Coastal Trail Series – South Devon

This is the hump race. It will mean four down and three left to go. This month the race was located in South Devon with race base in the seaside town of Beesands.

The other day we had seen a show by James May (Top Gear) and Oz Clark (some wine buff dude) on finding the best British drink. This week they visited Plymouth and the gin distillery. Not being regular drinkers ourselves I was aware of the classic G&T but that was about it. So, we set out from Bristol early Friday morning to head to Plymouth.

Some interesting facts about Plymouth gin and the surrounding areas in South Devon –
-the Mayflower left from Plymouth with the pilgrim fathers to America
-the pilgrims spent their last night in the building which is now the Plymouth distillery
-a plaque on the wall inside the distillery has a list of the prominent pilgrims that left on the Mayflower
-the Plymouth gin bottle has a picture of the Mayflower on the front of it and a monk on the rear (it has since been suggested that the distillery was not a monastery at some point but they kept the monk on it anyway in case the finding changes)
-the South Devon region is famous for pirates, shipwrecks and a famous disaster that occurred along Slapton Sands beach in World War 2.
The beach and coast was used to undertake “Exercise Tiger” which were actually two different exercises. The first was a training exercise in 1941 that combined a number of different forces, numbering in all 100,000 men. The second in 1944 was a practice run for the D-Day invasion of Normandy by the British and American troops. Unfortunately through failings of the Allied forces passing German U boats were able to attack and 749 American soldiers lives were lost.

Back to gin – we learnt quite a lot about it, how it is made, the tastes that come through on your palette and how many of the drinks came about. Interesting to note is that the gin and tonic came from the Commonwealth officers living in India at that time. They found putting their quinine (for malaria) which was rather bitter and foul tasting in gin it made it more palatable. This then lead to tonic water with quinine in it. Schweppes today uses an artificial quinine flavoring however we did try a brand called Fever Tree and they put a natural quinine in their product. The dosage is not enough to use this instead of malaria tablets!

We did a quick trip to Beesands to see where race base was going to be on Saturday then a trip out to the lighthouse at Start Point. There was a strange fog all day over the water and this started creeping inland later in the day. We stayed the night in a fabulous place called The Forge Inn in a town called Totnes. The inn was a 600 year old converted forge.

Saturday morning when we woke it was glorious. Clear blue skies, perfect weather. I decided to walk the 10km run (unofficially) and keep an eye out for Steve as the half marathon, marathon and 10km run converged on the last few kilometers. He caught up with me about 1 kilometer from the end so we ran together for a bit. Not the easiest to do in my tramping boots. I have an even greater heightened respect for the half marathon and marathon runners as having seen the terrain first hand!

It was a great couple of days away. I think today we will take it easy, go to the movies and let the muscles rest. Next month – Pembrokeshire in Wales.