Torquay with G-Line Coaches 2026

Sathurday 25 July 2026. I have a break from medical appointments for a while so today we are on a coach which will take us to Torquay for a week.

Regular readers will remember that we took this same coach holiday in May 2024. We'll visit a few different places and take a few trips which will seem new to me because I went to sleep during them last time!

I'm still running that risk but nowhere near as bad. Meanwhile I can also enjoy the scenery from the coach window as we head down the M5 motorway towards Devon. Also, as can be seen from the top pic above, I have some snazzy new caps to wear in blue and beige!

Sunday 26 July 2026. Our driver has put on an unscheduled excursion to Brixham. Unfortunately the local authority has now decided that coaches have to discharge passengers and park quite a walk away down past the harbour. The legs are far better than the last time we did this holiday but I'm not up to a sprint yet and it was a full half-hour's walk in temperatures well into the 30s before we came to the harbour, having passed by the somewhat odorous charms of the local fish processing plant. Lovely...

We were glad that the first café to be seen had room to let us sit down and I thankfully wrapped myself around a cup of tea. Blimey is that me? I look like Methuselah's granddad...

Miss Franny meanwhile is making short work of a latte...

Brixham was making the most of the weather to bring out the blooms. The last time we were down in Torbay there was a water scare in Brixham.

The replica of Drake's Golden Hind No plan exist so we don't really know what it looked like exactly but someone at least wrote down the measurements so that although the other replica in London looks quite a bit different at least they are the same size front to back and across!

There were a few craft stalls along the edge of the harbour, one an old van with a somewhat less than swarthy old sea dog selling pirate-related carvings.

Monday 27 July 2026. Dartmouth. We went from Paignton on the steam train, took a ferry over the river and then a boat ride up the river and down again to where Ian was waiting with the coach. I managed to stay awake this time too...

One of Dartmouth's older buildings.

Tuesday 28 July 2026. We have a free day and get a bus to the point where the promenade sweeps off to the right. We stop at the first coffee shop - a Costa - sitting outside on the terrace. A woman comes to sit at the next table with a small dog. "She's a bit quiet..." explained it's owner, "she was bitten by another dog yesterday." But the old Burke animal magic tempts her to come for a reassuring pat and stroke. We walk a bit further then turn to walk back, with regular rest stops where a conversation can always be found.

Wednesday 29 July 2026. Our excursion today is to Plymouth, once a regular visiting place for work, but then I never got to take a boat ride along the coast and river mouth. Our tour is to sail from close to the famous Mayflower Steps, where the Pilgrims set sail in 1620 for the New World across the Atlantic.

Our boat squeezes into it's space on the jetty. And we settle down for a hour's sail.

Also that evening we went to an excellent variety show at Babbacombe Theatre, starring Steve Laister with comedy, music, magic and dancers providing a wonderful night's entertainment.

Thursday 30 July is another free day and Ian puts on a shorter excursion to Teignmouth and Dawlish. I'm afraid I didn't take any photos that day, but once back we did get on our usual table in the hotel garden which allowed me to finish this sketch of the side of the hotel.

Friday 31 July. We take a trip up the coast to Sidmouth. Now I had booked two holidays in quick succession, so that despite having to head home tomorrow, we will be coming back down to Sidmouth the following Saturday! However this particular weekend the famous Folk Festival takes place and there were many craft stalls along Sidmouth's elegant promenade and a fair number of singers of (it has to be said) various degrees of tunefulness...

We got back to Torquay and our hotel to see a procession of three or four traction engines trundling past the hotel.

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Torquay Weekend and The Jukebox Heroes Show,13-15 June 2008

A short series of articles about a long weekend that we took to Torquay in order to see a sixties show with John Leyton, The Honeycombs and Craig Douglas.

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Brixham

Just to round off the posts about our weekend in Torquay (before the next weekend actually hits!) here are a few of views of Brixham.

We had been before and the roads are somewhat exciting around the harbour - very narrow streets with at least one hairpin bend that requires you to try your best, then reverse and try again! Single-track streets that are two-way etc. etc. Anyway we chickened out and went on the bus. This made it more relaxing and used less fuel which was a bit hard to come by that weekend anyway!

The harbour is lovely. A typical fishing harbour, with pastel painted cottages lining the hills behind and to the sides of the cove.

This is the unlikely landing point for William, Prince of Orange who led The Glorious Revolution to become King William III and deposed King James II who it was feared would lead Great Britain back to Catholicism. It is called the Glorious Revolution because it was mainly bloodless (though I'd be willing to bet someone got a bloody nose over it somewhere...) However the fact that he turned up from foreign parts with a dirty great army and was suddenly given the crown of England could justify the thought that there had been an invasion. It may have happened to have been a convenient time to be invaded but when he jumped onto the quay at Brixham and gave his speech the locals were probably a bit bemused. He couldn't speak a word of English...

"Woss he say?"
"Dunno - it's all in foreign innit? Oy! You! I'll buy your fish, how much a pound? Talk in English can't you? Ow! Me nose! I thought this was supposed to be a bloodless revolution?!?"

His imposing statue is either less than flattering...or the nose has fallen off at some point. William III of England was the son of Dutch ruler William II of Orange and Princess Mary of Orange, who was the daughter of King Charles I of England. In an effort to totally confuse readers William III (not William II) went on to marry Mary (not Mary his Mum) but Mary, his fifteen year old cousin, daughter of his Uncle James, the Duke of York. They ruled England jointly as King William III and Queen Mary II (the first Mary being Henry VIII's daughter, Bloody Mary).

Fran decided to go for a look around the shops whilst I walked around the harbour taking the odd (sometimes very odd) photo and reflecting a little on royal inbreeding which just a decade or so later would lead to the most severe case of Habsburg Chin in the person of King Charles II of Spain whose ancestors had spent eight generations in happy incestual relationships. Keep it in the family then... There was a notably unmodern ship in the harbour, so I went to have a nosy.

It was a replica of Francis Drake's ship, the Golden Hind, in which he sailed around the world. (I mean in the first one...not the replica.) In fact there's another replica in London and they look nothing like each other. This is possibly because it's hard to build a replica when we haven't a clue what the boat looked like. What we do know are the measurements of it and the fact that it is highly likely that there was a pointy bit at the front, a window or two at the back and a deer's head stuck on it somewhere as otherwise it would have been called something else.

"'Ere - wossat on 'is boat?"
"Aw no... it's Bambi's mam, ain't it?"

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