Home » United Kingdom » The Landing Gear is Out. Arrivederci!!

Exeter, England<br/>
September 5, 2001<br/>
Scoreboard: 13,345 miles; 7 Countries, 20 states<br/>

The Landing Gear is Out. Arrivederci!!

Claytononboard
2005-11-18 13:24:37

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Ok, that's it! We're comin' in. It's been a long and glorious run, and it's time to recharge the batteries for our next run.

From Horsley we moved west, to Exeter, the point-of-entry to the English Riviera. No, that's not a term I made up, it's from the local tourist bureau. That being the case it doesn't have many of the attributes of the "real" riviera, which is why we're willing to spend an entire winter here. We stayed at a great camp where the center of youth activity is "the big tree," and they had a campground bar-b-q and plenty of farm fresh cider on Fridays.

From here we went down the coast to Plymouth, not much there, promptly came back up here. Exeter is a college town, albeit a somewhat quiet one, and a great location for us to work from.

Winter is coming on fast, we're currently staying at a bed & breakfast (unimpressed with the "breakfast" I refer to it as a "bed and butter," it's also true that I think cold pizza is the only sensible breakfast that there is), and looking for a good seasonal rental through the end of March.

It's a good town, it's got a feel that we like. The girls are excited about school, and there are plenty of good winter time side trips to keep us feeling like we're still on the move. The entire Cornwall coast, Wales, London for Christmas, the Dartmoor Forest, Stonehenge, Glastonbury Tor...all within 150 miles one direction or another.

Dartmoor Forest is especially promising. There's a university professor, who has been published extensively on the subject of "What's the Most Influential Novel in the History of Mankind About Devon County?" who puts on his Sherlock Holmes hat every weekend, for the past 30 years, and leads expeditions into the forest. They reenact The Hounds of the Baskervilles as closely as they're able and I dare say that at some point soon we'll join them.

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