Dartmouth part one - Sailing by.

We visited Dartmouth immediately after Totnes, and if you've read the previous instalment of this blog you'll know that so far as we were concerned at least, Totnes was a pretty tough act to follow. Would the home of the Royal Navy's premier training facility measure up?

We snaked our way through the winding roads between Totnes and the coast  (and I'll be talking about them at some length in a future post) debating whether we'd be able to find anywhere to park in the centre of such a small tourist trap of a town. It was something of a relief therefore to see the large park and ride car park on the town's outskirts. We pulled in, bought our parking ticket and almost immediately hopped onto a bus which whisked us  right down to the harbourside.  Even better, the cost of the bus was included in the price of the parking for everyone who had been in the car! There were two of us, but the family of five ahead of us in the queue also got return tickets when they surrendered the stub of their parking ticket.

I'll be honest, I haven't used that many park and ride schemes, so this might be pretty common but I've never seen this kind of ticketing system before. Park and Ride schemes that I've used before (York and Cambridge, since you ask) Have offered free parking, but charged for the bus service. Doing it this way around made no appreciable difference to me price-wise, but if you've got a family of four it would save you a bit. Given that, as a tourist town, Dartmouth must be keen to attract families and groups this approach strikes me as a stroke of genius! The place was impressing me even before we'd properly arrived - which can only be a good thing.

Like many places, Dartmouth is not blessed with the most attractive suburbs. But by the time the shuttle bus had made its way to the riverside bus stop things were looking a good deal more attractive. We stepped out of the bus and surveyed the veritable flotilla of boats moored to various jetties in the river and, thinking that a river trip might be nice we cast our eyes over the various kiosks belonging to companies offering pleasure cruises. We were just coming up to half past twelve and the question was "river trip then lunch, or lunch then river trip?" My eye fell on a blackboard outside one of the kiosks. One hour cruise up the river Dart, next sailing, 12:30.

Clearly fate.

Tickets were hastily purchased from a nice man in a sailor's hat, and we hurriedly made our way to the jetty where the blue and white majesty of the Cardiff Castle was waiting to depart. We clambered aboard and made our way through the saloon bar to an open seating area at the bow*. One of the nice things about catching something like this at the last minute is that you don't spend ages hanging around - we'd barely taken our seats before the boat began to move off into the middle of the Dart.

The first thing you notice when you sit in the middle of the river is the way the famous Naval College dominates the town. I was surprised to learn that the Britannia Royal Naval College wasn't actually founded until 1863. It looks older than that, which was probably deliberate, its huge red brick frontage glowering over the town. As you might expect, given that it is the place where the Senior Service trains its officers, it has an illustrious history and has trained some pretty illustrious names. His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales trained there, as did his father, His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh. In fact, as our own ship's captain pointed out, it was as an officer cadet at the Britannia College that The Duke met a young Princess Elizabeth when she came to inspect place in 1934.

The rest, as they say, is history.

The good ship Cardiff Castle made her way sedately upstream in the direction of Totness and our captain's patter really hit its stride. On the left hand bank as we cruised along was the town itself, and many, many boats moored in the safety of the river's embrace. Then there was the HMS Hindustan, a permanently moored training vessel belonging to the Britannia College, and more training launches than you could shake a stick at. The right bank was occupied first by Dartmouth's mirror town of Kingsmere, and then by what was once a ship yard, then a ship repair yard, and is now a "great development opportunity". Such is progress.

The sun was blazing down, the river was full of dashing little boats and the patter from the captain was suitably amusing as we swished onwards. I don't know whether our gallant captain also had an interest in real estate, but he certainly was keen to point out buildings that were now holiday cottages.  One impressive looking house that wasn't available for the season was "Greenway", Agatha Christie's old home, perched high up on the right hand bank. The Captain seemed to have been a fan, because he was keen to tell us all about the times the novelist had spent there. Mrs Snail, who is a fan of Mrs Christie's work and something of an expert on the subject pronounced his information to be "passable" - which is pretty high praise.

We'd have liked to have given Greenway a visit, but time sadly did not allow on this occasion. The house is now run by the National Trust, which means it costs an arm and a leg to get in, but it's definitely on our to do list for the next time we're in that neck of the woods. You can actually get there from Dartmouth by steam train on the Dartmouth Steam Railway, which strikes me as a suitably evocative means of getting to the house where Christie, who for me at least will always be an icon of the inter-war years wrote so much of her work.

We were on the short trip, so instead of continuing on up the Dart to Totness, the boat heaved to (or whatever turning around and going back the way you came is called on a boat) not far on from Greenway, just downstream of the pretty little town of Dittisham, which according to the good Captain is posessed of several fine pubs, all within crawling distance of each other. Since the commentary had covered most of the sights on the way upstream, the patter for the downstream leg was more of a stand up routine. The Captain was keep to tell us why all the lower tree branches overhanging the river formed a ruler straight line in parallel with the river's surface. "It's what we do in the winter, Ladies and Gentlemen. We get in little boats and row up with shears to keep it neat..."**

It didn't seem long before we were back at Dartmouth, but the cruise wasn't quite over yet. We made our way past the town, with Kingswear now to our left, and carried on to the mouth of the river, guarded by the forbidding facade of Dartmouth Castle, before heaving to (or whatever) again and finally returning to the jetty.

It really was a fabulous way to spend an hour, and I'd heartily recommend it. We'd timed the weather perfectly too. This particular Dorset trip hadn't exactly been rain free, but for the whole time we were on the river the sun blazed down. Just as the Cardiff Castle settled at the dockside the sun slipped modestly behind a cloud and the gentle breeze swelled to something more closely approximating a stiff wind.

Time then for a spot of lunch and a stroll around the town itself - which is a topic for next time...

*That's the pointy end, for all you landlubbers out there...

**To be fair, he did 'fess up and say that wasn't true. They have cordless hedgetrimmers now...***

***Oh, alright. It's the high tide line.