Out & About-Clovelly

Since our last post the weather has turned particularly nasty. More on that in a moment. We have been very busy doing little local day trips around Devon & Cornwall, in the past week. First trip was up to a village called Clovelly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovelly on the north coast of Devon. This took some getting to as Dartmouth is on the south coast of Devon. When I think of English roads, my mind conjures up narrow lanes, rock fences and hedges. Well the way to Clovelly is typical of this. Our first stop for morning tea was at a village called Bovey Tracey. It was on the banks of a small stream called Bovey and our coffee shop, by strange coincidence was called Brookside. We told the counter staff that we were on our way to Clovelly and had set out earlier that morning from Dartmouth. The gasped and said, "oh my you must have left early to already be in Bovey Tracey". Bovey Tracey was about a 45 minute drive at a maximum, from Dartmouth.



On we drove, further north, frequently pulling over in a gateway or small overtaking area so a big bus or truck, coming the other way, could pass us. After passing through the big town of Bideford, we turned west, following the coast and 3.5 hours from home, arrived at the Clovelly visitors centre. This is located at the top of a cliff, and in the summer, we could have taken advantage of a range rover ride to the bottom. As it is well and truly winter, we walked down the cobble stoned road into the village.



Apparently Clovelly was built at one of the few accessible beaches on the north coast of Devon, and has be inhabitated for about 1000 years. In the last couple of hundred years, fishermen built a small harbour with sea-wall and slowly houses were built, two deep on each side of the street leading back up the cliff to the visitors centre. The locals were extremely unfriendly, I guess because they are sick of prying tourists but as the information video points out it relies upon tourists to survive.



The village is wholly owned by a wealthy family and it is only the second owner in the entire history of the town. The villagers rent their homes from this landowner. We walked done to the harbour and across the Bristol Channel in the fog to Wales. After this we stayed at the Harbour Inn for some lunch and began our slow and long walk back up the cliff. Decided to continue down the Devon Coast and into Cornwall and home on one of the divided highways which slashed travel time almost in half.