Dittisham and Agatha Christie

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A short drive away from Kingsbridge is the village of Dittisham. From there, you can take a ferry across the River Dart to Greenway, former summer home of Agatha Christie, now a National Trust Property. The drive takes you on "A" roads, which are defined as "major roads intended to provide large scale transport links within or between areas, often the main route to a destination." In many areas of the country, these are multi-lane roads like minor US highways. In Devon and Cornwall, not so much. In fact, they are often one lane roads and are marked with a sign like the one below.

Oh, and that "30" indicates a speed limit of 30 MPH, but some of these tiny roads - a lot of them, in fact - post a speed limit of 60 MPH and the locals often drive that fast. When the road is one lane and you meet a car coming the other way, you look for a place to pull off to the side but sometimes it's just too narrow, so one of you has to back up to where it's wide enough for the other car to get by. It's quite exhilarating (aka terrifying.) Anyway, these little roads eventually led us to the Dittisham car park.

Please forgive that rant, and BTW, here comes another: in the 6 years that we've been making regular trips to the UK, one thing has really bothered me. Having a US phone, one can't download most UK apps. That means no grocery store savings apps but, more importantly, no parking apps. Without a parking app you have to carry lots of £1 coins which are rather heavy and quite cumbersome. Well, I guess our frustration level peaked, so we bought a cheap Samsung and got a pay-as-you-go plan with EE, formerly BT. End of rant, thank you.

Back to the story. We parked in the Dittisham car park, used our fabulous new parking app, RingGo (I wonder what Mr. Starr thinks of that) and set off down the path,

We walked the twisy-turny path past lovely seaside houses and finally made it to the Dittisahm Ferry loading point.

The Dittisham Belle is a small wooden boat that holds about a dozen people.

The ride lasted about 2 minutes (at £3 per person) and dropped us at Greenway where you can access the John Musgrave Heritage Trail and/or the National Trust property, which was our destination. It's another lovely leafy uphill walk.

Upon entering the welcome center I was thrilled to see that visitors were encouraged to take a little red notebook and pencil of the sort that Agatha Christie used, and do a little writing of their own.

Dotted around the property are small slates on the ground with writing prompts.

There's also a trail intended for young people where they can fill in the blanks of a story book.

A volunteer greets you as you enter the house

and hands you a notebook with information about each room. It's a wonderful idea and I think it should be adopted at more properties since there always seems to be a shortage of volunteers. Most of the volunteer docents are retirees. Many have been volunteering at their local property for years and are incredibly knowledgeable. I hate to think what will happen if future retirees don't continue the tradition.

We started the tour in the Morning Room which features a sweet painting of Agatha Christie as a child. and holds lots of the porcelain figures and other items that make up part of the vast trove of collectibles amassed over the years.

The Morning Room opens onto the Drawing Room where the family gathered in the evenings for music, games and first readings of new manuscripts. Apparently Agatha Christie trained as a concert pianist but she was too shy to perform, even for her family.

The Morning Room leads to the Entrance Hall which is also full of collectibles

including a skull jar made in Germany used to hold tobacco.

Agatha Christie was married twice, first to Archibald Christie whom she divorced in 1928, then to Max Mallowan, an archeologist whom she accompanied on many of his digs. She used to assist by cleaning off shards of pottery with her cold cream. Imagine!

Going up the stairs, on the landing is a figure of the Buddha found by Max on an archeological dig, now on semi-permanent loan from the British Museum.

The first room on the 2nd floor (1st floor in England) is the bathroom featuring the mahogany toilet which Agatha insisted upon bringing along when she traveled with Max on digs.

In the bedroom, there's Agatha's bed and Max's smaller bed which he took with him on archeological digs in the Middle East and which he found so comfortable he brought back. There's a truly stunning Damascus chest inlaid with mother of pearl and bone

and several chinoiserie pieces inlaid with mother of pearl.

My favorite part was the Dressing Room which contained clothing and "dress up" pieces.

I particularly loved the mother-of-pearl inlaid box and sewing box/manicure set.

I never seem to remember that Agatha Christie was a modern writer; she only died in 1976. I shouldn't have been surprised then, when the next room was the Fax Room.

Then came the Sitting Room which Agatha's daughter, Rosalind Hicks, converted from Max's bedroom and which featured a portrait of Agatha when she was 20 years old, painted by Nathaniel Hughes John Baird in 1910.

Next was the library, with its collection of over 5,000 books including, of course, all those written by Agatha. This was said to be her grandson's favorite room.

The last two rooms were the inner hall with its collection of canes, boxes and other items

and the dining room with its wonderful curved doors.

I loved this little sign and its story.

We explored the grounds which include a walled garden complete with glass house.

Further afield we found a secluded garden with a fountain

which contained the graves of the family pets.

The beautiful path led back to the house and exit.

After our wonderful visit we hiked back to the landing, where one is instructed to ring the bell to summon the ferry.

We drove home on another twisty-turny road and stopped at Blackpool Sands, a beautiful horseshoe shaped shingle beach.

 For the uninitiated, a shingle beach doesn't have sand, just little pebbles.

When you walk along the beach, you get quite a workout as your shoes sink into the pebbles.

We hiked to the end of the beach to a little hidden cove.

There are wonderful slate formations that shed bits of slate into the shingles.

I was amazed to see a sauna at the end of the beach with smoke coming out of the chimney.

On the way to the car park there was a plaque which talked about the significance of Blackpool Sands. In 1404 a fleet of 300 ships carrying 2,000 knights along with supporting bowmen and men-at-arms set sail from Breton, France with the objective of landing at Blackpool Sands and storming and burning the city of Dartmouth. As they crossed the English channel, they came upon a convoy of Spanish wine ships and, unable to resist, many ships diverted from the rest of the force to plunder them. In the meanwhile, the English militia and local peasantry had dug a ditch around Blackpool Sands which filled as the tide rose, leaving only a narrow causeway leading to the far bank. The Bretons tried to attack but halfway across the causeway they began to flounder, their horses weighed down by heavy armor. The British rushed forward and a bloody battle ensued with the British victorious. News of the peasant army's exploits reached the court of Henry IV. Astonished at the victory, a chronicler wrote that "the Crows have pecked the Eagles."

Back into the car and on to Slapton Sands, site of a recovered Sherman tank.

At first you would think that this is a fitting reminder of the American Forces who were billeted here during the Second World War, but it is much, much more. This Tank commemorates one of the biggest losses of life during the War, and is the unofficial Tombstone for 946 men who lost their lives during exercise ‘Tiger’, many of whom still lie buried in unmarked graves. In 1944, a military training exercise was held in Slapton Sands in preparation for D-Day. The area was chosen because of its similarity to Utah Beach.

In the early morning hours of the 28th of April, eight Landing Ship Tanks full of American servicemen and military equipment were converging in Lyme Bay, off the coast of Devon, making their way towards Slapton Sands for the D-Day rehearsal.  A group of four German E-Boats, alerted by heavy radio traffic in Lyme Bay, intercepted the three-mile long convoy of vessels.  The heavily laden, slow moving LST’s were easy targets for the torpedo boats which first attacked the unprotected rear of the convoy. News of this disastrous exercise was covered up for years. Ken Small first came to Slapton on holiday and discovered the existence of the tank while beachcombing. He campaigned for years to recover the Tank, uncovered the whole heartrending story while researching how the tank came to be lying just off the beach, and produced his best-selling book The Forgotten Dead that tells the whole story. The poppy wreaths show that the British people still remember and value the sacrifices made on their behalf during WWII.

After a pub lunch of fish and chips at the Start Bay Inn, where we met a very entertaining

waiter from New Zealand who was appalled that I would order and Italian pinot grigio instead of a New Zealand sauvignon blanc, we made our way back to Kingsbridge.