The breakfast was good and I slept all night, which is an excellent past-time for world travellers like me. It was filling, colourful and a delicious start to enormous breakfasts but stuff all else til dinner. My host was hospitable, and provided decent coffee, lashings of orange juice, muesli, yoghurt, and scrambled eggs. Proper yellow ones. I ate so much I nearly burst. Furthermore, there were no dirty marks on any of the silver, there was no dust on top of the pictures, and there were no plastic flowers. The carpet had been recently vacuumed, and I could see out the windows. She probably has a diploma in hospitality from AUT.
I decided to drive to Dartmouth to fill in time until the museum in Totnes opened, and on arrival joined a castle inspection club called English Heritage, so I could visit castles regularly and pretend to be a princess in every town I went to. Dartmouth castle sits at the mouth of the Dart river, and was a bit scary for even a modern princess, especially where the dungeony place met the sea, so I pretended to be a knight instead. The castle was built to protect the harbour in 1388 and extended in 1481 with a tower for guns. Quite a bit older than our house in Titirangi. I wandered around it happily, taking photos of bleak bits of rock and peering at the outside world through little gun holes. Then I asked Francoise to take Very Worried and me to Totnes, so she directed us to a ferry, which took off as soon as we drove on to it. My karma was just as good as it was a few days earlier when I was upgraded on Emirates.
On the way to Totnes I went back to Berry Pomeroy near my B&B and checked out its wonderful castle ruins, which I loved, but I got too cold to listen to the entire free audio. This castle was built by Mr and Mrs Seymour and is reputedly the most haunted castle in England, with reports of a ghost galloping across the ruins from time to time. I didn’t see the ghost, which I was quite relieved about, as the audio information said if I did, I would die shortly after, which meant I couldn't return Very Worried to the rental car place, or deliver my paper in Surrey. This castle is older than Dartmouth castle, and was finished in around 1305. I had a ball wandering around looking at where the various rooms had been, and imagining what life must have been like 700 years ago. A tad chilly I expect.
Eventually I got so cold I headed back to Totnes, where I hoped to find evidence of the Poulstons in early Devon. Sadly I sent up a one way street (most of them are actually) the wrong way, which was embarrassing for all of us. Francoise tried to tell us not to go there but we ignored her. Eventually we found the museum which of course was closed, it being a Monday. I got back into Very Worried, and asked Francoise to take us to Stonehenge. We had had quite enough of big towns and needed some fresh air.
The road to Stonehenge fairly quickly opened up to two lanes, then three, then about six. Francoise was brilliant, and every time we came to a major intersection, she not only showed me a diagram with huge arrows telling me which lane to use, but then she showed me a photo of the intersection so I could admire it, know it to be the same as the one on the other side of the windscreen, and follow the arrows into exactly the right place. It gave me a sense of security to be able to see a photo of where I was going, because I therefore knew that Francoise and I agreed exactly on where we were. We were here.
The surrounding fields were growing mustard and various other crops, and it occurred to me that the crop circles that regularly appear in these areas are probably UFO graffiti. A mustard field must look very enticing from outer space.
Stonehenge was horrendously busy and just as cold as Berry Pomeroy – in fact colder, because it started raining as I arrived. It was a bit like the Parthenon visit, with people taking photos of each other in front of it, but not really looking at the monument. Sightseeing is sort of sight-catching – you look at something and put it in the ‘been there’ box. I am no better than anyone else, and popped Stonehenge into my 'been there' box and got back into Very Worried as soon as I could.
I took a while to find accommodation in Salisbury, turning down four places for being too far to walk with my suitcase, not having wi-fi, or being too expensive. Eventually I got one I liked, very nice, run by a Connie Booth look alike, who even had a performing arts diploma on the wall behind her. What a giveaway. I found a small supermarket and some salad for dinner and caught up with my work emails.
If you don’t mind sleeping next to a castle but not in it, Horsley Park was good. The tv worked, my colleagues from CHME were there to enjoy meals and drinks with, and I had a duty to perform. I include a photo kindly sent to me by a delegate who was with me during the castle's chapel inspection, a photo of the castle that I didn't sleep in, and a picture of the sort of room I did sleep in. Note the absence of castle windows, knights, and BlackAdder. The castle would have been more fun. In due course I entertained/bored (choose one) a selection of hospitality academics for 20 minutes with my paper, and some time later the conference came to a close. I am not going to tell you what happened in between because misunderstandings might arise about what we are supposed to do at conferences, and I wouldn’t want that. If you are really desperate, leave a comment, and I’ll direct you to some of my papers. They’re on sex and theft and deviance and stuff so you probably wouldn’t be interested anyway.
