Day out in Torquay

Oh my goodness, we have just had a week of SUNSHINE!!!  Yes, it has been absolutely beautiful weather for at least a whole week.  And it has been HOT and there have been BLUE skies ... yes, BLUE skies, AND not a cloud in sight, no grey skies and no more rain.  Truly it's been miraculous.

And so we planned a day out to Torquay ... yippee!  I've never been to Torquay so I was very excited.  Torquay is a town in the area of Torbay and county of Devon.  It is a tourist resort by the sea, 22 miles east of Exeter in the South West of England and during the peak of summer, it's population can swell to 200,000.

Andy took most of the pictures I've used.  He is so much better at photography for one thing and for the other, I couldn't see my screen most of the time because it was so sunny.  

Here we are at Taunton station, waiting for our train

Which arrived perfectly on time .... thank you Great Western Railways :)

This time we sat on the opposite side of the carriage to the one with spectacular views of the sea so I took a picture of Andy instead

and he took one of me

The journey was around 50 minutes and before we knew it we had arrived in Torquay.  I smelt the delicious smell of the ozone as soon as we got out of the train.  And in the bright sunshine, even the train looks cheerful.

We are walking alongside the sea on our right, towards the Marina area

It almost feels like we are abroad.  Torquay is also known as the English Riviera because it is warm here and sheltered so much so that Palm Trees grow here.   The tide was in but there are plenty of people sunbathing right by it on the concrete walkway.

I feel like I'm in heaven.  The weather conditions are perfect and check out the BLUEness of it all.

This building ahead had a large shopping area inside it.

Love the architecture and wish I was up there on the roof

There are some really nice hotels and buildings on top of the hill overlooking the marina.

The sea was amazingly clear and we saw fish.  Lots of them but this was the best photo.  I don't know what kind of fish it was.  We also saw plenty of jellyfish and also a large crab clinging to a boat's rope.  It was difficult to take pictures because it was so bright and sunny we couldn't see our smartphone's screens that well.  Andy did a great job though.  

You might have to click on the photo for a closer look.  In this picture below there are loads of fish

Torquay really is a picturesque place.

I started having fantasies about owning a boat ... and living a millionaire lifestyle ***sweet dreaming****

We had a lovely lunch (I've forgotten the name of the place now!).  Andy had feta and walnut in a warm bagette (that wasn't warm) with salad and a bowl of chips and I had Lemon and Chilli Glazed chicken with salad.  I was trying hard to be good with my food and not order anything too fattening but the salad had oil all over it.  But hey I still managed to lose 1 and a half lbs this week .... yay!  We saw a lot of fat people in Torquay which helped me stay on the straight and narrow :)

We visited two really nice shops.  One was a gift shop called SeaBreeze with nautically themed giftware and houseware .... I've gotta go back there, I saw a lovely starfish necklace :).  The other place was Haddon Galleries which had some fantastic art work and limited edition prints for sale.  And a lot of Sam Toft paintings (we are big fans of his work).

On the way back to our train, the tide had gone out and there were a lot of people on the beach

And in the sea

We liked this cute ticketing office/building outside what looked like some kind of sports park.

Finally we returned to Torquay railway station.  We had a very friendly guard at Torquay railway station and he kindly took this lovely photo of us both

We were very lucky to get back on the train to Newton Abbot (where we had to change trains to get back to Taunton) because there were only 2 carriages and it was absolutely full.  We had booked our train and so squeezed on but we were squeezed like sardines in a can.  Why only 2 carriages when the school holidays had just begun?  Common sense lacking Great Western Railway?

Once we had got onto our Taunton Train we had room to relax.  And Andy could take artistic photos of our return journey

And I could take really bad photos, then give up and play 'bubble shooter' :)

Thanks for stopping by .....