Tintagel

On our drive down in the car we had listened to tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table so an early visit to Tintagel seemed appropriate. Our visit to began with a picnic in the garden of the old post office, our second picnic in the garden of a National Trust property that week since we had stopped at Mosley Old Hall on the way down. The ‘old post office’ is actually a 14th Century farmhouse. We really appreciated the sheltered garden because there was a very bitter wind blowing.

There isn’t a great deal left to see at Tintagel Castle and what there is, is medieval; so very old, but not far enough back to be the birth place of the legend, although there was something here before apparently. The setting is fantastic though.

The tide was in, so we didn’t get to visit Merlin’s Cave which disappointed the boys who I think fully expected to find a dragon in residence.

The Castle Garden.

 

After two years of fruitlessly waving my camera around and taking photos of empty sky, I finally caught a bird in flight!

An Early Morning Walk

Our first morning at Woodford started very early, a consequence of general excitement and the very thin curtains which let the morning sun stream into our rooms. South of the farmhouse the fields dropped away into a steeply wooded valley which winds its way down to the Coombe Valley and then to the beach at Duck-pool. We didn’t get that far, but with the chiff-chaffs, chaffinches, robins and great tits singing their little socks off, it made for a great start to the day. At least until S fell on a muddy stretch of the path!

Floral Dance

Down in Cornwall everything was a little ahead of home, so that there were even more spring flowers to enjoy. The distinctive banked hedgerows were home to many flowers, particularly primroses which were almost ubiquitous.

Elsewhere the primroses were mixed with other flowers with, in my opinion at least, the whole being greater than the sum of the parts:

With the primroses on this one small stretch of bank were violets,

barren strawberries,

and ground ivy…

Down in the woods the bluebells were threatening to emerge and in a boggy section in a valley bottom we saw a magnificent area lit up with golden saxifrage.

Stitchwort.

Woodford Week

“You’ve got a good tan. Which part of the world have you been to and how did you get back through the volcanic ash?”

Last week we were away in sunny Cornwall, in a holiday cottage attached to a working farm in the village of Woodford near to Bude. The kids loved the farm, particularly the dogs…

…Buster and Megan, but also the tractor rides, feeding the sheep and the lambs…

..climbing on the haystack and generally charging around…

Lots more to report, and as ever way behind, so expect many short posts in an attempt to catch up.