Every week Sue from ‘A Word in Your Ear’ dips into her English Oxford dictionary and picks a word on the page that it falls open at. The challenge is to post a photograph, poem, story – whatever the genre you like best to describe what that word means to you.
This week’s challenge is WAITING (click to join in with the challenge)
I came across these sculptures at the Plainpalais tram station, in Geneva, Switzerland.
2013 has been an unusual year for me in that I have not left the shores of the UK once! That doesn’t mean that I have stayed at home all year – no I have travelled to the south-east, the south-west, right across the Midlands to the east coast and to the west into Wales. The only direction I haven’t been in this year is North! And in between all this to-ing and fro-ing I even managed to have a few local trips, all of which have made me grateful that I have my health to enjoy such travels.
So here are some of my favourite memories of this year, enjoy them and I wish a Happy New Year to all my WordPress blogging friends 😀
This post links well with a couple of the end of year challenges, notably Sue’s ‘A Word in Your Ear’ Reflect, and the Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge showing Joy.
If you haven’t read about these trips then now’s the time to catch up:
Before we left North Devon for home (which at the time was in west Surrey) we headed on down the coast to have another look at the North Cornwall coastal towns of Boscastle, Tintagel and Port Isaac – famous for the Doc Martin series on ITV. Of course getting there involved a stop off at another beach – Sandymouth, and the return was via the coastal road and a quick stop at Widecombe Bay. Writing these travelogues makes me understand why it is that I arrive back from holiday needing a holiday. I don’t seem to do relaxing! Continue reading North Cornwall
Of course it wouldn’t be a holiday for me without visiting a garden or two. And North Devon has several, including one in Clovelly itself – Clovelly Court Gardens (entrance is included in the price to the village). Unfortunately the gardens closed at 4 p.m. so we were too late this time as we were still in the village. We did drive over to Marwood Hill Garden just north of Barnstaple where you will find beautiful gardens and lakes and a wonderful café which serves great cakes – we had a clotted cream tea with ginger scones! Continue reading North Devon: Gardens
The other must-do in North Devon is a visit to the village of Clovelly, where you have to park (and pay) to enter at the top of the village. Like Robin Hood’s Bay in North Yorkshire, this village is inaccessible by car. Originally the main occupation of the village was fishing – for mackerel and herring. Nowadays the fishing is only done on a limited, sustainable basis and the main income is from tourism. The steep and uneven cobbled streets run down to the harbour where you can visit the Red Lion Hotel for a welcome drink or food or grab a snack from the Quay Shop or Seafood Shop. You can hop on a Land Rover for the return trip if you don’t feel like hiking al the way back to the top! At a price, of course. And you can get a ferry from here out to Lundy Island, that lump of rock seen in the background of some of my photos in this region where the Atlantic meets the Bristol Channel. Continue reading North Devon: Clovelly
TRAVEL WORDS 