George's World Tour South of Stoke - Day 13
Once again I was woken today by traffic and sun. I managed to sleep in a bit longer though and got up at about 7am. After breakfast we had a mooch round Dartmouth and had a cream tea which was much more satisfactory than the previous one, maybe 8 out of 10 (the jam was ok but not excellent, and there was not quite enough of it). We bought some lunch and then headed off to spend the rest of the day on the beach.
The beach we'd decided to head for is called Blackpool Sands and is just a few miles along the coast from Dartmouth. It looks like a sandy beach from afar but is actually small shingle (not that we were bothered about that until we tried to walk on it with no shoes on). We settled down with our Kindles, had our crab and cucumber sandwiches and quiche, and then hired out some stand up paddle boards from the beach shop.
I hadn't really packed for a beach holiday (don't know why, as we had planned to come to the beach), so had to improvise by wearing my running shorts (that have not been run in during the holiday at all), and a colourful sports bra that I tried to convince myself did not look at all like a sports bra and in fact was obviously a sporty bikini top.
The sea was as calm as a millpond and there was no wind, and the man in the hire shop said we should be fine with them so long as we've got some sense of balance. By the time we got down to the sea with them my feet were killing me as I'd decided to leave my beach shoes in George so I didn't get tan lines on my ankles. We started off kneeling on the boards, and after 5 or 10 minutes I progressed to crouching and then finally standing (which was easier than crouching). I was rather smug to find that Claire was still at the kneeling stage at this point, although she got quite grumpy at my smugness and that we'd finally found a paddle sport that I'm better at than she is.
We had the boards for an hour and I did manage to coax Claire to her feet for the last half hour. The boards are much more stable than I expected although it is quite hard work on your legs keeping balanced. My legs felt like they were permanently tensed up and a bit shaky but I don't think anyone could tell from a distance. We did a few laps of the bay and I'm sure all the other people on the beach were suitably impressed and said to each other "I wonder if that's as easy as it looks?" like we did a few days ago at Lulworth. It is quite a surreal feeling, as it's a bit like you're just standing in the surface of the sea.
I paddled past a couple of lads in their late teens who were having a swim, and overheard them saying "I'm sure that girl's wearing a sports bra" in a slightly incredulous tone of voice. I resisted the temptation to paddle over and spout a load of feminist stuff about men wandering around with no shirts on at the slightest hint of sun, and just paddled serenely past them instead.
We had the biggest Belgian buns I've ever seen afterwards, and spent another hour or so sunbathing. I fell asleep and woke up with a sunburnt left arm and a headache. Claire says she isn't sunburnt but appears to be red all over.
We've parked up for the night in the National Trust car park again. We've been bold enough to have a barbeque here, and Claire has made some bread rolls on it which have turned out far better than any of the muffin attempts.
Tomorrow we will start to head towards home, maybe stopping for a final cream tea on the way.
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