Day four: 3 May: Totnes and Berry Pomeroy

After a walk with Jane and Fudge and the usual luxurious breakfast with plenty of decent coffee (Russ – note this for your future reference please – this is what people have for breakfast) I set Francoise for Totnes via Exeter and said goodbye to everyone who was up. Which was all those under 10 and over 16.

Jamie told me most of the roads would be dual carriage-way, which was less worrying than a motorway, but as it happened I did end up on an M5 sort of road later. The thing about the motorways in England is that they are very very safe. Because people can travel at any speed they like, they are not constantly distracted by looking in the mirror for cops and jamming on the brakes ever time they see a black and white car. The only thing that really puzzled me was that they had speed camera warnings on the motorway so I am not sure what they were looking for. Just in case they were worried about slow drivers, I kept my speed up. The lights at the roundabouts had me flummoxed but I got through them okay and somehow ended up in Exeter. I parked my car in a tower of some sort, visited the cathedral, and actually found my way back to the car park and located my car again. I was a bit disappointed in the cathedral though I don’t really know why, as I usually love them. The astronomical clock was good (a bit old though) but the Gothic wasn't as high as I had imagined it to look. Apparently Hickory Dickory Dock originated here.

As I got further south out of Dorset and into Devon, I saw a lot of thatched roofs (Margaret's family did them). The roads were incredibly narrow in places, with hedges on each side, so Very Worried and I took things quietly. Several times I drove up a narrow street the wrong way and then had to try not to look silly. Many streets were only big enough for one fairly slim car. We made it into Totnes safely, but couldn't find a park anywhere close to where we wanted to go, so we parked somewhere we didn't want to go instead. Which is how we found the amazing organic supermarket down a back street, where I bought falafels for my dinner and a small bottle of Mateus. There were heaps of organics shops around, and the place had a sort of wholemeal bread and organic apples feeling. I bet the locals wore macrame underwear.

Eventually I decided to look for my B&B at Berry Pomeroy and got lost, but oddly, turned up at Higher Poulston Farm. It was mostly cottages for holiday-makers, but I found the farm part with dairy cows and a tractor or two, and lots of mud. I felt very important wandering around what was surely my property, as I am a Poulston and the visitors probably weren't. I wanted someone to ask me what I was doing there so I could explain that it was my family farm, but no-one took any notice of me. So I took a photo of the gate and the cows, and left. I had travelled thousands of miles to inspect it and my job was done.

The B&B was clean and good but I had forgotten my dongle (a Vodafone gadget that finds the internet wherever you are) so I couldn't do any work. I washed my clothes, ate my falafel and and drank the Mateus and several cups of tea, then went for a walk. I found a road that had a castle at the end of it, but decided to go back the next day by car, as walking on such narrow roads is a bit nerve-wracking - there was nowhere to run if a car decided to use the same bit of road as me. The church-yard was very good, but apart from that and a couple of houses, there wasn't much to the village worth reporting on. Actually there wasn't much to the village.