No Airshow for Haz

5.45 wake up call - Harry was off to the RIAT airshow and I was catching a train down to Dawlish for the day. As Harry drove me down to the station, the BBC kindly informed him that he wasn't going to the airshow after all. It had rained very heavily during the night and all the car parking was flooded. I remember last year, it was very muddy underfoot and we had to be careful where we put our blanket to have our lunch and avoid the puddles as we parked the car in the field. It was not a bad day for an airshow but even a better day on the Sunday - but again it was cancelled due to flooded carparks - the first time ever - a huge disappointment for the thousands of aircraft enthusiasts and of course the organisers. The only consolation is that it is Farnborough next weekend, so something to look forward to. So, Harry decided to catch the train with me down to Dawlish. I had read in the paper recently that rail tickets were up to 40% more expensive if you bought them on the day - and guess what Harry's ticket was exactly 40% higher - worth every penny I might add to have his company - but you do wonder how they can justify it. We arrived in Dawlish, a little seaside village and the first thing we saw was an amusement centre with a helicopter outside - it was unfortunate Harry was a bit big to sit inside as it was the closest thing he got to an aeroplane all day.
Thankfully, the amusement centre and a bingo hall were the only hi-de-hi type activities in Dawlish which proved to be a lovely seaside village. One of the pamphlets I picked up described Dawlish as a seaside village 'with a pretty little babbling brook, which gurgles merrily past the Museum, bowling green and newly restored water wheel, through the colourful Pleasure Gardens, with their tropical palms and famous Black Swans, before tumbling into the Blue Flag waters of Lyme Bay'. Being rather parched when we arrived and because the Tourist Information Centre wasn't yet open we went to a tea shop for tea and toasted tea cakes (we are beginning to like this English tradition and prefer it to Devonshire Teas as we still can't get used to the clotted cream on the scones - Harry likened something about a movement in the car engine to whipping cream the other day but his students didn't know what he was talking about as they had never whipped cream before - I can remember as a child taking a jar of milk to school and I (and others) would spend all day shaking it up to make cream and then butter - boy have the English kids missed out!!!). Anyway, back to the cafe...the menu included a variety of meals and all day breakfasts as well as the tea cakes and you could order 'Potatoes instead of chips' or 'Beans instead of beans' if you preferred. We didn't know the difference between a big Bean and a little bean, but it made us laugh and we can only hope the chef did. We did see some of the famous Black Swans in the brook and at the souvenir shop you could buy a little black swan if you so desired. Black swans have been around Dawlish for a long time (probably before mankind actually) but during the war they decided to leave for a while. Soon after a family donated 2 swans to the town and hence the swan family grew once more and they are now the emblem of the town. You can adopt one, or a goose or a duck, if you want to with the money contributing to the care and well-being of the bird life in Dawlish (I wonder if that includes sea gulls - there was an article on the news about a woman being attacked by a gull as she wandered along a popular beach front the other day).




We then walked a couple of miles along the concrete wall between the red cliffs and the railway on one side and the beach on the other to Dawlish Warren. During high tide this walk isn't passable if you want to keep your feet dry but we had timed it quite nicely and managed to get both ways without having to take the high road away from the coast. The nature reserve is on the sand spit looking over to Exmouth (where we were a couple of weeks ago with Sheila and Paul) and we were looking forward to seeing lots of different birds - but besides oyster catchers and gulls (again they showed their scavenger side by stealing someone's donuts) there were no other birds as apparently most do not migrate here until about August - we had timed it wrong again - sometimes a bit of research would be good - but then I think we would want to do everything in only a few days. Anyway, there were a few bird watchers out (but not as many as there were train spotters with their cameras and tripods on the platforms we sped past in the morning). There was a golf course running through the middle of the reserve and we passed a couple of signs warning us to'watch out for that golf ball sailing over our head' and 'not to stop and look at the estuary as it could hold the game up'. Brunel was evident in the history of the town, as he had helped design and build the South Devon Coast Railway and created the stationary steam engines that created vacuums to push the train between them (which was meant to work better because the moving engine was lighter but it apparently turned out to be a big user of coal so the experiment only lasted a year. For more info ask Harry cos that was enough for me!!). The railway, did seem to take a prominent part right along the coast line as it runs between cliffs and the sea and you can hear the whistle of the train long before you see it.



Sunday - summer arrived but by lunch time it had gone again - in saying that it is quite warm, but the clouds and breeze arrived to make it not quite sitting on the beach weather. We decided to have a walk along a path in Wales and England - it is right on the border and so you sort of cross the border more than once - customs agents must have been busy once. Offa's Dyke is a 273 kilometre ditch and wall that virtually follows the Welsh/English border and was they think built by Offa, King of Mercia from 757 to 796 AD. The ditch was built on the Welsh side, they think so that you can see the view of the Welsh countryside. Offa's kingdom covered the area between the Trent/Mersey rivers in the North to the Thames Valley in the South, and from the Welsh border in the West to the Fens in the East (I had to get a map out for that geography lesson). As originally constructed, it must have been about 27 metres wide and 8 metres from the ditch bottom to the bank top. The track didn't give the impression of that width (in some parts we scrambled through uncut bushes only a few centimetres wide). We didn't walk it all today - in fact very little of it, because we discovered that after about 1 km it met back up with the road in more than one place. So we did little stretches, driving in between, before ending up in St Briavels looking at a Castle built by St John in 1200 AD which is now a Youth Hostel. What a cool place to stay for a few days. There was an article recently about hostels becoming not just a place for poor young travellers but they are becoming quite upmarket and appealing to all ages. This seemed to be the case - historical appeal from the outside looked great - I suspect the inside was done up quite nicely but we couldn't get through the big heavy wooden doors to have a thorough look around. We drove down more narrow country lanes and even saw a 'Watch out for the cat' sign before coming home.



So, the weekend was another one of seeing new and different things. It started well with me having Friday at home (thanks to flexitime) and spending time doing housework and shopping at a leisurely pace - I decided it isn't too bad having to do it once in a while!! A well known woman when interviewed about what she didn't like about holidays said 'the coming home, the unpacking, doing the washing, opening all the mail and getting back to routine' - I know just how she feels as I feel it most Sunday evenings - that feeling that it is over but I am very grateful for the opportunity to do so much and there is always the next working week and weekend to look forward to. I think we have quite a good combination really as being the tourist full time could lose its novelty after a while and work enables us to meet friends and get our brain stimulated. Most of the news over here is predicting a worsening economic situation with 1 in 8 houseowners with a mortgage greater than the value of their house - there was a cartoon in one of the papers that had a couple talking to their bank manager who was advising them 'if you want to buy a cheaper house why don't you buy your own'. Funny, but not if you are in that situation. On a brighter note there is a blackbird that mimics ambulance sirens and cell phones, apparently very rare in that bird but not so in others such as the tui or the Australian lyre. We heard him and indeed he sounded just like a siren - the news reader said he was calling for a 'parrot medic'. Also for £5000 you can cruise around New Zealand stopping off at the Bay of Islands, Tauranga, Napier, Wellington, Christchurch - train trip to West Coast, Milford Sound and Dunedin - lets hope the weather stays good for those with the money to buy the ticket.