This is Susan writing. We ended our most recent entry saying (in reference to the driving) that we expected more of the same. But instead it got worse--much worse: damage-to-Rover worse.
We got out of Dawlish reasonably easily, compared to getting in, by heading south and west to a motorway. From there the driving was easy, but with amazing long hills and views. The hills concerned us a little because of our hill/gas problem in Brighton and because our fuel gauge was getting low. But we found gas (at £1.41/litre or $8.32/gal) and went on to the day’s first stop, a National Trust house . . . only to find that it was closed on Mondays. Undaunted, we headed south to the amazing Eden Project, with the GPS taking us in a very roundabout way through a very small town. (Hmm, surely we can do better than that on the way out.)
The Eden Project is a huge piece of engineering and imagination, built since 1997 in an abandoned china clay open pit in Cornwall. It is the quintessential “green” project: educational . . . practical . . . highlighting our dependence on the natural world and encouraging us to care for it. It has several large geo domes made of heavy plastic containing literally thousands of plants from the tropics and all over the world. It attracts thousands of people from all over the world, and no wonder: it was really spectacular and a wonderful way to spend the day.
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I was wrong. The very first thing we encountered was a “diversion” (detour), so we were headed off on what the map shows as a “white “ road--the kind to be avoided at all times. However, once you are on these roads there is no way to turn around. In fact, you are lucky to have passing room if you meet someone, which we did three times. We passed a car that pulled aside into a little space. We backed up about 50 feet to let a tank truck pass. Then we asked a lady for directions at a cross road, and when I asked if Rover could get through she stepped back for a better look, hesitated and then said, “Yes, the milk lorries get through the lanes” (note her telling use of the word “lanes’).
Lanes indeed. The road in places was barely wide enough to pass through. In one small town we could have both reached out and touched stone houses on either side. I mean that literally. We pulled in our mirrors and forged ahead, branches brushing against both sides of the vehicle (Rover measures 8’-3” with the mirrors pulled in). And then at another narrow passage we heard a crunch and discovered the front-facing awning support had been partly torn away from the side of the coach: some of those hedges, it turns out, are actually rock walls covered with vine. But there was nothing to do but keep going. Then we came upon a farm vehicle, one of the big ones with the cultivators folded up, that was backing up toward us because he couldn’t get through! I got out of the car to find out what he was planning, discovered we had two cars following us. We all started to back up; fortunately there was a place about 100 feet behind that David could back into, and the tractor was able to clear us with about 3" to spare and turned into a field..
We let the cars go ahead of us and we were off again. We fairly quickly ended up at the campground, arriving from a direction that the directory listing would never have given us, after maybe half an hour. (We saved many miles of travel but added many gray hairs.) (And David used a few words I haven’t heard him say in a long long time.) We were able to put the awning support back in place; it seems to be very secure, although scratched down to the metal in places. It was very frightening and it was a huge relief and a real blessing to get to the campground. It cannot get worse. It simply cannot get worse than this. The photo is of the campground we were in at the end of the day (but it looks a lot like what we had just been through.)
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