All of us and Ross and Susanna travelled to Cornwall. We hired a seven-seater people mover with all the mod cons including in car DVD. We zipped down the M4 to Bristol in reasonably good time. It was a glorious sunny day. I love the English countryside – the patchwork fields were beautiful.
From Bristol we veered south and then turned off the motorway near Exmoor and headed up across Dartmoor. It was superb – the moor is very wild – hard to believe in this country where everything has been ‘civilised’ for such a long time. We stopped at one point on the top of the moor where the wild moor ponies were grazing. Susanna warned us about the ponies as they can become aggressive looking for food. One of the ponies seemed to take a great interest in the girls and came very close – but luckily they came to no harm.
We also went past Dartmoor prison – one of the most inhospitable places you can imagine even on a fine and sunny day like this one. The prison is a bit like Pentridge Prison made of dark blue stone but is stuck in the middle of nowhere. The small village around it – Princeton I think it was called – houses only the prison staff and the families of the prisoners and a few shopkeepers. It was easy to imagine how woeful it would be in the middle of a dark, windswept rainy night.
The heather on the moor was jus starting to bloom – parts of the moor were a soft hazy mauve.
We arrived at Susanna’s sister’s and her husband’s holiday house at about 6pm. We took a rather circuitous route to get to Seaton. The road was barely wide enough for the car with hedgerows on either side.
The holiday house is at Seaton – a small Cornish seaside village that adjoins another village called Down Derry. The two rows of houses are built along the edge of a low cliff with a narrow strip of road between. The land is very steep so the houses are all built up on terraces of rock with terraced gardens.
Tony and Mary’s house is a great beach house – it has a large living room glass along the south-facing wall, which has a 180-degree view across the ocean. To the east you can see the lighthouse at Exmouth and to the west the town of Looe and the small island off its point. Some of the houses on the cliff side of the road at Downderry are classic Cornish houses – it’s like being in part of a Famous Five novel. The houses are made of stone and have these glorious terraced gardens with soft green lawns, flower borders and paved terraces that stretch down to the edge of the cliff. Steep steps lead down to the beach.
Carlene
From Bristol we veered south and then turned off the motorway near Exmoor and headed up across Dartmoor. It was superb – the moor is very wild – hard to believe in this country where everything has been ‘civilised’ for such a long time. We stopped at one point on the top of the moor where the wild moor ponies were grazing. Susanna warned us about the ponies as they can become aggressive looking for food. One of the ponies seemed to take a great interest in the girls and came very close – but luckily they came to no harm.
We also went past Dartmoor prison – one of the most inhospitable places you can imagine even on a fine and sunny day like this one. The prison is a bit like Pentridge Prison made of dark blue stone but is stuck in the middle of nowhere. The small village around it – Princeton I think it was called – houses only the prison staff and the families of the prisoners and a few shopkeepers. It was easy to imagine how woeful it would be in the middle of a dark, windswept rainy night.
The heather on the moor was jus starting to bloom – parts of the moor were a soft hazy mauve.
We arrived at Susanna’s sister’s and her husband’s holiday house at about 6pm. We took a rather circuitous route to get to Seaton. The road was barely wide enough for the car with hedgerows on either side.
The holiday house is at Seaton – a small Cornish seaside village that adjoins another village called Down Derry. The two rows of houses are built along the edge of a low cliff with a narrow strip of road between. The land is very steep so the houses are all built up on terraces of rock with terraced gardens.
Tony and Mary’s house is a great beach house – it has a large living room glass along the south-facing wall, which has a 180-degree view across the ocean. To the east you can see the lighthouse at Exmouth and to the west the town of Looe and the small island off its point. Some of the houses on the cliff side of the road at Downderry are classic Cornish houses – it’s like being in part of a Famous Five novel. The houses are made of stone and have these glorious terraced gardens with soft green lawns, flower borders and paved terraces that stretch down to the edge of the cliff. Steep steps lead down to the beach.
Carlene
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