England #10 – dropping in on Doc Martin at Port Isaac

note: this is actually a trip that my bff Kim and I took to England last May – I’ve been posting entries on PB and am copying them here. Very very very slowly… so slowly that at this point I actually HAVE seen Season 8 of Doc Martin! 

I forgot to mention in my last entry how much I loved driving – it was kind of bizarre, how much I loved it. Even at the time, I was thinking it was a little weird that I was finding driving in England so easy. It took several days on our first trip to get comfortable with it, but this time I was zipping around like a pro almost immediately. It did help that the traffic was so light, especially for Cornwall. We were there before tourist season started up. And we had the teeny tiny Fiat. However, I did get my fill of driving on the day we went to Port Isaac. Thanks to the Google Maps navigator on Kim’s phone that we kept using. Which clearly hated us and wanted us to die. Of exhaustion.

SO. Port Isaac is only 16 miles from where we were staying outside Bodmin. It should have taken half an hour or so. Yet, every time we would look at our estimated time of arrival…. it was still 30 minutes!!! After about an hour and a half, this DID get really maddening. And we couldn’t figure out what the hell was going wrong. In retrospect (and after a few other unpleasant experiences with Google Maps GPS) I think it was spotty phone signal/internet access and continually losing the connection without knowing we’d lost it. We realized after going through Wadebridge for the SECOND damned time that it was sending us around in circles. And we did have a road atlas, but unfortunately Kim is a terrible map-reader, and I can’t just look at a map and figure out how to go where I’m going without continuing to look at it, and I couldn’t continue to look at it because I was driving. To give us a little credit, there were quite a lot of back roads involved, and when I was telling Baker B, aka Mr. Maps, about it later, he started out scoffing at me (“How could you go around in circles?? All you had to do is look at the map!!”) then HE looked at the map and said, “Oh. Yeah. That is kind of complicated.”

I think it took us something like two and a half hours to get there. We finally drug out the old old GPS I’d brought with me, which is so very very old that you can’t update the maps, so it had issues too, but from here on out we just used both of them. And got to listen to them disagreeing, the Google Maps with her flat American voice and the GPS with his slightly-annoyed British voice, which was pretty amusing. But HE got us going the right way, FINALLY, and we started actually seeing signs for Port Isaac, and at last arrived at a car park. Which was way up on a hill and the wind was whipping and it was COLD and we couldn’t figure out how to do the payment to park online (and of course we did not have correct change, which was a recurring theme with us when paying to park) and we were STARVING because we’d had nothing but coffee all day and it was way up in the afternoon at this point. So, yeah, we were both about to have a meltdown and neither of us was really as appreciative of the gorgeous view as we’d have liked. And we had a fair walk down to the town itself, because of course we just parked at the first car park we saw and didn’t realize there was one a WHOLE lot closer to the town we could have gone to. And being off season, it had plenty of parking. But hey, at least we got lots of exercise in! Despite not appreciating it at ALL until we spotted a little restaurant – The Terrace Tea Room, which actually appears to be a bed and breakfast now I’m looking it up. It was a little teeny restaurant in a little house, with one guy taking orders and making the food, and it honestly looked like he lived there too. But we had Cornish Pasties – veggie – and nice HOT tea (we were freezing – it was quite chilly) and a peaceful rest with a pretty view, and recovered from the traumas of the drive.

The lovely view from the car park that we failed to fully enjoy due to being exhausted, frozen, nerve-frayed, and ravenous:

The Terrace Tea Room:

And its view:

And proper tea! Yes, somebody did drip tea all over that pretty tablecloth.

It was kind of busy when we arrived, but we sat so long recovering and drinking tea that we ended up the only people there, and the owner chatted with us about Port Isaac and Doc Martin, which is of course why we were drawn to Port Isaac to begin with – it’s where Doc Martin is filmed! If you’ve never seen Doc Martin, you need to go start watching it right this minute. It’s about a cranky, socially-oblivious (possibly Aspergers) surgeon who suddenly develops a blood phobia and moves from London to become the doctor in the teeny coastal town of Portwenn (Port Isaac’s alias) where his elderly aunt lives and he spent summers as a child. And has to learn to deal with the locals who would greatly prefer a more caring and warm general practitioner but got Doc Martin. It is hilarious, and very sweet. And they were actually still filming Season 8!!! But, sadly, they didn’t film the day we were there because it was overcast. They had filmed the day before, and would be filming again the next week — when we’d be gone on to Bath. But still, it was lots of fun to see the town even without the filming (and we COULD have checked the website to see the schedule but of course that didn’t occur to either of us – we weren’t even sure they still were filming). Also, I still haven’t seen Season 8 although it’s out for streaming now – Baker B and I are working it in soon – we got sidetracked by Game of Thrones. Which everyone else in the world has seen but us, and now we’re totally hooked on it. Doc Martin will be a REALLY nice contrast, though.

SO, after recuperating for a bit with tea and pasties, we headed down into town. Naturally, being us, we took the longest way possible into town. We realized later there was a road right in front of us that went straight there, but we totally missed that. Which actually was great, because we ended up walking part of the Coastal Path, and the views were stunning!

“Oh, hai, human!”

OMG!!! It’s Doc Martin’s house! Presented by Greeter Gull, who is pointing out that it’s NOT the great big house, but the teeny tiny little house on the left of the great big house.

You always see this ….lock?? Whatever it is – in the show.

It’s a really pretty town.

And…what a surprise!!! I’m out of time!!! I’m writing at work as we’re in a surprisingly slow period currently. I’m actually bored. This will end day after tomorrow when pre-registration is over and we start working on May graduation applications, but right now it’s really really dead. Which is nice for us since we’re still without a receptionist due to Aggravation Receptionist’s abrupt departure a few weeks ago. Of course, as I’ve always said, AR not here is just like AR here, but way less annoying. And AR not here ever again is like a great weight has lifted off us, and none of us mind the slightly increased workload in the least.

But back to the point, I will continue with Port Isaac shortly.