Arriving back at Gatwick we managed to get our bags (thankfully, after the delays at Bordeaux airport) and then the nice lady at the rental car counter responded to our quest for a better model than the Vauxhall Corsa we’d had previously as we were driving for the next 44 days; we were quite pleased with the outcome, a Citroen C3. Ninety minutes delayed, we headed west to our next housesit just out of Bath, notifying our hosts that things were not going as smoothly as we hoped. Friday afternoon traffic and roadworks didn’t help but we made it in time to meet our hosts and be introduced to Dolly, finding out about her routines and foibles, local walks and recommendations, before they headed off. It was going to be a very short sit of only two nights, but the location of Bradford on Avon worked well for us, a beautiful little town with good walking tracks through local fields, time to settle briefly and do laundry, home cooking and just breathe. Dolly kept us on our toes though, she had some interesting quirks we had to deal with; such is the petsitting life, you come across all sorts of doggy behaviours and she was a bit OCD.

Rested and cleaned up, having had a dose of doggy love, Devon was another star on our list of “must visit” – staying on the outskirts of Torquay we arrived for the British beach summer in full swing with a cool wind and rain. We almost made it through for our first morning of exploration in the semi-dry but then the heavens opened and we were too far away to brave the walk home, into the wind, with just umbrellas, so lined up for the local bus back. Torquay was interesting, a friend said it had a faded elegance, and faded it was. That afternoon we took the car out to explore further afield and found the charming village of Dartmouth. This was much more up our alley, with quirky and wonky buildings and interesting harbour views. We enjoyed wandering these streets as the sun came out again.

Each month, Chris is supposed to have a blood test to monitor levels due to medication he is on and, this month, we had found a clinic in Exeter so that was our reason to head to this city we knew very little about. It was a pleasant surprise to wander the streets of this ancient city and find out more about its history, viewing city walls and a very old church – two of its towers have survived since the 1300’s, most of the rest since the 1500’s and just a “minor” new repair after WWII. The front facade was quite beautiful and the flying buttresses evident on the length of the building added to its grandeur. There were many old buildings in the main street too, thankfully not with ubiquitous “Costa coffee” signs plastered across them.

That afternoon, we had booked our slot to visit “Greenway” the holiday home of Agatha Christie (a Torquay native). Getting there was fraught with two way traffic on narrow, single lane, tree and hedge lined roads. We made it unscathed, I think we only backed up briefly once, but found this beautiful peaceful spot overlooking the Dart Estuary, views towards Dartmouth and Kingswear, and could well understand why this was such a special place to Agatha and her family.

Our next housesitting assignment was right across the country on the east coast, so it was a long drive ahead of us, around greater London, to our intermediate stopover. When researching possible options, I couldn’t get over the location of the hotel at “The Green, Matching Tye”! The tiny village was not far from the A12, so easy for us to access in and out on our way east. The pub was friendly and, being Wednesday, it was quiz night. We asked if we could join in, preferably with an existing team due to our lack of local knowledge, but were assured we’d be just fine on our own. So the “Kiwis” team of two participated – very poorly! Our range of music knowledge let us down badly as did our UK place names associated with food, the best we did was in “summer holidays”, of course! We ended up dead last by a long margin which was disappointing, I’d hoped to participate and interact with other locals, all we did was show our ignorance. It was fun, but not quite the community experience we’d anticipated.

At last we reached our destination of Southwold, a very pretty seaside village in Suffolk. We’d never heard of it, but in talking with others on our journey over the past couple of weeks, they definitely had and told us how amazing it was to be able to stay in Southwold – getting accommodation here in summer is like striking gold, and here we were staying for free, and with the most gorgeous old dog. Bob was a lovely old Jack Russell, well loved by his owners and we too fell in love with him. We were able to take some wonderful (slow) walks along the long sandy beach in both directions, getting drenched on our first day, learning to always carry the umbrellas thereafter. The only times Bob barked was when we were too slow getting our shoes on for the walks, otherwise he relaxed very well. This was another short but very sweet housesit, long enough to get another load of washing done and explore this area briefly.

We have been really deliberate in finding housesits in out of the way places, avoiding the big cities, but when a housesit came available in London, on the River Thames, we applied and were successful in being invited to look after Clara for a week. Our adventures continue…