road to devon

We woke at nine, we left at 12.30. (I do try to be relaxed about these departure things.) By the time we relinquished consciousness last night we had a car, and had booked our first two nights accommodation—in Exeter. This morning therefore there had been (quite a few) more phone calls to be made. In the end we managed to find rooms with the right balance between price and availability, and got to the point of (and here's quite an important bit) a one-to-one relationship between places we'd booked to sleep and number of nights we'd be away!

The drive to Devon was uneventful. We followed a detailed guide from the AA Route Finder. Having supplied the start and end postcodes, it gave us point-by-point instructions, including when the next petrol and comfort stops were! We'd travelled much of the route before, as our journey had us bisecting Wiltshire—including the highway that famously runs right past Stonehenge. Nice to see it again, but you can see why people complain about the location of the road... Stonehenge would be even better if it was more remote.

Having arrived in Exeter I can say we have never stayed in a B&B quite like this one. At no point since our arrival has our host engaged in any small talk. “Good evening"s are entirely ignored. She has not told us her name. She has not enquired of ours. She sounds proper. Her attitude seems a little wanting. She did offer us a hot or cool drink when we arrived: we both requested a cool drink. When she later brought us a glass of orange juice and a cup of tea, she commented it was strange that Bronwyn said she never drank tea in the mornings, but that she had asked for tea now. (I drank the tea instead; she no doubt thought this was odd too.) This is the least expensive B&B we have stayed in during our time in the UK. Ostensibly this was because our room is up a flight of steep stairs (essentially up a stepladder) while the bathroom is on the story below. I'm not so sure anymore. I think we might be receiving a statutory “crazy discount”.

Having, err, un-settled in to our B&B, we headed into Exeter for the evening. We quickly found a small theatre that was marked on our map and bought movie tickets for Farenheit 9/11. It wasn't playing again until 9pm so with 2.5 hours to spare we drove off in search of dinner. Exeter seems to have surprisingly few restaurants in the central city area. We eventually settled upon the quite attractive Mill on the Exe, which as per its name overlooks the Exe river. It was an average chain pub meal—everywhere belongs to a franchise chain here... the English seem to love this—but we sat outside by the river, their delivery was lightning fast, and it even included complementary niceties which was a pleasant change after B&B California.