Regional capital

While in Devon we paid the first visit to the regional capital, that is to say Exeter, for a while. Checking this morning, apart from the odd visit to a house in the suburbs, our first visit for more than four years, that is to say since the end of 2016, with one of several notices of that visit noticed at reference 1. I wonder this morning whether the local authority has been obliged to launch a full-on consultation about whether the statue snapped there should be relocated or melted down. Perhaps the local people have taken the law into their own hands.

On this occasion we confined ourselves to what had been the docks area of Exeter, more recently the Quay area and now a version of our own Covent Garden in London. The maritime museum, which used to include a lot of interesting old boats - possibly small ships even - in the dock, looks to be long gone, with the dock now mainly occupied by paddle boarders. A way of getting around on the water which still strikes me as perverse: more a way of (slightly) athletic posing than a method of transport.

Started off at the conveniently located and conveniently near empty Haven Banks car park. Conveniently located except with regard to public toilets, oddly thin on the ground for a tourist attraction. Although to be fair to its promoters, in normal times there are plenty of bars and restaurants offering facilities.

Started off with a quite decent cinnamon bun from a small eatery on the Haven Banks side, then headed on down to what used to be the gas works, where what we took for the tied cottage of the manager, appears to have escaped the attentions of the heritage people.

Crossed what used to be the ship canal and made our way across the new-to-me Trews Weir suspension bridge, a footbridge across the Exe proper. Which delivered us to an interesting bit of old Exeter, below the Topsham Road and St. Leonard's church. Past a large public house called the Port Royal, not open at the time. Possibly an independent, although reference 2 is not terribly informative.

Past two sitting swans, who did not seem to mind sitting just the other side of the railings at the edge of our path. Past one treading duck. Or possibly a coot, I forget which now.

Refused entry at an eatery called the Waterside, on account of the outdoor social spacing then in force. A place with a rather more elaborate website (reference 3) than the Port Royal. Maybe the latter is just too far from the centre, at all of a couple of hundred yards.

Entry achieved at the Puerto Lounge, where we took a cool lunch, involving, in my case, a burger with some sweet yellow sauce dolloped onto to it. Quite edible - but I was glad to have the benefit of my duffel coat, with the hood up for once in a while. It turns out this morning that this lounge belongs to the same family as the Caballo Lounge here in Epsom, an eatery I think we have yet to try. Not to be confused with Cabello Hair & Beauty at the other end of town.

Across the unnamed inlet just to the north of the lounge and on up to Quay Hill, where we had a view of what might be a Milling Attraction, replacement of a sort for the Maritime Museum.

Plus an arty shed, not the sort of thing I recall seeing in the real Covent Garden at all.

Plus the Bishop Blaize public house, a house I don't think I have ever visited in the fifty years or more than I have used such places in Exeter. I assumed a notable bishop from the cathedral just up the road, but this morning he turns out to be an Armenian bishop and saint who became the patron saint of wool combers. So the pub is named for the wool trade of old Exeter, not for a local bishop at all. See references 5 and 6. Bing suggests that there are quite a lot of houses with this name, allowing for various spellings, scattered about the country. Presumably, although I have not checked, once woolly parts of the country.

From there we made our way up Stepcote Hill, near the local Salvation Army Citadel and including some tied cottages for senior officers therein. Also therein, some confusion between the Church Army and the Salvation Army, which, for the avoidance of doubt, are not the same thing. See references 7 and 8.

And so to the Oxfam bookshop at the top of South Street and the neighbouring bric-a-brac shop. A visit already noticed in the margins of reference 9.

From there back down to Haven Banks, more or less following the route I used to cycle, ten years or more ago, up the canal from Exminster, to the Internet facilities offered to aliens by the library in Exeter town centre. A library I first used before I was twenty years of age.

BH drove us home through a considerable amount of rain, in the intervals of which I was interested to see clouds of steam rising off the wet fields. To take tea and the last two rock cakes from Horrabridge when we got back to Holne.

PS: it also turns out that the unnamed inlet is actually the old Mill Leat, which runs roughly north west to come out at what was once a mill and is now a public house called the 'Mill on the Exe', roughly at the junction of Bonhay Road and Exe Street. What was once a whole line of mills. Snapped above from Ordnance Survey. There is also a long island in the Exe, alongside St. David's Station, rather like one of those islands in the Seine at Paris. Something to be explored on our next visit.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/12/buller.html.

Reference 2: https://www.theportroyal.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://www.waterfrontexeter.co.uk/.

Reference 4: http://thelounges.co.uk/lounges/puerto/.

Reference 5: http://www.exetermemories.co.uk/em/_pubs/bishop_blaize.php.

Reference 6: https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=28.

Reference 7: https://www.churcharmy.org.uk/.

Reference 8: https://www.salvationarmy.org.uk/.

Reference 9: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/05/vercors.html.

Reference 10: Two thousand years in Exeter - W. G. Hoskins - 1960. A book about some of this being closely studied by BH.

Reference 11: The Making of the English Landscape - Hoskins, W. G. - 1977. On the strength of reference 10, now in the post. A snip from Abebooks.