Holiday Summary

In summary, it was a good holiday and went very quickly. Part of that was maybe cos we had to leave a day early and went down to visit Bev & Ruth on the south coast, then headed up to the Lake District on the Saturday then home on the Sunday. Some good memories - the train from Exeter (and them attempting to not take my money!), Murphy & the wasp in Clovelly, Maddie and the grouse, the sunglasses in the river, recognition of my accent in Tescos in Barnstaple, Maddie in the pub in the Lake District (see below about seats) - and Richard's shock that petrol in Devon is dearer than petrol in Scotland!

I think Maddie needs to have a travelling crate with lowerable curtain as she has on about half a dozen occasions this trip, either had to be put back in the car since she was determined to go back there (scared by something obviously), crawled under chairs in pubs, trains, the B & B room (!) etc - and never the chair WE'RE sitting on! - or snuck into the car and ended up sitting in the driver's seat, waiting for us.

Poor wee thing. I don't think she copes well with change. On the plus side there were no sheep incidents and only one grouse incident, no chickens encountered and a couple of wasps tangled with, so here's to next year! Cornwall, anyone?

Lately

We've had a few interesting times on our holiday this year - like on Tuesday when I dropped my sunglasses down a riverbank while picking up a stick to throw for Maddie who was in the water waiting for it. 

We were on the point of going over a footbridge by a railway line over the stream and the bank was about 3 feet high (& pretty sheer). After some debate as to how forgettable (& expensive) the sunglasses were we decided I would go wading for em - so off with my shoes and socks and having given Richard my phone to look after in case I fell in the river, down I went - it actually wasn't too deep and as I shuffled along calf deep in the (cold!) water I found the sunnies - they had caught on a plant so hadn't even hit the water, result!

Grabbed them and got Richard to pull me back up. Then had to rescue my phone which had fallen out his pocket and nearly into the river (!!) and a few agonising minutes tiptoeing over the chuckies lining the path over the bridge with me in bare feet and then we were over, there was a nice field with grass and I could dry my feet and put my shoes back on. We won!

Then there was today, where Murphy caused consternation in the pub when he ate a wasp, whacking his head off the table as he snapped at it and barging over to press against my legs under the table - we guessed it had stung him and the landlady went off to get him a tub of water to drink, just in case. The rest of the pub was attracted when he cracked his head off the table but he seems to have no ill-effects from it. And nobody arrested us for taking him into wasp-bearing environments. Phew!

Holidays

How am I enjoying this year's dog walking holiday so far? Well, we're in the hills of North Devon so all those awful wee narrow roads with 10 foot high hedges on either side, but traffic's been light so far so I haven't met much coming the other way.

And at about 4am this morning I believe I heard the words "This is shit, I want to go home" emerge from me as I groggily got up to let the dogs out AGAIN to see if they needed to relieve themselves. This because Murphy had barked - we'd have ignored it if it was Maddie (who'd already been shouted at for trying to break down our bedroom door). Of course the dogs didn't need to go out, they just fancied a midnight (ish) perambulation round the back lawn while I stood in me PJ's trying not to get too cold and awake.

Then we left it til after today's walk to do the big supermarket shop - forgetting England has weird opening hours and everything shut at 4pm. So we ended up at KFC's for a carry out for dinner - a first for me and probably a last, too. I liked the popcorn chicken, just nothing else particularly!

On the plus side we had lovely weather today and the house is quite the nicest we've stayed in so it's mostly good. And will be better once we get a long piece of rope to attach Maddie to so she can be left in the back garden without fear of her leaping the fence and going off to find the sheep which are two fields away!