England #5 – We stroll around Exeter, Devon

note: Catching up with my PB entries about our trip to England in…MAY. Which I’m not bothering to backdate because I am really just about this far behind in real time.

Exeter is a cathedral city, to quote Wikipedia- and the cathedral is the big centerpiece. There is also the Historic Quay area along the river, which, sadly, we didn’t make it to, since our day was a little abbreviated by all the morning drama. We of course couldn’t figure out where to park when we got there and just kind of drove aimlessly through town before spotting some street parking spots with no time limits, so we nabbed one and started walking towards the cathedral. And now after looking at Google Maps, I see we were actually quite close to the quay area – like a couple of streets away!! I’d been telling myself we probably were nowhere near it. Damnation! We crossed a pedestrian bridge by a bit of the old Roman Wall that looks like it’s BESIDE the parking area for the Quay. We really didn’t plan out the Exeter visit very well, clearly. The cathedral was the big thing I wanted to see, and although I did read approximately 10 million tour books, we were kind of winging it a lot of the time. As we do.

Oh, well. Next time we’ll go to the Quay!

Nevertheless, I liked Exeter. The cathedral itself is breathtaking – we were using Google Maps to find it from where we’d parked, and I kept seeing the tops of churches and saying, “Oh, I bet that’s it!” Which was hilarious when we finally did round a corner and find it looming massively in front of us. It is enormous. Exeter itself was bigger than I was expecting, and has a nice long High Street shopping area near the cathedral that we walked around– since we didn’t realize we could have gone to the Quay instead!!

This will be picture heavy, instead of story heavy, since I detailed our Drama!!!Morning!!! previously. And I really want to finish this – I started it yesterday but spent all my time discovering our Quay miss.

We passed this church right after we parked and started walking. I said, “Is that the cathedral?!?” HAHAHAHA!!!

There were very pretty rows of houses on the way.

And gargoyles!

Exeter was a Roman fort around 55 AD. This is part of the Roman wall that surrounded the town during Roman times.

Remains of the Hall of the Vicars Choral – a college of clergy who sung in the cathedral services. It was built in 1383 and destroyed by a bomb in 1942.

The high street area –

Stopping off for a pint at the White Hart Inn – I’m borrowing a picture Kim took as it was much nicer than mine. And yes, that is the back of my head. As I rush happily towards my pint.

The White Hart Inn was on our way back to the car, post cathedral, and I’ve just realized the cathedral is going to have to wait till next time. It’s so amazing that I don’t want to shortchange it, and I’ve got to go to a staff meeting in a few minutes. In which we are going to discuss some big changes we’re about to undergo. Yikes. I’ll write about that one all by itself. One day.

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