We made our farewells then went to a viewpoint to find a cache and take some photos before leaving Exeter. Although I had set Lyme Regis as a destination I had forgotten to put in a way point so we ended up on the main road. We managed to move onto a smaller road later and made our way on side roads to the seaside town.

The last time we tried to visit here we drove though in fog . Today we still had to drive through without stopping because parking in the in town is so difficult. In fact we found most of the wider area also lovely but it was almost always too difficult to stop even briefly to take photos.

After the GPS had taken us a way we didn't want I overrode it and forced it to take us south to the New Forest. This proved to be a mistake as we ended up doing a slow drive and on the suburban streets in Bournemouth. This added over half an hour to the trip and when we just let the Tom-tom to choose the route we ended up on nice New Forest roads anyway. We saw the wild ponies and had more than once to slow for them as they clearly thought they had priority on the road.

We had a late lunch at Beaulieu and then split up so John could go to the Motor museum and I could see the Palace house. This had been the gatehouse for the Abbey before the dissolution of the monasteries. It has been in lay hands since the house was acquired by the Lord Chancellor for Henry 8th and is still in the same family . The present Lord Montagu set up the motor museum to attract visitor and has done very well from it. Some of the private rooms were also open to visitors prepared to pay extra.

The house had a small number of people dressed in period clothes including 'houseguests’ who were playing the piano and singing in the drawing room. This room clearly showed its religious background as there is a 14th century fan ceiling in the room. It was part of a previous chapel. The other part of the chapel is now a dining area, full of photos from Naples collected by a former owner on his travels. In these areas it is said you can sometimes hear Georgian chanting and smell incense. There were a number of stained glass windows in the house, all with non religious designs.

The library is now a portrait gallery with the books moved to a new space. I didn’t spend much time here as I was not interested in the family photos. There were photos all through the house, along with comments from the owner .

Apart from the people in costumes, there appeared to be no staff in the rooms here and they seemed to rely on ‘Please don’t touch’ signs as well as having cords across chairs to stop people sitting in the chairs.

The house also had a secret staircase although it was chained off for safety reasons. The previous main dining room is used at occasions such as Christmas and the table has come from servants rooms. The table had plain pewter plates, which dated from the 18th century and were prized as they kept food warm as well as being unbreakable.

I then made a quick visit to the Abbey. There was a good exhibition and it showed the layout of the abbey as well as its history. There is a ‘brother’ in the abbey who explains more and he had a small group with him. I didn’t have time to see much but I did see a small bit of a falconry display that was happening in the cloister. The man explained the term ‘hoodwink’ came from putting hoods on falcons .

John saw a large range of vehicles – from ye olde 1880 3 wheeled Benz’s through to modern sports and Formula 1 cars. He particularly liked the McLaren sports car. There were also ‘special’ cars like Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang and the De-Lorean from ‘Back to the Future’. The motorbikes were really good although they didn’t have a Britten super-bike as in Te Papa. He got a nice shot of a BSA Gold Star like Teddy use to race. There were also some bikes raced by former World Champions, as well as some classic old-time machines. They also had a section of old service vehicles e.g. delivery vans, fire engines, ambulances etc. The place was certainly jam-packed with vehicles.

Then both of us went to a SOE exhibition I had not realised that secret agents had been trained in this area during WW2. SOE means Special Operations Executive but it was also suggested it referred to the Stately Omes of England because so many of them were used as training sites . There were 11 in this area, including Beaulieu itself, and agents at one house were unaware of the existence of the others. Locals did not know what the houses were being used for either. Over 3000 agents from 15 countries were trained here, including New Zealand’s Nancy Wake who became the most decorated of them all.

The display told us that the trainers included a safebreaker, released early from prison to pass on his skills, because burglary was classified as a specialist subject. After the war he ended up back in prison. Hardy Amies was also an instructor as it was important that agents dress appropriately. Kim Philby was one of the senior staff here. He descried the instructors as a school of pretty odd fish, with their eccentricities a cover for amazing intellect.

Although most of the display was in the form of information panels, there were also various items on display. A number were the classic spy items. There were timed fuses that looked like pens, hidden weapons etc . We were also told that the training included information about using readily available items like eggs and lemon to write secret messages or make small explosives.

There was also a lot of information about codes. Agents were given specially written poems to memorise. This made them unique and therefore couldn’t be broken. One such poem, written by the cryptographer on the death of his girlfriend, was on display.

It gave an outline of the work some of the agents trained by the unit had done and their fate. This included Nancy Wake, the White Mouse. I knew a bit of her story but had forgotten that she was the most highly decorated woman from WW2.

Despite the secrecy surrounding the unit one panel told us that records from German intelligence captured at the end of the war showed that they knew all about the unit. They even knew the name of Lord Montagu’s dog.

We had a quick look at the James Bond exhibition as we left . As you would guess it mainly concentrated on the cars. There was the car with weapons built in and the one that supposedly could go underwater. There was also an Army exhibition happening and we passed a couple of people with blacked faces. There was also a penny farthing bike and a couple of old cars driving around.

We went from here to Chichester and found the apartment. We had been told there would be someone here at 5pm but when no-one arrived we rang and were given instructions about getting into a box which had the keys. We have been upgraded to the Da Vinci apartment although we don’t know why or what the upgraded apartment had that the other doesn’t. What we do have is a four poster bed, a basic kitchen, a small separate bathroom, free internet and a washing machine.

We went to the local pub for the worst meal I have had in a very long time. The burger meat was charred and tasteless, and was the only thing inside an uncooked bun. It came with nice onion rings and chips so I did eat those but the rest was left. John’s bangers and mash were ok.