Told you I love them... So Jeanie, Clair's mom's friend invited Clair and I down for a long weekend in Devon. Clair picked me up on Wednesday night from London. She went to work Thursday, so I just laid around the house mostly and stayed in the garden during the day. We woke up around 6 or so Friday morning and drove the 3 hour journey to Budleigh Salterton where Jeanie is house sitting for some friends. As we drove through the town, we noticed that there seems to be quite a lot of elderly people on scooters, and Jeanie explained that it's somewhat a posh retirement community like the Florida Keys, but with more young families buying into the market now.
Jeanie is effectively looking after the 4 new chickens, 4 turtles, 4 fish, 2 gerbals, one rather chunky Yorkshire Terrier (Mr. Bumbles) who has stolen all our hearts, and Henry, the 16 year old son of the couple. The house sits just along the beach (pebbles) and is three stories with 7 bedrooms and 3 restrooms. There is a lovely conservatory on the first floor that overlooks the front garden and ocean front (where we end up spending most of our mornings and evenings eating breakfast and dinner and watching the boats on the horizon once it's gone dark after 10) and also a second floor balcony which has gorgeous views down the main street.
As beautiful as the hosue is, it needs some T.L.C. It seems that projects have been started and not finished. The second floor-where Clair and I are staying in Haley's room (18 year old daughter on holiday with her mother and friend in Gibraltor), has a restroom with a huge bathtub with exposed plumbing, non working shower, and a toilet, but no sink. This seems to breed bad habits to me (not washing your hands after using the restroom??). The floor to the restroom is unfinished and in some areas has been taken up to expose dirt (on the second floor?). The light pull (not many places in England have switches-more pulls), is pulled out of the ceiling so the wires are exposed, and I'm fairly sure that if I pull just ever so slightly, I will pull the whole thing out of the ceiling (so I rarely turn on the light). We found out on our first night, that in one of the two closets in Haley's room, she actually has a sink (strange) as does the master bedroom (also on the second floor). This restroom really paints a picture of the house which is really quite grim (Clair's word), but I suppose when you wake up every morning and see the ocean, there are better things to do than fixing up your house!
We spent most of the day around Budleigh, walking through the town and along the beach and driving through places like Newton Poppleford (hahaha), Otterton (otters?), East Budleigh, and Sidmouth which are all fairly near to Budleigh Slaterton (amazing how easy it is now for me to write and say this town whereas before I couldn't think of the name for the life of me!). It was a great introduction to Devon!
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Liked the writing on this boat along the beach
Red cliffs of Devon!
So, Clair and I had no idea that the beach we were walking on turned into a nude beach. We noticed a rather large unpleasant lady lying nude on the beach before we noticed this sign. Very disturbing. This is where we turned around...
Houses next to Fourways-All looking out on the beach!
Seemed like every town in Devon and Cornwall had one of thes crosses-the ones in Cornwall were Celtic crosses as the area dates back to Celtic times
View of Budleigh Salterton from the top of the hill-where the cross is
Pebble beach at Budleigh
Clair and her new love-Mr. Bumbles!
