Holiday Inn

The first break on the recent journey to Devon was at Solstice Services, a place which we have seen grow from a field with a few surveyors' posts to its present eminence.

On this occasion we took tea and coffee (and a rather good gluten free cake) in the Holiday Inn where we were served by very pleasant staff, mostly foreign, and including a very cheerful young lady, probably from the Phillipines, who thought it more fun to give the floor a polish by swishing around with cloths on her feet, rather than bothering to drag the floor polisher out of its cupboard.

We asked the young lady who seemed more management about the large shed opposite, illustrated above, and we learned that it was where she went when she had run out of housekeeping things. Very handy she said. A sort of cross between T. K. Maxx fancy goods and Robert Dyas household goods. Both a distribution centre and a large shop, clearly yet another major operation of which I had not previously heard. See reference 2.

The Inn was quite busy, this being late morning, clearing up after a large seasonal party from the night before and getting ready for another for the coming afternoon. It seems that they do quite well out of providing facilities for the locals - rather in the way that the next door Harvester does. Not just for travelers such as ourselves.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=solstice+park. For a mixed bag of stuff, some of it about this solstice.

Reference 2: http://www.homebargains.co.uk/.