An ancient Assyrian carved head, probably

We set off by mid-morning with our plans still uncertain. I had arranged to meet up with Dave and Angie, who live in Totnes, at some time in the next few days while we were staying around the South Hams area of south Devon. Dave has suggested we join them on a river trip from Totnes to Dartmouth where they would be having a special fish meal in the port. But we heard yesterday that the trip was off, so plan B was for us to visit them on sunday on our way home.

But the idea of a 90 minute river trip along the tidal stretch south of Totnes still appealed. Prue had recommended that we combine several plans by driving to the village of Dittisham so that we could take the foot passenger ferry across to the east bank of the river. This would allow us to use the back entrance to Greenways, the National Trust owned former summer home of Agatha Christie which Helena was keen to see. So off we went and the threatened rain showers joined us and a deluge began just after we parked the car and stood waiting for the ferry to cross over to pick us up. It was so wet that we just had to visit the convenient Ferryboat Inn on the small dockside.

When the ferryman finally crossed over to pick us up we rushed out to the small boat which can take only twelve people at a time for the three hundred yard crossing. On arrival there was a five minute climb up through the rear gardens of the big estate to reach the big house, which was surprisingly busy. I am not a big fan of Agatha Christie but I was interested to see the house, which was only one of her and her husband's homes. There was a lot of their rather extensive collections of paraphernalia, as they seemed to have been prone to accumulating stuff.

One room that particularly appealed to me was the workroom of her husband, Max Mallowan, which had some of his artefacts as well as information about his exploits as a archaeologist who lead several expeditions to Iraq in the 1940s. Agatha joined him for many of these extensive digs, and was obviously closely involved in the work as well. This head caught my eye placed on top of a bookcase and shelf unit and below some wall mounted information posters about his work at Nimrud. I couldn't see any reference to the carved head at all, so I don't know if he had found it or not. There were some other artefacts supplied by the British Museum and I imagined they might have been in exchange for objects that Max had supplied to the museum. It was very dark in the rooms as all the windows had been shaded by the extensive scaffolding that surrounded the house to facilitate its repainting that was in progress.

After leaving we returned across the river on the ferry and then drove down the valley to Dartmouth, where we could use the car ferry to cross back over the river to drive to Paignton where we had a room booked in a B'n'B for two night. On the way we drove into the nearby town of Brixham which prompted us to want to return there later for a fish and chip supper in a fabulous small restaurant beside the ancient harbour quay. I will add some more pictures of some of these places to a Flickr gallery in a day or so.