The South Coast Chronicles Day One Packing up Bryony, our Autosleeper Broadway EB motorhome, and heading for Seaton in Devon.

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The South Coast Chronicles – a short tour of a few places along the south coast of Devon and Dorset

Our second trip out, the plan was simple – a small ‘get to know your motorhome better’ tour from Seaton in Devon across to Swanage in Dorset, stopping off at Charmouth and Bridport on the way. To be done irrespective of autumnal weather and to involve lots of walking and cycling. Have we emphasised “irrespective of the weather”! As the Scandinavians apparently say “There is no such thing as bad weather only bad clothing”, something we were determined to put to the test on this trip.

Day 1: Packing up Bryony and heading to Seaton

We are getting quicker at transferring last bits and pieces from car to motorhome when we get onto the storage site. Maggie organises the interior and I sort out the time-consuming task of relocating the E Bikes and rack from car to motorhome. The bikes are locked onto the frame arms, under two cycle covers and with various D locks, the hope being that we slow down any potential thieves and make stealing our bikes a right pain!  If we know we are travelling long distances and then stopping off to do walking at various points, the bikes are then also covered with two covers, both bungeed in place and with a rope tied over the whole lot and to the tow bar frame.

From arrival to departure can be done in about 20 minutes. It used to take around an hour and a half to leave the site when towing ‘Florrie’ our caravan. (The Bikes had to be manoeuvred into her through a small door entrance and then padded out and locked in place between the two sofa seats – very time consuming).

Today however, the 20 minutes slip to 40 as we meet and chat to our storage yard neighbours for the first time. They have come to clean their caravan and winterize it. Then there are the new security stickers to put on and window and locker alarms to sort. Time slips by.

Pootling up the A38 to Exeter at a steady 50 mph, we admire the autumnal foliage of this lovely road, once described by the great late Cornish MP David Penhaligan as ‘the UK’s longest country lane’. He wasn’t being complimentary by the way, using the metaphor as an argument about the poor road connections to the west country and how that in turn was crippling any employment investment opportunities in the region. Things still haven’t changed some thirty years later.

At Exeter services, craving a coffee and forgetting we now have our own on-board coffee making facilities, we brave the crowds. We haven’t quite yet made the mindset jump from caravan to motorhome. It will take time! The idea of heading to Exmouth seafront for a stroll is promptly abandoned when we see the tail backs and queues down the road, five miles out from the town centre. Budleigh Salterton proves just as nice and the drive across Woodbury Common is stunning, burnished golds, browns, coppers, yellows, in the low afternoon sunshine, nature’s palette at its very best.

Negotiating B roads gives us a feel for how Bryony handles. She doesn’t ride across bumps well, her tyres get trapped in any road ruts quite easily and she seems to develop a slight steering wheel wobble at around 55mph (so we have learned to not go above that speed even on dual carriageways).

We have difficulty judging her width (and so arrive at lay-bys, car parks or camping sites with vegetation trapped on her passenger side wing mirror. Good job we fitted the MirrorGuard protectors!)  Steve is prone to sticking close to the white central line which scares approaching large vehicle drivers, you can see it in their fixed stares and pursed lips as they pass by us.

On the plus side, sitting up high and with a wide windscreen, the views across the countryside and over hedges are spectacular, giving us a perspective that we have never seen before.

 

The view from Pitch 1 at manor Farm

Manor Farm at Seaton, our first stop on the tour, gives us a warm welcome and a first-class pitch. “To celebrate your first proper outing in your new motorhome”, says the owner. Pitch 1 has its own wooden deck and picnic table on one side and a small fenced garden with truly enormous giant sunflowers on the other. The views eastwards down across the site into the Axe valley are beautiful. A small tidal estuary comprising of nature reserve marshes, bordered for much of their length by a little old Victorian electric tramway, running inland to Colyford and Colyton. To the south, the faded Victorian elegance of a former seaside resort, Seaton with its sweeping views across the English Channel. To the east, in the far distance, the red Triassic cliffs of the Jurassic coastline – classic coastal walking territory.

The motorhome service point proves to be down a short but steepish narrow road. The pull in bay is very snug and Bryony’s nose ends up almost touching the toilet block door. After our painful lesson in Dartmouth (we had to be towed off the grass pitch), we are very careful to keep one drive wheel on the tarmac but the other has to go up onto the grass slope. Whilst the water tank is filling, we note that when we come to drain the freshwater and waste tanks in a few days, Bryony will have to be parked with her nose practically on the toilet block wall, if the drain taps are to be over the waste drain area.  It’s a functional, clean service area but with a complicate drive in-out procedure that involves reversing back out onto a sloping throughfare whilst trying to keep a drive wheel on the tarmac and avoiding the rubbish disposal bin area. A tight turn, having those hill starts down to perfection is a must.  

To more pressing matters. How do you tame a new tightly coiled freshwater pipe? And, how do you store it in the external locker in a way that takes up minimal space? So many new things to grapple with eh?

In the meantime, stay safe, take care out there and have plenty of fun with your motorhome.

Steve and Maggie.

If you would like to know more about who we are then visit these blog posts at

https://wherenexthun.blogspot.com/2020/10/welcome-to-our-blog.html and 

https://wherenexthun.blogspot.com/2020/11/who-are-main-characters-in-our-blog.html

Our route from Exeter to Manor Farm at Seaton – including the Exmouth bit!

We criss-crossed various roads across Lympstone and Woodbury Commons but essentially the key roads we journeyed along were Exeter Services – A376 – Exmouth – B3178 – B3179 – B3180 (we turned around a few times!!) – B3178 – A3052 – B 3172 into Seaton.

Next leg: https://wherenexthun.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-south-coast-chronicles-day-1-out.html