Mark enjoying canapés and a martini before a fancy dinner at Lympstone Manor, with the Exe Estuary in the distance

For this three-night stop we stayed at Lympstone Manor, an old country manor with more modern rooms attached. The hotel is out in the country about a mile-and-a-quarter from Exmouth, a little port town at the mouth of the Exe River. The attraction was the hotel itself, a place Mark thought would be pretty great. And while it had its upsides, there were a couple problems. The biggest was that most of the rooms (including ours) were in a relatively modern structure designed such that the rooms had … no windows! The doors had windows that opened a couple of inches, but that was it for fresh air. Oh, and there was no air conditioning. As a result no matter how delightfully cool it was at night, the room was way too warm. And too dark, even on a bright sunny day. Strange.

And then there’s the issue that the hotel advertises a “heated pool.” My guess is that it was ever-so-modestly heated; the water was cold, but would have been way colder in this climate without some added heat. But we’ll just say gently that the hotel’s version of “heated pool” differed dramatically from Mark’s expectation. Neither of us went in.

Mark along a bike path

There was one part about the hotel that I loved. They had a few bicycles available that you could just check out at no cost, so we did a beautiful 11-mile ride into the city of Exeter mostly on a dedicated bike path along the Exe Estuary and then the Exe River. And not only did we enjoy the bike ride but we loved the little town of Exeter – a beautiful cathedral, lovely restaurants; it was quite the treat.

The Exeter Cathedral has the longest uninterrupted medieval stone vaulted ceiling in the world. Pretty impressive!

There’s this weird thing about Exeter. We didn’t plan on coming here at all; it was just fortuitous that the hotel had the bikes and we were close enough for an energetic but doable ride. But we’d already stopped in Exeter on the way between Bath and Dartmoor. Mark had figured out that the most efficient way to get to Dartmoor was to take the train to Exeter and then hire a driver to take us an hour to Dartmoor. Then we took the train to Exeter again on the way to Lympstone Manor, getting out and hiring a car for the last 30 minutes to the hotel. And when we left the Lympstone Manor, the best way to our next stop – Winchester – was to take a taxi back to Exeter and catch a train from there. So we spent a lot of time in a city that we never intended to visit at all!

At any rate, the bike ride and visit to Exeter was a highlight. The only bad part of the ride was that on the way back we were following signs to Topsham – a little town we biked through on the way up to Exeter – “via ferry.” The ride was beautiful and I was loving it until we got to the ferry … and it wasn’t running. I don’t know if it was because of the low tide or because it was a long weekend or what, but there was no ferry. And since that was the last crossing before the Exe River dumped into the sea, we had to go back 10 or 15 minutes. It seems like they would warn you with a sign saying “via ferry, if it’s running…” or something like that. But still, I thought it was a great ride.

Me, discovering that the signs pointing to the Topsham ferry were a lie!

We had some good food on the stop. The hotel has a Michelin-starred restaurant that we ate at one night that was pretty special. And one night we took a taxi into Exmouth and ate at a really good seafood restaurant. It was a bit of a strange night, though, insofar as we were walking around town a bit just to see what was there and walked through a somewhat down-scale residential neighborhood that was between the town center and our restaurant right on the coast. There was a lot of police activity across the street from us in front of a small house and we thought we heard a bystander – presumably a neighbor – use the word “murder.” We just kept walking.

Part of the delight for us over this portion of the trip has been the transportation. We’ve had to spend money hiring drivers to get to some of the out-of-the-way places, but then we don’t have car rental and gas and parking and all that to deal with. And sometimes you learn a thing or two from the drivers.

We chatted a bit, for instance, with the driver who took us from St. Mawes to St. Austell, where we would catch the train on to Exeter. He asked us where we’d been in the region and we talked about Padstow. Now, I didn’t want to be too negative about a place that maybe he loves even though it was hands down the least interesting stop on this trip. I needn’t have worried. “Oh, people hate Padstow,” he said. “They call it Pad-sty!” He even told us about a couple he drove once who had worked in hotels and restaurants all over England. When he asked what was the worst place they’d worked they immediately responded that it was Padstow. So it wasn’t just us who didn’t like it!

Exmouth was the 23rd of our 26 stops on this Explorer, so we’re definitely winding things down now.

Mark, near the start of our ride

The beautiful Exe River along our ride

Our first glimpse of the Cathedral as we were riding into town

The Cathedral

Another interior view

The grounds of our hotel included a vineyard

A little pre-dinner bubbly and nibbles, but the real reason I took the picture was because the gladiolas behind him were spectacular!

And finally, here I am on one of our many stops in Exeter. Never have we made so many stops in a city we hadn’t intended on going to at all!

Looking happy in the old fishing village of Padstow

Let me quote from Lonely Planet:

“If anywhere symbolizes Cornwall’s increasingly chic credentials, it’s Padstow. This old fishing port has become the county’s most cosmopolitan corner thanks to the arrival of a bevy of celebrity chefs, and restaurants and boutiques now sit alongside pubs and pasty shops. …[I]t’s hard not to be charmed by the seaside setting.”

Not to be too negative but in our two-day stop we never saw anything remotely chic and we weren’t charmed a bit. And to make it worse, the little town was absolutely filled with tourists such that you couldn’t so much as go into a drug store because everything was so crowded. I find it amusing, though, that Mark managed to take some photos that make it all look attractive. Trust me, more illusion than reality!

The Camel Estuary

To be fair, much of the problem could have been that the weather was not great – overcast, periodic light rain. So not as beautiful as it would have been and maybe those hordes of tourists expected to be on the beach but instead were all crowded together on the town streets trying to get into the same drug store. And of course we’d just come from Hotel Endsleigh in Dartmoor, probably my favorite stop on the whole UK Explorer so I was bound to be let down.

And then there was Rock, the town across the Camel Estuary (the River Camel empties to the sea in Padstow) described in Lonely Planet as “an uberexclusive getaway.” Given that ferries run back and forth between Padstow and Rock every 15 or 20 minutes or so, it was not remotely exclusive, much less uberexclusive. We went over for lunch one day and it was … fine. It’s a mystery to me though why people would go out of their way to get here. As Mark asked rhetorically one day, “Have they ever seen Greece?”

The view from a coffee break in Rock

One of the primary attractions for Padstow and Rock is the dining scene. A couple of celebrity chefs have opened restaurants that were supposed to be really special. We ate at three of them and they ranged from pretty good to not so good; I thought even that part of the stop was over-hyped.

A sashimi appetizer in The Seafood Restaurant, the one genuinely good restaurant we found

Of course, there were some bright spots in the stop. The Camel Trail is an old railroad bed converted to a walking/running/biking trail heading inland out of Padstow that I enjoyed a great deal. We spent part of one morning sitting outside at a coffee shop reading with great views of the estuary and all the boats bobbing along. We had a nice water view from our room. All in all though neither of us understood the charm of Padstow or why there were SO MANY tourists there.

I guess all the stops can’t be perfect, right?

A water view from our hotel room

Celebrating our 21st wedding anniversary with a Negroni

The town looks charming, right?

Tons of tourists in Padstow’s small village center

Early morning on the Camel Trail

A nice path leading down to the beach at St. George’s Cove

Picturesque boats at the town pier

On the ferry over to Rock

Part of the walkway from town down to St. George’s Cover. It was a pleasant walk with lots of benches to sit, read, and enjoy the views.

Mark in front of Bath’s Royal Crescent, built of Bath Stone in the late 18th century and considered among the best Georgian architecture in the country

We loved Bath, the only city in England that is a World Heritage Site in its entirety. Founded by the Romans in the first century AD at the site of natural hot springs, the town grew as the Romans built a temple and then an increasingly complex bathing complex over the next 300 years. When the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the fifth century, though, the bath complex fell into disrepair and eventually disappeared entirely under rising water and silt.

The town continued to limp along and by the late 7th century first a convent and then a monastery was founded there. In 973 (so nearly 100 years before William the Conqueror) Edgar was crowned as the first King of the English in the monastery; there had been local kings before that but he was the first to claim jurisdiction over all of England. Thus during her long reign Elizabeth II came to Bath to celebrate 1,000 years of English royalty.

Stained glass representation of Edgar being crowned King of All England in the Bath Abby

And time went on. In the 12th century the abbey was rebuilt and significantly enlarged, and then plans were underway for yet another major refurbishment in the 16th century when – whoops! – Henry VIII took over the Church of England, declared his independence from the Pope, closed monasteries like the one in Bath, and took their wealth. The Abbey was left to rot.

Eventually, in no small part to the help of Elizabeth I, the Abbey was resurrected and refit in much the form it stands today. It is still known as an Abbey, though technically abbeys are the home of monks or nuns, none of which are to be found there today.

The Abbey is particularly known for the fan vaulting seen here

Bath really began to flourish in the 18th and 19th century as the supposed health benefits of the hot springs brought large numbers of tourists to the town. The local postmaster, Ralph Allen, was so good at his job that he became postmaster for areas all the way up to the Scottish border and into Wales. With the wealth from that position he started buying up quarries where Bath Stone had a distinctive honey color. That stone gives much of Bath an amazing beauty today.

At the same time the old Roman baths, which had silted and covered up for over a millennium, were rediscovered and, over many decades, excavated. Today there is a great museum at the site of the old baths with really good explanations of what used to be there and displays to help you translate the ruins of today into the glory of nearly 2,000 years ago.

Ruins of the old Roman baths

So there was a lot to enjoy about Bath – great history, beautiful architecture, really good food. And great weather. We continue to be extraordinarily lucky weather-wise: no rain to speak of, no great heat or humidity, just pleasant temperatures all the time.

Oh, and one other way we’re lucky. We took the train from Cardiff to Bath, but figured we would have to get a car again for the next few legs of our journey. Instead we figured out how to get most of the way to our next stop by train and then found a car service to take us the rest of the way. It seems as though that’s going to work for the rest of the trip so … no more driving. Yay!

The Pulteney Bridge spanning the River Avon is one of only four in the world remaining with shops on both sides spanning the entire length of the bridge. I was confused the first day or so we were in Bath because I knew we crossed the river to get to our hotel from the city center but I never saw the river….

More of the Abbey

And odd feature of the Abbey are the angels climbing to heaven on Jacob’s Ladder

A small section of The Circus, what we would call a residential circle. The four sections of the circle, separated by incoming streets, are all this same beautiful Georgian architecture from the late 18th century. What really made it spectacular though were the enormous trees in the center of the circle.

The head of Sulis Minerva, the goddess worshipped by Romans at the baths

Part of the 2,000-year-old plumbing to maintain water levels in the baths

One of my favorite parts of Bath was the Kennet and Avon Canal with its tow path perfect for walking, running, and biking

These narrow boats were lined up for miles along the canal with odd people living and vacationing on the canal. Some of them looked relatively nice but some were really trashy.

Mark and I did a big loop hike one day up above Bath, parts on forested trails like this…

And parts with big open fields like this

And some great views above Bath

Here I am early in the hike at Sham Castle, so called because it is in fact a sham, just the facade of a castle built for ornamentation

Wildlife on the hike

Just a beautiful country estate

I took a big walk one day up to Prior Park, once the home of Ralph Allen, the postmaster who got really rich. That’s his home way at the top of the hill with great views of Bath. More importantly from his perspective was that all of Bath could see his property built of Bath Stone which he was eager to sell.

Allen’s Palladian Bridge, designed by the Italian architect Andrea Palladio, is one of only four in the world (three in England and one in St. Petersburg, if you were wondering…)

The view of Bath from Allen’s mansion

Lamb at La Terra, a beautiful Italian restaurant in Bath

And then there was our final dinner at The Herd, a well-reviewed steak house. We got there and the restaurant was two floors below the entrance level, but because of the hills of Bath it was at street level down there too. The problem was that the dining room was small with walls of old stone, and there was a group of 10 or 12 thirty-somethings who were incredibly loud. We asked if there was a table outside and they accommodated us … on this weird street with industrial fans blowing on us at an entrance to a tunnel that may in fact have led to the Gates of Hell. We didn’t investigate, but we had a pleasant and quiet meal there.