Dartmouth is such a lovely place. A variety of scenery, some lovely old buildings, the steam train over in Kingswear making lots of retro train noises, the paddle steamer on the river etc etc. We happily wandered around the town again, enjoying the rather good weather too. Naturally, as soon as there was a slipway or beach area, the little dog needed to paddle. This time she was hidden behind the crew on the slip leading to the boat float:
In case you are even mildly interested, here is what the boatfloat looks like:
We enjoyed a great day with John and Kath, who own a house overlooking Dart Marina, right on the waterfront. Spectacular views and they were great hosts too, feeding us and the doglet royally. Not having seen them since New Year, there was plenty to catch up on.
The walk to Warfleet Creek, one of Izzy's favourite paddling spots, gives you good views back up the river and you can see how kind the weather was being too:
Once there, the usual stone / ball chasing fun had to be enjoyed by all. Perhaps a little bit more by the 4 legged member of the crew:
We then met up with John and Kath again, this time at the castle, near the entrance to the river. John took the instruction to make Izzy work for her treat most seriously:
which was good, testing the wait command nicely.
We were very happy pottering about but decided to walk up to the recently rebuilt and gentrified Noss Marina for a couple of reasons. One was that there is a company based there (Spares Marina) who will replace the battery in EPIRBs. For the non boating folks, have a look at EPIRB weblink for more information than you really need on how they work. Suffice to say that ours was now overdue for a battery replacement. Unfortunately, it isn't like popping a couple of AA batteries in a torch. If only it was that simple or cheap. As a pretty critical bit of safety kit, it also gets tested and resealed. The Spares Marine site details what they do as:
The service includes full testing before and after the service where the 406MHz, 121.5MHz and GPS functionality are checked. The batteries, plastic dome and seals are all renewed. The old Battery Expiry Label will be replaced, showing the new Battery Expiry Date (SEPTEMBER 2031).
Hence we needed a specialist to do the work, who had a test environment that allowed them to activate the device without alerting the emergency services at the same time. So the EPIRB was dropped off to be fettled.
Our second reason to walk there was more selfish. We'd been told that the on-site café did great coffee and cake. That intel was so right. Heading back, we had to allow some more slipway paddling time for the doglet - her tail becomes a real weapon when she gets excited, spraying water in all directions as you can see from this video clip:
We learned to stand well back.
The social whirl continued when we met up with Simon and Amanda in town for coffee (bit of a theme building here it seems). They live at the end of Old Mill Creek, just upriver from the town in a wonderful setting - just a shame that nobody built a wider road to access the place. They used to run the little yellow day boat hire business here and before that a canal hire fleet and repair facility on the Shropshire Union canal so they are also steeped in the boating thing. Now retired and having got the hang of being so, we had many stories to share.
On the basis that all good things must come to an end, we realised that the further west we went, the harder it would be to return the doglet to her owner. Our plan was to rent a car in Plymouth and try to meet Anne half way but as her diary was rather busy, she decided to come to us for a couple of nights in Kingswear and then take Izzy home. After a tricky and long drive here for her on a Friday, we got some exercise and had dinner in the very good Floating Bridge pub. Back on board, Anne and Izzy played "spot the ball":
For Anne's full day with us, we managed a huge Dartmouth shop crawl. The woman who told us that she had bought several items of clothing recently and so should get nothing else, then justified her actions as early Xmas shopping, We said nothing and just carried the multitude of bags. One traditional old newsagent come gift shop really was trying their best to dissuade customers with a series of notices running from floor to the top of the entrance door forbidding anything and everything it seemed:
Not the most exciting device in the world or one that we hope to ever use / need. However, if that day came.... . The lovely folks and Spares Marine and their huge lovely dog were great. So much so that we took pity on them and after our coffee and cake stop in the excellent café there, we delivered some of the truly splendid carrot cake to Spares Marine as a thank you. It seemed to be appreciated. We also bought a new handheld VHF radio to replace our elderly and decaying one.
Dogs were banned three times so we took notice and waited outside as Anne went really big and bought a postcard for her mum. Apparently buying things in the shop was still allowed. Just.
Strange notices were not confined top the card shop, this one amused us more though, in a second-hand book shop with some artistic items crafted from old decaying volumes:
The brutal honesty was refreshing.
Anne and Izzy duly departed and the boat seemed rather quiet. We decided to amuse ourselves by lugging two loads of washing to the marina facilities, then dragging the even heavier slightly waterlogged stuff back. We powered up the breaker for the tumble dryer and washer, went to load up the dryer and found that the washing machine which had been dead, suddenly was illuminated. Er?? A self repairing Miele washer? The only thing that made sense was a dodgy door latch - the machine had been sitting idle after it refused to power up and there was a certain odour building inside it we thought. So, the captain had slammed the door shout on the supposed dead machine in frustration to prevent this. When we turned the breaker on, the thing seemed all happy again! Sure enough, we attempted another wash and it worked perfectly. It seems that brute force and frustration can fix things......
In celebration, we took the higher ferry over to Dartmouth, wandered around the town and cove, then did the very touristy thing of sitting watching the antique lower ferry setup as it traversed the river:
If you've never seen it, there is basically a barge type ferry that carries the cars and people, coupled to a tugboat which drags it from the slipway backwards, then spins around and drives it forward to the other bank. Iconic Dartmouth indeed:
Our last fun here was walking back to Noss on Dart (again on a rather hot day) to collect our EPIRB with the new battery fitted and tested:
Not the most exciting device in the world or one that we hope to ever use / need. However, if that day came.... . The lovely folks and Spares Marine and their huge lovely dog were great. So much so that we took pity on them and after our coffee and cake stop in the excellent café there, we delivered some of the truly splendid carrot cake to Spares Marine as a thank you. It seemed to be appreciated. We also bought a new handheld VHF radio to replace our elderly and decaying one.
The most painful part of our stay was paying the berthing fees and particularly the extortionate harbour dues. Still, for pole position in a lovely setting, it was worth it.
Maintenance News:
As mentioned above, it was kind of a reverse maintenance this time. The washing machine that had miraculously revived itself after being rather brutally treated was off the "must fix" list. We still think that it and the tumble dryer are due for replacement as they are doing well - 19 years old and heavy use since 2009, Thanks to the lovely weather and our sloth, nothing else of note got done. We are stacking up the jobs now, especially loads of polishing.
