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