Travelling during lockdown – even a partial lockdown, as was the case for our West Country break – imposes a number of limits on activities, so the final day of our three spent in Plymouth was simply mostly spent on foot, looking for pretty pictures. This had always been our plan because pre-arranging visits to museums or stately homes would have restricted us further – we wanted to wing it for the most part just to see what could be done – but we would have needed to reduce any objectives to the least strenuous had we not thanks to my wife picking up an injury on the previous day’s Eden Project visit.
Breakfast out of the way, we left the hotel and headed south(ish) to take a walk through Plymouth Hoe. The Hoe is the public park on top of the (surprisingly to us) rocky mound that dominates the seafront of Plymouth and is probably best known as being the setting for the very likely untrue game of bowls that Sir Francis Drake had while waiting for the tide to turn so he could set sail with the fleet to take on the Spanish Armada. These days the Hoe is the home to a number of war memorials (including one by the architect Sir Robert Lorimer that is one of a set of three, with one of the others being situated in our home city of Portsmouth), houses a statue of Sir Francis Drake, includes the landmark lighthouse of Smeaton’s Tower, and provides fabulous views out over Plymouth Sound.
As we stood there, taking in the view in the pleasantly warm and clear day (the last such day weather-wise for our break as it would turn out) we suddenly heard a man shouting at us. Initial thoughts that we might be trespassing or taking a photo of something we shouldn’t proved to be wrong as it turned out he’d spotted my camera and wanted to know if I had a telephoto lens on it. I did have a telephoto lens with me for this trip but I’d decided that I’d leave it at the hotel today and use my workhorse lens, the 24-105mm instead. The reason this person had wanted to know was because he wanted to draw our attention to something we’d not spotted while gazing out across the water, that being a submarine. A telephoto lens, of course, would have given me the chance to see far more detail of the naval vessel but I had to suffice with wider shots instead. This was only the second time we’d seen a submarine cruising on the surface of the water, the first being several years earlier in Chile at Puerto Montt, and it was great to be reminded of that trip.
Smeaton’s Tower is probably the most prominent landmark on Plymouth Hoe and it’s certainly something we noticed on our first evening from the water on our harbour boat trip. The tower is not a working lighthouse but it once formed the upper part of the Eddystone Lighthouse which was in operation for over a hundred years from 1759 on the submerged Eddystone Rocks fourteen kilometres south of Cornwall. John Smeaton, the civil engineer tasked with the construction of the original lighthouse, used hydraulic lime to set concrete underwater and form the base of the navigational aid, and it was only erosion of the underlying rocks that necessitated the building of a replacement beacon and the deconstruction then subsequent repositioning of the tower in Plymouth as a memorial.
Tinside Lido was the next sight to greet our eyes as we progressed as far forward on the mainland as we could, and what a lovely sight it was too. We were lucky to see it on such a pleasant day, to see the cyan of the shallow pool contrasting with the deep blue of the sea, but it was the design that was most appealing. A lot of lidos were built in the UK in the 1930s and were pretty conventional, rectangular affairs, but Plymouth’s 1935 lido incorporates the fabulous curves and straight lines of the Art Deco movement and benefits from its location at the base of the surrounding cliffs with views out over Plymouth Sound. Portsmouth has a lido, too, but here’s an area where Plymouth beats our home city hands down.
Our walk along Plymouth seafront continued in an anticlockwise direction and took us past the imposing fortifications of the Royal Citadel. We’d wanted to take a look inside but it wasn’t the Covid restrictions in place that stopped us; rather, it was the requirement that all visitors have photo ID. For my wife this presented a problem since she doesn’t drive and the only photographic ID she has is her passport which didn’t make the trip along the coast with us on account of us not needing to leave the country. A stupid barrier to visiting a historical site, in my opinion. A small bit of history, anyway, since I like to share knowledge: the citadel sits on the spot of a former fort that had been erected in the sixteenth century. The English Civil War of the seventeenth century saw Plymouth take the side of the ultimately victorious Parliamentarians, during which it was besieged for several years without falling, but following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 construction of the Royal Citadel took place and the cannons were positioned facing both out to sea and towards the city on land, supposedly as a warning not to oppose the Crown again.
Our path took us sloping downwards back towards Sutton Harbour where we’d enjoyed some time on both of the previous evenings thanks to its attractive views and abundance of pubs.
The Mayflower Steps area of Plymouth includes a rather odd sculpture, known locally as the Barbican Prawn despite clearly not being a prawn at all. Its actual name is Leviathan and it was unveiled in 1996 during modernisation works along this stretch of the waterfront. Designed by Brian Fell, Leviathan includes an angler fish’s head with lobster claws, the fin of a John Dory and the tail of a plesiosaur, finished off with the feet of a cormorant, because of course it does. We liked it.
It wasn’t all just aimless wandering on this day of walking along Plymouth’s seafront; we actually had a tiny, tiny plan, and that was to pay a visit to the National Marine Aquarium. We are fond of an aquarium when we travel around the world. Plymouth has hosted an aquarium since 1888 but the National Marine Aquarium was built and opened in the mid-1990s during the Barbican modernisation works and it is the UK’s largest aquarium. Arranged around specific zones and featuring some huge tanks to house the thousands of creatures this was a lovely place to visit. I could sit and stare at an aquarium tank of fish swimming for hours and fortunately several tanks had seating in front of them to allow just that. Obviously, we didn’t spend hours here, though. This is definitely something worth hitting if you ever find yourself in or around Plymouth.
This wouldn’t be the only aquarium we’d visit during our West Country short break as Weymouth, where we’d be off to the day after this gentle amble around Plymouth, also housed one and, as I’ve mentioned, we are a sucker for them.
It was the afternoon by now so we grabbed ourselves some liquid refreshment from The Ship (where we’d paid a visit previously; see: A Few Plymouth Pubs) then hunted down a shop we’d spotted overnight in the city, a wine and spirits specialist called Barrel & Still. Fabulous range of alcohol for sale plus the ability to have some free samples too. Which we did.
Not wanting to lug our bottled purchases around we decided to head as directly as possible back to our hotel to drop them off. This took us in a westwards direction along Royal Parade, more-or-less the main road through the centre of Plymouth and one lined with some sights of interest. First up was the Minister Church of Saint Andrew. Externally, this church looks the same as it did in 1500 even though it was bombed during the war and required significant rebuilding in the years afterwards.
The two buildings that really leaped out at me because of my fondness for architecture were the House of Fraser and the Pearl Assurance buildings either side of the precinct bisecting Royal Parade. The House of Fraser building was formerly the Dingles department store and it was the first building to be designed as part of the complete redevelopment of Plymouth after the war. There is an absolutely fascinating PDF that explains the architectural visions and plans for the city – Plymouth: Vision of a Modern City – and if you’ve any interest in town-planning or architecture then I can’t recommend that enough, but since you’re you and I know you well enough to know you don’t have that sort of attention span then I’ll give the short version here: Scottish modernist architect Thomas Tait, more widely known for his Art Deco works, at the end of his career was brought in as design consultant for the new plans for Plymouth in the late 1940s and produced the Dingles store as well as associating with designs for several other buildings. Individual architects and building owners were free to create their own designs within the style guidelines so as to produce something not strictly uniform but that fitted together; new buildings with a sense that they’ve stood for far longer. You can see some modernist, brutalist elements in these buildings despite the classical decorative pieces and use of Portland Stone. It’s all a wonderful testament to the changing times and rebuilding for the future taking place post-war.
There were plenty more buildings encompassing brutalism, modernism, and Art Deco styles to gaze at on the walk back too.
Finally, there were some public pieces of art to admire. Or not. I like street art and I know that art is subjective but what we saw in Plymouth was some of the most uninspiring work. It felt like someone had broken out some oversized set squares and geometric templates and just filled in the spaces. Personal opinion, but yuk. The somewhat abstract sculpture was more to my liking. This was the seven-metre-high bronze called Messenger by Joseph Hillier; apparently a woman crouching and inspired by an actor preparing for a role, this more closely resembled an American Footballer in a three-point stance at the line of scrimmage to us.
We dropped off items at the hotel, checked that my wife’s niggling injury wasn’t too problematic for walking some more, then headed off again, this time southwest from our hotel as there was an area of land near the water there that we hadn’t checked over which might have been hiding a fabulous pub. It wasn’t. In fact this turned out to be uninteresting as we approached so we veered south to the seafront once more to see what might be of interest down there and to see how the sun might affect the look of the shoreline as the sun started to sink towards the horizon.
We spotted a fairly lively-looking place by the waterfront actually called The Waterfront but there was a queue of people waiting to be seated so the option of enjoying the sunset with a drink evaded us. However, we also saw what appeared to be a security guard in front of an interesting-looking piece of sculpture in iron resembling a block-type figure staring out to sea. We didn’t know it at the time but this was LOOK II, a work by Sir Antony Gormley.
We found an empty bench and enjoyed the Plymouth seafront view for a while in the warm, early evening sunshine. We were quite surprised by the number of people swimming in the water and spent quite some time being entertained by humans and dogs leaping from the stone pier near us into the sea.
With dining and drinking options looking sparse along this part of the coastline we decided that we’d head back around to Sutton Harbour again where we were certain we’d find something. This gave us a chance to see the Belvedere Wedding Cake (to give it its local name) up close. A belvedere is a type of open summer house and this three-tiered building was constructed in 1891. The site on which it stands was formerly a camera obscura offering views over Plymouth Sound, below which there was a bullring (where bulls were tied up and baited by dogs for entertainment and to tenderise the meat; indeed, butchers were fined if they killed bulls without baiting them).
With the sun at our backs we retraced some of the day’s earlier walking route along the seafront, enjoying the views down to the rocky shore and the people taking advantage of the warmth to bathe or swim.
Our last meal in Plymouth was at the Pier Masters House. It’s a very nice-looking building on the waterfront with plenty of seating outside and in and we elected to dine inside as the sun was disappearing from the sky by this time. A warm welcome was sadly the best that can be said of the experience with service being perfunctory (and barely even that when it came time to pay the bill) and the fish being disappointingly overcooked and dry.
We grabbed a couple of final drinks near the harbour and called it a night.
That brings our stay in Plymouth to an end. It was certainly not what we were expecting geographically but there were lots of historical and architectural elements we enjoyed a lot and we wouldn’t be averse to visiting again when this pandemic is under control and life is a bit more normal.
The following morning we would be relocating along the coast to Weymouth for three days as part of our West Country break and we’d be making a stop in Sidmouth to break the drive up which will be covered in the next post in this travelogue series.