Beer in Beer

Monday 9th June 2014

George's World Tour South of Stoke - Day 9

Yesterday evening was rainy on and off, so we decided make the most of the electric hookup and watch a DVD. We would never have chosen to have a DVD player in our camper van, but George was slightly pre-owned and already had one fitted (I say slightly because although he was definitely pre-owned, it was pretty obvious he'd never been used as a campervan before we rescued him from his life of boredom). Anyway, the DVD player does come in handy occasionally and makes a change from Kindles and writing blogs.

We watched some more episodes of what is possibly the worst American crime series ever - Major Crimes. It sounded good on the back of the box but is a bit like Deal or No Deal where Noël Edmonds has been replaced with a few dead bodies, the contestants with some murder suspects, and the banker with the Deputy District Attorney. Whatever you do don't buy it, you can borrow mine if for some strange reason my description has sold it to you.

We packed up this morning and had a leisurely drive along the coast, stopping for lunch on Chesil Beach. Apart from being the title of a novel by Ian McEwan which I have yet to read because the last book of his I read (Solar) was like suicide by novel, it's an unusual shingle beach which is mainly separated from the land by a lake thing called the Fleet. We'd hoped that we might be able to fit in a quick paddle down the Fleet and back but I don't think boats are allowed. There are signs up saying access was on foot only, and the deep shingle prevented us porting the canoe to the water (which was about a mile away before you think I'm being pathetic).

Anyway, we had a nice lunch on the beach watching the fisherman and pondering why a toddler with the family next to us was wearing a purple helmet. Claire decided it was to reshape the toddlers head after a forceps birth (apparently for some reason she has Googled this previously and it is actually something that some parents do). I thought the toddler might be epileptic but it didn't really look like an epilepsy helmet. I'm also slightly paranoid about my own head now after my forceps birth some time ago, but think it is too late to do anything about it at the age of 36 and three quarters.

We left Chesil beach after a while non the wiser and continued on in George.

Our next stop was at Charmouth, which is world famous for its fossil beach. Claire was dying to visit as she'd been to a fossil beach nearby as a child and said that practically every rock on the beach has a fossil in. It all started off a bit disappointing (and I was starting to think that Claire had been tricked by her parents) but eventually we realised what sort of rocks had the fossils in and managed to find a few baby ammonite and shell fossils.
I got a bit bored after a while as I was hungry, which Claire eventually picked up on, so we headed back along the beach to the cafe.

One of our objectives today was to have our first cream tea of the holiday, which to be honest is something that we have overlooked up to now which is totally unacceptable. However, the cafe had probably the most unappealing looking scones ever, which were not only not served with cream, but no jam either! So we decided to put the cream tea off and just had ice creams which were much more satisfactory.

Then we visited the fossil shop, felt quite embarrassed about our fossil finds (Claire actually left hers on the car park in disgust), and headed off to find somewhere to stop over for the night.
The choice of wild camping spots was limited, and I was getting a bit grumpy about it. To be honest, I wanted to spend a relaxed evening by the sea eating fish and chips and drinking beer. Claire was eventually persuaded round to my way of thinking, and we have checked into a campsite at a village called Beer!

We've had our fish and chips, which were the best I've had in ages, with both fish, chips and curry sauce being excellent, and the salt and vinegaring technique was far superior to the norm. We're now sitting in the beer garden of the Anchor inn in Beer, drinking Peroni overlooking the sea.

The rest of the evening will either be spent drinking more beer in Beer, or watching more Major Crimes if we can't fit any more food and drink in.

Tomorrow the search for cream teas will continue in earnest. Now that we have crossed the border into Devon it shouldn't be too difficult.

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