Introduction
Having spent the last few months visiting locations from the Sherlock Holmes stories and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's life, I decided to expand my horizons . Having read an article in the Sunday Times about the Agatha Christie locations of Torquay and the surrounding area, and given Christie's admitted use of the Holmes/Watson relationship for Poroit/Hastings in 'The Mysterious Affair At Styles', I decided to make a pilgrimage to the English Riviera.
DAY 1 (04/10/2017) Catching a train from London Paddington (unfortunately not the 4:50), after around 3 hours I found myself at Torquay railway station where in 1990, Christie's centenary year, Joan Hickson's Miss Marple and David Suchet's Hercule Poirot met for the first time. Finding my accommodation and dumping my luggage I decided to follow a walk deemed 'The Agatha Christie Mile'. First up was the Grand Hotel, the site of Agatha's honeymoon with Archie Christie on Christmas Eve 1914.
Walking towards the Harbour my next stop was Princess Pier, a favourite spot of Agatha's for roller skating and built in the same year that she was born.
Nearby was Princess Gardens featured in 'The ABC Murders' and next to this was the Princess Theatre from which the official Agatha Christie Theatre Company tours each year.
Across the road was Torquay Pavilion, and it was after a Wagner concert here that Archie Christie proposed to the young Agatha Miller.
Opposite the Pavilion is a bronze bust of Agatha commemorating the Christie centenary year in 1990, by Dutch sculptor Carol Van Den Boom-Cairns.
Crossing The Strand which is recognisable in a number of Christie's novels, I made my way into Beacon Cove and the Royal Torbay Yacht Club where Agatha's father Frederick Miller was a prominent member.
Moving up a steep hill I overlooked the cove itself, it was here that Agatha once got into difficulty while swimming and almost drowned.
Continuing up the hill I reached the Imperial Hotel which features in the novel 'Sleeping Murder' the last of the Miss Marple novels. The Imperial Hotel also appears as the Majestic Hotel in 'Peril at End House' and 'The Body in the Library'.
On my way back into town, I passed a plaque indicating that Elizabeth Barrett Browning lived in what is now a hotel between 1838 and 1841. Stopping to get a bite to eat I returned to my hotel, and evening watching television and the first few episodes of Series 5 of 'Elementary', the DVD of which had arrived just before I left home. I also discovered that the bus timetable that I had picked up earlier, contained a number of discount vouchers for local attractions.
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