Buckfast Abbey

With a sad heart we packed up this morning to leave Devon and drive home. It has been a wonderful week with very hot weather, which although too hot at times was infinitely better than a week of rain. We had some excellent meals out, last night's being the cherry on the top when we ate at a Michelin Plate restaurant where the chef was the runner up of Professional Masterchef in 2016 - her mango soufflé (gluten free) with coconut and lime syrup was the stuff of dreams! Unfortunately the leisure industry has been hit hard by the lack of staff due to the double whammy of Brexit and the pandemic, and many restaurants are struggling to open every day due to the shortage of staff.

We decided to drive through Exeter and as our route took us past Buckfast Abbey near Buckfastleigh, we stopped to have a quick visit. The first abbey was built here in 1018, but was demolished in 1539 after the dissolution of the monasteries, and this current abbey was founded by French Benedictine monks in 1882 and rebuilt from 1907.

As expected the traffic was awful. We had so many deviations and back routes due to road works and problems on the main roads, it was a nightmare of a journey. The UK cannot cope with the extra traffic from staycations, especially in counties with narrow country lanes like Devon and Cornwall. We had some frustrating moments where trucks and cars could not pass each other on the small lanes and rows of cars had to reverse - in one instance an experienced truck driver got out his truck to help a particularly useless driver who was stuck and could not pass the truck because they were too nervous to go closer to the hedgerows. I am sure a significant amount of people would usually be holidaying abroad and hopefully they can again soon as the traffic in these holiday destination areas must be a nightmare for the locals.

We had lunch in Exeter and then continued home - our expected 3 hour 45 minute journey from Devon home took 6 and a half hours of driving time( not including the stops) which was not much fun.

Xena was delighted to be home again - she was so good on holiday, so easy and was very patient in restaurants too. The heat this week prevented her from having any long walks, and we also did not do any running due to lack of areas to run and the heat, so we have come home feeling like slugs as we usually exercise most days. 

We saw extracts of the Tokyo Olympics Opening Ceremony tonight on TV, how sad was that? Poor Tokyo to have incurred the cost of that with no revenue from spectators, and for the athletes to compete in the next couple of weeks with no cheering from the stands.