Hospital once again..!!

At the beginning of December Anne and I took a bus into Plymouth and on the journey the bus stopped at Derriford Hospital. 
I joked with Anne at the time that that it was one of the few hospitals whose Emergency Department I hadn't been admitted to yet.... This was obviously a tongue in cheek statement based on my medical history since retirement...

Long term readers of this blog will understand where I am coming from, with a list of serious health situations covering everything from.... cancer....temporary loss of sight in one eye....blood clots....aortic aneurysm....atrial fibrillation and more.....

Before I retired I had never had any major medical problems and have always kept fit and healthy only ever being a very very light drinker with on average about two 330ml bottles of light beer being consumed in a month, if at all.... 
I did smoke for a few years as a stupid young man but stopped overnight when I realised what an idiot I was being. I have now not smoked for over forty years....

Anyway just a few hours after I made my last blog post I remembered that throw away comment that I had made to Anne. 
I woke up in total agony with a pain coming from the right hand side of my lower back and radiating to the top of my shoulder... Also I was finding it very difficult to breath....

I took some pain killers and had a very uncomfortable night.... 
The next morning Anne took me into the ED at Derriford Hospital (another hospital ticked off the list).

I was admitted with a temperature of 40.5c (104f I think) and my blood pressure was off the scale at 244/102 which I may add is far higher than I have ever known either to be.
I had a range of tests and scans including a nuclear scan which involved inhaling some radioactive material .....
It was originally thought that I might have had a blood clot on my lung, but as I moved through the tests and scans it was decided that a lung infection was more than likely and this had caused my right lung to collapse hence the agony that I was in.......

Anyway after two days and one night at the hospital and some first class care from the wonderful doctors and nursing staff I was finally allowed to return to Eva the Eriba...

I am feeling very weak and fragile....cannot walk far yet....and have been instructed to take life very easy for the next week or two.....
I am also a bit depressed by it all following all the medical situations that have gone on before..... It sometime feels that this is going to be the ongoing pattern of my retirement and it certainly concerns me regarding my plans to travel further afield as we had planned to do....

I can't help but wonder what the outcome would have been if we had decided to spend our winter season in Spain or Italy for instance..... 
I will need to give this some careful thought as this wasn't anything caused by a pre-existing medical condition.
This was something new and out of the blue... One minute I felt fine the next in agony, all a bit scary really....

We made it to Spring....!!

Well.... We have made it to spring....
Today is the first day of spring according to the meteorological calendar...... 

There were some times over the past four months that we did worry a bit about the possibility of sustaining damage to our caravan and awning..... but in the end we have got through it unscathed.....

Having said that I have just heard on the news that we are expecting another big storm to hit us hard tomorrow.
Lets hope that my smugness regarding getting through the winter with no damage isn't a trifle premature   !!  

We enjoyed our trip to the Torbay area as shown in my last post so much, that a week ago we went back for three more days....
I've added some images from this latest trip below.....

Starting off with some images from Kingswear and Dartmouth......
The last time I was here was on a very wet Good Friday over thirty five years ago......

A view from Kingswear station looking out over Dartmouth

Joining the short queue for the passenger ferry from Kingswear to Dartmouth

One of the attractive black and white buildings in Dartmouth

Anne went shopping and put me in a creche..!!

I have always liked bandstands...this one looks very smart.

Tides Out...!

Following our day in Dartmouth and Kingswear the next place on our list to visit was Totnes....
So the next day that's where we set off for....
Totnes always seemed to be a bit of a 'hippy' town back in the sixties and seventies and it does seem that a good number of them are still here....

There are lots of shops selling crystals...Indian carvings and artwork....and other unusual items to buy....
I love these types of places with lots of small individual shops selling lots of unusual things....
Glastonbury in Somerset is another town that follows this pattern........

There is an Archway across the main street in Totnes about halfway up the hill.....
When I was last here over 35+ years ago I purchased a small water colour of this Archway painted by a local artist......
It is currently in storage, but for all those years it was on the wall in my hallway.....
After having lived with that image for all those years it was nice to see it again in the 'flesh' (or stone).....

Totnes also has a castle, but unfortunately it was closed for tree cutting during our visit...

The Totnes Arch almost as it is in my painting..

The old Guildhall in Totnes....

A Few Sleepless Nights....

This past weekend the storm that was named Imogen arrived.... I cannot lie....we did have a few sleepless nights.
First there was the noise of the wind that was pretty well constant... then there was the strong wind gusts that could be heard travelling towards us for up to 20 seconds or more before they hit our caravan.
As if this wasn't enough we also had torrential rain and hail that sounded like boxes of marbles being tipped on our roof....

Once we had been woken up numerous times the worry would set in and that didn't help with trying to get back to sleep....
What were we worrying about??

Well first was our concern that the awning would get ripped off the caravan and blown across the moor...so I would go outside to check the storm straps and pegs etc.... 
All the straps seemed OK, but then I noticed that the slight ditch that runs along the rear of the caravan between the electric hook-up point and our pitch had turned into a fast flowing stream....

With all the rain that we have had since we arrived here in November the grass is now so sodden that it can't absorb anymore rainfall hence the stream that had appeared. Luckily there is a slight slope here so the rain just sailed along until it reached the tarmac inner site road where it linked up with the rain that had been pouring off the moor and into the site entrance. 
Unfortunately it then all headed in the direction of the site office and shop where it cause quite a bit of flooding......

Anyway in the end we managed to avoid any damage to our caravan, awning or car.
The mini stream that had appeared behind our caravan has now disappeared and the site managers have cleaned up the office and shop and it is business as usual....

I don't know if it is just my imagination, but since it was decided that we would start giving these storms names we seem to be getting more storms. 
I think I preferred it when all the storms were anonymous.....

Anyway to finish this post, as promised, below I have included some images of my favourite of the Torbay towns..Brixham.
The weather was a lot quieter then, probably the calm before the storm.....

Replica of the Golden Hind

Fishing boats in the Harbour

A view of the working quay

View from the quay back to the town

Harbour view

View across the harbour

The Marina

The Harbour Wall

Another short break.......

Anne and I have just got back from another short break away from the site....
This time we decided to spend three days in Torbay...often called the English Riviera.
It wasn't exactly Riviera weather, it's the wrong time of year for that, but...... we did have some reasonably dry weather and the sun came out too......

Consisting of Torquay, Paignton and Brixham, Torbay is one of the premier English seaside resorts...
Apart from when I walked the South West Coast Path some years ago, it must be about thirty + years since I spent any time in the area......

Paignton is looking a bit tatty around the edges and could do with a bit of a spruce up.... 
It's probably passable on a bright hot sunny summers day, but at this time of year even with the good weather that we had during our stay, it just made me want to get out a paint pot and brush and brighten everything up.......

Torquay was looking a lot better and more effort seems to have been made to keep everything bright and smart....
All the usual shops are to be found in the town for those visitors that feel the need to spend their hard earned cash and there were a number of coffee shops and restaurants for people like me who like a coffee and cake occasionally....

As it was, our choice of coffee house was a small independent one down in the harbour area.... No Costa-Lot or other large multi national over priced coffee for us.... 

Below I have posted some images taken in and around the harbour and in my next post I will post some images from my favourite of the three towns that make up Torbay and that is Brixham.....

One for the Road........

When we were in Barnstaple recently I noticed THIS....!
 see the image below....

One for the Road.......

 The can of Fosters had been opened so it looks pretty certain the driver had been drinking whilst driving......
No matter how many don't drink and drive educational messages are sent out on TV and in the media it seems that with some people the message will never sink in..!!

The driver must be pretty thick anyway, as driving around with a can of beer on display is just asking to be pulled over and breathalysed by the men in blue.....

Note the high banks .....

Still on the subject of things vehicular.....
I took the above picture in one of the many lanes around our campsite..... 
Just imagine driving along this lane with it's high banks and no passing places for a long...long...way with your caravan in tow. Then you meet a tractor coming towards you with a trailer stacked  with hay bales higher than the banking.....
It could be a bit of a nightmare.... :-)

It Arrived....Well just a Little Did..!!

In my last post I predicted that some snow was likely to arrive in our area....
Well it arrived..Well just a little did..!! 
It wasn't a huge dump of snow which you can get sometimes up here on Dartmoor, but it was certainly more than a dusting.....

The snow actually fell overnight Thursday/Friday....
When we woke up on Friday morning the temperature had dropped further since the overnight snowfall.....

All the snow that had fallen on our awning had now frozen solid and it took me quite a while to remove it..... It's important to remove it if possible, because the weight of it all could eventually do some serious damage to the roof of the awning.

The empty hard standing pitch next to ours was a solid sheet of ice and the internal campsite road was too icy to attempt to walk on initially....
However it wasn't long before our campsite manager had spread salt/grit around and the site road turned back from a skating rink and became useable again....

We didn't venture out of the site on Friday as the reports we heard concerning the condition of the moorland roads made us feel that it would be more sensible to stay put even with a 4X4.

On Saturday it was Anne's birthday so we decided to venture off site to have a meal and a drink........
We set off up onto the top moor around Princetown and what surprised us was that although some of the snow had by now melted away, the roads were packed with cars parked everywhere. Lots of people had decided to visit the moor for a walk and a play in the snow..... Vehicles were parked up on the banks at the sides of the road and there were snowmen in almost every field.

Cars parked at the side of the moorland roads 

A lot of the snow had now melted

Although there wasn't much snow left it had proved to be a real visitor magnet.... 

According to the Dartmoor Ranger all these visitors had caused a major field invasion.... Although there are acres of access land that people can walk and play on, lots of these visitors chose to just park anywhere and enter fields where they had no right to be....

One farmer on entering one of his fields with his tractor to feed his sheep, had to avoid lots of loose dogs and children running everywhere only to find that his sheep had been scattered and had to be gathered and moved  into an area two fields away.....
Result... One very disgruntled farmer....

Most of these visitors seemed to be be 'Townies' who seemed to think that they could park and go wherever they wanted.
 Just a pity that they hadn't bothered to double check where they could in fact go.......

More vehicles parked everywhere

 As well as lots of cars being parked up at the side of the road, the moorland car parks were all packed solid and even 'Willy's' Ice Cream van was parked up at the car park above Pork Hill...

All the Moorland Pubs were packed solid too and it eventually became clear that we were going to be very lucky to find somewhere to shoehorn ourselves in and get a drink and a meal.....

The Plume of Feathers in Princetown itself was packed solid..... more like a Friday night than a Saturday late lunchtime.......
In the end we headed back down into Tavistock and had a very nice meal there.... Also I eventually got my much waited for pint (or two) of beer.
I chose a pint of Dartmoor Breweries Jail Ale which apparently is the best selling pint in these parts......

Princetown...The Plume of Feathers Pub on the right

My Pint- Darmoor Brewery Jail Ale

A Few Days Away.................

We had a really good Christmas and New Year on site, with the site managers arranging a couple of events over the holiday....
On Christmas Eve we had a mulled wine and mince pie get-together with other campers and on New Years Eve a barbeque and bubbly meet-up.

Anne and I were really surprised how many people were camping out over the holiday period the site being almost half full over Christmas and every useable pitch in use over the New Year.

Since then Anne and I have spent a few days away from site on a visit to Ifracombe on the North Devon Coast....

I haven't been to Ilfracombe since I made a trip to Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel a number of years ago.
I wanted to go back for another visit as I had heard that Damien Hirst had arranged for one of his sculptures to be placed there....
As the sculpture has the same name as my daughter (Verity) it had found it's way on to my 'must visit' list.

View of Ilfracombe Harbour

 The harbour at Ilfracombe makes a very attractive scene as can be seen in the image above.
Unfortunately during our visit we had some very heavy rain but it didn't spoil our visit too much.....

Lobster pots stacked up in the harbour area

Ilfracombe harbour is a working harbour and as we walked down from where we had parked the car we passed lots of lobster pots all stacked up waiting to be used....

Our first view of Verity on the harbour wall

 As we walked from the car park we had our first view of Verity standing on the far harbour wall.....
Verity is 20.25 metres tall and is situated at the entrance to the harbour and she looks out over the Bristol Channel towards South Wales.

Verity - A closer view

 The statue is made from stainless steel....bronze and glass fibre reinforced polymer.
She is on a long term loan from Damien Hirst to North Devon Council and is an allegory for truth and justice.
She stands on a base of scattered legal books and holds the traditional symbols of justice....a sword and scales. 

Verity - Another view.

 She arrived in Ilfracombe in three sections in October 2012 and she took a week to assemble on site and was hoisted into position with a 250 tonne crane...
Unlike my daughter, Damien Hirst's Verity is not the prettiest female I've seen and as a sculpture might not be to everyone's liking but she was certainly worth a visit.....

A general view of Ilfracombe town

We enjoyed our visit to Ilfracombe very much in spite of the continuing wet weather....

Now we are back at Eva the Eriba  the rain has stopped and it has now got a lot colder... they even had a dusting of snow today up at Princetown just a few miles up the road from our campsite.....
I wonder if we will be getting snow here next....?