Okehampton at Christmas

We set off quite early in the morning, diving around the M25 and then shooting down the A303 (mostly)...I actually slept for quite a bit of the journey down with my head resting on a pillow against the window, until the rising sun forced me to a wakeful state...

...(that's actually a picture of the sunset but you get the idea) we stopped off to buy some water (and ready-mixed Ribena drink for Flyingpops) at a service station about half way down and then woke up a very sleepy Dawn (who had been working at the nightclub in town until the early hours) at about 9am by calling her mobile just as we were pulling into town...I'd never been to Oakhampton before and was quite keen to look around the place, so we dragged our luggage up to her flat which is located in this charming shopping arcade, dragged Dawn out of bed, quickly exchanged Christmas gifts -

- and then headed straight out for breakfast -

- not opting for the amusing credit crunch breakfast we passed on the way, but to a favourite little cafe of Dawn's down a little alleyway filled with shops (this town was actually *full* of little independent places, the only chains that seemed to be in evidence were the supermarkets) which made a refreshing change -

- the food was very reasonable (£6 for a full English), and actually extremely tasty, even the sausage (which can be a bit of a minefield in the breakfast stakes) -

- funnily enough, it turns out that it had recently been visited (well, the upstairs Bistro part, anyway) by Gordon Ramsay for an upcoming episode of Kitchen Nightmares (which was quite exciting), so we were quite confident the fridges and storage areas were sparklingly clean (if nothing else)...can't wait to watch the show (just hope it wasn't too nasty beforehand)! ;) Anyway, when we had finished that somehow Flyingpops still had room left for a pasty, so we stopped at a small bakery (and she bought what was called a "cocktail" pasty, which turned out to be just an extra small example -

- I was absolutely stuffed so I contented myself with sniffing in the apetising aroma...the rest of the day saw us explore more of the town (although all the interesting stuff (museum/castle/Dartmoor steam railway) was closed thanks to the time of year) so we contented ourselves with a lunchtime pint in the local pub (which had some very interesting windows) -

- a spot of shopping in the supermarkets, and then I cooked us all up a tasty roast dinner, filling the evening with some quality Wii and Xbox 360 time in Dawns front room...a very pleasant stay...