Dartmouth
Dinner was announced this evening with some vigorous hand-bell ringing from the Dartmouth town crier dressed in glorious scarlet. Accompanying us at the Captain’s Welcome Dinner were a number of dignitaries from the town including the mayor and a representative from the harbor authority. A gala occasion, therefore, that speaks of a special connection between Lindblad Expeditions and this historic English naval town that runs back over a generation and a succession of vessels remembered with affection by the town’s inhabitants. We may, as our expedition leader so aptly put it, have a port of registration emblazoned on the stern but Dartmouth is a home port for us if ever there was one.
The harbor boasts a dramatic entrance. We took on our pilot during breakfast and gathered on the Bridge to watch our entrance into the mouth of the River Dart through a gap in the Old Red Sandstone. A castle guards the harbor entrance but students of the religious history of these islands might focus on the tiny church dedicated to St Petrox, a Cornish saint from the Celtic church who settled on this spot with a band of acolytes in the year 594 BC, three full years before Augustine arrived in Canterbury on a his mission to convert the English. For in the sixth century Age of the Saints, when the Dark Ages had cast its shadow across large swathes of continental Europe, the Light of Christian civilization was kept alight in the far west of this eastern Atlantic archipelago. The story of Celtic Christianity will hold our attention over coming days.
Our morning was devoted to a walking tour of the town. Dartmouth itself is situated on the western bank of the Dart with its sister township of Kingswear to the east. The situation of both settlements is as attractive as it is dramatic with rows of houses rising in colorful terraces up the steep banks of the river. Once inside the narrow harbor entrance the river opens up to provide splendid anchorages, such as the evocatively named Warfleet. When the railway arrived at Kingswear from Paignton it was decided to build the station building in Dartmouth, providing a rare example of a station separated by river from its track, with passengers taking a ferry from the ticket office to the train. The Early English church of St Saviour’s was a highlight with its rare example of a rood screen in an urban context that survived the destruction of the Reformation.
In the afternoon there were optional historical walks and natural history walks guided by the field staff and the chance to recuperate afterwards with a traditional clotted cream tea or a pint of local ale in one of the historic inns for which the town is justly renowned.
