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Torquay Hotels in Torquay, Devon with discounts and special offers
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Torquay is one of three main towns making up the English Riviera. Torquay has a continental feel with its style and setting amongst its many hotels and villas. It has a varied nightlife, excellent shops and beautiful gardens, making this a very popular and busy resort particularly in the summer season.
Places to visit include Torre Abbey and Tythe Barn. Kents Cavern (show caves). Sandy beach which is lost at high tide. Museum. Harbour and pier. Good shopping centre. More for people who like the hectic pace of life. The Western Lady fleet of WW2 high speed boats run frequent 'bus' services to Brixham. Sporting a mini-corniche and promenades landscaped with flowerbeds, TORQUAY , the main centre of the tourist conglomeration at Torbay , comes closest to living up to the self-penned "English Riviera" sobriquet. The much-vaunted palm trees (actually New Zealand cabbage trees) and the coloured lights that festoon the harbour by night contribute to the town's unique flavour, a slightly frayed combination of the exotic and the classically English. Torquay's transformation from a fishing village began with its establishment as a fashionable haven for invalids, among them the consumptive Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who spent three years here. In recent years the most famous figures previously associated with Torquay - crimewriter Agatha Christie and traveller Freya Stark - have given way to the fictional TV hotelier Basil Fawlty, whose jingoism and injured pride perfectly encapsulate the town's adaptation to the demands of mass tourism. The town is focused on the small harbour and marina, separated by limestone cliffs sprouting white high-rise hotels and apartment blocks from Torquay's main beach, Abbey Sands . Good for chucking a frisbee about but too busy for serious relaxation, it takes its name from Torre Abbey , sited in ornamental gardens behind the beachside road. The Norman church that once stood here was razed by Henry VIII, though a gatehouse, tithe barn, chapter house and tower escaped demolition. The present Abbey Mansion (Easter-Oct daily 9.30am-6pm; £3) is a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century construction, now containing the mayor's office, a suite of period rooms with collections of paintings, silver and glass, and one devoted to Agatha Christie. There's more material relating to the Mistress of Murder at the Torquay Museum , above the harbour at 529 Babbacombe Rd (Easter-Oct Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 1.30-5pm; Nov-Easter Mon-Fri 10am-5pm), but most of the space is given over to the local history and natural history collections. Walking north round the promontory from the harbour, you'll reach some good sand beaches, nearest of which Meadfoot Beach , lies at the end of a pretty half-mile coastal walk that takes you through Daddyhole Plain, a large chasm in the cliff caused by a landslide locally attributed to the devil ("Daddy"). If you're searching for something a little more low-key, continue round the point to where a series of beaches extends along the coast as far as the cliff-backed coves of Watcombe and Maidencombe . National Express Coaches operates coach services from Torquay to a number of cities. |
| The Marstan Hotel, Meadfoot Sea Rd, Torquay TQ1 2LQ
Hotel Peppers, 551 Babbacombe Road, Torquay TQ1 1HQ Glendower Hotel, Falkland Road, Torquay TQ2 5JP |
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