Weather Report..................

best wishes to paul and jenny.......
not as hot today thank goodness...............been pottering in garden over last few weeks ....only 10 mins here and there.....cutting down soft shrubs and tall wild flowers etc..........now have half a dozen or more black bags to dispose of.
started with a few drops of rain not so long ago...clouds looming.......sun showing its face every now and again......
need to get someone to erradicate the damned ivy. damned stuff grows so quickly......


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Just another day..38' max expected by 1600. Breeze is helping.
I'm on the phone, trying to plan our return trip .
So far 11 out of 12 calls have been inconclusive.. I'm sick of hearing The 4 Season s, played on a Stylaphone...
 
I left the wildcamp above the river Exe this morning and pottered along all-too-narrow farmer's lanes to Castle Drogo under a grey sky. This is an amazing modern impression of a castle designed by Edwin Lutyens for the Drewe family in the early 1900's.
It's huge, made entirely of local granite, and is perched above the Teign gorge on the northern edge of Dartmoor:

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The gardens are stunning with formal beds which include pungent roses:

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....and wild areas with other beauties:

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....including heather:

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Then on to Finch's Forge at Sticklepath, the only surviving working water-driven forge in England. An amazing piece of industrial archeology with an unusual summer house plus Quakers cemetery in the garden:

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Tonight I'm wildcamping on the deserted airfield by Davidstow (the cheese comes from an industrial-scale factory on the outskirts of the nearby village):

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...with views to the tors on Bodmin moor and Crowdy reservoir. Just me here tonight amid hundreds of acres of pretty much nothing.
And, of course, I'm surrounded by sheep.
The sky seems to be clearing nicely, I'm pleased to report. Hopefully there'll be a sunset to delight.

Colin ???
 
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A reminder of the view here on Davidstow aerodrome last evening:

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What a difference a night makes on a peninsular reaching out into the Atlantic:

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It was blustery during the night with plenty of rain.
In fact quite exciting if you're not a sheep.

Colin ???
 
Full Member said:
A reminder of the view here on Davidstow aerodrome last evening:

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What a difference a night makes on a peninsular reaching out into the Atlantic:

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It was blustery during the night with plenty of rain.
In fact quite exciting if you're not a sheep.

Colin ???
Click to expand...
oh ....you do get to some beautiful places.............however...desolate ones like these would give me the creeps.......especially being the only one there....
you do show some lovely pics
managed to get to the tips this morning........nice chaps down there...always get the bags from the vehicle for me andput them in the big skips........even managed to salvage the black bags which the garden cutting etc were in.......impressed
 
Good to see they’ve got the big plastic bag off Castle Drogo now. When we went earlier in the year it was covered in plastic sheeting, only a tiny bit visible, and much of the contents not yet out of boxes...Didn’t stop NT charging full prices to visit though! Good job we were members (albeit Scottish).
 
Barge1914 said:
Good to see they’ve got the big plastic bag off Castle Drogo now. When we went earlier in the year it was covered in plastic sheeting, only a tiny bit visible, and much of the contents not yet out of boxes...Didn’t stop NT charging full prices to visit though! Good job we were members (albeit Scottish).
Click to expand...

I was told that NT hope to have everything up and running by the end of this year, Barge1914.
About half of the outside of the castle was still covered in scaffold and sheeting, though they have started putting treasures back in the completed rooms.
When Drogo was built asphalt as a roofing sealer was white hot technology and it's shortcomings not properly understood - hence the damp problems.
The cost of renovation must be huge and we're lucky to have an institution like the NT able to organise and fund the skilled craftsmen involved in the work.
I've only recently joined the NT and so far I'm very, very impressed with them.

Colin ???
 
Today it's rained pretty much continually here in Cornwall.
So I've visited the Lanhydrock NT property just south of Bodmin. It's a huge 900 acre estate with a wonderful Jacobean house which was refurbished in the Victorian era. The entrance gate is impressive, even in heavy rain:

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.... with lovely formal gardens adjacent to the house:

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Inside, every room was furnished and left as though people would return to pick up where they left off over a century ago.
If I had to choose one room that fascinated me more than any other out of the fifty on view it was the kitchen with it's huge roasting spits:

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Heavy rain? Yes.
A great day? Absolutely.

Colin ???
 
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