Northam

Wednesday October 19th
In Which all Roads Lead to Chickerell

It should have been an easy drive. Our plan certainly sounded simple. We were going to leave our B & B in Chickerell and then follow the famous Jurassic Coast through Lyme Regis and Sidmouth to Exmouth, before turning north and driving up to Horns Cross (near Bideford). The total distance was estimated to be around 140 km. In Australia we would not think twice about driving that far in a couple of hours, so it shouldn't be much different in the UK. Or so we thought.

The first few km were achieved without incident, although the narrowness of the roads was quite disconcerting at times, especially when you had to face huge semi trailers, farm tractors and suicidal locals all racing towards you without slowing down and with only a few inches of clearance on each side.

We got to within a few km of Lyme Regis and looked forward to a pleasant break by the seashore.

"It will be a good stop for morning tea, or maybe we will wait and have it at Sidmouth instead", I told Maggie. It never turned out that way.

Just when Lyme Regis was almost within reach, our way was blocked by a complete barrier over the road. ROAD CLOSED. What did they mean, Road Closed ? Surely there must be a short detour around the obstruction ? We drove back a few km to the first village we encountered. Maggie went into a shop to ask directions. She came back looking confused. "I couldn't understand a word he said", she explained. We had no choice but to keep going back, and back, and back. There was just no way to get in the direction we wanted. About an hour later we found ourselves driving back past the actual place we had spent the previous night in. Yes, we were right back where we had started, and still going even further backwards ! It was a navigational nightmare of the first order.

We finally reached the end of the "DIVERSION" and estimated that it had added at least 2 hours to our journey. At least we were heading in the right direction again and we did eventually reach Lyme Regis and we did stop for something to eat, but it wasn't morning tea. It was lunch, and a late lunch at that. The town was a classic English seaside town with narrow and very steep streets

We managed to find a parking place on the outskirts and then walked (climbed) down the steep cliffside into the township itself. It was a pleasant place, but by now we were well behind schedule, so could not stop for long.

We resumed our westerly travels to the beautiful Sidmouth. This is a larger town with a delightful atmosphere. We would have liked to have spent more time but the clock was ticking and we did not know what other challenges might be lying in wait for us further on. We decided to skirt Exmouth and start our journey north to Bidewell by well of Chulmleigh and Barnstaple. Although the countryside was pleasant, it was not possible to see a lot of it due to high hedges on the sides of the narrow roads. The succession of towns we passed through were also rather drab and a little disappointing. It was also starting to get dark, so we kept pressing on trying to reach our destination before nightfall.

We also had a problem that we did not have an actual address for the B&B. The voucher we had printed off from Booking.com just described its location as somewhere called "Horns Cross, near Bideford". While we could find Bideford on the map, we could not find anything called Horns Cross, so we knew we could be in for a spot of bother. I did have the latitude and longitude of the place, so decided to feed that data into the GPS and hope for the best

Like a dog with a new scent, the GPS started spitting out instructions - TURN LEFT in 250 Metres, turn right in 500 metres, etc and so on. The only problem was that the already narrow road we had been on suddenly became a dog track. It was barely wide enough for us to squeeze through and seemed to be getting narrower. With the high hedges on both sides we could not see a thing. Every time we changed direction (which was often) we felt that we were in imminent danger of being wiped out by an approaching vehicle.

At one particularly narrow and scary part Maggie asked "What if we meet a truck now?" A second later her question was answered when a monster truck appeared out of the darkness. I slammed on the brakes with my heart palpitating wildly. He was much bigger than me so I tried to find reverse gear. Damn these manual transmissions. I struggled to reverse back and immediately went back into the nearest hedge. The amused truck driver then took pity on the couple of elderly dimwits, flashed his headlights and started to reverse back for us. A few minutes later we had edged our way past and our near death experience had been survived.

My patience was finally starting to snap.

"I hate these stupid, idiotic, ridiculous roads", I yelled at Maggie. "Why can't they build proper ones ?" She told me to calm down and keep driving. Easy for her to say, I thought, she wasn't sweating all over the steering wheel.

Somehow we finally found Horns Cross, found a small notice with the name of the B&B on it and miraculously drove into the driveway. My nerves were shot, I was tired and cranky and just wanted somewhere to rest. The friendly proprietor directed us which steep staircase to drag our suitcases up and finally we collapsed on the bed. It had been an interesting day.Read more