Overdue England Sept. 2011

Posted on Sunday, December 4th, 2011 at 9:25 pm. There is 1 comment so far.

See other posts about England, exmoor ponies, farming, hiking, road trips, travel.

Most of you probably were following my summer biostation blog: umbsgarden.wordpress.com, so you probably know I spent the summer working up at the U of M biostation in Pellston Michigan, growing food and inspiring people to eat kohlrabi, enjoy weeding, and the like. But that’s another story from another website. Following the summer session up there, I was lucky to be able to head back to England for another month-long excursion! Read on.

Part 1: Devon home-stay and Exmoor National Park

On August 28th, just after finishing my summer job at the biostation, I left Chicago for England again. Last trip you might remember was a voyage across three national parks in the north of England. This time we set out to fully explore the south-west corner of the country, mainly through hiking and home stays.
Our first home-stay was in Devon. If you think of south-west England in terms of the US’s New England, you can imagine Devon as corresponding to Vermont, in terms of culture and the ethos of the place. Alternative, ecologically-minded folk seem to find themselves drawn to the countryside of Devon, which is full of small scale sustainable farms, hippy villages, well-to-do conscientious tourists and plenty of open-air farmers markets.
Our home-stay in Devon was at a rare breeds meat farm. Morning chores involved feeding and watering chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese before we would head down to the goat pen to get fresh milk from Ben-Ben. During our week there I learned to trim goat hooves, prepped and planted some stuff in the vegetable garden, and harvested and processed a lot of beans. In the evenings we were responsible for feeding the owls. Yup, owls. The owls, well actually a lot of the birds, were kept not for meat or eating eggs, but for raising up chicks to sell. Apparently there’s something of a market for baby owls…

After a week of home-stay, we left hiking along the two moors way, heading north through Exmoor National Park. Early afternoon on the first day we came to Tarr Steps. The “steps” comes from a 180 foot long stone slab bridge dating to around 3000 years ago. Climbing up from the river we found the Tarr Steps Farm Inn…. where we splurged on an afternoon cream tea–tea accompanied by a scone slathered in thick clotted cream and strawberry jam. With the sun on my face and the beautiful view…. perfect.

Further north we hiked up onto the moors. September is a beautiful time to be in the moors, with the heather and gorse blooming purple and yellow all across the rolling hilltops. As well as the flowers, Exmoor is a great place to appreciate one of the top five best things about England: free-roaming ponies. The Exmoor ponies have been living and being managed quasi-wild across the moors of Exmoor since at least 1086.

Northern Exmoor is in Somerset, which you can think of as similar to Massachusetts, except with no city as interesting or historically significant as Boston. Closest would maybe be Bristol, but really England is more about the countryside and little villages rather than the cities. As we continued over the moors toward the coast, we soaked up a lot of beautiful views, often able to see all the way across the Bristol Channel with a lovely view of Wales in the distance. We hiked all the way to Minehead, an ugly coastal city, then southeast to Dunster where we camped outside an old castle and shared tuna with a castle-kitty. The next day we took the bus and hiked back to the farm.

Back with the car in Devon, our final day in Devon was a busy one. The 4th of September started with a hike out along this nice little creek, dreaming of seeing river otters. About an hour in we got to Watersmeet, where two creeks meet, and a lovely secluded coffee shop. The shop was closed and no one around, but we were sitting in the garden to have a look at the map when this cute little robin red-breast came up and perched on the chair opposite us, and proceeded to sing his heart out for the next 10 minutes or so. Our only guess is that the staff or customers commonly feed him, and he was singing a food song. Back at the car, we began the drive south, stopping back in at the coffee shop on the way for a coffee and walnut cake. Bustling with families, couples, and wait staff, the robin was no where to be seen.

From there we headed south to Saunton Sands– a long, smooth, white stretch of beach almost so perfect as to be a little bit boring. As we began the long walk back to the car it began to drizzle, then rain, then downpour, so we arrived soaking wet, muddy, and a little scratched up from throwing ourselves along the most direct route through brambles. We drove west to Clovelly which is a tiny steep touristy little town which doesn’t allow cars into the downtown at all, so groceries are brought in and out by sled. We ended the evening with a rare dinner-out in a pub by the lighthouse at the tip of Hartland Point.