Day 4 - UK

29 March 2011

From Sidmouth we made our way towards Torquay. We had only heard not particulary unflattering accounts of Torquay but Aaron was keen to see why it was so well known. What can I say, Torquay was quite hideous and apart from a toilet stop we drove straight through.


Once again we drove through several picturesque villages but the weather was cold, wet and misty and we preferred to admire them from within the car.

Eventually we got to our intended destination, Dartmoor National Park. As we entered the fog enveloped us and we never gained more than 20 metres visibility the whole time it took us to get to Princetown. We decided that was our destination as it had a caravan park and we still hadn’t found water. I also wanted a shower and a just to do some washing.


The caravan park is at the back of an absolutely gorgeous old English pub and apart from a school group, we were the only ones to stop for the night. First things first we did our cleaning and showering and then, despite the drizzle we went for a walk. It proved to be a very quick one though as we’d only gone about 300 metres before the rain became quite heavy and I suggested we duck into the art gallery. Thank goodness for the rain! The art gallery was awesome. It’s a large cement block building with several window displays at the front, 2 galleries within, and about 30 individual artist rooms upstairs and downstairs. 

Its basically a non-profit organization designed to help unknown artists become established. Each room is rented out on a monthly basis to any type of artist. There’s no long-term commitment requirements and the maximum any one artist can use the facilities is 5 years. Artists can just use their room to do their artwork, they can sell their art in the galleries if they want to and the can run classes if they want to. Each room is a white concrete shell with a large washing basin, numerous power points, wall hooks and a wall radiator.


I was thrilled with such an idea and we spent a very long time chatting to the woman running the gallery that day. Suddenly it became my next ’Powerball winnings’ dream. What an amazing place. I just wanted to rent one of those rooms there and then. I also wanted to spend a lot of money on some of the amazing artwork there, but as we have none, we left empty-handed except for lots of information about the centre and a great tip for our next stop.


The rest of the afternoon we spent in the campsite pub, sitting next to the fire and reading local magazines. Aaron sampled all the on-tap brews, correctly commenting to the barmaid and the old fellas knocking back a few pints, that the local brew was indeed the best. They were well pleased by Aaron’s assessment. I on the other hand sampled another cider, a toffee apple one no less, which, while nice, proved to be so sweet it took me close to 2 hours to finish it.


Unfortunately the rain didn’t stop and the mist didn’t clear until 7:3pm and so we dismissed thoughts of going for a walk.