Brixham

Finally I get to Brixham. I was so excited to be in Brixham again that it was ridiculous. In all the years that I've lived in Devon, for some reason I never manage to get to Torbay. I was almost as excited as when I got to Barcelona and noticed that there was a parrot in a tree in the park. Then I noticed that there was another one, and yet another! There were parrots everywhere! Where had they all escaped from? Why was nobody paying any attention to them? I was very excited and might have been waving my arms around and running up and down a bit. It was then that my more traveled companion informed me that they all lived there and that it wasn't unusual at all, which was why nobody was looking at them.

The last time I was in Brixham was in about 1976, and I was about ten years old, and oddly it didn't look that different recently from how I remembered it. After all these years I didn't imagine turning up here at four thirty in the afternoon on a windy day in January, just as it was getting dark. Ah, Brixham of my youth, when all I was interested in was what the local toy shop was like, and which toy I would choose to spend my money on. Sharkham Point caravan park, the ice cream sodas at Pelosis, jumpers for goalposts etc. My companions headed for the charity shops, and as the day turned rapidly to night, I rushed to the quayside to see the Golden Hind. This vessel is a full size replica (actually it's a replica of a replica, as the original replica was broken in a storm in 1987) but appears far too small to have had a crew of about 76 men on board. It looks tiny... where did they put them all?

Then on to the breakwater to record the sound of a gale, and then up to Berry Head to walk to the lighthouse in the dark. I don't like being close to the edge of cliffs, it's something that puts me off walking some of the local South West coast path, which gets ludicrously close to the edge in numerous places, and I mean within 12 inches of a 500 feet drop. It gives me the heebie jeebies, and really isn't the place to be when the ground is slippery. The walk to the lighthouse was fairly straightforward, as it's surrounded by cliffs on three sides, but luckily the main path doesn't get near the edge of any of these cliffs. Wow, I was in Brixham, it really has been a long time.