obliged to buy a thing, but by relying on an ancient technique perfected by the Catholic church, and therefore tailor-made for French campers, success is pretty much guaranteed. Who can take something for free and not feel morally obliged to cough up for the alms tray? We can vouch this technique works just as well for Brits Stopping too. It felt like a free night, and technically it was, but in fact cost us nearly £40 in food and drink. You have to be hard of heart and short of cash to resist the charms of Jim the sacred Exe River-chef of the Old Trout's kitchen in Bickleigh. And besides Mine Hosts were so charming and chatty it would be churlish not to fill their coffers as fast as they filled our glasses.

Blue Trout at night, a diners delight