Old farmhouses and cows (oh, and some more rain)

After a couple of weeks in London, we headed south.  Not far enough south to find any sunshine, but south non-the-less.  

We're staying with Maggie and Jeremy Robinson on their farm outside Exeter in Devon, in a lovely old farmhouse that's 650 years old!  Its really lovely and homely with a big Aga stove that burns all day keeping the kitchen warm, dries the washing and in which Maggie cooks up amazing meals of farm produce and masses of homemade bread and cakes.  The rest of the house has big solid beams running across the low ceilings and as lintels above the doorways and fireplaces, and each room is on its own level and the walls are lovely and thick with the bottom part being about twice as thick as the top parts :)  Its amazing how homely an old cob-walled farmhouse feels!  If you're ever in the area - STAY THERE!  Maggie and Jeremy are some of the most generous people we know.

Grendon Farmhouse, Devon

The farm dogs

Maggie and Jeremy farm cattle for meat and we try to help out with the cows when we can.  Its been so wet that the cows have all been brought in out of the fields which is rather awkward as they're calving at the moment.  It does mean though that instead of driving tractors in the green fields under blue skies, our contribution is mucking out cattle sheds! haha!

Some of the Heifers

Cute baby cows (anyone seen that South Park episode? blink blink, blink blink)

We got tired of staying indoors in the rain, so after a couple of days we took the big Volvo station wagon and headed up to Dartmoor National Park.  It me just say it was raining A LOT!  Maggie gave us some good maps and so with Geoff as expert driver and Lucy as expert navigator we took the scenic route down farm lanes.  For anyone who has ever driven Devon lanes you'll know what we're talking about! For the rest: think a tarred road, 2,5m wide with a mod covered stone wall on either side with hedge on the top and very windy, often with warning signs that the road angle is 15-25 degrees.  Please note that these are 2 WAY roads. When you meet another car, one of you has to reverse till there's a place to pull over.  After the initial panic that we would simply get stuck in the lanes, Geoff drove like a demon, often up to the speed limit of 30miles per hour!

Lanes edged with Devon Hedges (VERY narrow)

Depth-testing flooded roads - we figured that if the water didn't come into the top of Lucy's gumboots, we could probably drive it...

Dartmoor is well know for its Iron Age relics and for its miniature ponies.  We finally found some wet ponies hiding from the inclement weather! We did however also find the amazing Clapper Bridge at Post Bridge.  its the largest clapper bridge in Europe (according to the information board) and is made from slabs of granite about 3m x 1m each!  Those Medieval engineers were hardcore!  

Flooded river with the Clapper Bridge

 We wrapped a cold wet walk up with the amazing "Maggie Sandwiches" complete with John Deer lunchbox :)  *happy days*

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