We then tried to chase down this old church we saw standing
on the hillside and wound our way up some narrow, twisty roads until we popped
out into a hamlet with a beautiful church.
We wondered around the outside before going in to see the inside. The Vicar was kind enough to give us a little
history of the place saying that the building of the church dated back more
than 500 years! I’m reading a book right
now on Lady Jane Grey whose ill-fated monarchy lasted only 9 days…500 years
ago! Pretty amazing to think that the
history I’m reading about was circa the same time as the church I was standing
in. The Vicar also said that there were
a lot of military graves from WWII in the grave yard since there is a military
base nearby.
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| A thatched house in the village |
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| Don't see many of these now. |
Driving on from the church we stopped for a coffee in Croyde at this amazing little pub. The flowers were sooo beautiful (I thought of you, Diana!)
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| That was actually apple juice, not beer! |
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| Now that's a flowery bonnet! |
Croyde was a sweet little village, but we didn’t hang there long. We pushed on to have lunch on the beach at Croyde Bay. Again, the tide was out which left a huge expanse of flat sand. This area was called the Saunton Sands and sand there definitely was.
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| Heading down into Woolacombe on a nice tight road! |
From there we drove over to Mortehoe, a quaint little village where we would be starting our walk with David Kennard tonight. The village was nothing more than a few shops and a couple of restaurants and a church. Sooo cute! I’d been wanting to have a true Devonshire cream tea, but instead of stopping at the café as it was a little early for tea, we opted to buy some scones and Devonshire clotted cream and make our own at the caravan.
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| Downtown Mortehoe |
We took the kids over to the pool in the afternoon and
packed up a little since we would be leaving very early in the morning to drive
home.
Soon enough it was 5:45 and time to drive to Mortehoe to
meet David for our scheduled cliff walk and private talk. Wednesday night had been so magical I wasn’t
sure we could top it with another night, but I think we did. David met us and 4 others in the car park in
Mortehoe and walked us up to Morte Point where his dogs were waiting for
us.
He started by having Zola do another demonstration of
herding the sheep and explained in depth how the whistles and commands
work. I swear those dogs are smarter
than I am as I couldn’t remember if “comeby” met break left or if “away” meant
break right? And to top it off, the dogs
are trained to different whistles so that if two of them are working together
they know which whistle is meant for them.
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| Emmy and Zola |
We then spent the next 3 hours walking a stunning cliff line
accompanied by Fly and Alfie hearing stories about the filming of Mist and
about other adventures of the dogs and about sheep farming. David was very entertaining and so, so
patient and kind to the kids. There was
one other little boy with us who was as full of questions as London and David
spent the whole time patiently answering them all.
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| This was as close as Cannon and Sandra came to the dogs! |
It was a beautiful way to end our time in Devon and I
thoroughly enjoyed the hike.
The last place we went was for some dinner at a quirky little place serving seafood platters in the back garden of someone's house. It was wonderful and welcome after our long walk.
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| Cannon chose octopus and cuttlefish |
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| Beautiful sunset over Morte Point |
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