On the evening that I'm writing this post, we've been home for the same number of nights that we were away for, which is absolutely insane but thankfully the nights that we were away didn't fly by quite so fast, and we got to do everything that we wanted to - eat incredible food, relax on the beach, and thoroughly enjoy our minimoon since our Santorini honeymoon didn't feel like the right thing to do right now.
A note from me, who has now written the whole post: this is a 9 minute read which is a LONG time, so if you're just here for the pretty photos, please feel free to watch a TikTok of the trip which I made here!
Something I did learn from this trip is that if you want a 'long weekend' style trip like we did, travel out on the Thursday. Stephen worked a night on the Wednesday, and then we packed up and left as soon as he was awake during the late afternoon on Thursday. Due to train delays and everything, a 3 hour journey actually turned into something like 4.5-5 hours and we got into our bnb at 9pm, but we didn't mind it as much as we would've if that had taken up our entire Friday instead. Another thing to know is that if you're travelling into somewhere like Devon where your main food source will be pubs - a lot of their kitchens close at 9, so you will end up getting a takeaway from a greasy spoon, (not to be confused with a Wetherspoons, we've boycotted them for over a year now and that's not going to change), when you arrive, which is what we did and it was actually alright. Eating mozzarella sticks and burgers at 10pm in a beautiful air bnb with the love of your life? There are much worse things in life. Now that we've covered what we did on our first evening, we can get into the good stuff.
So we unintentionally organised our trip in a way which I very much loved, and would recommend following if you're like us and travel tends to tire you out a little bit. We had a one day in/one day out sort of trip, so we spent days one and three in Paignton where our bnb was, and alternated the days where we travelled out to Dartmouth and Totnes, so that we could have rest days in the middle where we just stayed in our local area and explored that.
Day one involved wandering around the beach, taking photos in front of beach huts which matched our outfits, going to the arcade, (and winning what appeared to be a lot of tickets, but only won us some packs of sweets, which I do still consider a win!), and eating in a few of the local bars. While eating dinner in one called 'The Spinning Wheel', we discovered that they do karaoke on a Monday evening so we made plans to come back and sing on our last night - which we did. Stephen was absolutely incredible, (although he doesn't think so and is refusing to watch the video I filmed of him singing), whereas I am just genuinely so happy there isn't a video of me at all because I SUCKED. I'm never doing karaoke again but the amount of sambuca shots I drank afterwards to get over the embarrassment were delicious, and I would drink them any day for sure, but I'm never singing outside of my shower again.
Anyway! Saturday was one of our 'out' days, and we got the steam train to Kingwear, followed by a ferry which took us to Dartmouth. Saturday was also Digital Detox Day, so I'm pretty sure I haven't posted about what we did on that day at all, so you heard it here first. I totally enjoyed not using my phone at all the entire day, apart from for using it as a camera while we were out. It was so nice to switch off for the day - it was my second year in a row of doing DDD, and I do still have a screen time limit, and the same hour timers I put on my social media apps a year ago. Habits do stick, they just might take some time, but it's worth it!
Back to the trip, I'd never been on a steam train before, and it is so cool, I wish I could travel on them much more frequently - Stephen has photos of me where my eyes have lit up because I heard the 'choo choo' sound. Honestly, it's so much fun. We weren't on it for very long, nor were we on the ferry for very long, but we did have a lovely time in Dartmouth when we arrived. Something I noticed in Devon is that so many of the houses are painted really pretty colours, so the majority of my photos from the ferry are of them. There are so many lovely back alleys where all of the gardens and houses are just beautiful. After we were done exploring all of the steep hills to find the pretty views, we had brunch at a cafe called 'Alf Resco', (say it out loud, I love it), and had lots of tea, along with what were probably the tastiest sandwiches ever, and I know that sounds insane for sandwiches but everything just tasted so fresh and amazing. Mine was a simple chicken and avocado salad sandwich, but I've somehow never had anything like it - Stephen felt the same about his steak and mushroom baguette, definitely give it a go if you're ever in Dartmouth.
As with all of Devon, I really liked how it was decorated - this one had pretty pastel bunting all around, and it was so nice.
There was also a puppy in the cafe which I was caught on camera smiling at - my advice is that everyone marries someone who looks at them the way I look at that puppy, I was so in love with it.
We then went on an hour long river cruise which took us all around Dartmouth and back. We saw lots of gorgeous places along the way like Bayards Cove, Kingswear and Dartmouth Castles, Britannia Royal Naval College, Dittisham Village, Sir Walter Raleigh's Boathouse, Greenway Quay and The Estate of the late Dame Agatha Christie. The weather was incredibly hot while we were on the cruise so it felt so summery, and the sea breeze was definitely welcomed.
While we're on the weather, I should talk about how I packed for the trip, as when we had checked the forecast before we left, it looked like it was going to be very up and down in terms of weather, and I'm happy to announce that we both had the right balance of summer outfits, and ways of making them warmer if we needed them to be. I packed one white crop top, one pair of shorts, one pair of jeans, two bodysuits, (one white and one black), two skirts, one swimsuit, (which I wore under jeans as it was too cold to just wander around in as a swimsuit), one jumper, (which is a cute matching jumper I bought for us a few months ago), one day dress, and one evening dress for if we went somewhere fancier. The beauty of packing the monochrome bodysuits was that I knew they would look equally as good if I had to wear jeans over them, or if I was lucky enough, (I was), to be able to wear them with the shorts or the colourful skirts that I packed instead. I only wore the jumper on one occasion, and that was on a particularly cold evening in a bar where we were there quite late and I was just suddenly absolutely freezing. For six days, that was pretty much everything that I needed, and it was the perfect amount of variations to an outfit so that I could make it work if it was hotter or colder than expected, so that's my advice for anyone who is going somewhere with unpredictable weather, who doesn't want to pack a lot. I also made sure to pack some new accessories such as my blue daisy earrings, and my north star hoops from River Island - so cute, as well as some scrunchies from New Look. One of them came with a matching clip as part of a set, and it was the best thing to put my hair up with when it got warmer, and was still very stylish. Look out for them in the photos!
Saturday evening was my favourite evening of the whole trip, but it very easily could've not worked out how it did, so big thanks to the universe for this one. As we were walking around Paignton on Friday, we'd spotted a gorgeous Italian restaurant that we knew that we wanted to go to for our 'date night' evening, (the whole trip was one massive date, but I mean a fancier meal than a pub), but little did we know that we'd find out a few hours prior to us walking in that it was completely booked, as were majority of the restaurants near us, and we'd almost resorted to a pub, while all dressed up, when we decided to just try our luck and walk in, even though we'd heard the voicemail message earlier in the day that they were entirely booked out all month. We walked in expecting nothing, but we found out that there was an empty reserved table, and as it had been 20 minutes past the reservation time, they let us have it. It was the most incredible cheese and prosecco-filled evening, and overall such an experience, (right down to Stephen having to come rescue me from a large spider in the bathroom, can't take me anywhere), so our outfits definitely did not go to waste, which was amazing!
After an incredible eventful Saturday, we spent Sunday as God intended and had a lie-in, before wandering into the local area of Paignton to pop our heads into the souvenir stores, eat Cornish pasties, and buy a huge amount of fudge from the beloved Roly's, (if you're our family, please come over to collect yours before we eat it all, thank you!). We also noticed that there were some arcades which we hadn't been to as we'd only been to the ones on the pier, and we tried our hand at winning some more packets of sweets, which we did - I totally love the arcade, and even if you just win something sweet, it doesn't take away from all the fun of the games that we don't have near us, like Space Invaders and Pacman Smash. We also went into a fish and chips place called 'Scoffs', where they deep fry and batter the chips, and oh my goodness, it was divine. So crispy, yet so light and soft - I read online that people travel from all over the country for these, and I can totally understand why. We then spent the rest of the evening in the outdoor space of a pub near the beach, because I thought it'd be fun to see if we could see the sunset, and then we'd be able to run down to the beach to capture it, but it was way too cloudy of a day for a sunset, but we did get these photos when the outdoor overhead heaters turned on, and they were totally beautiful enough in place of a sunset, until the next day...
We spent our final day wandering around Totnes, where Stephen spent a lot of time during his childhood summers, and it was an honour to wander around there with him, knowing he already had such happy memories there and he chose to invite me into that to make more of them with me. I had the best time. It's such a quirky little town, with lots of beautiful pubs, unique indie stores, and gorgeous seaside views. We spent the majority of our time there eating pizza from 'Rumour', and then going on an absolutely stunning hike to Sharpham estate. I got very used to walking up and down hills during this trip so ending with a hike on the last day was actually okay! I am very grateful that I am now a trainers girl, and to be honest, combined with my new discovery of Compeed blister packs, it is now a very comfortable world and I'm not sure how I could ever go back.
After getting back from Totnes, the last thing we went to go do was actually go watch that sunset on the beach that I was looking for the day before, and this time, we found it, as it had been such a hot day. The tide had come fully in, which I've never seen before even though I went to Caribbean beaches all the time when I was a child, and it was so fascinating to me. It was the most beautiful pastel sunset, and I will never get over it, or shut up about it. Prettiest thing I have ever seen.
After this, we went to go eat dinner at 'Inn on the Green' which is a pub which looks like a restaurant inside - I just found out that the term for this is a 'gastropub', anyway we need more of them because how incredible it was to sit in a beautiful room eating something as simple as a steak and ale pie? Immaculate vibes. After this was when we went back to The Spinning Wheel to drink, and sing karaoke, which I've already spoken about, but I honestly wouldn't change a thing about the entire trip, even if I did embarrass myself a little bit, I had the time of my life, and that's the point. That's always the point.
I hope you enjoyed! ♡
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