We'll spend another day close here in Kingsteignton and Newton Abbot before we take off for the last few days of our tour.
While we're here, in spacious quarters, we'll take the time to get everything ready to wind up our trip. Our perishable food supplies look just about right to get us through tomorrow morning, and I'll fix some peanut butter Wasa Rye Crisp sandwiches, with dry roasted sunflower seeds, for the remainder of the days we'll be on the road.
Apples, bananas, and grapes also travel well, and we've become used to drinking room-temperature diet Coke and Pepsi. We'll carry some of each the next few days.
We'll purchase a bit of local baked goods as we travel, and we look forward to finding Welsh Cakes (a flattened scone with sultanas - a type of grape) again. Of all the pastries (not pasties, although pasties are a kind of pastry) we've tasted on this trip, the Welsh Cakes have been our hands-down favorite.
We carry large chocolate bars with us so we can break off a square now and then. We both like the kind with nuts better than the plain. I also carry a nut mixture with me wherever we go so I can grab a hand full when I start to feeling a little weak or hungry, to stave off headaches and that near hypoglycemic condition that plays havoc with me from time to time. The protein and fats from the nuts do the trick for me.
Yesterday and today are cloudy and sometimes rainy, so it's good we did most of our driving around during the early part of the week.
Today, and a trip into town
Lauren absolutely doe NOT like driving to the town center in Newton Abbot. Part of his dislike is my fault because I've taken him into the town from both the north and the west, robbing him of the experience of going into town the same way twice so he could memorize the turns to get to where we want to go.
There's something mean in me, I think, because I can clearly identify the easy ways to get somewhere and yet I can't help but choose something a little more challenging than the course of least resistance. I seem to do this consistently; and then, recognizing what I've done (and almost feeling guilty), I compensate by congratulating Lauren on passing another driving test. I never intend these little trips to be tests, I'm sure; I think my idea is simply to see something we haven't seen before. Of course, when he's driving in these strange and often tight quarters, Lauren doesn't see much of anything except the few car lengths in front of him as he tries to avoid oncoming traffic on a road that's hardly wide enough to support one-way traffic, let alone oncoming traffic. Anything he accidentally happens to see is bound to be for the first time!
Although Newton Abbot isn't a large town, it's larger than Aberfeldy, and it's laid out in curves rather than straight lines.
Once you get into town, you're faced with an array of signs which you need to be able to read immediately because the streets and the traffic seem so chaotic. According to a paper placemat-sized map we have, there are 9 public parking places in and around the town center, all labeled with that big white "P" on a blue square; so immediately as you come into town, you have these 9 big blue signs in your face, all pointing in different directions, as well as signs to the train station, the race track, the town center (and everything is in the town center, of course), and for anything else that might be of interest to a casual tourist, so how in the world are you going to digest all that and take the right turn at the right time! It's as though you've run into a wall plastered with signs when you reach the first curve leading to the center of town.
Nevertheless, after a full day out of the car, I have convinced Lauren that we will go into Newton Abbot today to walk the town center again. It really is an interesting town for its small size, with more than one street with lots of shops for browsing and at least one big market (that's like an indoor flea market), so you can walk and look for quite a while before you've run out of things to see.
There are several bookstores in Newton Abbot, and my quest for today is to find something by a local author or to find something historical about the area or a personal journal-type writing about the local environment. I haven't really been tempted to buy any books on this trip because I haven't been reading. Knitting has been my full-time idle-time activity, and I've been well contented with that. But I saw a book while we were in Cornwall by a man who had explored the area on foot in the mid 1800s, and it's the first book that, in retrospect, I wish I had purchased. Whether or not I find such a book doesn't make much difference; if I find one, I'll have something to pick up and read from time to time and enjoy the descriptions I read; if I don't find one, I'll still have my money in my pocket, and that's a good thing, too.
Yesterday
The old locks (now closed) near the towpath
Originally uploaded by Suzie Rozie.
Yesterday, other than playing cribbage, eating, knitting (me), and looking up various things on the Internet (Lauren) (like: How do sim cards work on cell phones? What's the definition of a Moor? Who makes Astra automobiles (the answer is General Motors) and how long have they been around?), our only activity was to go for a nice walk on the path from Passage House Inn, through the marsh, to the edge of town where the race track is. The path follows the canal where they used to tow the barges (narrowboats) that brought goods to town and to transport clay for export to other parts of England. We found the old locks - just behind the race track. The canal is no longer in use and the locks are now sealed off; but because of our experience on the Llangollen Canal, the finding was all the more interesting to us.
St. Ives and the man who went there
One of Lauren's research assignments was to find the old childhood riddle about St. Ives, a place near Land's End in Cornwall. We both thought of it as we passed the sign that would lead off the mountain to that place. Here it is:
(As I was going to St. Ives refers to the name of a quaint old village in Cornwall, England.) Earliest traceable publication date is 1730.
Poem - As I was going to St. Ives
As I was going to St. Ives I met a man with seven wives.Each wife had seven sacks, each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits.
Kits, cats, sacks and wives, How many were going to St. Ives?
The Answer to the Riddle: Only one man was going to St.Ives! He met
the following who were going the other way: A man (1) with 7 wives; 7 x 7 (49)
sacks; 7x7x7 (343) cats; 7x7x7x7 (2,401) kits; for a Total of 2,801 wives, sacks, cats and kits!
The lagoon-estuary from our balcony
The boat floats
Originally uploaded by Suzie Rozie.
Yesterday, the tide in the lagoon came up as high as we've seen it. The sail boat, which has appeared to be totally beached up until now, was in enough water to sail out to the English Canal if the owner had so chosen. Lauren didn't think the water would come that high, so it was fun to see that it did.
The swans love the lagoon filled by the high tides, and they come out in numbers (I counted 14 this morning) to play around the marshes.
There are two Canadian geese who seem to hang out together day after day. Are they a pair? Do the male and female look alike? I don't know. This morning, they were swimming upstream, antiphonally honking as though they were having a conversation, and then they simultaneously took off out of the water and flew across a broad circle back to where they were. It seemed as though they were saying something like "On the fifth honk, take off and circle the pond." It was fun to watch and wonder what communication they have. Their honks all sound alike to me. Just minutes ago, I saw them walking near the reeds at the edge of the lagoon, and there were about 6 baby goslings walking around nearby.
I wonder if there are marsh wiggles in this lagoon. I look for Puddleglum, but I'm not sure if I would recognize him if I saw him. He's my hero from C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia.
Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things -- trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones.
Inspiration is everywhere here. No wonder we have such beautiful and lasting tales of the imagination that come from this place and other parts of Europe.
Tomorrow
Tomorrow morning, we'll drive to Bath. We'll be staying in a hotel on the side of the Henrietta Square that's nearest to town, but you have to walk several blocks and cross a bridge to get to the town center. It looks like we'll need to drive into the town to see what's there (Roman baths, among other things). Hopefully, I can locate a "P" on a blue sign that's easy to get to so it's not too much of a challenge for Lauren. He's passed all previous tests magnificently, and he really doesn't need to take many more. He's proven his road-worthiness for this trip again and again! (And he's still speaking to me. That's a good sign!)
Then, after one night in Bath, we're off to Swansea, Wales, for two nights. It looks like we're pretty much in the town center in our hotel there. I hope that's true. It would be nice for Lauren because I know we are going to get to that town center and to the wharf, and it would be nice if he didn't have to drive.
And then there's Manchester. When I purchased our plane tickets, I also purchased our first and last night lodgings. For the first night, I managed to get a hotel really near the airport at a reasonable rate (well, considering the circumstances, with the exchange rate being nearly US$2 to 1 GBP), but the rate for the same hotel going back was twice that amount. I ended up booking our last night in Stockport, not too far away from Manchester, for about 25 percent more than I paid for our first night; and as I watch TV and see the riots that have taken place in Manchester because of the football games (soccer) and learn that there will be another game this week, maybe I'm glad we won't be so close.
It looks like we will have Internet in Swansea and Stockport, so maybe I'll be able to blog once or twice more before we leave this beautiful place. But maybe not. We'll see.
Home soon
Soon we'll be home, and that will be good, too! We wonder if our tomato plants, planted in an upside down contraption, have survived. Lauren worked off and on several days to make sure the sprinkler was high enough and directed well enough to keep them with drink.
Our neighbor, who had rented out his house for the last 15 or so years but has now retired from the Coast Guard, is moving back and is in the process of making the house suitable again for his family. In exchange for the use of our lawn mower for his own lawn, he's kept our front lawn mowed, so the front lawn isn't going to be screaming at us as soon as we pull into our driveway.
I bet the back yard is a jungle, though!
My pink quilt is waiting for me, and I hope to get back to it within days of our arriving home. I have a couple baby things to finish knitting, ready for a shower in June, and I am now behind on my military quilt tops.
At this moment, life seems good, indeed.
Hat No. 5
Hat No. 5
Originally uploaded by Suzie Rozie.
Just for the record, I finished Hat No. 5 yesterday, and I started on No. 6. No. 6 will begin with burgandy ribbing as a contrast color, a purl-bump beginning border in burgandy, some cables in the pale brown or sand color, a burl-bump ending border, and then I think I'll do a rib-like K8, P2 around, using the same 10-stitches as before but a different pattern - all in the brown sand color. I like the fast decreases at the top (decrease at each 10-stitch marker every other row until I have only a few stitches remaining), making for a rounder crown of the cap.
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