This is still a blog post in the series "I should be writing about caving and running but am not". When I didn't go to Wales that opened other possibilities, and it turned out Neil had some time to spend. And he came up with the revolutionary idea of having a normal day.
A normal day in England. We wondered a bit on what that would mean; our penchant for societal criticism suggested some drunk driving and domestic violence, but instead we settled for going to the beach and having pub lunch. Really normal!
He took me to Slapton Beach; it's a playground for all our coastal scientists, and I had heard lots about it already. The plan was that Neil would run there while I did whatever came to mind (which was walking up the coastal path for a bit, and clambering over some rocks), then have lunch in a lovely beer garden, and then go back to the beach for some ogling of rocks. Can't go wrong with that! And it was splendid indeed! That ankle should heal soon before I get too used to being normal...
From higher up it's easier to see why this is a strange place: a very thin strip of land separating the sea and a small freshwater lake
Slapton Beach was used by the Allied forces to practice D-Day. This is a tank that ended up on the bottom of the sea during these exercises, and that was later retrieved and placed here as a memorial. The silly thing, which I hadn't heard of before, is they had come up with the daft idea of floating tanks. This one wasn't properly waterproofed and sank...
England's charming face: old pubs and even older ruins
The beer garden
Perhaps not very English: very good food! The meat on my plate, by the way, is pigeon; one does not often encounter them in such inoffensive state!
Rocks rock.
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