We’ve been hanging out so long now in Dartmouth that our transom is starting to show a small garden. But it is hard to leave. There is a long river to explore with several charming villages, lots to see in town, good restaurants, and for all the tourists about, Dartmouth and its environs have a pleasant ambiance.
The docks and moorings are extremely crowded, but not by the standards of the Solent a little further up the coast. And there is room to anchor. If you look hard you can see Wind Horse in the background just to the right of center.
There are markets, newstands, and hardware stores close to the dinghy docks. And the anchorage is relatively peaceful. In short, a perfect place to tie up loose ends with the boat, and business, where it is easy to bounce between productive endeavors and just chilling.
And as you can see from the sky, we’ve been having a lovely spell of dry weather brought to us by the Azores High.
The buildings ashore are colorful, and even the modern structures maintain the traditional style.
We’ll not bore you with a lot of town photos. Just one of the main street hotels and pubs adjacent to the tidal small boat basin. Visitor dinghies get to use floating docks which work at all stages of the tide.
We’ve been spending a lot of time cruising in the dinghy. Of all the yachts we have seen here, this is our favorite to look at (not to own – too much brightwork!).
This is our new friend Chris, one of the steam train engineers.
If you are interested in tasteful design, have a look at the next photos of the interior of a restaurant called the Dartmouth Apprentice. This is a non-profit training facility, teaching new skills to the unemployed. At first glance not where you’d expect a lovely meal.
But the minute you walk inside it is easy to see where this could be an intriguing experience.
The church theme is carried off nicely.
Juxtaposed with modern furnishings.
The food was OK too. If you are in the area, check this out.
We’ll leave you with a few random photos of Dartmouth the town and harbor.
Posted by Steve Dashew (September 12, 2009)
September 14th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Good one Steve. Reminds me of the children’s series of books “Finding Waldo.”
September 26th, 2010 at 1:13 am
Hi! We used to moor at “Philips” (Boatyard I don`t know if they are still there)so I know the area intimately, in fact I`m still a member of Brixham Yacht club even though I live in surrey :o(( dont ask why, I guess I`m still hanging onto the things I loved in life. Dartmouth is very beautiful. My friend is the relief engineer on Royalist and tells me he was on her at the time you took this photo (what a coincidence if thats true) I dont know if the still do it but the Naval college which you show so brilliantly in your photo used to have a visiting Frigate visit on “navy days” and it had to be on the river turned right at the bottom of the colleg. As you can imagine it was tight, and the “jimmy on the bridge” must have had to sweat buckets as he did it knowing that the Admiral was on the balcony watching :o). The divers sitting on the bouy farther down river (Having been deposited on the way in) waiting for her return to moor her up would always be happy to comment on the capability of this skipper or that one :o))Roib