Exmoor

Beautiful beach at Woolacombe. As you can see we went to Exmoor.

View from near Dunkery Beacon towards Minehead

This year's holiday was a little different for us in several ways. Firstly we left our son at home - he is 18 now, and was very definite that he did not want to come. Despite my worries, he has not starved and the house is still standing. Secondly, we very sucessfully took my daughter's friend with us, and thirdly it was Rosie's first holiday. 

We had to be careful not to do too much walking, as Rosie is still a puppy. But she absolutely loved some of the country and beach walks we did, as well as having a larger, wilder garden to spend time in. The cottage was dog-friendly, and she did not seem to mind being crated at night, as we could not completely trust that she would not start chewing. Here are just a few photos that give a flavour of our break.
 

Rosie had a great time in the garden

We toasted marshmallows later ...

Walk from Malmsmead, setting of R. D. Blackmore's novel Lorna Doone ....

These are some of the alpaca from the farm where I bought my alpaca wool

View of Dunkery Beacon, and an Exmoor pony

Top of Dunkery Beacon - highest point on Exmoor

Somebody else had made this for Rosie to sit by

Walking down from Dunkery

A caterpillar of an Emperor moth

The cottage where we stayed for the week

Dartmoor

I seem to have so much new to write about at the moment, but here is the last of my holiday posts. We drove across Dartmoor near the end of our holiday in North Devon, on our way to visit Granny, who lives in South Devon. It really is beautiful, although I am not sure that the photograph above is large enough to really show how great the views are.

My daughter is still not too old to bring a cuddly toy on holiday, and Clopper was really excited to meet a real Dartmoor pony. Highlight of his holiday. These ponies live wild on the moor, but are very friendly.

The granite outcrops of rocks are called tors, and there is a tradition to hide letterboxes on them. These boxes contain an inkpad and a stamp, so we had great fun hunting around the crevices in the rocks until we found one.

Heading down from the tor I managed to catch one of those increasingly rare moments when my children were getting on.

Seaside

Sea Holly

These are just a few nature pictures from a coastal walk in North Devon.

Braunton Burrows - a large area of sand dunes with a really rich variety of plants and animals.

Oh dear - I shouldn't have started labelling my photos, as I have no idea what this is, but it was very pretty.

The Common Blue Butterfly - so pretty he should have a better name I think.

Upturned boats at Appledore

Tarka The Otter

This photo was taken by me at an Otter sanctuary in Suffolk.

I keep meaning to write about our Easter holiday, and post a few more pictures. I have also been trying to get to the end of reading "Tarka The Otter" by Henry Williamson, so I could write about that at the same time. But I had to wait for Frankie to finish it, before I could even start.

We were staying for a week in Skirr Cottage, in North Devon, where Henry Williamson lived while he was writing the book. As you can see it was very old and beautiful. I did think it would be rather wonderful for the whole family to sit in the evening reading this classic together in the place it was actually written (possible with me knitting an otter), but perhaps my children have got a bit old for that, and at the time I was concentrating on my shells and didn't want to start a brand new project. So Little One got her hands on the book first, and although I think she found it quite hard going at times, did get to the end (she is 10 years old).

Now I have finished reading "Tarka The Otter" as well. I had always thought it was a children's book, but in fact it was intended for adults. The descriptions of nature are beautiful, but also it doesn't pull any punches.  But I guess nature can be cruel. It reminded me a bit of Watership Down, although the animals are much less anthropomorphic (Do hope that is the right word!).

Simply Messing About In Boats

We are just back from our summer holiday. We had a great time on the Kennet and Avon Canal. I hardly did any knitting and also had very limited internet access, so have very little to show for it in that respect. But we did all have loads of fresh air and exercise, but all at a very gentle pace. 

You just can't rush on a canal.

In the background of this picture is Caen Hill, the longest flight of locks in Britain. So I feel like I have muscles in places I didn't even know existed. In all we think we went through 76 locks. I also pranced around on the tow path with my camera, and took loads of lovely photos of plants and animals, but I will put a few in another post. For now I am going to tackle the most enormous pile of washing I have ever seen!