16.09.2011 – 16.09.2011  19 °C

Got an early start as there really wasn’t anything happening in Portland so I decided to get cracking off to Torquay. Torquay is on the Devonshire coast and it should take a couple of hours to get there…. Well, it took me nearly all day!

What happened was, as I was leaving, the only other guy in the hostel told me I should go and see Dartmoor National Park (it sort of edges the Devonshire Coast). This sounded to me like a cracking idea so I decided that I would detour into the park to check out whatever there was to check out! I thought at the least it might have some great walking trails or something? I also had this idea that it would be much more lovelier to take the coast road rather than the main road (its classed as a freeway but really it’s only a single lane road that is normal width). Of course the coast road was as windy as it could be, and every couple of miles I would enter another one horse town that meant slowing right down to 30miles/ hr, not to mention the never ending one lane roads that you really have to watch out for oncoming traffic. Needless to say that by 1pm I was thoroughly worn out! It’s incredible how stressful driving on these windy, one lane roads can be here in England—no real ability to sit back and relax and tune out to the radio.. you have to be on your game constantly, especially as nearly every one horse town also has a fixed speed camera so you have to constantly watch what speed you are travelling at!! (No more fines for this little black duck!)

It was well after lunch time (probably around 2pm) when I finally made it to Dartmoor Nat Park. The park isn’t marked (I couldn’t find any signs anywhere) and only had a couple of roads so I finally just decided to drive to a castle (that was marked on my map as being in the park) and find out what was going on with this Nat Park (because as far as I could see it wasn’t any different to any other part of the countryside). In the case of Dartmoor, it is a national park but it is also privately owned by heaps of landowners???? There are heaps of people living in it and villages galore! Quite different to ours!! I couldn’t work out from the guys at the castle why it is a park if it is owned as they didn’t seem to know themselves.. I guess it’ll need to be something to find out on Google. Anyway, the park is nice enough (I suppose) if you like green lush farm land that uses hedges as fences but after spending all morning driving to it I felt slightly let down…

I did a super quick tour of the castle’s grounds (I wasn’t interested in seeing the interior) before getting back into the beast and heading back through Dartmoor to the coast and Torquay. For those who really like all of the juicy details, I was at Castle Drogo which is the “last ever castle to built in Britain” which was completed around 1910. The castle is a working castle, meaning it is still occupied by its owners. A small part of the castle is open to the public as are its grounds (which include a gorgeous croquet field in which you can hire mallets etc. and actually have your own game!)

Finally arrived in Torquay and got myself settled into my hostel. This one is probably one of the poorest I’ve stayed in and I wouldn’t recommend the International Backpackers to anyone thinking of travelling to Torquay! It primarily houses perm tourists (students etc. on working visas) so it wasn’t overly friendly place to hang out. I did a tour of the quay side in Torquay and again wasn’t super impressed… I guess that is probably because it reminds me a lot of a Manly type suburb that time sort of forgot… It has some really tacky tourist attractions as well as a pretty seedy strip of shops.. All in all, I wasn’t impressed with old Torquay! Dinner was some pretty cheap (and fairly tasteless) Chinese before heading back to the hostel to catch up on some emails, blogs etc. Pretty ordinary day all around!

The only thing worth mentioning about Torquay was my encounter with someone famous.. (well sort of) who should I bump into at the Torquay Yacht Club but none other than John Bertrand.. he is here racing in the America’s Cup which is being held at Plymouth (half an hour down the road!!) The other famous person who is apparently hanging around is Johnny Depp who is currently shooting some Tim Burton film.. i’ve had my eyes peeled but so far no luck…..