1982 - Home Leave to England - Exmouth

Sunday August 15, 1982 – Exmouth

Me and the Alfa

I woke up to the sound of wet roads and found that it was drizzling still. The car arrived on time – a rather old Alfa Sud – and the owner of the firm was very pleasant. (There were no company vehicles available at this time.) We did not get off quite as early as I had intended - finally leaving at 10.30.

There were no problems in navigating our way out of London and being late we missed a deal of traffic before heading down the M25 like a rocketing pheasant. There was a fair bit of traffic on the motorway, but no hold-ups. At the end of the motorway we took to the smaller B Roads so we could see a bit of the countryside. It really is beautiful with the fields and trees all so green.

Matt's take on a man in the pub

Our route took us through Winchester and Salisbury. Mid-way between the two we stopped at a little pub – The Pheasant _ where we had a most enjoyable lunch: pate and cheese with crusty bread with a draft lager. On we went through Dorset on the recommendation of John Stanford (a pal of ours in Zimbabwe) we went down to Bournemouth to see a typical British seaside resort. We had a bit of a laugh seeing all the locals gambolling about on the sands and in the water in a high gale and rather chilly conditions. Although it was not exactly raining at the time, it wasn’t exactly a sunny day either. All in all it was more like a winter’s day on the South African seaside.

 

Tranquil seaside view

Our next stop was Dorchester where we tried, without success to see John’s sister, so on we went. I can see why he loves his old county so – some of the views as we drove by were absolutely magnificent. Beautiful little villages set against green fields and rolling, wooded hills. As we were getting closer to our destination – Exmouth I spotted a sign advertising the Heavy Horse Club. So we popped in to see what was afoot. What glorious animals those enormous cart horses were.

A first for us - a B 'n' B

We arrived here on time and met up with Roy and Christine and their daughters. (I had met Roy at Ashridge the year before). We had a walk along the front, bought a couple of drinks and packets of shrimps and whelks – that was a first – and finished up with fish and chips in newspaper to Matt’s delight.