Dart life, Dittisham and meeting the locals

Well, life in Dartmouth proved to be busy and entertaining. John, Irene and Archie know the area around Dartmouth well, having spent many days here with their motorhome - remember that we first met them outside the Dartmouth chandlery. So, no need to act as "local" guides here! Instead we all had a day with Andrew and Linda, eating, strolling, drinking and "doing stuff".  The following day Andrew, Linda and their Nordhavn 43, Zephyros headed off for Guernsey, following John and Kath who had left a day earlier and significantly faster too in their Broom 39. Our guests then organised a hire car and left to collect their motorhome from the Hamble. It went very quiet.

Or did it? Bernie and Jenni were in town, they have a house here - remember the man with a collection of old Triumph cars and wooden boats including Mimosa the Dunkirk little ship?

The boat, Bernie and Jenni are about to star in the new "Dunkirk" film being released in July, by the way.  So, we had an entertaining evening starting in a tapas bar, meeting half the local inhabitants (or so it seemed), moving on to the locals' pub (The Dolphin in case you want to try it), meeting the other half and then sneaking into the Floating Bridge pub just before the kitchen closed for excellent and good value fish and chips.

Life has a habit of finding unexpected things for you to do. Well, one of the local folks we met has a Bichon / Westie cross called Noodles who we ended up taking for walks:

including up to Bernie and Jenni's house for brunch and out to Dartmouth Castle. Thanks for loaning him to us Tracie!

The castle and St Petrox church make an odd but lovely couple:

We moved the boat from the marina up to Dittisham and picked up the one 18 metre visitor buoy that can hold us (there used to be 3 but the harbour master has gone and rented two of them out for the entire summer). Hum. As they say that they don't allow boats bigger than 14m on the Dartmouth mid-river pontoons the options for us are pretty limited here. Dartmouth Harbour Master - please read and take note, we are quite harmless and placid.....

Dittisham is another died and gone to heaven spot. A walk around the village and an evening swinging about on the buoy in glorious sun was just perfect.

We came back into the town and plonked ourselves onto the "max 14 m" deepwater pontoon that we have stayed on many times before. The harbour staff never seem to mind and are invariably friendly. Views astern included a nice square rigger that visited for one night:

Nice to see sail and rowing activity on the river.

The Kingswear steam train kept us amused as always with suitable noises and smoke:

A little polishing (just to keep our hands in you know!) and some nice walks (with and without Noodles) followed.

From Kingswear, there is a bus service to Brixham or Paignton. We fancied revisiting Brixham and even Torquay, as we haven't visited there since owning this boat. Previously we had a MDL card thanks to our house in Hythe marina which gave us free overnight stays in both places. As they want silly visitor rates now, we simply refuse to give our beloved MDL £4.65 a metre for a stay. Especially as they measured our boat and found it significantly longer then any other marina has managed! Going by bus was way better.

Torquay seemed less "sad" than we remembered it. Perhaps that was because the sun was shining? They have one of the observation wheel thingies in place, they seem to be becoming the seaside towns must have accessory:

Bearing in mind the average age of the visitors we saw, we are not sure how busy this will be.

The old seaside town "must have", a pavilion, was closed:

and most concerning was the sign on the door referring any queries to the MDL marina office. Our favourite business seems to have got some hold over the lovely old building that is gently falling apart. Poor pavilion. See Devon on line news article for what is planned.

Brixham was much like it always was - a working fishing port with fewer pretensions. Mind you, a seafront cafe seems to have got into the decorated gorilla trend in a big way:

We also enjoyed an afternoon / evening at Bernie and Jenni's place, overlooking the town from on high and being royally looked after. Jenni had just invested in a new hot tub. She seemed pleased with it:

or she might have been pleased with the red wine of course.

As a last activity, we borrowed a 1998 Renault Scenic from Bernie's car fleet (yes, significantly newer than the 1970 Triumph 2000 that starred in the blog a while ago) and visited Gara Rock. We walked the cliff path to the Salcombe harbour entrance and just drank in the views:

Despite having to climb the hilly bits (remember, the crew is half Dutch and they don't have too many hills to practice on) it was a great day, only spoilt a little by Noodles finding some nice fresh poo to rub himself in..... Wet wipes are a great invention.