we say our farewells and we are off again ... Jack and Heidi are getting married in August and are having the reception at the Living Coasts cafe in Torquay ... there are directions so we use them to navigate from Totnes to Torquay ... once again we are on the free-flowing side of the road - the traffic on the other side of the road is log-jammed for two maybe three miles outside Paignton ... the blue jug gods are smiling on us once again ...
what a fine place Torquay turns out to be ... more continental than Scarbro, certainly warmer, but really not as nice
we explore the harbour, ogle the floating gin-palaces, walk up and down the main shopping street and make our way back to the cafe at Living Coasts for lunch ... we sit on the terrace looking out across a sun-drenched Torbay munching on cauliflower cheese and chips .... yumyum!
Torquay is Martin Parr territory and the lure of photographing the uniformed Hinkley Youth Marching Band, the retired and the holiday-maker baking gently in the sun is too much ... but those images are all on film so it will be some time before I can see if i have captured a gem or two ....
the non-Betjeman aim of this trip is to photograph a small selection of my collection of blue and white souvenire ware in the places that they commemorate .. I hold the object at arms length and photograph it ... while I am doing this Benedict is photographing me with his medium format Mamiya ... this is not an anonymous process ... however, what is interesting is the almost total lack of interest in what we are doing ... so far, only the three small children at Bourton-on-the-Water have approached us to ask what we are doing .. on the harbourside in Torquay although surrounded by people, no-one watches us and no-one asks us what we are doing ....
and it is the same in Princetown in the heart of Dartmoor ... we toy with the idea of setting up in front of the prison gate, but Benedict rightly suggests this would not go down too well and as we do not want to include a night in the cells on this trip, we opt for a more distant vista of the prison and Princetown ...
and then we have a cream tea ... I can feel my arteries hardening ... then to find the house and workshop of Peter Randall-Page where we will be staying tonight
the drive from Princetown takes us to the northern edge of Dartmoor and a view back north ... the trip is drawing to a close ...
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