The second half of our week’s break visiting the West Country was spent in the Dorset town of Weymouth, the third new place for us to hit on this short holiday ending with -mouth after the city of Plymouth and seaside resort of Sidmouth, from where we drove.
The drive from Sidmouth was a bit of an adventure thanks firstly to a signpost pointing in what I said at the time was clearly the wrong direction but, since we didn’t know the roads, we ended up following anyway only to find ourselves stuck in a huge queue on a winding, dipping road for reasons unknown. I eventually took a gamble and picked a lane barely wide enough to allow our car through (they’re popular in that part of the world) and headed off on a mystery trip using my sense of direction to guide us to where we hoped we’d find a main road. I’m writing this now so you know that we didn’t find ourselves impaled on the front of a tractor coming the other way (always a risk) nor did we get waylaid in a village that time had forgotten, mistaken for witches in our mechanical contraption, and burnt at stakes kept in storage for just this sort of eventuality by the superstitious dimwits within (also a risk).
The adventure didn’t end once we reached Weymouth as our trip coincided with a series of roadworks that rendered the planned route to our hotel meaningless as we were sent off down one-way roads that turned us around several times before I could find the beach and hug its shoreline down to where the large car park near our hotel was located. It was difficult to get a hotel with car parking so we’d picked one near the Weymouth Pavilion as there was public parking outside it. This would be perfect, I reckoned, as we’d simply pay for parking and walk the hundred metres or so to the hotel. And indeed, we could have done exactly that had we not discovered that the car park took cash only. And not just any cash; coins. This trip took place in 2020. Pandemic year. It’s the year in which contactless payments became the way to pay for everything. Coins? Who the hell was carrying coins? We certainly weren’t. Thus it was that we checked the map and found a car park with modern means of paying to use it and headed there instead. This ended up being the Swannery Car Park. You can use an app to pay and extend your stay if you need to, and we did. It was great. Except… it was fifteen minutes’ walk from our hotel.
After a few, mostly lovely and warm days in Plymouth the weather had changed a bit and our time in Weymouth saw colder temperatures and a bitter wind so we walked at some pace – lugging our luggage as that’s what you’re supposed to do with it – from the car park to the Cavendish House hotel (not linked at this time as there may be a security issue on the hotel’s website, but bookable through the usual third-party sites), a bed and breakfast establishment in a terrace of similar businesses with views to the beach. We arrived out of breath, climbed the steps to the entrance, rang the bell, donned our masks, and were admitted shortly afterwards where our temperatures were checked with digital, infrared thermometers. Vacationing in the time of Covid.
I’m going to quickly talk about infrared thermometers and about my wife, and this won’t be the last time in these few days in Weymouth that this combination of subjects comes up.
Firstly: digital, infrared thermometers. They are, and there’s no nice way to say this, useless. They use technology ideally suited to picking out hot spots in a large area then make massively wrong assumptions about what this means when pointed at the forehead of a human. Yes, you’ve got a reading that tells you how much of a specific wavelength of light is being reflected from a surface but what does that mean? Have you made allowances for ambient temperature and its effects? Have you accounted for how cosmetics can alter what’s reflected or absorbed? Do you have a clue what the normal emitted temperature range of the person you’re aiming that sensor at should be? All digital thermometers do in this age of pandemic is create a means to embarrass people, to put them through steps not needed to prove they’re not plague-carriers, to be cast under suspicion, and they give a false sense of security to people who think no heat spike means you can’t possibly be contagious. As one factor in a large set of checks they can help but they’re not being used that way by Average Joe who’s running a hairdressing salon or small hotel.
Secondly: my wife. She has a very poor ability to regulate her body heat. Minor exertions can send her core temperature rocketing. When we regularly do hikes on our world travels that neither of us are remotely fit enough to attempt anyway it’s with the certain knowledge that one of us is going to be scarlet and will be attracting comments along the lines of “Holy crap! Are you having a heart attack!? Should we call for a helicopter evac?” constantly from anyone who glances our way.
Scanning our foreheads at the hotel in Weymouth we were acutely aware that I was a little puffed but that my wife was glowing from the quick walk along the seafront and clamber up the steps with bags while wearing masks. A failed reading and we’d have to head home. It was therefore quite a surprise to see that I registered at the bottom end of normal human temperature and my wife was 0.2 degrees Celsius above what’s considered hypothermia. The hotel owner looked wide-eyed at the reading, shrugged, said “Well, you definitely don’t have a temperature, I suppose”, noted it down for the record, and we were given the key to our room.
As mentioned, the Cavendish was a B&B and not the sort of place we normally stay at when we travel around the UK. I know that it’s nice to support independent business-owners (especially since the Conservative government in this country couldn’t give a fuck about them) and that smaller hotels can have a charm that’s not found in bigger establishments, but as introverts we like a more familiar and faceless experience; a perfunctory check-in; no surprises in the hotel room; spacious dining for breakfast you can be invisible in; options for evening dining or drinking on-site. There was nothing wrong with the Cavendish if you’re used to staying in these sorts of hotels in old buildings. The room was small to put it mildly but it’s just a room. The shower water pressure was pretty dreadful but we’ve experienced worse. Breakfast was perfectly fine and the hosts were perfectly pleasant. The main reason for choosing it during our Weymouth stay was simply that I quite fancied a view of the beach from the window.
I had hoped that we might be able to see some of the cruise ships anchoring off Weymouth from our room – victims of the global travel situation – and, indeed, we could. Just about. Leaning out and looking past the pavilion building and car park I’d wanted to use we could spot a few of the vessels.
It was late afternoon so we took a quick walk to get our bearings ahead of a full day exploring Weymouth to come. We started off by making our way towards the harbour entrance piers just beyond the pavilion to take a better look at the ships but the biting wind coming off the sea swiftly sent us scurrying back along the beach towards the town area.
Not far from our hotel there was a small funfair set back from the beach. It looked unwelcoming and foreboding under the overcast sky which is just how we like funfairs to feel. We wouldn’t end up visiting it during our stay in the town but it looked like it has all the creepy elements that make these places appealing and exciting. Is that game rigged? Are those targets glued down? Are these prizes toxic? Has my child been abducted? Such a thrill!
On the beach promenade we saw a sand sculpture shielded from the elements and from oiks who might want to target it for re-sculpting. A sign nearby indicated that more sculptures could be seen at a place called Sandworld elsewhere in Weymouth and we made a note to check this out later in the stay.
The beach gave us one nice view of all seven cruise ships in Weymouth Bay before the cold drove us away from the exposed location. You’ll be able to see two Cunard ships (we haven’t cruised with them yet), three Marella ships (including Discovery that we were on in 2019), and two P&O ships in the photo below (the bigger one unmistakably being Britannia that we should have cruised on earlier in the year). Bloody virus.
We were freezing by this time so looked to the option of trying to get something to eat indoors. Our experience in Plymouth during this pandemic had prepared us for the fact that this might not be easy but the first place we checked out, the Gloucester, while unable to accommodate us indoors did have outdoors seating set down from the road level and therefore protected from the wind, if not the attention of incredibly noisy seagulls. We ate, downed a drink, and took a look at what else was around a road or two back from the sea. This visit to the West Country took place after the relaxing of the first lockdown restrictions so shops had been permitted to open with precautions in place but by this time of the evening they’d all now shut so Weymouth was like a ghost town and it didn’t take a lot of convincing to persuade us to seek some comfort inside another residence run by the purveyor of alcohol beverages. That place was the House of Sounds. Music was playing, there was plenty of music-related decor to cast eyes over, and there looked to be sensible one-way directions and markings around the bar area to ensure proper social distancing was observed. Not that anyone really was following them other than us from our time there. In fact, one couple came in after us and the bloke pulled his wife roughly away from following the one-way route to drag her and stride across the shortest distance to the bar instead. People are just awful, but you know that already. Despite it not seeming to be the friendliest of places with not the most pleasant of patrons it was keeping us out of the wind so we decided to stay for a few more before calling it a night.
We concluded our first evening in Weymouth with a quick wander down to the harbour area and along Custom House Quay on a scenic route back to the hotel, relying on the alcohol inside us to protect us from the worst ravages of the temperature. In the next post in this travelogue series I’ll cover our exploration of some of Weymouth’s historic buildings; expect a fort, a castle, and a museum to feature, plus the discovery of two very good drinking establishments.
