Robyn writes: Today was moving day again - luckily I checked our folder, as we'd been blythly assuming that Tuesday was the day to move, then went: holy hell, it's tomorrow! Focuses the mind admirably! Anyway, we were up rather late last night (Lex is addicted to the World Snooker Championship on the BBC - the final is taking longer than an entire NRL season, I swear, and I'm hooked on a book on Victoria and Albert I bought at Osborne House the other day) and it was past 11 before we finally got to bed, so slept in until about 8 - the latest we've slept in here, I think.
It was another lovely morning and not too cold so we had everything packed and ready to leave by a bit after 9.30. Getting out was a bit of a process - it required two trips down in the lift to put everything in the car and dispose of our rubbish, then we had to drive the car out and park it outside, then we had to go back up in the lift and pop the unit keys in through the post slot on the door!
Navigating in this country is always traumatic - the cities have so many twists and turns and everyone zooms along at a manic pace. Our phone GPS (nicknamed 'Mary Lou' due to her strident American accent) didn't help when we were nearly out of Portsmouth and she announced "Signal lost" and left me to navigate (with considerable skill, may I add) for about half of the way until she decided to come back on board with the trip. Here I must give tribute to the signage on the roads, which is magnificent, and of course my dear husband's driving. I would be a nervous wreck and crawl along at about 20 miles an hour on most of these roads. It is easy to get lost sometimes though, we spotted "Maiden Castle" in the atlas and were trying to get to it to take a photo for Nikita when once more Mary Lou lost interest and we found ourselves heading west, so never found the castle :(
We drove down into Southampton to see what was there, but the dockyard areas seem to be filled with a retail paradise - the biggest Ikea store I've ever seen and several huge shopping centres. There was a massive passenger ship berthed there but wasn't much to see so we headed west again. We dodged a bullet on the A31 when we were trying to take a turn on it and realised that there were police ahead closing the road (probably an accident) so we had to turn left - Lex realised that the cars ahead of us all seemed to be going up a little lane, so we followed and a few miles later came back onto the A31, much to our relief. However, the oncoming traffic was backed up for about 5 miles with the end of bank holiday travellers stuck there! Goodness only knows how long it was before they got moving again.
We stopped for lunch in the New Forest Heathland at a little recreation area with a nice cafe looking out over the forest and play areas. As it was a bank holiday, it was full of families picnicking, playing and walking their dogs in the sunshine, so all was happiness. We had a lovely lunch there of jacket potatoes and salad so it was filling and warming.
We finally got to Torquay around 3pm after some beautiful scenery coming out of Dorset and into Devon. It was a rather traumatic time trying to find our way around Torquay - it was all built on the top of hills near the beach in the 1700 and 1800s so my, there are some nasty tight high little roads! Not to mention we'd entered the wrong postcode into our satnav. It's very strange here, they don't give you an address, just a six digit code that takes you right to the area. Our unit is gloriously high on a hill overlooking the bay and built some time during the Victorian era by my guess, so it was rather difficult to track down. Then we had to find a park in the street, use a code to get into the reception area then another code to get into the key safe. Then follow the instructions around the side of the building to our unit steps down on the patio (we are in one of 17 units!). Whew!
However, it was all worth it. Our one bedroom unit is overlooking the bay at Torquay and the esplanade runs along out of sight below us. Off to our left is the pier and ferris wheel. The view is absolutely beautiful. Will be even nicer if we score a sunny day; unfortunately the afternoon weather has turned on us and it's cold, rainy and miserable outside. We (after many more misadventures) found our way down to the local Tesco's for supplies (not that far as the crow flies but a nightmare of one way streets and steep curves lie between it and us....) and home again, and are now happily ensconced in the unit which is still rather cold, though we have the heaters on. Lex ventured out for a walk before and reports that we can go down the hill to get to the esplanade, which will be MUCH better than taking the car anywhere down there!
We've got into the habit of eating tea every night in our units, as it saves so much over eating out. Have become very fond of Tescos etc who have a wonderful range available which make it so easy to have really nice meals. Tonight we tried their ready cooked Indian curries with one of their naan breads and they were excellent :) There is also the ever-fascinating alcohol aisle, too, with a massive range of cheap beers so Lex has selected London Pride, Hobgoblin, Black Sheep Ale and the worryingly named Doombar as his current stock of pint bottles (actually they are 500ml, but half-litre bottle just doesn't sound right). I have an Aussie Sav Blanc for 4 pounds, so thought that sounded worth a try. Hope it's as good as the Chilean one I had last week!
As I write, it's just after nine pm and the sun has set. The lights are twinkling around the bay and it is so pretty! We really should draw the curtains to keep the lounge room warmer but just can't bring ourselves to lose the view. Fingers crossed for a clear day once more tomorrow!
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