Thursday 23 January 2014

mince pies, moors and some very happy ducks.

I just had a look at my last post about Devon...it's massive...and I see I managed to slip a little Bath trivia lesson in there. Read up, there'll be a quiz later. But this one will be less of an investment of your time, I promise.

With a bagful of home-made gifts and a couple of jars of home-made fruit mince under my arms (I had a lot of time on my hands before christmas...), we delved deeper into Devon, to a little town called Winkleigh where some more of Will's extended family live. On the night before christmas we arrived at a wonderful thatched, converted barn- there were ruins to explore, baking to be done (and a subsequent truck-load of mince pies to be eaten) and table tennis to be played so we were all very happy.




On christmas morning we woke to pancakes and bacon, a surprise bag of very thoughtful gifts each and the promise of an enormous lunch. Will was oblivious to all this though; being finally allowed to play with his (christmas present) yoyo after pestering me all week for it, he did little else the rest of the day.


If you don't call the underside of a rock home, you will know about the fairly hefty amount of moisture this little island has been drowning in of late. Fantastic for the ducks and their brethren; not awesome for two Australians who are keen on sunshine. It does mean though that when the skies do stop crying, we are outside before you can say 'hey look at those two weirdos splashing around in the puddles'. So we have managed a few sun drenched adventures. I like to call them sundrentures.






We admired some very dramatic coastline and pondered over a dead cow on a beach in western Devon, then fed our appetites for tiny cobbled fishing villages and cream teas in Clovelly.

I demonstrated how being bad at tennis probably means you are also going to be bad at table tennis and Will and our new friend Ed demonstrated how boys will be boys by getting all aflutter upon finding full fire extinguishers on an abandoned train.


We got lost on a bike ride on Dartmoor and saw some Dartmoor ponies. I drank any kind of mulled beverage I came across (it's cold here, okay).

We outwitted the floods and managed to find our way down to Cornwall when most of the public transport demonstrated how pathetically unable to deal with water it is, and stayed in  a shack that will probably be in the sea in 10 years (this is no exaggeration- cliff-edge houses have been toppling over at an alarming rate recently). And the next day we had poached eggs for breakfast, a cider and a wander around the blue and white houses and smuggler's coves of Polperro for lunch and got a wee bit lost looking for a coastal path (after sitting in the growing dark and cold for 3 hours, waiting for a lift that was not coming, we were saved a 6 mile walk in the dark by the kindness of strangers- a lady who, according to her fam who were all bundled in the car, liked to 'collect' the lost and hungry looking).

We walked 5 miles on an internet pilgrimage and then had to walk home in the rain (luckily we had pre-rewarded ourselves with a pint before we left town).

And on those days when going outside was vetoed by a look out the window, a look at each other and a weary sigh into a cup of tea, we did other things. Like learn to knit. I am almost the proud owner of a completely boyfriend knitted, extremely warm and cosy looking scarf. And visit the smallest cinema I ever did see to watch about the muted horrors of Irish catholicism. And cook cinnamon buns and go shopping for hiking boots and visit a marble museum.



And in a wonderfully satisfying circle, we then went back to Halberton and Hugh, Lindsay and Jess, who were the very first stop on our Devsplorations. We spent our last day in Devon watching incredibly posh people on huge horses mingle with archetypal English farmers in wellies and those hats before charging off down the road with their hounds, wandering through a wintry forest next to a murky river, clambering halfway up a hill in the mist on Exmoor (and running back down it when that mist turned to rain) and trying to find somewhere that would give us lunch after 2.30pm in small-town Devon on a winter's afternoon.

Take-away pork pie anyone?

P.S. here are some pictures from last blog. enjoy.


This Kombi sells excellent coffee. This is my favourite thing ever. 
Exeter. We spent many a rainy day here shopping. This day we spent watching swans preen.
A country manor. We have delusions of grandeur.
The beautiful Devon at sunset.
What this? It's only the most famous stone circle of all time.
We did a spot of time travel whilst in Bath.
Some of John Wood's architecture.



Tuesday 21 January 2014

some moor pictures (and some others too)

As well as farmers, moors and rain, this is what else is you can find in Devon...

It's always a good time when you're learning to slack-line.

The drama of the west coast...we also saw a dead cow on this beach.


The tiniest fishing village that ever there was. Clovelly. 

Polperro! And the ubiquitous blue and white. 

Polperro makes us smile. 

Smugglers coves in Cornwall...Famous Five style. 

Say hello to Mr. December. 

Oh, the charm. 

The colours of a Devon winter.

Where ever you are, it's always appropriate to yoyo.

King.

Sunset at Hound Tor (a tor is a hill with a pile of rocks on top, to be found all over Dartmoor).

Will's bit on the side...of eggs. 

Sideways Will and pony. 

We went to the marble museum and this is what we found...

"Sound the trumpets Nigel, it's time to drink tea and hunt stuff."

Lucky penny tree. 

Running around Exmoor...in a minute it will start chucking it down. 

Exmoor in the mist.

Wednesday 15 January 2014

it's chucking it down but DON'T MENTION THE WEATHER.

Welcome to Devon, England. Here you'll find cream teas aplenty, thousand year old country lanes and farmers of all kinds. Have fun, watch out for floods and remember, DON'T MENTION THE WEATHER.

We have been in the motherland for nearly two months now and we are learning ever more about our English friends. Like when it's raining it is actually 'chucking it down', if you want to do something you are actually 'up for it', tea preferred over water, you are allowed to put exclamation marks in the names of towns, a la Westward Ho! (I'm not sure what Westward Ho!ians do when they want to jubilantly welcome visitors to their town though...) and although the locals are allowed to be as derisive and moany about the (at the moment fairly terrible) weather, as a visitor you are most unwelcome to join in the chorus of whinge unless you want to hear 'this is England! What do you bloody expect!'. I feel it may be a bit of a sore spot. We are clever though so now when it is raining we just smile resignedly and say 'ahh well, we had that lovely spot of sun last week, no problem.'

Since leaving London we have been taking full advantage of the expansive hospitality of Will's distant relations, and meandering through Devon along the way. We have celebrated christmas England style: roast turkey and all the trimmings (including that odd English condiment, bread sauce) and pudding with custard and fruitcake and thousands of mince pies, danced in the new year in a barn amongst kids and dogs and wellies and a punk band, wandered down countless tiny country lanes that are so old the road level has sunk several inches below the fields on either side and so narrow that if two cars come upon each other one has to reverse until they find somewhere to pull in, drank warm pints of ale fireside in homely little pubs, eaten scones with clotted cream thick as butter and admired some beautiful cloudscapes. And spent more than one relentlessly rainy day getting our cabin fever on. It's all terribly English really.

Our explorations of Devon started in Halberton, a little hamlet near the thriving metropolis of Tiverton, about 3 hours south of London. We eased our way into country life with walks along the nearby canal and cycle rides in and around Tiverton, a town where there is no excuse for bad hair ("Tivvy" is no metropolis- that was my facetious side shining through- but as a relatively small English town it has no less than 7 hairdressers...we counted. And this is a recurring theme in small town England; apparently a complete absence of sun is bearable if one has perfectly coiffed hair). We visited Exeter, the nearest city, and wandered along its quay, admired the kitsch for sale at the christmas market and took a tour around the wonderful cathedral. Here we learnt about the cat that was employed, at one penny a week, to catch the vermin drawn into the church by the animal fat used to grease the huge mechanical clock and about why Americans should not be allowed to join group tours. We bought each other christmas presents then tried to forget what they were so we could be surprised on christmas day. We decorated the christmas tree and made lots of goodies to ingratiate ourselves with our obliging hosts.

As I couldn't come to England a fourth time and again miss one of its most iconic sites- and Will was also keen- we borrowed the car one Friday evening and hit the open road. After we had packed- the kitchen sink stayed in situ, but barely- I jumped in the driving seat and we were off. Well, I jumped in the driving seat, sparked fear in Will's heart as I panicked and "jokingly" clarified which pedal was which, and we were off!

Our plan was to sleep in the car and be at Stonehenge for sunrise the next day, as it was the winter solstice and something very clever is supposed to happen involving the sun and the stones and the shadows on the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Of course, the English sun is a little bit contrary and on this morning, to the consternation of the thousand or so people standing around in the miserable dark drizzle, it decided that the clouds probably had everything under control and it might just stay in bed. We did get an unexpected glimpse into paganism though as we celebrated the solstice druid style. For those playing at home, here's how it's done: first call for peace in all corners of the globe, then get everyone to chant together- this will create an eerily harmonious sound in the circle, then talk a bit, do some praying and beat some drums, smoke weed and be cheerful. Dress-ups are appropriate...unicorns, human trees and capes aplenty.
Pagans are a slightly odd bunch, turns out, but welcoming in the shortest day of the year with them in a huge stone circle in a field in England was certainly memorable.

However, we aren't druids and after about an hour the magic of the morning could no longer block out the freezing cold wind and rain and we jumped gratefully back into the car, turned the heaters to full and drove to Bath. 2000 years ago we would be eagerly heading for a day of pampering and socialising; preparing to have our skin scrubbed and scraped, our eyebrows plucked and our ears cleaned, to sweat in a sauna and re-energise in a plunge pool, and to gossip, giggle and flirt our way around the swimming-pool sized main bath. All the while in the nude. Fast forward several millenia and we are wandering, fully clothed, around a slightly more subdued bath-house complex guided by the disembodied voices of Bill Bryson and a knowledgeable English lady. We couldn't take a dip, unfortunately, but we did drink from the fountain of magical (very irony lukewarm) Bath water. We are now immortal.

Our appetites for local history not quite satiated we took a walking tour around the city and learnt about Bath: the making of. Obviously the presence of natural hot springs play a major part in Bath's history, in that there wouldn't be a city there at all if it wasn't for them (and those canny Romans turning them into a fashionable destination). The limestone found in the local hills is also a major player, being the main material for most of the old buildings.
Moving into the human realm, the city owes it's outstandingly aesthetic architecture to a father and son team named John Wood (elder and younger). They were champions of the Palladian style-elegant, harmonious, proportionate and balanced- and sought to turn Bath into the Rome of England. A square, a mansion and the foundations of the Circus- his magnum opus- later and John Wood the Elder died. His son took over, finished the Circus and added to it the Royal Crescent, which is considered to be one of the best examples of Georgian architecture in Britain- and speaking as someone with no architectural knowledge at all, it is amazing; a building that makes you happy just by being there. He was obviously pushing the right buttons; most of central of Bath is his work. We'll leave the Woods to their building and move onto the man who cleaned up Bath's society. Beau Nash came onto the scene in 1705 with his velvet and diamond rich wardrobe, his fortune made in gambling and his personable charm and transformed Bath. He commissioned a ball room, set in place a curfew so that people felt safe on the streets, introduced rules such as the one that forbade 'exhibitions of resentment from either gentlemen or ladies on the grounds that someone had danced out of turn'. Essentially he poshed up Bath, and he looked damn fine doing so...

"(Beau) wore his gold-laced clothes on the occasion, and looked so fine that, standing by chance in the middle of the dancers, he was taken by many at a distance for a gilt garland".
                                                                                                         Lord Chesterfield

100 years later Jane Austen ensured Bath would be on the future literary trail by making the city her home for 5 years and using it and it's society in Persuasion and Northanger Abbey.

Before we left Bath we visited another of John Wood's creations, the Assembly Rooms, a function centre housing some incredibly glittery chandeliers and the fashion museum, where we looked at lots of dresses and I got to see how uncomfortable women used to be back in the days of hoop skirts and corsets. The answer is very, surprise surprise.

Then with our brains heavy with new information we ran back to the car, made it within minutes of our parking ticket expiring and headed home to rest our fact-filled little heads. Christmas was mere days away and we needed to be bright and well-rested for all the eating and present opening to come.