May 17 Exeter to Barnstaple

A Beautiful Morning in Exeter Cathedral Close

We enjoyed our breakfast at Park View B & B and then walked down the hill to visit Exeter Cathedral. We began by sitting in the cathedral close, enjoying the sunshine, the cathedral exterior, and the trees—even though it was slightly incongruous hearing a piano and children's voices coming from a building nearby, singing, "What should we do with a drunken sailor early in the morning?" We didn't try to answer the question.

The pathways outside in the cathedral close had lines of poetry inscribed in the pavement at intervals. Our favorite quotation was "All pathways by his feet are worn, His cross is every tree," by Joseph Plunkett, an author we hadn't encountered before. His dates seemed to suggest that he might have died in the first world war—he certainly did not have a long life.

The cathedral itself was distinctive in its horizontal structure; that is, rather than the usual impression of height and vertically in the interior, the relatively low vault built all in one style and extending all the way to the east end gives a "horizontal" impression—but one that is innately satisfying and beautiful nevertheless. We got there at 9:00 a.m., and no one was there except us and the staff. Ken wanted to sing but was too shy to ask. It is one thing to sing in a small village church and quite another to do it in a major cathedral. Sigh. Unusual fact of the day: there was an astronomical clock that had a door with a round hole at the bottom, cut in the seventeenth century to allow the bishop's cat access to the clock's inner workings. Apparently mice were attracted to the fat used as a lubricant for the clock, and mice running up the ropes of the clock may have given rise to the nursery rhyme "Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse ran up the clock."

Fifteenth-century Dutch Altarpiece of the Passion (Detail)

The Royal Albert Memorial Museum was our other main event, and it was an interesting mix of art, natural history, and human history. Sara really liked the Victorian dresses, and Ken found the stuffed giraffe (!) interesting. We both liked the modern portraits because there were so many different styles. We both found a fifteenth-century Dutch altar screen amazing for its three-dimensional depiction of the passion of Christ, bringing some of the same characters from panel to panel. Also noteworthy was a video of people describing their experience of living in Exeter during the bombing of World War II. It was moving to see that there had been a service of reconciliation at the cathedral between the German city of Lubeck and the city of Exeter.

In the afternoon we took the "Tarka Line" train to Barnstaple, a 1.5 hour ride which Ken particularly enjoyed. This line is named after the famous story Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson, a fictional but very "real" account of the life of an otter and his wanderings in these parts of Devon.

Our Cottage at Herton B&B

Quote of the day, while walking up the hill to our B & B in Barnstaple: Ken: "Watch out for the proverbial banana peel." There was one on the road, and we had visions of the walk ending because of slipping on a banana peel.

When we got to our B & B, our host Jan showed us not to the room in the house which we had booked, but to the adjoining seventeenth-century holiday cottage which used to be the living quarters for the farm laborers—a special treat for the night before our first walking day! We enjoyed tea and biscuits in the cosy living room, and then later on went to the local Tesco and pieced together a wonderful dinner which we ate in the cottage. We've had a peaceful evening of reading and writing.

Weather so far: quite cool (the cathedral was freezing), with a few spatters of rain conveniently not when we were outside, for the most part.

Sara's pedometer reading: 13,390 steps, 10.042 km, 358.7 cal.

(Note: I will give the readings as they are recorded, with the caveat that for each 10 km, you need to subtract 1-1.5 km, since my pedometer is not perfectly calibrated.)