It took until September of this year for us to take a week off work and leave the house, a previously nearly-unimaginable period of time without somewhere foreign to titillate the senses. That week was a break to the West Country, an area with which we’re reasonably familiar – our very first trip away together as a couple was to Cornwall – but this would be to places we’d not visited before. The first three days saw us staying in Plymouth, considered a sister-city to our home of Portsmouth because of its naval dockyard connections, and a city we’d therefore expected to be quite similar. Yeah, not so much, as it turns out.

This post will cover our first day in Plymouth.

Roadworks for long stretches didn’t have too much of an impact on our travelling time along the coast, thankfully, and we only made a single wrong turning (albeit a fortuitous one that got us to where we needed to be faster) in Devon’s largest city before arriving at the New Continental Hotel. We picked it because the location was pretty good and on-site parking for the three days we’d be there was very cheap. A very friendly check-in and explanation of some of the COVID-19 rules in place – masks on outside the room, one person at a time in the elevator, don’t lick the banisters; sensible stuff – was followed by us quickly finding our room on the second floor. The room was a very good size; no view to speak of but we weren’t there for the view. Our only criticism of the room was the heat which was toasty and uncomfortably so after walking up the stairs with masks on as we did each time we returned to the hotel. There was no air conditioning and the window was left open all the time to counter that. Luckily, the area was a quiet one, helped by Plymouth’s plentiful cameras keeping traffic speed and noise low.

We decided to have a quick walk to get a feel for the immediate surroundings and get our bearings sorted ahead of making for the harbour area on the east side of the city. This was our introduction to just how different from Portsmouth that Plymouth was. Portsmouth may be surrounded by hills but the city is flat. Plymouth, on the other hand, seems mostly to have been placed on the large hill that forms most of it, then slid off or been pushed off around and behind it by the impressively imposing Royal Citadel fortfications. We’d expected something familiar – a seaside town with naval connections – but we’d found ourselves on a fortified rock with quays and marinas, and the bulk of the commercial and residential properties blocked from any view of the sea by that hilly mass on its southern edge. I know that you can’t see the sea from a hundred metres back from it in Portsmouth either but just being at or near sea-level gives you a closer connection in my opinion. That feeling of being slightly disconnected from the water thanks to the Royal Citadel and Hoe Park dominating the high land of Plymouth remained with us throughout our stay.

As mentioned, the Royal Citadel did look very impressive and we had a quick check online to see about taking a look around, but restrictions on what was accessible and the need to book well ahead of the visit due to the virus put us off. Incidentally, that need to pre-book – and we understand it for popular places at popular times – would prove to be a major hindrance during our late-September, West Country break; museums, pubs, and restaurants made casual visiting a chore. Do you know when you’ll be somewhere you’ve never been before? Do you know how long you’ll be? Well, we didn’t. Down to the harbour we went.

We arrived at the spot near the Mayflower Steps Memorial, waterside, at the southern end of Sutton Harbour, and noticed a swing bridge that allows pedestrians to cross more quickly to the aquarium when yachts and other boats weren’t entering or exiting the area. You’ll be able to read about our visit to the aquarium when I cover our last day in Plymouth. It was to the Plymouth Boat Trips ticket booth that we headed, however, in order to book ourselves on the final harbour boat cruise of the evening due to take place within the hour. Under a tenner each and lasting ninety minutes with a free drink included, this would be the “Summer Sundowner“, not quite coinciding with sunset for our visit, and somewhat scuppered by cloud cover anyway. It was, however, something we didn’t have to pre-book and a chance for us to get out onto the water for the first time in 2020. Did you know we like to cruise? We don’t like to mention it.

Our catamaran arrived and we boarded. There was seating downstairs, inside, plus seating on the top, exposed to the wind. Almost everyone headed up top because that’s what sensible people do and as we were the second people to board we snagged a prime spot right at the back with views not obscured by other passengers. Restrictions to prevent COVID-19 transmission meant that masks had to be worn at all times, even outside (which seemed a bit over-the-top, but whatever), but other than meaning I had to remember not to breathe out just before taking a photo if I didn’t want to fog up the viewfinder this didn’t prove to be much of a pain.

Plymouth is effectively a bit of land between two rivers, these being the Tamar to the west and the Plym to the east. Out boat trip would take us out past the mouth of the Plym with the area opposite Plymouth across the Plym known as Mount Batten. Mount Batten has a breakwater jutting out from it and on that breakwater during our visit there was an art installation. This was Speedwell, built as part of the four-hundredth celebration of the Mayflower‘s sailing to America. Comprising over three and half thousand LEDs, the installation flashes one of nine combinations of words designed to reflect the New World that the pilgrims hoped to find, the fact that it wasn’t really a New World at all as it was inhabited, and that for Speedwell the voyage didn’t even take place, amongst other things. Surprisingly interesting and even mesmerising at times, and we’d get a better view on the way back from the harbour cruise as the light was fading and the artwork became more prominent.

Our boat had a bar on the lower deck; small, but with a reasonable selection of wines, spirits, and beers. As mentioned, the harbour cruise tickets we had entitled us to a free drink and we decided to go with some Prosecco. If we were on a proper cruise ship it’d be champagne but you work with what you have. If plastic tumblers of fizz and a wake view are all 2020’s allowing us to have then so be it.

Our boat proceeded south as far as the Plymouth Breakwater which it then proceeded to slowly pass alongside. This brought us up close with the Plymouth Breakwater Fort, one of the Palmerston Forts built in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The first ones were built near Portsmouth (because we’re more important) so we were very familiar with them and their intended purpose, as well as the ultimate waste of time and money it took to construct them.

Close to the fort we passed RFA Tiderace at anchor. Tiderace is a fast fleet tanker and a fairly modern one at that.

The breakwater had interesting elements at each end of it. We’d already passed the eastern end where a beacon was mounted, comprising a spherical cage atop a structure. This had originally been designed as a refuge for shipwrecked sailors and tells you a lot about the mindset of people in the nineteenth century. The western end was marked by a lighthouse, operational from 1844.

Our gentle, clockwise cruise around Plymouth Harbour next took us past the landmass to the southwest which included Mount Edgcumbe. This was Cornwall we were passing as Plymouth is situated right on the Devon/Cornwall border. Mount Edgcumbe is a landscaped park and woodland with Grade I listed gardens. We wouldn’t visit it during our short stay in the area but the gentle hills and follies we saw looked very attractive even under the cool, grey skies.

Opposite Mount Edgcumbe, as the boat turned around in the mouth of the Tamar, we saw the impressive architecture of the Royal William Yard buildings. Even had we not known about Plymouth’s naval heritage we would have immediately recognised the style of building associated with the Admiralty, again thanks to living in Portsmouth. Built between 1826 and 1835 and designed by architect John Rennie the Younger, Royal William Yard was constructed from local limestone and granite and served as the major victualling depot of the Royal Navy. Much like the Palmerston Forts, however, Royal William Yard never really fulfilled its intended purpose as not long after construction was completed the requirements of the navy changed. These days the area is another former-military establishment turned into restaurants and bars with sea views and historical landmarks, and if we’d had one more day in Plymouth then we would have explored it but our time was too limited on this occasion

The final site of interest in Plymouth Harbour that we’d not seen was St Nicholas Island, or as it’s become more commonly known since the late sixteenth cenury, Drake’s Island, in honour of Sir Francis Drake who had strong connections with the Devonshire city. The rock of the island is a mixture of ejected lava and limestone and the island served as the focal point for the defence of Plymouth for many centuries. Barracks and batteries have occupied the location and numerous plans have been put forward to build hotels on the space since its sale by the Crown but its current disposition is due to be that of a museum and heritage centre once the world sees the back of this pesky virus and things get back to near-normality.

All that remained of our hour and a half out in Plymouth Sound on a boat was to head back towards Sutton Harbour. This took us past Plymouth Hoe with its own lighthouse (you can never have too many) and war monuments around which we’d have a walk a couple of days later.

We had another chance to gaze at the Speedwell art installation on Mount Batten breakwater as our harbour boat cruise came to an end.

To finish off our first few hours in Plymouth we sought out somewhere to eat and drink. Eating proved to be difficult thanks to it being a Saturday night during a pandemic when everywhere wants you to book a table in advance. As I’ve already mentioned, this is not a policy that lends itself to casual travelling, and, although there’s an argument that this is a good thing when the world is under attack at the microscopic level, it’s a smidge inconvenient for visitors if you’re trying to keep the economy running. After a couple of “Did you book a table? Ah…” responses we eventually found a friendly welcome, pizza, beer, and cider at The Plymouth Stable. And some gorgeous views across the waterfront to the main harbour area of the city as the light faded from the sky was a bonus.

The pub we concluded our evening in was The Cider House which, as its name implies, specialised in ciders. There were over a dozen available which pleased my wife a lot but we limited ourselves to just a couple because we’d be heading out fairly early the following day to see the Eden Project, and you’ll be able to read about that in the next post from this West Country series.

The end of our day in Cornwall saw us back in Devon and in search of something to eat and drink. Covid restrictions had already played a part on our first evening in Plymouth and there was an impact at the hotel too with the attached brasserie only being open for room delivery on a Sunday evening. We didn’t really fancy the idea of sitting on the bed or by the dressing table with a plate each so were already looking at eating in the city, but we also knew that attempts to wander into dining establishments the night before hadn’t been too successful on account of the need to book ahead. A few minutes searching on the phone, however, located us a bar a few minutes away doing basic pub food that could be booked online, and that won our custom because if I’ve got to pick between booking over the web and booking over the phone then the web will be victorious every time. Talk to a human? Me? The very thought!

Obviously, Wetherspoon’s was not an option. We have standards which may not be high but they’re not so low as to support the likes of that business.

We booked a table at Revolution Plymouth, wandered over, and discovered that we had the entire venue to ourselves and probably needn’t have bothered with all that searching and reserving anyway. No big deal. Burgers and fries satisfied our need to eat and we washed that down with ale and cider before discovering the cocktail menu. We had seats, we were indoors, and we wouldn’t have any trouble getting served so it seemed wrong to leave before taste-testing what was on offer. Everything was perfectly fine and I was apparently the first person to ever order a Manhattan for the barmaid to make.

It was getting dark when we left Revolution which gave us the chance to see the nearby Theatre Royal colourfully-illuminated and the somewhat menacing sculpture adopting a three-point stance outside it as we headed for somewhere else.

That somewhere else ended up being The Ship which was full inside but had plenty of tables at which we could plonk ourselves down outside by the harbour. Social distancing was enforced by only allowing patrons to sit on alternate tables. Because we’d distracted the barman with a quick chat as he was pouring drinks we ended up getting a pint instead of a half for my wife at no extra cost. We offered to pay the difference because it was clearly a genuine mistake but we were waved away. The pleasant view, ability to order from the table and appealing-looking food options, and friendliness of the barman ensured that we’d make a return visit to this pub on the following day too.

The final Plymouth pub of the evening for us was the Cider House which we’d hit on our first evening in the city too. Small, quiet, and with a fabulous range of boxed ciders, it’s the sort of place you almost have to have a drink in if you’re visiting the West Country.

Our next day in Plymouth (covered in the next post in this series) would be our last before making our way along the coast towards Weymouth to complete this week’s break.

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.