Home again.

The north Devon scenery was absolutely stunning. Beautiful coastline. Some rocky beaches, like this one that we walked down to ...





and some surfing beaches.





Picturesque towns ...





And a carousel, at dusk.





I enjoyed stumbling across a very creative scarecrow festival in a lovely little town named Mortehoe. Here's my favourite one. And here's the one Sophie liked best.

The campsite was far too regimented for our taste. There was a cool playground in the woods, complete with zipline, and it was very clean and green, but overall it really wasn't our sort of place. It felt like most people there weren't doing what we think of as camping; they were just recreating their home environment in a different location. They had portable washing lines, for God's sake.





I will say that I did like the fact that nobody here seems to use paper plates and cups and so on; everyone was doing their washing up in dishpans at the designated washing-up place. But still. Not what I think of as camping. The thing that irked me most was that, in the midst of all this regimentation (they had rules about where exactly on your little site you could pitch your tent, for instance) and seeming endeavour to take nature out of the whole camping experience, the hot showers weren't actually hot. Warmer than tepid, but not hot. And, instead of having a tap to turn on, they had one of those things that you push and then get hot water for four seconds. So in order to wash your hair, say, you had to push the damn thing about a million times, and endure a chilly pause after each push, before the water started up again.

The climbing ... didn't happen.

You can see the climb Bobby wanted to do in the picture; you walk along the headland, rappel down to sea level, and then climb up.





Here's another view of the climb.





Only, when we got there (having carried all the climbing stuff for a good couple of miles) we discovered that didn't have enough rope for the climb, since we'd left one of the ropes at home. I wasn't well enough to climb anyway so it was all a bit academic for me, (though, specially in my weakened state, it looked scary enough that I didn't mind not doing it) but Bobby was really miserable.

He did cheer up later on, though, when we were playing on the rocks.





See the jaggedy rocks?





Emily's knee ... and Emily's toe.

It didn't stop her for long though.





I felt quite grim at various stages during the trip, but much, much better than I had been feeling the previous few days, so I'm glad I went. Being at the sea always helps me. Tomorrow will have to be a laundry and unpacking day, and the next day we're off to Norwich.