My holiday by Jonathan Rimmer aged 29.

This week I have been holidaying in the 1950's.
A Big Sur in a B&B sort of affair but without the poetry or impending D.T's.
I spent the early part of this week on the Dorset coast (Lyme bay) entertaining myself by picking through beach/sea rubbish, collecting ting pyritic ammonites, echinoderms and sea worn vertebrae from ancient sea reptiles. I wandered un gracefully along, slipping, twisting my ankles until my legs felt like they were going to collapse in a plume of flotsam leaving me stranded at the mercy of an unforgiving tide.
Almost unconsciously (apart from the burning sensation in my creaky thighs)I covered the area from Seaton to Seatown and bought the fridge magnets to prove it. The weather was wild to beastly for the main part and on reaching Seaton and having two hours to kill before a bus to Lyme I shivered into my cuppa and then replaced my two legged tripod with a more sophisticated three legged model. I must give an unheard internet thank you to the bus driver who's routine involved drivin the same 15 minute circle all day who, bored out of his wits and seeing me stood shivering at the side of the road, gave me a lift (For free) round the corner to a bus shelter with a timetable so he could tell me I had a couple of hours to wait. A random act of kindness, one in a continuing series of about 3.
I wandered through charity shops where on seeing the tripod and my hooded coat, a bored, slghtly un-nerved volunteer suggested I was in the IRA- like Al Quaeda never happened. It truly is a corner of the world where time has failed to progress. The tripod that actually supports the weight of a camera (and has a smart spirit level) allowed me to have a go at flicking around with shutter speed and experiments with light writing (something I'd always had those road to hell paving intentions to do).
Oh, and I swear I had a curry at the table opposite Billy Bragg, but was too cowardly to actually ask him knowing full well that if he wasn't he would be someone that'd I'd run into at every single turn of the street.
On leaving, I took the bus to Exeter and was amazed to see that most of Dorset and Devon had flooded and even more so to pass through about 100metres of woodland under a couple of inches of hailstone- apparently 2 foot fell in a really localised area!?
Brutal. Odd part of the world.

newsy video:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7700244.stm

newsy article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/7701372.stm