Exeter weekend

It's been a busy week since we came back from Exeter - more of that in later blogs - but here's some of the photos from a lovely weekend.

Our hotel was well situated - right on the City Wall. However, when I got up on Saturday morning, I decided to walk out and buy a paper, but managed to walk in totally the wrong direction. Still, I did spot these unusual porch covers on some of the houses:



This is our hotel - on Iron Bridge - which you can just see beyond the hotel:


and here's the reason why Jo has no photos on her blog - we walked to Cathedral Square and she tried to take a photo of me, but realised her camera had no battery power!:

We took the short train trip down to Topsham to visit the Bridge Inn, which had come highly recommended to us by Bill Miller, whose Auntie Pam stayed in Topsham before moving to Banchory a few years ago. It's a quirky little pub which only serves its beer gravity fed from casks through a serving hatch out to the car park - you can see it behind me, but it's still shut as it wasn't even noon when we arrived there:

We had a few beers there and then walked round Topsham and even managed 40 winks in the sun overlooking the estuary! In the evening, back at the hotel, Jo posed in front of the fish pond in the walled garden at our hotel:

We came across one of Exeter's tourist attractions - "The House That Moved" - but we were both left distinctly unimpressed, but I managed to get this shot - in twilight with the flash off - of the houses across the street:

On Sunday we went on a guided walking tour which took us round the City Wall to Rougemont Castle and this spooky sign:

Next we headed towards Custom Quay, and, on the way, we came across some old buildings and bridges, so I set up the camera - a little low down as it happens - but trust Jo to overdo things in bending down to get in shot!:

We made it to the very attractive Custom Quay area - and there seemed to be a Morris dancing competition going on - and, surprise, surprise, there were women taking part too!:

After watching the dancing, we planned to cross the river and headed towards the St Thomas' area - but not before Jo posed for a nice shot in front of the Custom Quay House:

We went on one of the tourist walking trails - round the distinctly downmarket St Thomas' area of Exeter. Frankly, it was pretty cruddy, but we discovered a few interesting things about Exeter - including the great flood of 1960. The brightest point of the tour came almost at the very end when we stumbled upon the Royal Oak, situated on a lovely spot on the Exe - and I managed to finally get a pint of the local Otter Ale - served in a special Otter glass - can you make it out?:

The end of our trail - and what an exciting finish. We could hardly contain ourselves in hunting out the copper sheep's head described in our brochure:

and here it is - the sheep's head carved in copper in to a paving stone:

On Sunday evening we headed back to Cathedral Square to seek out somewhere to eat. On the way we heard music coming from the Well Tavern - the Old Porch Band were playing and they had the most unusual form of percussion - Appalachian clog dancing!:

We had a nice meal afterwards in Michael Caine's restaurant - no, not the actor, but the (apparently one-armed) celebrity chef.

On Monday morning we had planned to vist the Tudor House - but it was shut! Jo liked this property on the way back - Snayle House it was called:


Finally, lunch on Monday was at our hotel and we sat in the conservatory area and enjoyed a beer whilst waiting for our taxi to the airport: