Ferry in Plymouth

London was pouring with rain, a thunder storm had taken out a signal box on the train line, there were no trains and it was the start of our Summer holiday.  Luckily we managed to squeeze our way onto the 6:00pm train to Plymouth and only arrived one hour later than planned.  Plymouth was still steaming hot.  They were still enjoying the last days of the heat wave that had come crashing to a halt in London with Summer storms.

Tom had taken Trouper down to the Mayflower Marina in Plymouth over three days the previous weekend so we could maximise our holiday and minimise the passage making. We opened the hatches and turned on the fans to try to cool the boat down.  I felt as though we were genuinely on a Summer holiday as the contrast between home and Plymouth was so stark.

The only problem was that we were late arriving and hadn’t gone to the supermarket so we were short of the usual provisions.  The next morning we decided to cut our losses and breakfast on shore.  Luckily the  marina has a fantastic cafe/restaurant, Jolly Jacks, and we had a superb breakfast.  Less fun was the miles and miles long walk to the main road and buses, taxis etc to take you to the nearest shops.

The Mayflower marina is a favourite of mine.  The first time I visited was in 2000 where we’d stopped overnight on a delivery trip to Dartmouth.  We couldn’t get over the fact that there are bathrooms available.  We were very surprised to see fully fitted out bathrooms each with their own shower or bath, toilet and sink.  It was delightful after two days on passage in blustery conditions.  I’m pleased to say that the bathrooms are still there, fully updated and as splendid as they were in 2000.  The chandler was a sad state of affairs.  It turned out that the owners were closing down at the end of the season so they were running their stocks down.

Across the water is a redevelopment of some old naval warehouses.  Royal William Yard was a former victualler for the Royal Navy but has been turned into a small marina, restaurants and shops.  We stupidly didn’t explore until it was too late and missed out on the opportunity to try some new restaurants.

The nearest supermarket is a Lidl where we managed to stock up on some good quality fruit, veg and staples (including a handheld mixer for £12).

We stayed in the marina for two nights using Trouper as a B&B to enable us to go to the Port Eliot festival.   With that achieved we set off for Salcombe.

I felt sad that we didn’t really explore Plymouth I would have liked to have swum in the Lido or visited the old town and Plymouth Hoe but they’ll all be there the next time we visit.