Monday, May 10, 2010

Who knew --

that right here in South Brent there was a shop where we could send a Fax to Canada and buy a new memory  card for my camera? Robin found it this morning. I celebrated my new memory card  by taking a photo of the inside of the shop, which turned out to be not very scenic -- so I came home and snapped a few photos of the caravan park instead.  This is Weblands. We are spending most of this holiday here, taking day trips but coming home to sleep. I like having a place to call home -- and I love being able to unpack and stay unpacked!
After breakfast, we headed south to Bigbury-on-Sea.  You may note that my eleven pounds was well-spent yesterday. I brought the good weather  back to England. I wore the scarf today, to coddle the sore throat I acquired yesterday, but the toque and mittens remained on the seat of the car, unnecessary, not wanted on the voyage.
Bigbury-on-Sea turned out to be beautiful. We walked down the beach to Burgh Island, which is accessible at low tide, but which becomes a true island at high tide. Note the date on the pub -- 1336.
Had we been so foolish as to stay on the island too long, we could have been rescued by this, the sea tractor, which would have carried us back to the other side for three pounds each. As it was, though, we had lots of time, so we strolled back along the beach.
By the time we got back to the car, I was seriously in need of a cup of coffee, so we headed
(more or less) east to Torcross and Slapton Ley by way of Kingsbridge.

On Kingsbridge Quay, we found a place called Coasters, where I indulged my new-found addiction to soya cappuccinos. The quay path reminded me of Victoria, B.C.

From Kingsbridge we made our way to Torcross, where we sat in the hide at Slapton Ley and watched the swallows, gulls, and coots for a while. That was my favourite part of the day.  Actually, Slapton Ley is always my favourite part of the day. This was my third or fourth visit, and I would go back tomorrow. I made a short film to try to demonstrate the peaceful quality of the interlude. Now I have to figure out how to bring it over here and share it. YouTube doesn't seem to recognize my clip, and Google Video isn't allowing uploads anymore, according to their website, so I'm stymied.

We came back to Weblands mostly over B roads and farm roads so narrow that the prospect of encountering an oncoming car was truly frightening, but we made it home without incident, and now we've put our feet up to listen to the newscasters rehash the election results.

Aha!  Update:  With the help of John Hayes (thank you, John), I have managed to upload my 2-minute+ video taken today at Slapton Ley. Be warned - there is no plot. There are no characters. There is just the beauty of Slapton Ley (with a very short narration by the coot, I think - but I couldn't understand a word of it).

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Do you run Windows? If so, see if you can open the clip in Windows Movie Maker. It will make several separate clips, which you then arrange in the order they appear as a movie, then save that movie to your computer. You should be able to upload that file to YouTube.

Otherwise: 14th century pubs, sea tractors & coots--how wonderous!

Sandra Leigh said...

Thanks, John. I'll try that. I forgot - we went by a 13th century Norman church, too - I think it was in Moreleigh.

Karen said...

Beautiful, Sandra! Thanks for the tour.

RLM Cooper said...

Really wonderful photos sandra. I finally had a minute to see what you were up to. We've been so busy traveling in this RV I haven't had very many minutes -- and today was supposed to be a day of rest! Ha! Sylvie got sick and threw up twice and we had to go get some stuff at the grocery store. All this at 7,000 ft. altitude - wore me out. Nice to sit here and look at your photos.

Barry said...

Obviously Slapton Ley needs neither character nor plt but gets by very well on beauty alone.

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