Five On Friday - Exmoor Adventure

It is time to join Amy from Love Made My Home to bring you another Five On Friday.

We have been lucky enough to get away for half term week and visit one of our favourite places - beautiful Exmoor. We are staying at The Garden Lodge at The Langbury at Blue Anchor. You might remember we sometimes stay at The Langbury B and B, this time we are self-catering in the Lodge although my son who also loves this part of the world and decided to accompany us has chosen to stay in the B and B so that he can enjoy Nigel's wonderful breakfasts!

I have to say that the weather hasn't been the best, several days have been decidedly murky so photographing the scenery has been something of a challenge so please excuse the quality of the pictures.

One of the reasons I love Exmoor is its diverse scenery, from the beaches to the bleak and barren moor tops and everything in between. Hopefully the photos will give you a flavour of this.

1. The beach: We have enjoyed our walks along the beach despite the sometimes very cloudy and murky conditions. You can see from the last few photos that we did eventually get a clearer day.

 
 

2. Walk to Dunster Beach and The Hawn: The next beach along to the west of Blue Anchor is Dunster although the actual village of Dunster is about a mile inland. Dunster Beach is very uncommercialised although it does contain a little kiosk from which we were able to obtain a hot chocolate which went down very well. It also houses some holiday chalets which remind me very much of the 1950's. Behind the holiday chalets is The Hawn, this stretch of water is now land locked but used to be navigable. It is a good place to go birdwatching and I was pleased to get really close to a heron which you can see in one of the photos below.

3. Exmoor Safari: We booked to go on an Exmoor Safari way back in March and have been looking forward to this as it is something we haven't done before. We were picked up from Dunster carpark by Andrew in his Landrover Discovery for a 4 hour trip all over Exmoor. Unfortunately it was again a murky day especially on the top of the moor where visibility was very poor. We were hoping to get a good view of the red deer but apart from a distant herd we were out of luck. I did take a photo (see below) just for the record and hopefully you can just make out the stag with his hinds through the murk! However Andrew gave us a brilliant tour and was extremely informative about the area so although we didn't see all of the wildlife we had hoped for it was still a great day. One of the highlights for me was the off-road sections which were very exciting (if a bit of a roller-coaster ride). One of the off-road sections took us deep into Lorna Doone country looking down into the Doone Valley, we then drove past Oare Church where Lorna married John Ridd. All of this has given me the urge to read Lorna Doone again, the last time I read it was when I was a teenager (many years ago)!

The deer are in this photo somewhere!

 

 

 

4. Horner Woods: Yesterday was a better day with the hint of sun every now and again. On the safari we were told about the ancient woodland now owned by the National Trust so DH and myself decided to go for a walk in the woods. Horner Woods are beautiful, especially at this time of the year. Starting off in the village of Horner we gradually made our way up through the woods with the river tumbling down over boulders at our side.

 

 

 

 

5. Steam Trains: Blue Anchor is one of the stations on the preserved West Somerset Steam Railway and as you know my DH and son are mad steam train fans so photographing trains is always on the agenda for them. I surprised myself by taking a couple of photos too! I don't go out specifically to take train photos but these were taken as we were walking along the beach - I do quite like to see trains in the landscape setting.

 

 

 

 

I hope you haven't been too bored with all these photos, I can never decide what to leave out!

 

Have a great weekend and please go and visit Amy where you can link up to more Five On Friday posts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Continuation of Somerset Adventure

As you will know if you read my last posting we have been staying in Somerset for a long weekend. This is a favourite destination for us and we have been to the area many times but each time we go back we see or go somewhere we haven't been before as well as visiting old haunts.


Once again we stayed at The Langbury, this is the very best B & B we have stayed in, just perfection in every way and the hosts Paula and Nigel have become great friends.

On our first full day we motored into Devon as we had promised my No. 1 son who was spending the weekend with us that we would take him to The Valley of Rocks that DH and I visited back in October. We drove to Lynmouth via the toll road from Porlock, wow, what a view you get from the toll booth on the top of the moor looking back east towards Porlock.

As we crossed the top of the moor we were lucky enough to spot a group of native Exmoor ponies, these can be difficult to spot and don't very often come so close to the road so we were extremely lucky to see them.

The view across the moor is spectacular.

We then parked up in Lynmouth and headed for the cliff lift to take us up to Lynton. 

The weather was dry and sunny when we left Lynmouth as can be seen in the two photos below ...

By the time we returned later in the day the weather had closed in - just look at the difference. We experienced all extremes of weather on this day from sun to snow and everything between!

However, we still had lots of bright sunny and breezy weather to come for our walk to the Valley of Rocks, my son and I decided to walk from Lynton along the narrow coast path, you might remember from my post of our last trip here in October that my DH wasn't at all keen on being so close to a vertical drop to the sea so he walked along the road and met up with us later. As you can see from the photos below the feral goats that reside in this unique place were much in evidence.

We found my DH sat on a seat in the sun in a sheltered spot waiting for us.

Luckily for us the weather remained dry for our walk back to Lynton where we enjoyed lunch.

I then made a visit to John Arbon Textiles to buy some sock wool and some socks for my No. 2 son (watchers of Country File might recall this company featured at the end of January). We came out of the shop to find the weather had suddenly turned and it was snowing so we made our way quickly back to the cliff lift by which time it had turned to sleet. By the time we reached Lynmouth it had turned to rain, and very icy rain at that, so we decided to cut short our day and make our way back across the moor on the high road.


By the time we had climbed out of the deep wooded valley to the top of the moor the weather had improved dramatically and we were lucky enough to see two herds of red deer as we crossed the moor - a real treat.

On Saturday I split company from DH and No. 1 son who were spending the day enjoying the steam gala on the West Somerset Railway. I decided to go walking instead (somehow I have to face the scales at Slimming World next week and with all the extra eating I really needed the exercise). I decided to catch the steam train down to Minehead and walk back to Blue Anchor along the coast path - a distance of 4.5 miles. I was a bit nervous about doing this as I don't usually walk on my own but I thoroughly enjoyed it and would definitely do it again. 


The first part of the walk takes you along the promenade at Minehead before turning onto the coast path and walking alongside the golf course.

After passing a couple of pill boxes at the end of the golf course you reach the Dunster beach chalets which stretch along Dunster beach for quite a way.

After a quick breather and a loo stop I walked onwards towards Blue Anchor.

Crossing this field I spot Blue Anchor in the distance so am now on the homeward stretch.

I timed my arrival back in Blue Anchor at just the right time to see a double-headed steam train pull out from Blue Anchor on its way towards Minehead. There were about fifty photographers stood in the field on the other side of the track taking photographs. 

By this time it was lunchtime and I enjoyed a lovely prawn sandwich and a welcome mug of coffee at the Driftwood cafe before relaxing and reading my book in the warm and snug lounge at The Langbury before walking down to the station to meet the menfolk on their return.

All too soon it was Sunday morning and time to pack up and leave The Langbury but before returning home we stopped off in Watchet, principally for the menfolk to take yet more steam train photographs, while I enjoyed wandering around the harbour.

There was a final treat in store on the way home as it was Mothering Sunday so my son treated us to lunch which rounded off a super weekend very nicely indeed.

Sorry, yet another long post, if you have stayed with me, thank you for reading. I will be back again soon.