We have recently been on holiday to the Royal William Yard in Plymouth. We only stayed 4 days but it was enough to recharge our batteries. It was odd not to have Lily with us. We used to love taking her on holiday exploring new places with her. This apartment was not dog friendly though and it gave us a chance to do a few non dog friendly things.
The apartment was amazing, we were on the top floor, so the views were perfect. The first thing I did was perch myself on the window sill and look out. As you can see in the photo below in the distance across the water, is Mount Edgcumbe. The Cremyll ferry headed back and forth to it all day long. So, we are on the Devon side and across the water is Cornwall. The weather was really lovely on the day we arrived, almost too hot. You can see the sailing boats and windsurfers in the distance. It was a hive of activity.
The evening sunset was beautiful and this photo was taken below our apartment looking across to Mount Edgcumbe. How beautiful to be able to watch the sunset over the sea.
Royal Navy Boats and Ships!
The next day the weather wasn’t quite as warm, as you can see. However as soon as I got up I had my own Royal Navy boat show! The first ship to come along was this big grey one below. If you look carefully you can see it being guided along by a rope from the tug boat. It had a police boat out in front and two more boats either side keeping it on course.
These ships had come down from the naval base at Devonport, just up the river. They were heading out to sea, passing right in front of us and off towards the Sound. Funnily enough, although I’d called this my Royal Navy show, this first one was actually a visitor from the Royal Netherlands Navy. It’s HNLMS Johan de Witt, a Dutch landing ship, and you can just make out her number, L801, on the bow.
I tried to take a really close up photo of the ship. In the photograph below you can just about see some of the crew lined up along the rails, something they do when a ship is leaving or entering harbour. The size of her was phenomenal. I was so pleased it just happened to pass by while we were in the apartment. The little tug working alongside is one of the Serco boats that help the big ships in and out of Devonport.
More Navy Ships!
Then not long after, another ship came along, slightly smaller this time but still exciting and still pretty big! This one really was one of ours. It’s HMS Sutherland, a Royal Navy Type 23 frigate (number F81), based just up the river at Devonport. It is nicknamed ‘The Fighting Clan’. This one wasn’t being pulled by a tug, but guided along by boats either side, another in front and a police boat.
Cremell Ferry
That morning we were heading off on the Cremell Ferry across to Mount Edgecombe. The photograph below shows Mount Edgecombe in the distance and more smaller boats that were coming along after the two ships had gone by. I haven’t been on a boat for quite a long time but I knew as soon as we were going to go behind the little boats we were going to hit the wake! It was a bit of a bumpy ride for a minute!
Mount Edgcumbe
We met family at Mount Edgcumbe, the big Tudor estate you can see across the water on the Cornwall side of the Sound. It sits in a huge country park that has had a herd of wild fallow deer roaming. We didn’t walk up to the main historic house, but we did wander around the formal gardens. We then had lunch in the Orangery. Although there were a few clouds, and it had been incredibly beautiful and hot the day before, the photo doesn’t really show how cold it was that day. We were lovely and warm inside the Orangery for lunch, which you can see below.
Formal Gardens
The formal gardens were lovely. You don’t have to pay to see them, as it’s all a public country park now. Its run jointly by Plymouth and Cornwall councils with volunteers helping to look after it. I think they have done a marvellous job. There are actually several gardens here, each laid out in a different national style. Italian, French and English and the Orangery where we ate sits in the Italian one. The flowers were planted in these diamond shapes using white, pink and red begonias and it was really striking.
This was another part of the garden, almost maze like, where the red and pink begonias carried on the theme. Even simply looking after a garden like this must take a lot of work. Cutting the hedges and keeping them so neatly trimmed is probably almost a full time job in itself.
I took this photograph because I loved the composition of the winding path leading up to the pretty salmon pink bathhouse. The trees around made it look really cosy. It really was a bathhouse too, I read it on the sign and I did have to laugh imagining them all trekking the whole way down here just for a bath!
Royal William Yard Holiday – Ferry to Plymouth
The next day Nicholas and I took a longer ferry, this time from the Royal William Yard all the way around to the Barbican in Plymouth. It’s a little water taxi that pootles out around Devil’s Point and across the front of Plymouth Hoe before dropping you right by the harbour. Here we were able to spend the day at the aquarium and have some food. The photograph below shows the ferry leaving, with all the seagulls watching us float by.
As you can see, it had been raining a little bit early that morning, but the blue sky was already peeping through, and by midday we were very lucky with the weather as it turned out really warm. The ferry journey was excellent and such a good experience.
The National Marine Aquarium
We last visited Plymouth’s National Marine Aquarium many years ago as a birthday treat, and it must be at least 25 years since we were there. It was really lovely to go back and see it all afresh, as I don’t remember very much about it from before. The fish were incredible, and the tanks were absolutely huge, with some truly amazing fish from all around the world.
I really love the ray, and from underneath it looks like they have little smiley faces! The smiley ‘mouth’ really is the mouth, but the two ‘eyes’ above it are actually its nostrils. The ray’s real eyes are up on top of its body.
There were such beautiful colours and a whole variety of different fish in all the different tanks. This lovely collection, all huddled together around the rock, are Batfish. Some of the tanks even had sharks in them, so I don’t quite know how they don’t eat the whole tankful of their fish friends!
Aquarium
This is a different type of ray, and as it swam in front of me and up the glass it reminded me of a bird, they seem to fly through the water rather than swim. They are so graceful and delicate and once they lie flat on the bottom of the tank you can hardly see them, they are so well camouflaged.
There were some extremely large fish in the tanks. My photographs really don’t do them justice, as you can’t really tell the scale of them. But as they swam by they were just incredible.
I took many photographs and have only added a handful here. I think this is one of my favourites, the Lionfish. They really are a dangerous fish. The beautiful feathery spines are actually venomous, so it is very much a case of look but don’t touch!
The Barbican
There were plenty of very expensive boats moored up in Plymouth harbour. As you can see, the sun and blue sky really came out for us after we came out of the aquarium. This is Sutton Harbour, right in the old heart of the Barbican. It was from here on the Barbican that the Mayflower set sail for America in 1620, carrying the Pilgrim Fathers across the ocean.
After seeing all the fish in the aquarium, rather oddly we went to the Rockfish restaurant and had a fish lunch! I found this really quite surreal, having just been looking at them all in the tanks. I’m still not sure how I feel about it. The food was absolutely delicious though and I would definitely go back.
We then took a stroll around the Barbican and found some really old narrow streets. This one below is apparently called White Lane. We love the way the old buildings curve and lean outwards slightly.
This is another really old street, oddly called… New Street! The buildings date back to the 1500s. The lovely timber framed Elizabethan house you can see was built in the late 1500s. This was when Plymouth was a busy, thriving port. From what I read on the information boards, it was not a nice place to live back in the day, pretty dangerous.
Talland Bay
Talland Bay is beautiful, and the hotel restaurant there is delightful. It sits in a quiet cove on the south Cornwall coast, tucked between the fishing villages of Looe and Polperro. It was once a favourite haunt of Cornish smugglers – probably Nicholas’s ancesters! We celebrated an early birthday with afternoon tea. It all had a wonderful Alice in Wonderland vibe, as you can see from the ‘Eat Me’ label with the White Rabbit on it. The smoked salmon sandwiches were delicious. Of course, as we were in Cornwall, the scones were jam first, then cream!
The views from the gardens were out of this world, and you can see we had a lovely day. It was a bit chilly in the shade, but in the sun it was perfect. Weren’t these gnarly toadstools fabulous!
This was my last photo of our Royal William Yard Holiday, and one I will remember fondly, of a very happy four days down in the south west.
Royal William Yard Holiday – And Finally…
We hope you have enjoyed our Royal William Yard Holiday blog post. I intend to do some pet portrait blogs next and I really must update our pet portraits websites with this years artwork. I feel I am catching up a bit now and its good to be getting back into the swing of things again after everything that has happened this summer. Definitely could still do with a few extra hours in my day though!! If you missed our huge monthly update you can read it here – Huge Monthly Update. Thank you for reading about our holiday, we hope you enjoyed the photos. We also hope that you are all keeping well and we will post again soon.
Contact Us!
If you have a question or you would like to commission a portrait, contact us at any time. Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube Channel too.