Salisbury to Exeter

The room we stayed in at the Grasmere Court Hotel must have been the honeymoon suite because the bedsprings were incredibly noisy.
However, the view from the window, looking back over the town and the cathedral was good. Whether it made up for having to lug our heavy suitacases up three flights of stairs is debatable.

Our destination on this, Saturday 28th October was Exeter we we reached via Stonehenge, Dorchester, and a few assorted places in between. Getting to Stonehenge from Salisbury was straightforward, taking us about half an hour to complete the journey. We arrived before official opening time but this was no problem as adequate views of 'the Henge' can be seen from the roadside. Even if admitted to the area on payment of a fee, you aren't allowed to get close to the monoliths so its seems rather pointless going in at all. I have to say that the whole experience was rather unfulfilling, but at least we could 'tick the box'.

Driving away from Stonehenge we thought that we were taking the A303 which would take us to intersect with the A350 where we could head south to Dorchester. Somehow the road turned into the A344 taking us north to Devizes. I realised this when I saw the name/distance markers had unfamiliar names -not ones which I had gleaned from our proposed route. However, after a quick check of the map we realised the error and saw that we could correct it by cutting west on the B390 which would take us onto the A36 and thence to the A350. Again, we weren't in a hurry so it gave us the chance to traverse some countryside we wouldn't otherwise have seen. I understand that during WWII all of the road signage was removed so that any invading forces or spies dropped to reconnoitre would have difficulty finding their way around. I have to say that we would have been totally lost without the generally good signage available now.

Salisury plain has lots of military establishments and on our (unexpected) way to Warminster we passed the occasional 'tank crossing' sign. We were continually surprised by distances being less than we expected. I guess we get so used to 'the wide open spaces' in Australia that the relatively short distances in England take us by surprise.

Reaching Dorchester at around midday we experienced the usual English town problem of finding a car park on 'shopping day'. By queueing patiently we were able to get into a carpark near the town centre and, once in, had no problem finding a park. A short walk away was the main town shopping centre and various acknowledgments and monuments to Thomas Hardy. Hardy's fictional town Casterbridge was based on Dorchester and the townsfolk haven't been slow to cash in on the fictional historical link.
It's interesting to see how the fictional history becomes so enmeshed with the reality of the place that it takes on a life of its own. After making a few purchases at Marks and Spencers we had lunch in another local department store's cafe which was also quite busy. This photo shows a plaque outside what was supposed to have been the Mayor of Casterbridge's house.

Extracting ourselves from the carpark after lunch was almost as painful as getting in but eventually we were clear and on our way to Weymouth. There we had a bit of a stroll around before heading west on the coastal 'B' road which was bound to be much more interesting and less stressful than the busy main road. Unfortunately we had to join up with the A road at Bridport but shortly after were able to divert to the coast again on the Lyme Regis, Seaton, etc road going also through Ottery St Mary.

We seemed unable to break our pattern of arriving at our destination at the busiest time of the day and so we got to Exeter late on the Saturday afternoon. Leaving Pat in the car as she had a headache Garth and I tracked down the information centre and managed to find a hotel for the night. As we had come to expect, our room was on the 3rd floor, there was no elevator and no porter. The lady in charge seemed reminiscent of Basil Fawlty but that could have just been because we were pretty tired at the end of the day. The ultimate pain was that we had to park the car in a residential area two streets away because the hotel had no parking at all!
We enjoyed traditional fish and chips from a traditional chippy just down the road. Chatting with them while we waited we were pleased to discover that they would not do battered Mars Bars! (Mostly, it seemed, because it would destroy their process flow)