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Last full day here today. Jo’s thumb is getting better, she was able to take the strapping off and leave it off this morning. We headed off to Ilfracombe this morning about 10. It was a late start this morning; everyone except me slept in. We got parked at about 11:15, but the ticket machine was eating money and not giving tickets, so I had to ring the number on the machine to pay for parking using my credit card. You had to give the registration and make and colour of the car and then your credit card details, all to an automated system, so that was painful, then it took payment and sent you a text confirming you had paid.
We walked a few hundred yards to Tunnel Beaches. In the 1820’s tunnels were hand carved through the
cliff to access the beach and rock pools. The cliff is slate and so is the grey ‘sand’ which is quite strange under foot, not like any normal pebble beach. Also, it sticks really well to your legs and feet as the flat little pieces don’t easily brush off like sand. By the time we arrived on the beach it was about 3 hours after high tide and the tidal pool was just becoming visible. I went scrambling round the rock pools with the kids, with my jeans rolled up to my knees as I hadn’t thought to wear shorts. Many pebbles and shells were collected. As we were getting ready to go for lunch, I sent the kids to wash the sand off their hands in a rock pool by us. This was when P slid into the pool and was soaked to the chest. If it was going to happen to anyone it would be him. I went back to the car to collect the spare clothes and then once he was changed we went for lunch. We looked at the cafe at the entrance to the tunnels, but ended up walking along the front and eating in the Dedes Hotel & Wheel Room. I had the all day breakfast, Jo had the cumberland sausage, P had the Cornish Pasty and A had the burger in bun. All the food was delicious and worth walking a little further for.
After we had eaten we carried on walking along the front until we got to the aquarium. We had a look around in there and the kids did the quizzes and got all the questions right. We stopped off in one of the many fudge shops and treated ourselves. After a few more shops we were out of cash, so it was time to head back to the car. Jo did find a couple of nice leather bags in a leather shop, but they went on plastic.
We stopped off at Sainsbury’s on the way back to grab some food for tonight. We needed something to go with the abundance of cream we bought earlier in the week.
We went to Exmoor Zoo today. It’s about 12 acres, so a lot smaller than Whipsnade. That said, its well laid out with a wide variety of animals, some of which we hadn’t seen before. The meerkats were cute as meerkats always are. When we got round to the guinea pigs there was a peacock that was determined to be noticed and very noisy. The guinea pigs were separated into a male and female enclosure (hmm, I wonder why) and the kids spent a lot of time stroking the female guinea pigs, the males were a lot more shy. They had a black leopard which wasn’t difficult to find; it was lying asleep next to the fence, not very photogenic thou’. We caught one of their organised sessions at 2:30 when they brought a selection of animals into the encounter area for children (and adults to touch). A stayed clear of the skunk, but stroked the guinea pigs, polecat, barnacle goose and hairy armadillo. P did the lot.
The kids were playing outside in the garden when we got back and one of the neighbours asked if they wanted to see the piglets, so we went up past High Hallsanney to see the piglets. The sow (Princess of Pork) is a Gloucester Old Spot and the boar (the young Duke of Pork) is a Tamworth, so the piglets are a mix of orange and spots. Their other boar, (the old Duke of Pork,) hadn’t been performing, so he was in the freezer. That said the other sow was pregnant, so maybe he had been up to the job after all. After we had met and fed the piglets and the boar, and A scratched his head, which was very bristly, we met one of the cows and then the ducks. At this point we were overflown by either a swallow or house martin. I hadn’t been able to make up my mind what I’d been seeing and so I asked. Evidently there are both, the swallows have a nest at the back of the main house and the martins have a nest on the front. We were taken to see the swallows’ nest, where they were raising their second brood of the year. We could just see the three heads peeping out over the brim of the nest.
We ate this evening in the Old Barn Inn in Bickington. We were going to go to The Quay Cafe in Fremington again this evening, but after driving down the single track road to it, found that it closed at 5pm. The staff at the Old Barn were really friendly and the food was great, so that worked out well.
We had been keeping an eye on the weather for today, with the intention of heading to Dartmoor. When we got up today we checked again and it was looking good, so we took a chance, packed up and headed south. We had checked our route on the RAC website and written down the route, so it should have been fairly straightforward. The instructions were not 100% accurate, so we had a couple of interesting diversions. Still we got to Dartmoor without too much difficulty, even if the route had been given up on up by then. We had to resort to a very general map I had in the glove-box for guidance at one point.
We stopped off a few times for the kids to see and photograph the Dartmoor ponies or the free roaming sheep. The first time we stopped by a stream we saw a golden-ringed dragonfly. I did try to get some photos, but none came out particularly well. At one point we passed a car park which had been invaded by a herd of cows, which were licking the cars, nice! We did get to Badger’s Holt at Dartmeet, which is where we were aiming for, so that was good. We ate at the restaurant first and then after visiting the shop, headed off along the bank of the east Dart. All was going well until while climbing up a rock, Jo’s right thumb dislocated and then popped back. She nearly passed out, but after a while was able to move. This is the same thumb that she dislocated about 20 years ago while doing aikido, so she knew what she’d done. After a while we headed back to the car and had a cream tea before leaving for home. The sheep were just wandering out in front of the car on the way home which the kids found hilarious. There was one sheep that was licking a patch on the road and wasn’t getting out the way for us or the other oncoming car, we each took in in turns to go round the sheep while it moved it’s body into the other lane. We were going to have a meal at the Puffing Billy in Torrington, but it didn’t appear to be open, so we headed up the hill to the Clinton Arms in Frithelstock. We had a excellent meal here and would eat here again. After picking up some strapping tape at Sainsbury’s we headed back to the cottage where Jo strapped her thumb up.
Kids watched out for bats again and saw a few.
It was a slow start this morning. Couple of spots of rain while we were having breakfast. We headed into Barnstaple this morning as we needed to get a memory card reader for Jo’s camera. Mine and the kids all take SD cards, but Jo’s uses xD cards. I had grabbed my SD card reader, but forgot to pick up Jo’s before we left, oops. A quick trip to Jessops in Barnstaple got a multi card reader and so Jo would be able to download her photos to her laptop. While we were in town we had a look around the shops and ended up getting some books in the Oxfam shop, a 1867 copy of volume 2 of The Waverley Novels by Sir Walter Scott and a copy of A Child’s Garden of Verses by R.L. Stevenson.
After this we headed down to Great Torrington to Dartington Crystal. We got there just after 12, so would be able to go on the factory tour, which restarted at 12. We looked around the visitors centre at the history blown glass making and the history of Dartington Crystal. Some of the engraved pieces were very impressive. While we were looking round it started raining and continued on while we ate at the restaurant and then visited the shop.
When we got back to the cottage I taught everyone a card game called Switch, I know this isn’t the name that I knew it as, but cannot remember it. The idea is to get rid of your cards by placing the same name or suit card as is on the pile. 8 causes the next player to miss a turn, Ace allow you to name the suit, Jack changes direction, 2 – you have to place another 2 or pick up two cards or 4 if two consecutive 2s are played etc. This went down really well and many hands were played before we went out for the evening meal.
Our plan was to head to the pub in Littleham, which is only a couple of miles away, but somehow I missed the turning, don’t ask! We headed across to the next village with a pub using the ‘yellow’ roads on the OS map. These are apparently roads generally less than 4m wide. Yep, they were, they were so narrow that there was grass growing down the middle. I met a car coming the opposite way on the first bend and had to back up a bit to the nearest passing place. I didn’t meet anything else, which was just as well. When we reached the A39 in Horns Cross, the Coach and Horses pub was directly across the road. We had a very pleasant meal there tonight and then headed back along the A39 instead of the country roads.
Kids wanted to see the bats tonight, and weren’t disappointed.
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