UK Road Trip

September 15, 2014 - Port Isaac

We started the day with another hearty English breakfast. Gayle had reserved the walking tour of Port Isaac with John Brown for us, and we met the tour outside the shop called May Contain Nuts. John gave us a lot of information about the town, where about 800 people live. It was first settled in 1338, and the first boat came 500 years later. Most of the people on the tour were huge Doc Martin fans, and only Barbara hasn’t seen many of the shows, but now her interest is piqued. John pointed out where specific things happened—the place where Doc hit the dog with his car, etc. We walked all over the town, along the narrow streets that pedestrians share with cars. We walked down the narrowest alley in Port Isaac known as Squeeze-ee Belly Alley and Jerry took our picture standing by the doorway of Doc’s house. John said as we were walking along that street that you could have fired a cannon up the street and hit no one before the Doc Martin TV series came out, but now it is crowded with tourists. Some of the home owners have been pretty feisty about their homes being used for the show, although the tourism must really help the business owners. It’s probably seen as a blessing and a curse. John showed us some old interesting black and white photos of the town. We saw several pumps—they didn’t have mains water here until 1940. The tour lasted about 1 1/2 hours, and our legs got a workout going up and down hills. Back at the hotel, we used the lounge upstairs to eat our lunch of apples, chips and other snacks we had. We bought a jug of Pimm’s in the bar downstairs, and used our time to catch up with emails and FB while we listened to some Beatles music. We don’t have wifi in our rooms here, but we did at every other hotel and B & B where we stayed. For dinner tonight we went next door to the Mote Hotel and Restaurant, where we all had fish and seafood that was probably caught that day. We thoroughly enjoyed this quaint village that has become known around the world because of Doc Martin.