A weekend in Devon

This year I've decided to make the most of having friends living all over the country, and when my flatmate Naomi suggested a trip to her house in Devon, I couldn't pass up the opportunity.

Apart from a relatively stressful journey to Paddington (where we almost missed the train due to traffic), the rest of the journey was smooth sailing. The train went over a sea wall at the famous Dawlish Warren (which apparently was a GCSE Geography case study),and at parts there was genuinely 1m between us and the sea which was amazing, especially at night. The train was about 2 and a half hours, which wasn't too bad.

On our first day we drove to Salcombe, a little town in Devon. We bought sandwiches/ pasties and sat on the pier, taking in the sea air. We then did a cliff walk, which was about 5km but took us hours because a) we got a bit lost and b) we stopped every half an hour to take pictures of the breathtaking views. I genuinely felt like I was abroad- the beach looked mediterranean!

On the way back, we had a look in some of the shops, and got ice cream (I got clotted cream honeycomb) which was heavenly. They have really cute fudge and sweet shops as well.

In the evening we went back to Naomi's house and had a BBQ with her family, which was so nice and included some pretty passionate conversations about whether the jam or cream is put on first on a scone. We then lit a fire pit and just chilled and drank tea till about 3am. Being away from London pollution and actually being able to see the stars at night felt amazing. 

On Sunday we went kayaking in Nos Mayo. It was sooo much fun, despite our reluctance to get up at 7:30am after such a late night. It was 100% worth it though. I ended up on the solo kayak on the way back which was way harder because we were going against the wind, but it was a solid arm work out. I also unfortunately lost one of my shoes when wading through mud to get back to the car (RIP), which I didn't really care about until we had to walk on the rocky beach. P A I N. 

We went to the Ship Inn for lunch, which had tables and igloos in the sun where we warmed ourselves from the freezing water we'd just been in. I had scampi and chips which was sooo good. It was 3pm and we’d been up since 7:30am to kayak so it tasted even better.

In the evening we went to Mothecombe beach, which wasn’t as mediterranean-looking as Salcombe, but was so peaceful. On the way we saw the Erme Estuary, and all my geography GCSE knowledge about salt marshes came flooding back to me. We lit a fire on the beach as it got dark and did some gymnastics in the sunset- we were the only ones on the beach so could afford to look like idiots! The walk back through the forest in the dark to get back to the car was pretty scary though, not helped by Rhian's attempts at scaring us. 

On our last day, we went on a walk around Dartmoor. We saw wild ponies (!) and climbed up a rock to have our lunch. I had my first ever cheese sandwich- man have I been missing out. Wensleydale is the one. We went back for a final dinner at Naomi's and got on the train back to London (an hour later as we missed the first one, why are we so bad with trains?). The train back was a bit longer than the first one, but we snacked and played Indian card games- a perfect way to end the best weekend.

Now it's back to reality!