Down Devon way....

I got up at 5.00 and was on the road by 5.40 a.m. I was surprised how much traffic there was at that time of the morning.

Had a very easy drive down to Devon and 186 miles and just under 4 hours later I arrived at the hotel.

Changed over to Pete's car (he'd volunteered to do the driving) and we headed off for Buckland Abbey. In all my visits to this area I'd never been before... it was a pleasant way to start the day especially after an initial cuppa.

I've had to cut down on the number of pictures and there's still quite a few... so I won't ramble on..

I've just bought a new lens (Canon 18-200mm) as a travel lens and, given the light wasn't that good at the beginning of the day, I was quite pleased with this shot which is heavily cropped.

Colourful veg!

Pictures were permitted inside the house.

We had an "OC" moment here..

Having had an excellent Tomato and lentil soup for lunch we headed off to spend the afternoon at Saltram House... again, another first visit.

Ducks greeted us.

Throughout the house these wooden mice were hidden...for children to find... I missed most of them :)

but found this one too.

Fancy this wallpaper? bit busy I feel. ;)

and we had cake.... of course :D but today the Tipple Cake was a little on the dry side although the Coffee and Walnut was a bit better.

Pete was ensuring that the cake didn't disappear before his very eyes!

Some quail (I believe) on our way out..

Despite the black sky as we left it didn't rain!! We had a very few spots on the windscreen at odd moments during the day... but that was just low cloud!!


A good first day which finished with a rather nice meal (the first course being scallops....)

.... and tomorrow is another day...