Signs, Seagulls and #Charming

Kay and I have found many signs over here that we find funny or amusing in one way or another.   The English will politely ask in a sign for you to do something while here in America ours seem to order you to do so.  And to prove the point, when we were headed back to London on Saturday, we encountered a traffic jam on the M5.  There was a queueing line of cars waiting to enter the expressway.  I said to Kay, if this was Atlanta, the people sitting in that line wouldn't be sitting there...they would be driving across and trying to cut in front of someone already on the expressway.  They do what they are asked to do...for the most part.

No one got out of line!



Now here are a few of the others that have made us laugh, chuckle or we found amusing in one way or another.

Hmmmm

The horses are playing badminton again this year

I guess if you are a guy in top hat and cane, you can't go in here!

I still think the dog should pay according to size...

We loved this one!

 

If you are twinned...how can it be with four cities?

I missed the one that said "End of Free Recovery"

I love the apology!

This castle is lived in and I loved the sign.

Ok, now the seagulls.  Once we got to our place in Devon we were amazed to see them there.  At the time we didn't realize how close to the coast we really were.  In Devon it was pheasants and seagulls...the pheasants got smashed and the seagulls flew away.  When Kay and I were along the Jurassic Coast and we remarked that the seagulls seemed much bigger than the ones we see on the US coastlines.  When we moved on to Cornwall, we never saw another pheasant (we have been told by our friend Collette that they are daft) but the seagulls were even bigger here!  Everyone in Port Isaac has had seagull poop on them at one point or another...us included.  There are just so many of them.  Everything is covered in poop..buildings, windows, boats, cars, fences and walls are just covered in it.  And...we saw one without a foot and another with an injured foot.  Kay and I said these birds were big enough to have for Thanksgiving dinner..geez!  We had one that would land on the dormer over my bedroom window and one on Kay's each morning.  The sound would wake me up.  Then it was mating season and they were so loud...as soon as it was dawn they would start.  One day during the filming of Doc Martin, there were two on a roof mating while they were trying to film and it was so loud they had to do a retake...everyone was laughing. 

Our funny pheasant from Beaminster

My window

Now #Charming...this came from my initial assessment of The White House which is where we stayed in Port Isaac...and my daughter Teresa's response to my post.  Now in defense before I talk about this house, you have to understand that it is one of the oldest houses in Port Isaac...varying estimates but between 400 and 500 years old.  The person who originally constructed it knew how to chose prime real estate as our view was arguably the best in the village.  Really the only thing we couldn't see was the cottage next door which is the building used in the filming of Doc Martin.  While it was more expensive than other rentals in the village, we felt it was worth it.  It was advertised as a 3 double bedroom 2 bath house with parking for two cars.  Parking is a huge issue here and most rentals don't have it and you must use the parking lots at the top of the village...a long walk regardless of how you do it.  Most rentals have been renovated here to make them more modern.  Ours had a new kitchen installed a couple months before we arrived so we thought that was great.  What we didn't know was that although it said there were two baths, the truth was there was a shower on the second floor with the bedrooms and only one toilet and it was located down an interesting set of stairs....in the kitchen!  The kitchen had been updated with new appliances but there was absolutely no counter space to work and no cabinets for dishes at all.  All the dishes were in the dining room in a hutch or on the other side of the table were built in glass front cabinets.  So you had to remember to get glasses if you wanted a drink BEFORE you went to the kitchen.  When emptying the dishwasher you had to carry it all into the dining room to put it away.  They supplied nothing so luckily we had some supplies left over from our last place we brought but we didn't think it would mean no salt and pepper or even shakers?  No pot holders or oven mitts and we couldn't find and silverware....until we realized the dishwasher was run by the cleaning people and we had to empty it and there was a drawer on the very top we didn't know was there that lo and behold had the silverware...ugh.  So now we decide to fix a pot of tea while we check out the rest of the house.  We get two mugs from the hutch in the dining room and pour tea and one of them leaks out all over the counter...it has a crack in it.  OMG...this is going to be never ending.

Still...what a great location..we can deal with it right? We go into the living room and the furniture is so old we think it may be original.  The sofa and loveseat are leather that is so worn it has no cushioning in it anymore and is sagging.  Formal portraits of we assume as Mr. and Mrs. Hambly from that looked like it may have been the current Dr. Hambly's great grandparents....it was creepy and the man's eyes seemed to follow us around the room.  It got to the point that we would go upstairs together at night so as not to be alone with the paintings...yikes!  The internet was horrible and the router looked like something I had twenty years ago.  It got progressively worse and if more than one of us would use it at the same time, the other was unable to do anything...an exercise in frustration when we were trying to blog at night.

Now let's talk about the upstairs.  First, to get up there the first step was a major problem for Kay since she has been doing therapy to raise her leg.  The step was maybe a foot but no way to get a grip or rail to hold onto so it was difficult for both of us.  The balance of the stairs were not bad but the last two curved like on a circle staircase.  Then there was a maybe 3 inch step up in the hallway to get to Kay's bedroom and the double at the far end of the house.  We both passed on taking that room but it was the only room with a double bed.  The other two rooms had two twin beds each.  At the top of the stairs you made a quick right turn and my room was there or continue another few feet and it was the tub/shower. The floor/house from the step to Kay's room to the end of the shower room was definitely leaning which presented interesting situations both in the tub and putting things on the dresser in my room...because they rolled off!  The shower was a whole other thing.  While the water heater for the shower was in my bedroom closet just next to the shower but controlling the hot water was something neither of us managed to do in the two weeks we were there.  We longed to stand in a hot shower when we got home.  The safety issue was another thought when I looked behind the drapes in the dining room and it was the electrical boxes for the house being covered by the drapes...yikes!!

Although this house has been painted, it has huge gaps in the wood walls which house we are sure the loch ness monster but we know for sure spiders which we were chasing all over one day and I picked a strange sticky worm off the wall in the bathroom and things you generally see in damp areas like rolly pollys.  It doesn't help that the foliage outside both front and back is so overgrown that you can barely walk to the front door by the time we left.  And pigeons have built a nest in the top of the chimney.  This makes for creepy thoughts when going to bed but Kay even said something woke her up shaking her bed one night.  Oh my!  Dr. Hambly also is big on signs as you will see.  But again it was location, location, location but what I wouldn't give for a bathroom upstairs at night!  Kay spoke with Dr. Hambly to ask what we needed to do before we left...basically he wanted us to clean and vacuum....interesting.  Well he said we only needed to vacuum if there were crumbs..ok then.



If he could tell me how, I would do it.

They have these vacuums on cruise ships!

This is comforting



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

We packed the car and walked to the Chapel Café for our final breakfast.  We are sad leaving here.  This is a fun little village and we have met some really nice people here.  Our plan was to drive to a Poldark filming site near Bristol on our way back to London so we program the GPS and take off.  We had a beautiful drive with lots of rapeseed fields along the way...it is the most beautiful color yellow.  We get to Chavenage House and it was closed.  We didn't think to check that.  I got a few photos and was satisfied knowing that I was standing in the spot Aiden Turner had just months before.  We stopped once we were back in the Cotswolds in Tetbury which was a neat little place and had lunch at a place called the Pioneer Inn.  It was familiar to us being back there again.  We drove on to London and checked into the hotel then Kay and I took the car back to Enterprise.  We put 1,854 miles on the car which was brand new...had only 11 miles on it when we got it and they got it back without a scratch...well done us and proper job!  The guy asked us where we went to put that many miles on it and we told him...he said he couldn't have done it and returned it without a scratch.  We didn't tell him but we do know there was a scratch caused by a run in with a hedgerow in Devon but he didn't see it so it never happened.  When we got back we had a lot of reorganizing to do to get luggage ready for our flights in the morning.  Neither of us got a lot of sleep that night and we were at the airport at 8 AM.  It was a long day of flying...more for Kay since she had another flight to Greenville but we are home.

 

 



 I will do my final thoughts and favorite things of this trip in a day or two.  Things are unpacked and washed today but I have things to catch up on here....but I have to say well done us!