Day 49 (7th August 2022)

 I awoke at 08.30 - pretty sure that's the latest on my entire trip so far. Must be something to do with the bottle of cheap cava I squaffed last night. My itinerary today was quite busy and due to last nights lack of signalage, I still had to catch up with the blog. 

My first stop was one of the places on my copy (well, copies) of Carrion and to get there I had to drive through a Germinal CCXXIV place first, but I wanted to do that destination at a more leisurely pace so I didn't stop. The Carrion destination was stop #103

BERRY HEAD

What an impressive headland Berry Head is. Rather than stand on the edge of it, I descended down an exceeding steep and scary path to get this view. It was frankly terrifying to be honest. I'm pretty certain that had I slipped, I would have fallen over the cliff. Just near where I was standing was a number of rucksacks and stuff. Some climbers must have got there earlier and already abseiled down to the sea below, but no way was I going to get any closer to try and see them.

I doubled backed on myself and headed into stop #104

BRIXHAM

What a lovely place this is. My only experience of the English Riviera is Torquay - Melvyn and I stayed here twice in the late 80's and I have no real desire to return, but I was kind of kicking myself that we never ventured further round Torbay to visit Brixham.

The ship in the background is the Golden Hind, which was full of excited children. I stopped at a seafood restaurant and gorged myself on oysters which were creamy and delicious, with a good view of the colourful houses over looking the harbour. 

Next stop was a bit of a schlep to get to, and when I arrived, it was extremely busy. I drove through feeling very much like I didn't want to be here. In the end, I parked in the next town (Cockwood) and walked back into stop #105

DAWLISH WARREN

Yuck. I thought I would be able to walk through the part of Dawlish Warren that is a nature reserve and maybe get lucky and have a Heron in the background but there was a busy railway line between the road and the reserve. As I got closer to the town, I passed at least five huge holiday parks full of mobile homes, crying children and their screaming mothers, sulky teens and their sunburnt fathers and lots of rubbish on the pavements. It's the sort of place I probably would have loved as a 10 year old - when I was 10 we lived in Zambia, but in all the time we lived there, we never saw any wildlife other than mosquitoes, cockroaches and termites, and never ventured to such amazing places as the Victoria Falls or the many huge game reserves. I can't help but think of all the wasted opportunities of living in such a beautiful country.

But I digress. My trip seems to have gone a bit squeuewiff as I ended up heading backwards into the western part of Devon for tonights campsite is right on the edge of the lovely town of Totnes. I arrived late afternoon but it was still glorious weather so the moment I pitched my campervan, I headed off to find a safe place to swim in the Dart. The river was surprisingly warm and surprisingly empty - I expected loads of people to be swimming, but I had the river all to myself.

Still hoping to bump into a couple of people I know around these parts - I might pop into Drift Records if I have time tomorrow.

Allons-y 

Douglas Germinal CCXXIV Brain over and out