The Wonderful World of Traffic Circles! – Truro to Bournemouth – all wrong turns, but what fun!!

Crop circles are so yesterday….now traffic circles…those deserve some serious merit! Canada really needs some serious traffic circles. We don’t need big highways in Vancouver, we need to get rid of traffic lights and then need to install traffic circles, and educate everyone properly on how they work. Edmonton has traffic circles…Halifax has one but it just doesn’t work like any other traffic circle in the world so it doesn’t really count because it really is an international oddity. But when you look at the population of Britain, and then you look at the towns and where the people are concentrated…and you hardly ever encounter a stop sign or a traffic light…and the traffic flows …well! We could learn something here!

Anyway, today we had a full day. We hung out at Mary and Derek’s until about 10 am and it was really hard to tear ourselves away. They were such amazingly wonderful hosts and we would have loved to spend more time…but it is a short trip and we really did not want to impose any more than we already did.

Once we got underway we headed towards Dartmouth with a few detours on the way (read wrong turns). We took one turn and ended up in some little town where there was a ferry. We parked and walked down and took a few photos before backtracking. We tried to stick to the coast as much as possible and ended up in Fowey first. What a cool little place! However we actually kind of missed it. We took the ferry across and aimed for Polperro…but took a wrong turn and once we were committed…there was simply no turning back since the road was barely one lane wide (my mirror was often in the bushes!). So we ran it to the end and found ourselves in Polruan. We stopped and took some photos since it looked out and across to Fowey. We turned around and found the right road to Polperro…Kirk muttering the entire way about the fact that I seem to find my way onto the smallest narrowest roads on the planet. …. Eventually we popped out near Polperro and when we saw a wonderful Inn with a waterwheel we turned in…unfortunately we both missed the sign that said no cars…but after a few minutes we figured it out and managed to get turned around and find the parking lot. We walked back down into Polperro and loved it! We stopped for Cornish pasties and stumbled back to the car full of meat, potatoes, and pastry.

Back on the road and aiming for Dartmouth. But we missed the right turnoff there too….and ended up taking a ferry to get back across to visit. But it was worth it. Dartmouth is delightful. It’s warm and an ice cream cools us down as we sit and watch the boats drift by. The we have to take another ferry to get back to where we started.

Then it’s on to Lyme Regis. I can’t actually recall why I waypointed this place…I think it was just to force the navigation software to take us on a route along the coast… but are we ever glad I did! What a gem of a town. We stop and buy fish and chips for dinner and eat it down by the water. It’s been a bit of a carb filled day and we have spent the better part of a month eating salads, so the chips weren’t really necessary and we spend some time causing fights between seagulls. The beach along here is stunning. And we look down towards the massive breakwater behind which are some boats. And the sailboats are sitting upright…with their keels firmly entrenched in the mud. Very cool.

We’d love to stay, but we still have a long way to go and need to push on. We drive out to Portland Bill and visit a lighthouse. WATCH OUT FOR THE CHICKEN! LEFT LANE, LEFT LANE!!!! DON’T HIT THE BUNNY! LEFT, I SAID LEFT! NO THE SECOND LANE OFF THE ROUNDABOUT!!! NO THE OTHER LEFT! Apparently I was looking at the computer when we had an almost close encounter with a massive truck (it was apparently an inch from Kirk’s mirror) …glad I was looking down. I didn’t miss the other stuff though. NO NO NO….NOT THAT LANE!!!!

Then on to the Durdle Door…but the light is falling and the clouds are rolling in. It’s just too late to make the hike down to the Door and we think we might have time tomorrow evening to visit if the Flickr friends get tired of us. If not, well, just another reason to come back.

So on to Bournemouth only to discover that our hotel closes at 9 pm…it’s 10:07. There is a phone number so we find a sympathetic person at another hotel who calls for us and the Hotel manager says he will meet us at the front counter if we come back. We do, he does, and we have our room. It’s fine. It’s a bit of a backpackers place, and this neighbourhood is a bit of a backpackers/watersports place…but it’s fine. it’s clean and has a bathroom. What else do you need…arguably I can even live with a communal bathroom, wouldn’t be the first time…but it’s the clean part that is important to us and this works just fine. Tomorrow we meet a bunch more people and will have a fun day I think!

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