No Otters but plenty of Hippos!

Friday 29th April 2016

Staying at a CL at Aylesbeare.

Our caravan repair man arrived nice and early, he took out the fridge and pronounced that it was working perfectly well.  I suppose that was a relief but it was an easy way of spending £45 in 20 minutes.  I didn't begrudge him the money as he had come some distance and I expect to pay something for the call out.

We made the opportunity to drive to Honiton for some shopping and for a look around.  Despite the name of Honey Town it wasn't quite a 'honeypot' town for tourism.  We 'flounced' into the small museum to have a look at the famous Honiton lace, I use the word flounce because we learned that it was a term for a length of lace.  We also learned that the bones of 17 hippopotami were excavated when the bypass was built in 1965....

You thought that I would make another reference to Janice but I wouldn't stoop so low.  There is no resemblance between Janice and a hippo, her front teeth are much closer together.  I didn't know that hippos were ever native in Britain, maybe there was an Iron Age safari park nearby?  By the way, I am informed that the word hippopotamus comes from Greek for river horse!

We came back to the site and went for a little walk down to Aylesbeare looking out for bird life in the area.  I'm sure we saw a common redstart, the fact that I had just been looking at a picture of one in our bird book before we set off didn't influence my sighting.  We didn't see any chiffchaff or any riffraff for that matter. The village was fairly unremarkable but the general area is very pleasant with a rolling mix of villages, agricultural land with red soil and woodland.  The trees are all leafing now and the bluebells are lovely.  There are plenty of thatched cottages around too.

View from the site, looks like a large small holding, if that possible!

After our walk we fitted in a bike ride to Ottery St Mary.  The river Otter is nearby and I think we are close to Tarka the Otter country.  We scoured the river banks but no otters were to be seen.  We had high expectations of Ottery St Mary, which were quickly dashed.  A couple of dodgy looking pubs and a plain shopping street.  The church was nice and we found out it was the birthplace of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

A quiet night in was had, with a game of 'name that tune' to keep us interested.  I majored on a 'name the intro' round with the Bee Gees and Janice was a hit with Billy Joel.  We live the high life!

Saturday 30th April 2016 - nice sunny day but still cool in the wind.

As the weather forecast was dry we decided to go cycling.  But first, we had to get a meal ready in our new 'sexy' slow cooker from Lakeland Plastics (it was a bargain).  We hope to have a lovely beef stew ready when we get back.

Our route is down to Budleigh Salterton and then on to Exemouth.  

This is Budleigh beach.  More cliffs in the distance, I think they are from the Cretinous period!

Nice bit of sand at Exemouth.  We ate our egg sandwiches, free range eggs supplied free by the CL owners. Yummy, nice and yellow yokes.

Back to the van for our beef stew.  Pretty good, very tasty but it probably needed more thickening but there is some left for another day and I can sort it out.  A bit short of Lea and P?

Stop Press - we managed to sit out for 20 minutes in the sun before the wind chill kicked in.