No blogging for the last week as we have been away on a family holiday to Watermouth Bay near Ilfracombe, North Davon. Nina and Nick especially deserved a holiday as they have both been working extremely hard. When I booked it I had been conscious that this might be our last - or at least one of our last- family holidays as the girls are growing away, as they should.
As it turned out it was both terrible and lovely. Nina was ill when we set off, and by the time we got there, we had all caught her cold. so that the first couple of days, we were all miserable, listless, and crotchety. The weather wouldn't normally have been such a bother to us, but it was so wet and overcast, and were were all coughing and sneezing so that it was quite a downer. Desperate for everyone to have a good time, I spent far too much money (about £100 a day on the days we went out which wasn't even every day).
Thankfully, the accommodation, a log cabin sort of a prefab, was lovely, as was the on sight restaurant, pool, and table tennis. The site was next to Watermouth Castle which is a Victorian Country House come theme park. Over the road is Watermouth Harbour which is lovely. In the sand, we found lots of sea glass and smoothed off chips of china, more than I've ever seen at any other place. It was a delight. I picked up some for Nina to use at her nursery. She also got lots of rounded flat stones for the children to make paperweights.
We spent quite a bit of time at Ifracombe. It seems virtually unchanged from our last visit. One of the very good things about the town is that its unusual lack of chain stores. I wondered how they have achieved it. Maybe the town is so quiet in winter that the chain stores don't see it as viable. Irrespective of that, the place is well kept with some big building projects going on, it feels like things are going right. Highlights? Nothing to get excited about, but the harbour was a nice place to sit, and we found a lovely Tea Garden (I'm sad that I don't remember the name of it) where we could sit outside with Darcy and feed the brave sparrows on crisps.
We also had a couple of hours at Coombe Martin, which I love in the sunshine, but is frankly horrid in the rain. H and I went to Barnstaple, it's a good place to but bread and meat and it took some effort to get jelly snakes for Nick who I was trying to appease since he was so poorly. On the way back, we stopped off in Bristol to see if we could catch the Banksy exhibition. Bristol was having a festival and was thronging. We just couldn't find the place we wanted and gave up in the end.
All a bit of a non-event in the end then. But we all still love each-other, and I got to eat some fudge. What could be more important than that?
1 comment:
Interesting!
Thanks for sharing.
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