Boxing Day.

........ and Christmas Day. 

Christmas started for us with a special Christmas Eve meal, no meat, followed by Midnight Sevice at the local village Church. Each year the numbers grow less which is sad to see. We spoke to a few people afterwards including a lady who used to cook the school dinners at the village primary school. (Only 2 classes for all the children.) She was quite impressed with the size the boys have grown to. I was not the only one coughing and spluttering away during the service and I had to drop all my singing an octave to be able to join in at all with the traditional carols. It is a lovely old Church and there are times when the 'old' traditional wording of the service is appropriate though our usual Church has no set form for the service and the worship is wonderfully enthusiastic.

There was an absolute mountain of presents under the Christmas tree. That's what happens when there are 7 adults in the house, ( and there were presents for other people as well). 
Once every one was up we gathered in the sitting room with cups of tea to start the distribution of presents. 

Vytas and Kate sitting amidst the growing heap of wrapping paper.

After an enormous dinner , slightly late because the Rayburn was burning very low due to the wind direction, we crashed out in the sitting room in front of a roaring fire and watched TV. Vytas had a very old Jackie Chan film, Wheels on Meals, that was so bad it was funny. Vytas has been doing karate seriously since he went up to university, discussed technical details of the fight scenes with Pete who did karate in his youth. I have to admit to falling asleep occasionally, waking up in time to watch Strictly and the very funny new Wallace and Gromit animation - A Matter of Loaf and Death. It's amazing how much expression plasticine models can have. 

Today Peter and I went for a walk along the cliffs at Mortehoe. 

A Band of Morris Men were dancing in the village as we arrived. They are the Pilton dancers who put on a big display for the Green Man Festival in Pilton in the summer.

In contrast to the grey weather of the last few days a chill north-westerly had blown all the clouds away and the sun was shinning in a bright blue sky. ( True to form the Rayburn is now burning efficiently with a decent temperature in the oven).

The cold wind was chopping up the waves and at times made it hard to stand near the cliff edge. We managed to see one fat seal just bobbing about close to the rocks.

Vytas, Kate and Romas drove to Putsborough and ran the 2 mile length of the beach to Woolacombe, (just seen in this picture) and back again. There were a few surfers out but Romas decided not to take a chance as he still has this cold that is affecting most of us. I'm about to do my sit-ups, in between sneezing, and then hopefully we'll settle down in front of a roaring fire and some easy viewing.

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Beauty On My Doorstep.

It has been a typical chilly damp winter's day today. After a session weeding around the pond, in the shade so rather cold, I decided to take a walk back up the stream that runs down the valley past the back of the house. Once I had negotiated my way past the holly branches growing across the stream at face level I found a beautiful hidden world. Its been quite a few years since I've been for a walk up there. Over the babbling and burbling of the stream I heard a few extra splashes, I looked carefully and in the crystal clear water saw a fat 9" trout frantically making its way past me. I had a lovely walk up the stream taking lots of photos of the mossy tree trunks, clear pools and sparkling waterfalls.

Peter just came home happy as Larry having been on a clay shoot over at Keypits with people from the local independent brewery, Barum Brewery. http://www.barumbrewery.co.uk/

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Dramatic Skies.

Last night at WI it was a flower arranging demonstration. I'm always quite impressed with flower arranging but at home I just like to plonk flowers in a vase and give them a bit of a shake to settle down. So much easier.

We were given lots of ideas for Christmas displays.

I might get inspired if I have time.

Our refreshments, most of which were home made. One lady had even used cream from her farm's jersey cow.

A dramatic red sunrise at 8.00 this morning.


By 9.00, as I drove Romas to The Ariel for another recording session, the sun had started to shine. This flat road used to be the start of my running route until my knee gave out. Round the corner there are telegraph poles at close intervals so I was able to run a little further each day with good old Zulu by my side. Shame about Zulu and shame about the knee. Now it's just the sit-ups. (450 today.)

After I dropped Romas off there was some dramatic underlighting of the clouds. My camera has made them moodier than the reality but when I lightened the photo using the manual settings I lost the cloud definiton.

The hills on the horizon are Dartmoor 65 miles away. I love being able to see such a long way.

I drove into town to do a bit of shopping, despite all the hype on the news there were very few extra reductions at Woolworths though I did buy myself a snazzy set of gardening tools in pink! as my trowel has no handle and my secateurs have lost their spring and one of the handle covers. Original price £16, I paid £3.60, so that was a good reduction.

On my way home I had another good veiw of Dartmoor from the top of our drive. I like the way it is rising form the mist like an island.

Before going out to do more weeding my inner 4 year old iced some biscuits that I had baked yesterday. I now know why I only bake biscuits at Christmas, it took several sessions and quite a long time. They do taste nice though. I like to give a bag of home baked biscuits to our postman as a Christmas thank you. He drives to the house, has a chat, takes letters I want posted and if we're not in, leaves parcels in the porch. I might bake some giant chocolate chunk cookies as well as they are much easier to make.

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Tarka Trail.

Today I was awarded The Uber Amazing Blog Award , thank you Sarah. It is given to sites who:
- inspire you,
- make you smile and laugh,
- or any other reason that makes them uber amazing.

The rules of the award are:
- nominate at least 5 blogs that for you are uber amazing,
-let them know they have received this award by commenting on this blog
-share the love and link to this post and to the person you received this award from.
so here are the blogs I'm awarding The Uber Amazing Blog Award to, in no particular order:
Domestic Executive Julie and her husband are Brits who have moved to New Zealand and built their own home(not literally), a dream we have in this household. Julie takes amazing photos of her life, home, garden, beautiful surroundings and especially of her 2 very comic Basset Hounds.
Confessions of a Pioneer Woman Ree lives on a working cattle ranch in the USA and is home schooling her 4 children. She takes amazing photos , has a wicked sense of humour and her blog/site is a work of art .
The Farmer's Wife Suzanne lives in the countryside in Maryland? Her blog is varied with all sorts of interesting snippets about her life and a lot of craft ideas.
HappyOne is a lovely lady who lives in the USA. She walks 6 miles every morning and seems to meet all sorts of interesting people. She posts superb photos taken on her walks and also photos of her new house that is being built.
Cesca is a lively New Zealand lass with a great attitude to life. She has 2 children and her husband had a major pedestrian v car accident very recently yet she is so positive. I'm also so glad to have found someone who gives housework the same lack of priority that I do. Her blog always makes me smile .

I had to have a quick lesson from Linas on hyperlinks as up till now Ive just pasted in the URL thing. Apologies if any of them have gone wrong. Some of my regular blog friends ( who have already had the award) can be found in my blog favourites. As someone who would be quite happy being on her own for most of the time, which I'm not actually, I would like to say a big thank you to all my blogger friends for welcoming me into the blogging community and expanding my circle of friends.


Today was wet to start so as we both wanted to go into Barnstaple, Peter and I decided to take a walk along the Tarka Trail which runs alongside the estuary from Bideford to Barnstaple and then down to Braunton. We walked some of the bit between Barnstaple and Bideford. Luckily the rain cleared and the sun even tried to shine.

Looking up towards Barnstaple.

Originally the track was the railway line that linked all the small towns in the area. It is a favourite with cyclists. We haven't walked it before as the lure of the rugged coast has always been stronger.

A road bridge that went over the railway, ...

..... and from the other side.

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Putsborough Beach.

Another grey but mild day. It's nice that it's already light by the time I've gone out to feed the hens but I was just half an hour later going home,( I went to Brian Fords to do the food shopping as Thursdays are much quieter than Friday evenings), and it was dark for the homeward journey. Not good. Pete gets home much later so he's been driving in the dark for some time but my body tells me that when it is dark I should be tucked up in bed. Or at least curled up on the sofa under a rug watching some non-taxing tv.

I had a year 1 class for the whole day. In the afternoon they were drawing pictures and writing about a 'special place' they would like to visit. The group I was sitting with had the usual type of choices - "Jessica's house because she is my friend ," and "The North Pole because Father Christmas is there," but we also had "inside some one's tummy so I can see all their bones," and so poignantly " My Mum's house because I love her," this was from a lad who lives with his dad. There are times when you just want to give them a big hug. When I returned to teaching 12 years ago I went on a back-to-teaching course and we were solemnly told that there were no circumstances where we needed to have physical contact with the children. This was in the days of total paranoia over accusations of child abuse. I thought as an infant teacher this was a load of b******s. For a start how do you get 30, 4 year olds into pe kit without any physical contact? And sure enough within a couple of years the official word was that contact should be appropriate. So no problems if a tearful child needs a hug or a nervous child needs to sit on an adult's lap for a while. Many children, especially those with difficult homes, run up as you walk across the playground for a quick hug. Last year I had a child who had violent outbursts and one of us would have to sit or kneel behind him and wrap our arms around him to prevent him scratching, biting or kicking until he calmed down. That was a hard year and it wasn't fair on the other children in the class.

To make up for my recent sunset photo-failures here are some photos taken in October a couple of years ago while Romas was surfing at Putsborough Beach. For these evening surfing trips I would make a flask of coffee, take school work to do while it was still light and sit up on the cliff listening to the whoosh of the waves and enjoying the sea air and the wonderful views. Puts is my favourite surfing beach to go to because it is hardly developed. Apart from the car park/field with a small caravan site directly overlooking the beach, there is just a small beach shop, a block of about 12 flats and about 4 houses. You can walk 2 miles along the beach to the village of Woolacombe which is a popular touristy/surf village. All the headlands and most of the coast in this area is owned by the National Trust who maintain them in their natural state and keep them safe from development.

On the horizon is Lundy Island with the lighthouse(centre) and the the church tower (left) just visible.

The golden light was reflecting off the wet sand.

The surf was not bad and there were quite a few surfers still in the water.

Click on the link below for a live web cam on Putsborough Beach.
http://www.eyeball-surfcheck.co.uk/putsborough.html

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The Valley of The Rocks .... part 2

All is quiet in the house. Most of the youngsters left yesterday and Linas and Gemma went this afternoon. I carried on in 'housewife' mode and cooked a roast dinner and for once the Rayburn was hot enough to make good roasties. Peter has been suffering today with a very painful elbow again but hopefully the anti-inflammatories will settle it down. My afternoon was spent gardening. I'm a bit disappointed that my cold took up most of the holiday but then I wouldn't like to have gone to work while I was feeling rough. No looking back, I need to look onwards and plan the next stage of the house and garden tidying. I'm in school all day tomorrow to cover for injury, family complications and birthing class.

Now for .... The Valley of The Rocks. ...... part 2

Goats and Rocks.

There are many wild goats in the valley. This has caused some bitter arguments in the neighbouring town of Lynton as they do go in and raid peoples' gardens. There was an outcry last winter when the town council quietly got in a marksman and shot a large proportion of the herd.

Yesterday the goats were enjoying the sunshine and keeping out of the wind near the car park.

Some of them had quite spectacular horns.

They are very used to people and it is easy to photograph them. I think this young goat was just as interested in Gemma, maybe hoping for a treat though you are not supposed to feed them.

Everywhere you look there are magnificent rock formations.

It's a long way down, and I don't like heights!

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The Valley of The Rocks ...part 1.

Yesterday, while the boys were at home eating chocolate and shooting each other , Gemma and I went on a photo shoot to The Valley of The Rocks near Lynton, about 10 miles north of here. It was very windy and quite chilly once out of the sunshine but we got more patches of sunshine as the morning went on. Looking westwards across the local cricket club pitch. The only buildings in the valley are some tea-rooms next to the car park, (and a decent toilet block near the head of the valley).

The landward side of the valley is bounded by an extremely high escarpment which from the road looks almost vertical.

The road winds on around various rocky outcrops to Lee Abbey, a Christian study /retreat/camp/conference centre.

Looking back at the entrance to the valley.

Looking westwards out to the Atlantic. It was very cold out overlooking the sea because it was all in the shade with a strong wind blowing in from the sea.

Looking eastwards up the Bristol Channel. If you follow the coastal footpath Lynton is just around the corner and Lynmouth is at the foot of the cliffs in the next cove. These are the highest cliffs in the British Isles.

Tomorrow ....... Part 2 , Goats and Rocks.

It has been a real pleasure having a houseful of 17-20 year olds, they are typical students, are loud and the kitchen is full of their coats and airgun stuff but they have appreciated my home cooking,( and they eat vast quantities ), are polite to us oldies and wash up when asked. They spent the afternoon down at Crow Point, Braunton Burrows, doing a band photo shoot and messing about with their airguns. Right now they are finishing off another large meal and after clearing up from their 'party' last night most of them will be driving back down to Bude.

Peter spent 3 hours at the North Devon College today for a tutorial on the maths unit of his OU degree. He is feeling more confident now with this maths section than he anticipated. My cold is receding now thank goodness but today has been mostly spent in the kitchen. I don't mind for short bursts but would get very crotchety if I was stuck in the kitchen for any length of time.

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