Signs, Conversations and Sidmouth

This morning we were invited to coffee at the home of Charlie and Julia.  They showed us around the house explaining the original structure had been there as a farm house in the 16th century.  It was added onto later and when they bought the property in the late 90's, they made some structure repairs and modernized it while trying to keep the integrity of the house.  They now have a bed and breakfast there as well as the house which we are in which they built two years ago. This place is beautifully appointed, comfortable and very high tech.  Julia lived in New York for 13 years before she married Charlie.  Charlie is a funny guy and always makes us laugh and together they are really cute.   Kay and I enjoyed visiting with them and were there way longer than we thought we would be at over two hours. 

We had planned to meet one of the ladies I had met on the Doc Martin FB page who lives here in Exmouth.  She made reservations for us at The Cafe in a little town called Topsham.  We found it with only one wrong turn.  Collette was a delightful person to talk to and we enjoyed visiting with her. She is a beautiful lady who is very artistically talented.  She had crocheted each of us a gift that was all wrapped and tied with a crocheted bow!  She had helped us here with a few suggestions for places to go of which we took advantage and today gave us some things to do when we get to Cornwall as well.  Lucky for us she was off from her job recovering from surgery or we would not have had the chance to meet her.  She too has lived in the USA for a time in Chicago and New York.

Very creative..looks like planes but made out of plastic knives, forks and spoons!

This was made mostly of buttons!

When we left Collette, the only place we hadn't been on the coast was Sidmouth so we drove there.  As I have said before, these are a hardy bunch of people.  Most of these beaches are not sand but stone.  You see them laying on a blanket on the stones and walking barefoot across them like we do in sand....all in what you get used to I guess.  This place was slightly different in that it had a few pedestrian streets of shopping off the beach area with cute independent shops.  We enjoyed our walk around and browsing through the shops.  We stopped on the way home and picked up a pizza to fix for dinner.  Both of us are tired.  Two weeks of long and busy days are catching up with us I believe.

It is now Friday...it's hard to believe we arrived two weeks ago today!  Today is getting organized and repacking day as well as tidying up here to be ready to leave in the morning.  The car is a different story.  We need to remove the things that have accumulated in both the back seat and the boot (trunk in USA terms) to make room for the luggage.  Kay says she already has a plan for repacking the car.  I hope her plan works as only one of the big pieces of luggage fit in the boot and the other three plus all our others things were in the back seat.  I'm surprised we were able to fit in it when we left the rental car park.

The other thing I wanted to share is the road signs.  We love them and just have to laugh.  They are so polite about everything..even the road signs.  Where in the USA you would be told "Be Prepared to Stop!", the sign politely says "Queues likely".  Yesterday after leaving Collette, we passed a "zebra" area near a railroad crossing that had squiggly lines...don't stop in this area.  Also we passed a sign that we had no clue..."Cat Eyes Removed" we hope that didn't mean literally.  My favorite of course is the Elderly Persons sign and we actually saw one that had the horseman above the elderly person so we wondered if that meant an elderly person on a horse?  They have a good system of making a learning driver put an "L" on their car.  The other day we were behind one that had the "L" for a good distance.  He finally turned into a horse riding academy.  Kay wanted to know if he had to put an "L"  on the horse too.  We also passed a sign in Dartmoor that I didn't get a photo of and now have regret...it was on a gate.  It said "Please Close Gate".  Now that is a reasonable request and you see it often along footpaths.  This one however, there was fencing to the left of the gate but none to the right which leads you to believe that closing the gate or opening it for that matter was redundant when you could just walk around it.  We did laugh about that for a long time.   I can't imagine teaching your child to drive on these roads.  Teresa if Lindsay were driving here, you would never sleep again!  Kay is a good driver and has adapted well.  We have now logged more than 1,000 miles on the car and our trip is just half over....I would say well done us!

George telling us we didn't do what he wanted...

How did they know?

Warning...Elderly People on Horses....ha ha