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!

Lunch on the hotel terrace in lovely St Mawes

We crossed from the north shore of Cornwall to the south, still in search of that picture-perfect seaside town, since Padstow hadn’t quite fit the bill. St Mawes got us quite a bit closer. Set on a beautiful sheltered harbor, it’s been called “Britain’s finest seaside village.”

That same writer compared it to St. Tropez in France or the Amalfi coast in Italy, which is going too far for two good reasons. First of all, you’re never going to see the kind of lemon-growing glorious sunshine that frequents those places. We actually got quite lucky and saw a partly sunny day with a high of 67°F (19°C). But that was in late August and everyone here was amazed! And we’re not complaining either; Jim finally managed to get in a nice brisk swim.

And second, it’s a pretty sedate place, truly little more than a village. The harbor is lined with the stately holiday homes of well-heeled Britons. The village includes a couple nice hotels and a handful of places to dine or grab a pastry or a beverage. And not much else of great interest. No charming shops to browse in. But also no swarming crowds in search of all that either.

My view from my reading spot on a park bench by the harbor. Turns out the painting students were all from coastal Massachusetts.

A view of our hotel, with blue umbrellas on the terrace and the multi-tiered “beach club” in the foreground

The road into town from the hotel

Old gas pumps in town

Pre-dinner libation on the beautiful terrace of Idle Rocks in town

The view from our dinner table

Early evening on the harbor

Town lights reflected on the water after dinner

A cemetery on a hike just out of town

Loads of blackberries along the hike

Our biggest adventure here was taking the ferry across the Fal Estuary to the much bigger town of Falmouth for lunch. The estuary, at the mouth of the Fal River, is also known as Carrick Roads, and it is one of the world’s largest natural harbors.

It was actually nice to walk along Falmouth’s busy high street with lots of shops, bars, and restaurants to peek into. After lunch at a fun, friendly tapas bar, we returned to our sedate, tasteful St Mawes for another lovely dinner on the terrace. Two nights here was just right to get a good taste of Cornwall before we turn back east and make one more stop in Devon.

Ferry trip to Falmouth

Leaving St Mawes by ferry, you sail past St Mawes castle…

…and then Pendennia Castle monitors the estuary from the other side above Falmouth

Our quirky but fun tapas restaurant on the edge of Falmouth

Wonderful tapas and a glass of rioja

Wildlife on a car in Falmouth

St. Anthony’s lighthouse welcomes you to the Fal Estuary, also known as Carrick Roads

Jim finally gets a chance to swim!

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.