A Serpentarium Odyssey: Dorchester, Stinsford, Cape Cornwall, Dartmoor (England), May 2024

In this video, I begin with a narrated slide show of some points of interest on and around Dorchester, England, than then continue with video of a hike I made on and around scenic Cape Cornwall, and then a small portion of a scenic drive through Dartmoor National Park. I also include a couple minutes of my first experiences in United Airlines' "Polaris" business-class seating and service.
For fans of the novels of English author Thomas Hardy, I included my visit (to play a concert) to his own tiny village of Stinsford, just outside Dorchester, which in his books he called "Mellstock". On our concert, we played some selections mentioned in Hardy's "Under the Greenwood Tree", which he had being performed by the "Mellstock Band" and their guise as the "church quire" band; our concert location was St. Michael's, which Hardy called the "Mellstock Church".

[@user-to9fw1wv9l]

Thank you. Enjoy the tour and your informational knowledge on the area. Take care and see you on your next adventure. 🙏🙏🙏

[@jbaymanec]

Always love your videos. Eagerly awaiting your next train odyssey....

[@youtuuba]

I am not sure that I will make any more Train Odyssey videos. I have already made them for all of AMTRAK's long distance routes, in some case making repeat videos of the same routes. I might take more trips on those routes, but unless there is something new to record, what's the point of shooting/editing another redundant video? I have little ambition to take the shorter routes, as they don't have sleeper cars and I don't like sitting in coach for more than a couple hours, and can't get very good videos from those seats. Perhaps I might take some of the shorter scenic trains outside of the AMTRAK system. No plans yet to do so.

[@jbaymanec]

@@youtuuba You ever thought of making longer train trips outside of the US? And there are rumors of new Amtrak routes in the future... but for now that is all the are, rumors ....

[@jbaymanec]

@@youtuuba Oh, and just from my side, even if you make repeat trips, we would still enjoy them. But I see your point...

[@aps125]

Assume you drove a car with manual transmission. You couldn’t have shoot any videos while driving like you did often in the states. But to my surprise I did see footage when your car was in motion. Did you just mount cam on windshield?

[@youtuuba]

aps125, as I mentioned in the video, I did not think I would be able to shoot video in Dartmoor because of the often challenging roads; with all the shifting of the manual transmission, the need to carefully steer the car on narrow twisty roads, I would not have a hand free to hold the camera. But later, when the road I was on got wider, flatter and less challenging, I was able to just leave the car in one gear for a while, steer with my gear-shifting hand and hold the camera with my right hand. I might have switched camera hands at some point. I did have to set the camera in my hap a few times when I needed both hands to drive, but I edited that out of the video.

[@mohamadfaiz6935]

You like on the set of Doc Martin TV Series.

[@youtuuba]

Mohamadfaiz, I have a KZbin video where I visited Port Isaac (Portwenn), the town where the Doc Martin show is filmed. In that video, I show the major filming locations, and show a scene being filmed at the school. Not shown is where I met Martin Clunes (Doc Martin) and Ian McNeice (Bert Large). I just missed meeting Sigourney Weaver who was also visiting. The video is titled, "A Visit to Port Isaac (aka Doc Martin's "Portwenn") in Cornwall".

[@philiplettley]

What do you call a convertible skoda? A skip. What do you call a skoda on top of a hill? A miracle

[@youtuuba]

This is not the most powerful car I have ever driven, but it was perfectly adequate for both the steep rural roads as well as accelerating to motorway speeds (typically 80MPH) and easily keeping up with that traffic. And that was carrying a lot of large luggage and three full sized American men.

[@philiplettley]

@youtuuba when i was a kid in the 80s, we always hears these jokes about skodas lol, they've vastly improved since that time. My family's from Somerset originally and remember childhood holidays to Devon and Somerset. Also when I was in the sea cadets, went to RNAS Culdrose, we were taken up in a search and rescue helicopter and flew all around lands end and Cape Cornwall. Glad to see you like the area. Keep up the good work, and safe travels