We stayed in Torquay, within walking distance of both the beach and the center of town. The weather was perfect the entire time we were there so we got to do a lot of fun things.
We spent one day exploring Dartmoor National Park. There are a lot of narrow roads and the horses, cows, and sheep roam freely around the park. We did some hiking and climbing on the tors and even saw a small stone circle.
The next day we did a "round robin" tour of the area for the whole day. We took a bus (open top) from Paignton to Totnes, a river boat from Totnes to Dartmouth, a ferry from Dartmouth to Kingswear, and a train from Kingswear back to Paignton. We had quite a bit of time in both Totnes and Dartmouth to explore, visit some castles, eat good food, and we even saw a (very loud) stunt flying demonstration.
We spent the bulk of the next two days at the beach since the weather was so nice. It was a rock beach and the water was very cold but we had a lot of fun and the boys spent some time finding sea glass.
On our last day, after we checked out of our holiday apartment, we headed over to Kents Cavern. It's an old cave with guided tours that had a lot of excavation done back in the Victorian times. We didn't take many pictures here since flash photography wasn't allowed but it was a pretty cool thing to see.
We came back to a house full of boxes waiting to be unpacked but it was a really good trip to take before the school term started.
*More details and more photos on the Kimblers Abroad blog.
