Pitched up in North Warnborough and walking the Basingstoke Canal

Albion Farm Caravan Club CL 

As you might have seen on yesterday's blog post, we spent this weekend just gone in the Hampshire village of North Warnborough. We stayed at a Caravan Club CL on Albion Farm which was a lush green field with a small allotment area in the corner. Sadly, we were far too early to scrump any runner beans! It was not the most peaceful of CLs as there were military helicopters regularly flying overhead, but Albion Farm has the great advantage of being within a couple of minutes walk of the Basingstoke Canal so we took advantage of this to go walking on two days - one day out-and-back in each direction. This weekend marked the first time we had ever done more than a single night without an electric hookup. Albion Farm CL doesn't have electricity - just waste disposal and fresh water - which we did know when booking but had, of course, completely forgotten about by the time we turned up so there was a brief panic when we realised neither of our phones were charged up! Fortunately our friends Chris and Marta were already on the site too and lent us their USB in-car charger to save the day. We've now got a couple of our own - from Poundland! No electricity means cheaper pitch prices and Albion Farm is a very reasonable £10 a night or an even better £50 for a week.

Odiham Castle 

Our first canalside walk took us to Odiham Castle, now a ruin, but once an important British historical site. King John had the castle built with construction beginning in 1207 and it was from here that he set out to sign the Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215 - the very same Magna Carta we saw in Lincoln Cathedral last year. Having grown up in Lewes, Sussex, I know the De Montfort name well and Eleanor De Montfort, daughter of King John, was granted Odiham Castle by her brother, Henry III, in 1238 making it one of the most powerful households in the country. Odiham was ruined by the early 1600s and these days only part of the keep remains visible.

Newlyns Farm Shop 

Also easily walkable from Albion Farm is the fabulous (and dangerous to wallets) Newlyns Farm Shop. I didn't know anything about this place prior to my visit so just wandered along in the hope of getting a few decent apples. I must have spent twenty minutes wandering around the displays of fresh fruit and vegetables, meats and cheeses, jams and chutneys, cakes and biscuits, ... I could see why customers need to take a break in the cafe! In the end I bought an interesting Good Taste Bakery Lardy Cake because I had never tried it before. Not sure I would again either because, although it had a good flavour, it was very greasy. I guess the clue is in the name! The Isle Of Wight Biscuit Company's Cinnamon Shortbread was excellent - very short and with a delicate cinnamon taste that complemented coffee perfectly. I am also pleased with the Compost Heap card I bought but can't say too much about it here because it's for Dave for our anniversary tomorrow - thirteen years together. Yay us! Instead I'll plug the Yorkshire Mix boiled sweets from Bonbons which are probably my favourite travel sweets for the car, and the Wooden Spoon Company Damson Jam which we haven't opened just yet, but which I am looking forward to because we have eaten their jams before. With all that shopping, it took a lot more effort walking back to our campsite than it did walking out!

The Basingstoke Canal, which was completed in 1794, cuts through the former site of Odiham Castle bailey on its route. In total it runs for 37 miles from West Byfleet in Surrey to Basingstoke although, since a tunnel collapse in the 1930s it is now only navigable as far as Greywell. The Basingstoke Canal Society has lots of information and history on their website and they also run John Pinkerton Cruises to help finance the canal's upkeep. John Pinkerton owned the company which originally constructed the canal. For less mobile people, canal trips are available via Accessible Boating, a great initiative which provides two boats that are specially designed and equipped to cater for those with disabilities or reduced mobility.

A great day wandering historic Perigueux

We didn't get to Perigueux on Friday as the weather was

Mad street art in Perigueux 

miserable - those April showers starting as they mean to go on! Saturday dawned grey, but we decided to take what might have been our last chance to view this historic town, dressed up for rain and ended up wearing far too much in glorious sunshine. Definitely a better outcome than the forecast's promised drenching!

We parked for free in a little car park down by the river. Dave had researched getting there by the little local Peribus, but it involved a mile's walk at the campsite end, a change of bus and a journey of well over an hour so we took the car instead. The town was busy in the morning as the bi-weekly farmer's market had taken over several of the squares and surrounding streets. The market happens on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, packing up about 1pm, and there was an excellent range of food stalls including fruits and vegetables, cheeses, meats, honey and mead, and breads.

Our first sight upon exiting the car park though was

Perigueux cathedral 

Perigueux's unique Byzantine cathedral whose spires tower above the other buildings. I did get a blue sky picture of it later in the day, but it looked more imposing I think against the ominous grey clouds. Saint Front Cathedral was originally modelled on St Mark's Basilica in Venice with its floorplan being a Greek cross. This felt quite weird when we actually stepped inside briefly as two large sections of chairs face across towards each other giving worshippers no view of the altar or the service. The cathedral seemed to be mostly dull grey stone inside and I thought it best seen from outdoors! Built in 1669, Saint Front looks quite plain in early images with only its tower to distinguish it. The domes were added when the cathedral was rebuilt to the designs of Paul Abadie between 1852 and 1893.

Perigueux has surviving Roman stonework and lots of

medieval structures including this old 'moulin' by the side of the road into town. (If you see this on your right, the slope down to the car park is imminent on your left!) We had intended to visit the Tourist Office for a historical town map, but didn't arrive until after their lunchtime closure. Instead, we wandered the old town at random.

Narrow streets have dramatically tall buildings leaning in towards each other and many of the most interesting alleyways are still unevenly cobbled, rising in the centre to drain water (and originally sewage) to gutters on each side. We spotted signs for a historical town walk which is marked by yellow stripes on the side of various buildings. This led us through a medieval maze of streets including those of the Jewish quarter, and alongside sections of the city walls which are still very much in evidence. We loved seeing buildings with their original thick wooden doors, and some had small stone statues in niches above.

This weekend just gone was a pan-European celebration of

artisan crafts and crafters entitled 'Les Journees Europeennes des Metiers d'Art'. We saw two exhibitions that were part of this - one of pottery in a small gallery and the second of various arts in a wonderful venue. Delphine Viau and Vero And Didou showcased their talents for leather bags and recycled lighting over two floors of the Mataguerre tower. The tower was part of the defensive walls, made of thick stone, and with a steep spiral staircase enabling us to enjoy these fabulous views across the rooftops of the old town. Originally there were twenty-eight towers and twelve gates, but Mataguerre is now the only one remaining.

Lunch was coffee and cake at Le Fournil patisserie which has a good selection and also offers the usual bakery breads, plus salad boxes and savoury pastries. There are a few little tables inside along one wall. Suitably refreshed, we wandered back down to the river so Dave could drop off his waterproof coat at the car. In hindsight, I should have left my wool coat too as shortly afterwards the cloud cover cleared and the sun shone on our canal and river walk.

Perigueux has a short canal built just inside the bend of the

Perigueux canal 

river L'Isle. It's banks are now primarily for leisure with a Voie Verte passing along here. In the hour or so we walked out and back we saw dozens of cyclists, runners and other walkers. It is amazingly peaceful and feels rural despite being just metres from the town. Returning along the narrow strip of land between the river and canal we enviously overlooked small houses and fantastic little plots of amenity land, some with hammocks and swing chairs, others which had been dug into full-scale allotments.

After such a great visit, the downside to Perigueux is the huge sprawling Centre Commercial we needed to drive through to get back to Antonne Et Trigonant. There are so many businesses and such weight of traffic that getting across the roundabouts safely was a pretty hair-raising experience. I wouldn't let that put me off visiting again, but I might choose to camp elsewhere if possible and cycle in along the Voie Verte!

We set a new Longest Cycle Ride Ever record!

It's been the most glorious day here in the Haute-Garonne

A canal lock is called an ecluse in French 

and we made the most of it by spending several hours cycling along the beautiful Canal Du Midi. By the time we got back to Camping Violettes we had completed our Longest Cycle Ride Ever! We cycled 45 kilometres which is about 28 miles and just snuck above our previous 26.6 miles from Cullera last Spring! In tree terms, that's going from plane tree number 35721 to plane tree number 33428 And back again. I love how all the plane trees along this part of the canal are numbered. I have no idea why though. (Informative answers in the Comments?)

Interesting sights along the way included frolicking water

Water voles in the Canal du Midi 

voles and a heron, none of which I managed to photograph though Dave got some good shots of the voles. He spotted the first one and also saw two herons.

We appreciated a rest stop at Gardouch which has picnic tables, toilets and a drinking water tap. We sat to eat lunch at one of the tables and I was flattered by another cyclist admiring my 'jolie velo'! The cycle route has benches regularly spaced all along it and people were sitting in the sunshine at the locks and on the grassy banks too. I do think it lacks food and drink facilities though. We saw one Salon du The barge, but it hasn't opened for the season yet. Otherwise there seems only to be a bistro at Mongiscard on the other side of the water. Perhaps there are more temporary cafes open in the summer months? We thought, as it is a sunny Easter weekend, everything would be open and we could get tea and cake en route! Perhaps we should have booked ourselves on the 'gourmand' boat pictured below. It looked like they were having a birthday party.

Birthday boat on the Canal du Midi 

My favourite sight, just back from the canal, was a line of

A car in a field! 

buildings that appeared to be some sort of commune. We first noticed the white car unended in a neighbouring field next to a blue windmill tower. Then we saw that the garden fence was actually a line of reclaimed bicycles and wheelchairs. Waste not, want not. Elsewhere, the back end of a blue minibus gave the impression that it had been driven into the wall. Dave commented that the only thing missing from the arty-boho vibe was a vegetable patch. That was on our outward journey. A couple of hours later as we cycled back, two men were digging away! Maybe they heard us?!

Recycled fencing 

Our ride was about four hours including stops for lunch,

I'd like to try a bicycle carriage ride 

gawping at wildlife, and just because we wanted to enjoy the ambience. It was great to be two of so many cyclists and walkers. We saw all combinations of people from solo men haring past like they were in time trials, to families with small children all pedalling away, and even two guys who looked to be well into their eighties pottering along on battered bikes that couldn't have been much younger! One bike rental place looked to be doing good business and we also saw a Camping a la Ferme site which had bicycle carriage thingies to hire. One was in use on the path and they look great fun - tandem cycling but with less of a falling off hazard!

Dragons and a Japanese garden in Toulouse

It's almost exactly a year to the day since we last visited

Toulouse and I was glad that we got a fairly warm sunny day yesterday in contrast to the previous year's grey damp! We got the train from nearby Escalquens station. The journey is only about twenty minutes on comfortable seats at a grand total of €11.60 for return tickets for us both. There's free car parking at the station too, and a friendly cheerful man staffing the ticket office. Off peak return tickets would have been a euro each cheaper, but we would have been limited to early afternoon trains or those after seven pm. As our train in wasn't until half past ten, we chose the open return instead and actually caught the quarter past five. Six hours of walking around Toulouse was plenty and we were both pretty shattered by then!

There didn't seem to be the same wealth of public

69 Allees Jean Jaures, Toulouse 

sculpture and street art in Toulouse as I had appreciated in Spain, however we did discover the above pictured Antonio Saura fountain sculpture, created in 1987, and I liked this architecture at number 69, Allees Jean Jaures. (I haven't been able to find the artist responsible by Googling so if you recognise the work, please comment.)

The pedestrianised old town centre starts fairly close to Gare Matabiau and we spent a while taking in the sights and atmosphere. There's a good selection of independent shops and boutiques to browse and the streets didn't feel as enclosed as in many historic parts of towns. Perhaps this area doesn't retain as much of its medieval plan as is the case elsewhere. Escaping shopping opportunities for waterside tranquility, we walked along the Canal Du Midi until Dave was suddenly surprised to realise we were exactly retracing our cycle ride from last year along the Canals du Midi and de Brienne to the River Garonne.

Our dragon sighting was in the park Jardin Compans

Tholus by Tom Petrusson 

Caffarelli where this fabulous sculpture by Tom Petrusson is sited in the centre of a pool. It is entitled Tholus and was created in 1993 from pieces of scrap metal.

We sat in the sun outside a little kiosk cafe for an excellent hot chocolate before taking a stroll around the Japanese garden that we had seen marked on our town map. The Japanese garden only covers a small space in the Jardin Compans Caffarelli so it would be easy to miss if you didn't already know it was there. Part is neatly raked grey gravel studded with largish boulders, then a pathway leads around an open sided wooden building to a traditional space with green trees, huge koi carp in a pond, and a red painted bridge overhung by a blossoming cherry tree. The Japanese garden, and indeed the whole park, was quite busy so we didn't experience any Zen serenity, but it was beautiful to visit.

Japanese garden, Toulouse 

A cute detail in the Japanese garden was this miniature

natural artwork that someone had laid out on a flat tree stump by a path. It would have been easily overlooked but for the eyecatching trio of red berries.

In order to see more art, we spent a couple of afternoon hours at Toulouse's modern art gallery. It is located in the former slaughterhouse and is appropriately called Les Abbatoirs. Fortified by our favourite coffee-and-cake lunch at a cafe called Baker's Lounge (I had croque monsieur and flan nature, Dave went with Brioche Suisse and pain aux raisins), we almost completely failed to understand the main exhibition of work by Antoni Tapies. We saw one of his large works in Ceret's Modern Art Museum and I didn't 'get' that either. Seeing dozens of pieces collated from across his lifetime should perhaps have been easier to comprehend but wasn't! I was a little envious of a small school group who were being taken around by a enthusiastic guide. She sat them in front of several works, discussing and explaining, and the children were knowledgeably joining in. I understood some of the French language discussion - but still not the art!

Upstairs, Les Abbatoirs had rooms with work by other

Picasso stage curtain, Les Abbatoirs, Toulouse 

artists including items from the Daniel Cordier collection. Some of the were interesting to see, but I think Les Abbatoirs is the first modern and contemporary art museum I have visited where there wasn't a single work to really wow me. A possible exception was a huge eight by thirteen metre stage curtain painted by Picasso in 1936 and now housed in the basement. It is best viewed from half way up the stairs and the mythical figures tower over visitors standing at ground level. Interestingly, it looks 3D in my photograph here, but didn't in reality.

From a Nailloux campsite car park to Le Canal Du Midi

After one chilly electric-free night back at Camping Les

Deer at Camping du Lac de la Thesauque 

Casteillets (using our heater on the gas is like trying to sleep over an aeroplane - as it takes off!), we were hoping to pitch up until after Easter at Camping du Lac de la Thesauque in Nailloux. Unfortunately on arrival we learned that the pitches there were still so soggy that the site itself isn't open to touring caravans yet. Instead we were invited to use the €6 a night motorhome area which is basically the car park! However the tarmac was level, it was peaceful with just one other occupant, and our €6 included an electric hookup. We will definitely remember Thesauque as an overnight stopping point for future years as the car park option is available throughout the winter months. There is a coin operated paybox to raise the entrance barrier and the electric hookup is in the garage! 2 euro coins are also needed to operate the motorhome water and waste point. Reception opens for three hours in the afternoon and we also got to 'meet' two deer who were dozing in a paddock above the crazy golf.

Our car park campsite - the bar is closed too 

Thesauque's receptionist helpfully recommended us to

Greenery at Camping Les Violettes 

Camping Les Violettes which is only about a twenty minute drive away in Deyme. It too has grass pitches, but is much less soggy - perhaps not being right by a lake is the key? We are sharing the site with maybe half a dozen other tourers, all French, and it is considerably more expensive than Nailloux at €19.50 per night. However, for that we do get a whole large pitch instead of just a bay! The shower rooms are excellent and there are all the other usual facilities as well as table tennis and a little shop in the reception. Wifi is €10 for a week, down from €15 as it's low season. It's very green here too which is a relief for the eyes after so much dry Spanish dustiness!

The bus stop outside will get us into Toulouse centre in

about an hour or we might get the train instead. There's a station nearby and that journey would be twenty minutes. Best of all, we are less than 1km from the Canal Du Midi and after the first 100 metres it is quiet back roads until we get to the canal. Yesterday we walked along the wide cycle path / footpath for about three hours. We thought it was busy because it was a Sunday, but today we jumped on our bikes and cycled for a couple of hours along the canal in the other direction and it was just as busy! We got to a large park and admired lots of houseboats were moored up at the Toulouse outskirts. There wasn't any sign of the temporary shelters we saw on the Canal de Garonne about this time last year. In theory we could cycle into Toulouse for our days out in the city, but we don't fancy walking around all day and then still having over an hour's cycling to get home afterwards!

Bridge over the Canal du Midi 

Our Christmas Day canal walk above Ceret

A small irrigation canal, cut into the rocks above Ceret, has

It's still autumn in Ceret 

provided public water to the town for centuries. It is more of a Spanish-style levada than an English-style canal. In places the canal is probably only about six inches deep and maybe a foot across, however it was important for public fountains and crop irrigation across Reynes, Ceret, Maurillas and St Jean Pla De Corts. Understandably, in times of drought, making sure each town received its fair share of water was a fraught business and conflicts often ensued. Population increase and agricultural development wager needs overtook the limited levada supply in the 1800s so a much larger canal was built from Le Tech at Amelie Les Bains in the 1860s and our walk began near part of this. However, the little old canal still flows and following part of its journey certainly made for a very pretty walk.

An early signposted diversion took us through mostly

The waterfall,
partly hidden behind a rock ledge 

autumnal woods to visit the waterfall. We didn't expect much of a spectacle at this time of year - there hasn't been any  significant rainfall for ages - however the tumbling water was still a pretty impressive sight. Getting close involves rock scrambling which I didn't fancy so early on in the day so this photo makes the waterfall appear smaller than it really is. It's just far away (as Father Ted said to Dougal)!

Despite the ground being carpeted with fallen leaves and nuts, we were amazed to see Spring indicators too. More mimosa was in full bloom and two trees were absolutely dripping with yellow catkins!

We both appreciated walking the narrow woodland paths, even though most of the first hour was uphill with varying degrees of steepness. We had passed maybe a half dozen people also walking to the waterfall and back, but once we returned to our canal route, we seemed to have the world to ourselves for the rest of the day.

Lunch was a slice of Boterkoek each whilst perched on the

Mas Blasi emblem 

roadside by the very grand entrance to the Mas Blasi estate. Their gate emblem was a leaping boar and we had seen lots of evidence that wild boar had been rooting around in search of food.

Shortly after Mas Blasi our path plunged downhill to spend several minutes passing alongside cherry orchards. It must be absolutely beautiful here in the real Springtime when all these trees are in blossom. Apparently Ceret was the first place in France to begin growing cherry trees and the town got its name from their French name, 'cerise'.

For a short distance, the levada hugs closely to the rock and

our path wasn't much wider alongside it. There were a couple of precarious looking concrete slab bridges to cross too, but they seemed sturdy enough as I dashed over them. The photo here shows Dave about to cross one and you can see how the hillside has fallen away underneath the bridge.

Further down the hill, the levada is a sunken trough across the woodland floor. It's raised moss-covered sides stood out against the fallen leaves and made for a very pretty view, but I imagine that continuously having to clear he water's path in olden days must have been a nightmare!

The canal 

Our whole walk took us about four hours and, if you would like to try the route too, it is number six in the free Little Guide Of Hiking book from Le Boulou tourist office. Our final descent back into Ceret took us past the Capuchin Convent, built in 1581 and abandoned after the French Revolution. I loved its gateway, which was about all that we could really see, and also the improvised wooden gateway (pictured below) which we had seen a few minutes earlier and which I don't think is connected to the convent.

Capuchin convent 

Improvised gateway 

Finding T E Lawrence again in medieval Aigues-Mortes

Aigues-Mortes is one of the places recommended to us by the guy at Le

Aigues-Mortes walls 

Petit Arles creperie in Arles. The historic town is quite a drive from Castries, however we took this opportunity to view the Camargue delta and at one point drove across the thin strip of land past La Grande Motte. We saw several of the famous Camargue ponies and also two flocks of pink and white flamingos. I don't think we have seen flamingos since Tavira so that was exciting. The whole coastline along here looks as if moths have been at it! Huge lakes and ponds are everywhere although there is now a lot of commercial-industrial building too. We did briefly wonder at the long-term security of people living on what is essentially a flood plain.

Aigues-Mortes is certainly an eye-catching place. The thick medieval

Aigues-Mortes gateway 

stone walls surrounding the old town are maintained to a high standard and I can imagine that this would be a ridiculously busy tourist trap in the height of summer. Yesterday was sunny but with a strong wind so outside the town walls felt distinctly wintry. Sheltered inside, especially in a sunny spot was pleasant. We followed green 'P' signs to a free car park within easy walking of the old town. Near to the first huge gateway were several tall information stands, in French, which told the history of Aigues-Mortes. It was too windy to stop and read all of them, but the list of notable celebrities caught my eye as it included not only T E Lawrence (whose grave we saw in Dorset) who visited in 1908, but also two authors I read not so long ago: Ernest Hemingway stayed a while although we weren't told exactly when, and Alexandre Dumas came here in 1841.

Salt mining has been traced back to Neolithic times here and there has

been practically constant habitation since then. Charlemagne had the Matafere tower built in 793 and Louis IX bought the town and its surrounding lands from the Abbey of Psalmody in 1240. Louis IX ordered the massive fortifications, which were completed under his son's rule, and used Aigues-Mortes as a base for sending mercenaries out to the Crusades.  He took part in two Crusades himself, dying in Tunis during his second. From outside, the walls look impenetrable other than the slender arrow slits. From the inside it is possible to see that each slit has an arched area directly behind it with two bench seats, presumably for the sentries to rest upon while keeping their vigil.

I enjoyed simply walking the streets around Aigues-Mortes and was

Plaque above a house doorway 

suprised at the extent of residential housing within the walls. The commercial streets are limited and are mostly made up of restaurants, regional produce shops, tourist tat and expensive boutiques. I did find one shop I very much liked. Coton House is on Grand Rue Jean Jaures and sells beautiful Indian cotton clothing including medieval style laced dresses. The shop had that vintage-hippy-shop incense scent which I love. The prices were pretty good and I allowed myself to be tempted by a pair of embroidered lounge trousers. My Almerian ones have been worn so much they are starting to fall apart at the seams! We also pondered Camargue rice in a grocer's for a while, but didnt really want to spend €4 a kilo on each type and couldn't decide which of the three to try.

Once back into modern Aigues-Mortes, we paused to admire the wide canal that passes by. It's towpath looked very inviting for a long cycle ride!

Canal de Rhone 

Cycling the Velovoie from Geraudot

As you might have guessed from a couple of words in that title, we are

Velovoie on the levee alongside the reservoir 

now in France. Nous sommes en France! I had probably the best ferry crossing ever - lying down in the cabin as we left Newhaven and only being awakened some four hours later by a banging on the cabin door which turned out to be one of the crew letting us know we had arrived. Those Stugeron travel sickness tablets are good! Perhaps I should have just had one instead of two?

Our first afternoon's driving took us to a campsite at Peronne which would probably be a fantastic base for exploring the Somme region in Summer, but was damp and a tad dingy in October. It was open though and many sites along our route south have already closed up for the season so we were happy to pull in there for a night and would definitely return in warmer months.

Our current campsite is Les Rives Du Lac just outside the very pretty

Wooden dog at Camping Rives du Lac 

village of Geraudot. This site is open all year, has good facilities and gravelled pitches. It is pretty busy with lots of permanent-looking setups and several of us travellers making use of it for just a night or two. We chose to stay two nights as we wanted to see the Lacs de l'Aube which are an important element of the Paris flood defences. The basic theory is that water is diverted from the rivers along canals into huge lakes and reservoirs during the rainy winter months which prevents said rivers overflowing their banks. Then, during the dry summers, the water is returned to the rivers keeping their water levels high. It's a fantastic engineering triumph and one that we were able to see close up both by walking on the lake edges yesterday and by cycling part of the Velovoie cycle route this afternoon.

The lake did look very strange yesterday and we weren't aware of its

purpose until we got back home to google it. The water level is amazingly low and we were intrigued by the remaining tree stumps which dot the sand and, at certain angles, look like animals. We 'saw' turtles and a small dog that could almost have been Toby from The Homestead campsite in Hailsham. The sand is very sticky and turned our shoes into platform soles which were fun to try walking on. There are lots of wild birds here, but we only recognised egrets as the others were too far away to identify. There must be significant fish stocks too, both for the birds and for the half dozen or so fishermen we saw out in their little boats this afternoon.

I think the Velovoie is an entirely off-road cycle route which runs from

Canal taking water from the barrage-reservoir Aube

Troyes out to these lakes a right along one side of them. We covered about 28km out and back today and only saw one end of it. It's practically flat and has a good tarmac surface. Our first half hour was through deciduous woodland with beautiful orange and yellow leaves fallen everywhere. Then we got out and up onto a pretty high levee overlooking the waters on one side and farmland on the other. There were huge heaps of potatoes across the end of one field and we had seen several similar heaps on on the way here yesterday.

In the other direction from Camping Rives du Lac, on the Velovoie just

K Rinke sculpture 

before Lusigny, there is an eyecatching hairpin weir with water thundering with great force over its curve. Above it is a sculpture in homage to Gaston Bachelard who was a significant philosopher of the 20th century. The sculpture was created in 1986 by K Rinke. I didn't understand all the French text describing its purpose, but the gist is to illustrate the tension between the point of the pendulum which is only fractionally above the tumultuous waters. It appears as though it should be moved by the water, yet hangs perfectly still.

Exploring Exeter makes for a great day out

One of our major reasons for choosing our present campsite,

Alexandro Farto mural in Exeter 

Huntisbeare, is its proximity to Exeter, a city that we both wanted to visit. Our first port of call was the Park and Ride. We are definitely getting the hang of these and Exeter's is particularly good. My return fare was just £2.50 and Dave got a freebie with his bus pass. The seats were super comfortable too and it felt more like travelling on a coach than an everyday bus. There are several stops in the town centre and we jumped off near to a John Lewis on the High Street. Also on the High Street, but several minutes walk away is a Whittards where I stocked up on our new favourite drink: Creme Brulee flavour White Hot Chocolate. It's basically pudding in a mug! I also bought a tub of Dreamtime Instant Tea which I used to drink in my A level days -a good twenty years ago (eeek!). Getting to sleep has been difficult for me recently - probably because I am getting up too late - so I impulse bought the Dreamtime Tea to see if it might help. Nearby, the superb mural pictured above was created by Portuguese artist Alexandro Farto who drew the image onto the wall's plain render and then chipped it away to produce the striking monochrome effect. I haven't been able to find out who the woman is though. Someone local?

We tore ourselves away from the shops, but not before admiring the

Interesting architecture in Exeter 

architecture of some of the old buildings. The upper stories of Lakeland and its neighbour are particularly enchanting and I was disappointed that I couldn't get a good enough photo for you. The street is too narrow to step far enough back. Instead, these two great buildings, which really do sit so closely together, are near to the Cathedral. The red sandstone church on the left is St Martin's, one of the oldest churches in the city which was originally consecrated in 1065 and does still contain some Anglo Saxon stone from this time. There is an amazing variance in architectural styles and periods all around Exeter and especially in the Cathedral area. We saw a fantastic heavily carved wooden door that is about 500 years old and the Exeter Memories website has interesting information about the rest of Cathedral Close.

We had picked up a Visit Exeter booklet while in Tavistock which

Bosses in Exeter Cathedral 

included a page of discount vouchers. One of these was a two-for-one entry into Exeter Cathedral - a good deal and even more so when we were charged at Dave's concession price, not my standard adult! The Cathedral was very interesting and I loved the painted bosses in the vaulted ceiling. There are more than 400 and they are all carved with Gothic images including plants, animals and coats of arms. The lower of the larger bosses in this photo depicts the murder of St Thomas Beckett. The vaulted ceiling is the longest continuous medieval stone vault in the world and it is breathtakingly beautiful. Some of the tip-up seats in the choir stalls are also medieval and are beautifully carved with elephants, a whale, birds and plants. Tombs date from all periods so we saw representations of knights in full armour and in Elizabethan costume. I was fascinated by the astronomical clock, from 1484, which depicts both the moon and the sun in orbit around the earth. In a a biography of Galileo I have just read I learned about his imprisonment by the Catholic Church for suggesting that the earth was Not the centre of the universe and this clock perfectly illustrates the official Church beliefs of the period.

Astronomical clock in Exeter Cathedral 

Lunch was taken down on the Quayside which has been sympathetically

Exeter quayside 

restored and turned into a leisure area. We had a sharing plate of Chilli Nachos at a little cafe called Mango's and just managed to escape an unexpected downpour by shifting tables to be under their huge umbrella. The coffee is good here. After eating, we took a wander along the arches which now house artisan and craft shops. One had a fantastic light designed by Scott Nelmes. The river was quite busy with canoes and rowers and there were a lot of cyclists about too. We walked as far as the canal basin and I understand that there is a pretty flat cycleway, the Exe Trail, from here to Exmouth and plans to continue it right around the Exe Estuary as far as Dawlish.

Back up the hill again, Dave mentioned visiting the Exeter Phoenix, an

arts centre which is currently hosting a modern art exhibition, The Exeter Contemporary Open. To be honest, much of the work was hit and miss for us although we did like Mimei Thompson's oil paintings and Henny Acloque's acrylic works. I was very taken with a video installation of pendula by McGilvary White entitled Things That Swing. I think the sound effects are perfect! We also got to view a photographic exhibition of Independents Of Exeter, photographed by Vanessa Miles, which highlighted local small businesses and celebrated the inauguration of the Exeter Pound - an initiative to keep local money spent locally.

After all that art and culture, we needed our reviving chai latte and chocolate milkshake at Caffe Espresso which is a cute little place just opposite the castle - well worth the quick walk from the High Street to get there. We did then have some trouble finding the right stop for our bus back and were exhausted by the time we got back home.

Exeter's history in a single mural