Minehead

Burrow Bridge is inland and John wanted to see the coast so we headed to Minehead. Minehead is a place John and his family spent a summer holiday when he was a young man at a place called Butlins. Butlins is institution exclusive to England. After World War II, military bases which were no longer needed and an entrepreneur thought that these would make great holiday places. These camps were run in a military style with breakfast at a specified time and so on. The camps are fenced with barbed wire along the top. The joke is/was that the fences were to keep the holiday makers in. While they have had to evolve, they still exist with only minimal new frills.

The day we were there was a typical autumn day (in early August) with drizzle interspersed with heavy rain. We walked the sea walk, played a few arcade games and smelled the chippy. In other words, a typical English holiday ~ wet and greasy.

On the way back to our lodgings, we went through a number of villages...Dunster was the most memorable with a medieval festival and a dog show. However, there were no parking stalls for miles.

The roads in Somerset are truly incredible affairs ... really they are more like gullies with hedgerows planted on the tops. As the road is at the bottom with about 18 inches built up on each side, it would be almost impossible to have an accident; unless of course there was a car coming towards you. Ever so often; when the topography permits, there are pull-outs where one car can pass another. I have no idea what the etiquette to determine which car is backing up as luckily we did not see another car. There are also lovely road tunnels with very large beautiful trees on either side meeting over top of the road.