It’s just over 400 miles from Newcastle to Plymouth.
And it’s not that cheap to get there.
Fair enough, it isn’t quite as bad as a round trip of Asia, but I could get return flights to most European countries for less than the cost of a return train ticket. There’s coaches, too – which is what I ultimately went with for my journey back from Britians’ South West. This was a day less I could spend with my girlfriend, or do anything useful, for that matter. 14 hours of travelling back up North (via London, natch), all for the sake of £20.
Pip, the before-mentioned (and long-suffering) girlfriend, stays in Plymouth for now. We went down so she could start three months store managment training for her new job. I was only ever going for a few days, primarily to get her settled in (and ensure she didn’t get lost on the way), but also because I’d never seen Plymouth before. After a day wandering around, exploring the city centre – identikit shops like any other town or city, with well-known coffee houses around every bend – and the ‘cultural’ side of the city (two museems, one of which was mostly closed), I finally made it to the waterfront.
Beautiful.
At least, not bad for a coastal city with no beach – its harbour knocks the spots of Liverpool’s Dock front.
There’s no dodgy pier a la Bournemouth (sorry pier fans, it’s not the structure itself, it’s the old biddies and ghostly atmosphere pier towns always have that puts me off) or gorgeous beaches or dramatic peninsulae like nearby Weymouth, set to host the sailing events for the 2012 London Olympics. But it does have a certain something.
Character. History.
Nearly all of the worlds most life changing voyages started from this bay, the meeting point of two of Devon’s rivers, the Plym and the Tamar (the latter the natural border between Devon and western land’s end county, Cornwall).
Francis Drake left from here to circumnavigate the globe AND meet the Spanish Armada (not at the same time, mind you – he was good, but not that good!). There’s a statue of him just behind Plymouth’s lighthouse, though he isn’t holding any bowling balls (NOT the ten pin kind, American readers!)
Captain James Cook, a fellow Northerner, left Plymouth for all four of his famous voyages, charting the southern half of the globe, and most famously, Australia and New Zeland.
Darwin left here on his well documented trip around the better part of the world, stopping off at the Galapagos Islands, where he studied the strange and wonderful creatures for as long as he could (as well as eating a fair few of them). Plymouth city makes a big deal out of this chap in particular, which is strange, given all the history altering events that started here, including of course, the pilgrim ship The Mayflower.
At the point where the first immigrants to America embarked onto that famous vessel, The Mayflower Steps, is a small monument donated to Plymouth by the state of Massachusetts, where they first landed. That town’s name is Plymouth too.
So this city was the birthplace of American towns. Maybe that’s why they focus on eveloutin instead.
Interstingly, if you look at a map of Plymouth, MA (the US supersized version) you’ll find a whole load of west and south eastern towns nearby: Worcester, Gloucester, Newport, Bristol, Barnsatple Town, then Norwich, New Yarmouth, Cambridge and somewhat optomistically, New Britian. But don’t think like Nova Scotia (‘New Scotland’) in Canada. Far from a sweeping eastern county, New Britian sits among a whole host of similar sized towns looking not very important at all – go figure.
But getting back to my own travels, which sadly had no water invloved (just as well, really, or it would have flooded the moterway): Here I am, back in Newcastle, with Pip in Plymouth, who’s still not had the chance to see the prettier part of the city, but I know she can’t wait – I rambled about it enthusiastically enough to her the night I came back from the waterfront.
We still don’t know where she’ll be posted once her training is finished, but it still looks likely to be Devon. Sadly, I feel it won’t be Plymouth, but as long as it’s near, I’ll be sure to visit on a regular basis
