Originally, sometime in the spring, my plan was to finish our summer with one last hoorah of a trip to somewhere warm(er) and with a beach. We had a four day weekend scheduled around Labor Day weekend. The base here combined our weekend with Family Day (day off) and Labor Day (another day off). Anyway, we had Friday-Monday to go somewhere—the last weekend before British kids went back to school.
Well, my initial idea of going down to Cornwall, the most south-western tip of the island, quickly went down the drain after seeing how crazy expensive it was to stay ANYWHERE in the UK in the month of August. Then I read about how busy the roads can be during that time…and I started reconsidering.
Then, I read about “English Riviera”, and I had to laugh. It just sounded so cheesy, I guess an attempt to make you think of warm sunny days in the south of France. In fact, “English Riviera” is in the south of England, not quite far west as Cornwall. The map shows it better:
I found a cute B&B in Paington, right next to Torquay and we decided that we should give it a try. Nevertheless, when Labor Day weekend rolled around we almost cancelled the whole trip because really we were exhausted from our move, trips and visitors (not that visitors are bad, but life does get out of normal routine with guests). The weather was going to be fabulous, so we decided to go ahead with our plans, but wanted to make sure this was going to be a trip focused on relaxing and not sightseeing.
After a very easy four drive and almost no traffic jams, we had arrived to Paignton. It was late afternoon when we arrived, so we checked in into our B&B and walked over to the beach, five minutes away, geared with shovels, nets and buckets.
This area is hilly, look at that.
So we found the first beach—Goodrington Sands. Very different sandy beaches from anywhere else we have been so far. More similar to Japanese beaches than to Florida white sandy beaches.
Those colorful storage units on the picture below are for people to rent out and store their beach gear during holidays. They do look quite festive and sunny. And there was Katya on a donkey with only one ear (the donkey is the one with one ear).
The sun started to set, so we headed back to our place. We ordered take out Chinese (I know…very local) and ate it in the dining area of our B&B. That was one great thing (among others) about the place where we stayed—they had a fantastic common area with a ton of toys, books and movies. We could relax down their and let the kids play. And they let us bring food in and have dinner on their premises or in the back garden.
One thing that Robert was frustrated about was that our room was on the top floor, in the attic, basically. He kept having to walk bent in half, not only in this area where our kids slept, but even where our bed was. He kept wondering why we were paying the full price for the room if we are only using half of it-hehe.
The next morning, we drove up to Torquay to see the Babbacombe Model Village.
We normally don’t go to kiddie type of places, but this was quite enjoyable nevertheless (and relaxing;).
We even saw Stonehenge!
This was quite funny, I thought:). If you look closely, who do you see exiting the hospital with a new baby?
After about an hour at the model village, we walked over to Babbacome Cliff Railway—a small funicular that takes you down to Oddicombe Beach and back up.
And this is the beach that was waiting for us down by the sea. It was actually very pretty.
The kids just played on the rocks looking for crabs.
Before getting on the funicular to go up the cliff.
I have to point out the red mudslide in the background. That is the site Oddicombe beach cliff landslide.
There is a house, half destroyed, on top of the cliff. Don’t know if you can see it very well, as I had to zoom in.
Alex was fascinated once again with another natural disaster. When we got home we googled “Oddicombe Beach landslide” and found this interesting article and video clip:
The view from the cliff top was very pretty. We walked around till we found a place to eat a very late lunch—the second best Fish and Chips place in England! The name is Hanbury’s Famous Fish And Chips. Although they were already closed, I knocked on their door (as we barely missed their opening hours) and asked with my begging voice if they would have three more pieces of cod for us. They said no problem, and thus we had one of the best Fish and Chips in the last year!
We ate right there, on the benches with a fabulous view of the sea.
See..now I don’t remember in what order we did what because I don’t have dates on my pictures any more.
We drove down to one beach that was supposed to be a very picturesque rocky beach. And it was.
Except there was no place to play in the sand or anything, the kids could just explore around by climbing rocks. It was quite cold too. I had to wear my cardigan the whole time.
But this is the place where I saw a huge seal that came very close to shore! Crazy.
On Sunday we went to the local church, which was quite refreshing, as our kids made up the majority of their Primary. After lunch at the Paignton bay…
We headed to another beach, a little south of Paignton.
The kids actually went into the sea, but were freezing afterwards.
Katya is a pro at building castles now.
Our last morning in the area we decided to go on a train ride to Dartmouth on the Dartmouth Steam Railway and then a ferry.
Apparently, our train car’s name was Shakira. 
The train took us from Paignton to Brixham and then to Kingswear.
This is where the river Dart separates Kingswear and Darmouth and we had to get off the train and get on the foot ferry.
It was a very long ferry ride—a whole five minutes! We barely had enough time to snap this picture.
Darmouth was…okay. It was a nice little town, a few hilly narrow streets to explore, but nothing out of the ordinary. After eating some sandwiches at a random shop, we headed back to the train station to go back to Paignton.
My family almost left me behind. Don’t know what their deal was, it’s not like I was grouchy or anything.
After we got back to our B&B, we got our car and started our drive home. The drive back was even easier than on the way there, with no traffic whatsoever (although the motorway in the other direction was packed for miles again). We made sure we stopped by at Cheltenham again to fill up on our favorite Turkish food for dinner and buy a couple of boxes of their pistachio baklava (YUM!). This is the second time we stop by at this place on a Monday, the day they have all of their main dishes “buy one get one free”.
As you can see, the trip was really a relaxing one…wish it were warmer though. It was pretty and all, but did not live up to my expectation of “English Riviera”. Oh well, next time we might actually drive to Cornwall.
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