Devon

We went to Stratford-Upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare. We drove around town looking for a free park because every car park in England you have to pay. We stopped outside a house with a sign - ‘BMW’s only’. Mum and Thomas walked to Anne Hathaway’s cottage. We didn‘t know who she was but obviously she was connected to Shakespeare. When we got to the cottage we discovered she was Shakespeare’s wife. We didn’t want to pay to go inside and the gardens weren’t blooming because it’s winter. We found another park in town and walked to the house where Shakespeare was born and grew up. Like all the other houses in was Tudor style, Woven willow plastered with mud (Wattle and Daub) and big hand-cut log framing to support a thatched roof. We didn’t go into any of the houses. Mum went to the ticket desk and asked where the Library was but didn’t ask for the public library. We ended up signing in to the largest collection of Shakespeare books in the ’Shakespeare Centre Library and Archives. We felt like total idiots especially being such a big family while everyone else in the reading room was studying. We left very quickly. We ended up in the Public Library but there was no internet so we read some books. We went to a Motorway rest stop for dinner. We went to a pier on the Bristol Channel but the pier was closed and it was getting dark. We stayed at the end of a residential street in Burham-on-sea.


The next day we walked on the beach with lots of other dog walkers. There was a lighthouse beacon on stilts and quite a lot of rubbish on the beach. We drove into Devon. Rolling hills of green grass. All the fences are stone and hedges. The country lanes are very narrow and we had to pull over or reverse for other traffic. There were lots of sheep too. Mum had organised two HelpX places to stay for a couple of days. The first one was Middlescott Farm. It was pouring with rain when we pulled up to the gate. It looked very muddy on the driveway so Anneke, Thomas and Dad walked. There was a huge, tall house and a lot of slate farm buildings. We met Lawrence in full wet weather gear. He showed us where we could park. We parked out of the mud next to the house and Dairy. After settling in we went into the kitchen. Karen was making the week’s worth of bread in her busy kitchen. We ended up talking until dark. Karen and Lawrence were architects in London and moved to Devon with their daughter and son 20 years ago. They have sheep for milking and make organic goat’s, sheep’s and cow’s cheese.

We had a very windy and rainy night.

The next day Mum and Dad took a full tour of the Dairy and how they make the cheese. It was interesting hearing the tips and tricks of setting up your own small business. There was a formal dining room which we thought was very ‘English’. There was a massive table and there were thirteen people seated around it. Karen and Lawrence’s recently married daughter and partner popped in. There was their other son, Ben. And Louise, helpXing from France.

Mum had made a huge pot of vegetable soup and we had Karen’s bread and the cheese. We’re looking forward to being able to put a range of homemade cheeses on a board like that. The cheese was very tasty. Even though we don’t really like the aroma and taste of Goat and Sheep Cheese this was very nice. Karen showed us wool from their own sheep and beautiful baby clothes and knitting kits she sells along side her cheese at the market. The kitchen floor went from brown to black when the girls mopped the kitchen floor. We were invited come along to the ‘Open Mic night’ at the local Pub. When it is a clear day you can see the sea from the farm. We drove down to Lee on the coast and parked at the ‘Grampus Inn’ and walked on the beach before dark. The music started at nine and Karen and Lawrence came down later. The Pub was a beautiful old building with a low ceiling and there were only a few locals. Most of them sang or played Guitar. The owner of the Pub was a great fiddle player. The man organising the Music was very good at encouraging people to come up and play. Anneke and Thomas did a song on the ‘out-of-tune’ piano. It was quite difficult after not playing for a long time. We were all surprised when Johanna went up the front and sang a song without any accompaniment. We played snooker with four young welsh men who sang a Celtic or Gaelic anthem. A very friendly American/English guy (who was very good at singing and played some interesting music) invited us to come park up in his paddock. If we hadn’t planned for other places to stay we would have loved to stay there, so we asked him to come to NZ instead. We said goodbye to Karen and Lawrence and stayed in the Grampus car park.

We drove to another HelpX called ‘West Aish Farm’ in the middle of Devon. Mum had also organised this HelpX before but not as a proper exchange just sharing some meals and helping out when we could. Our hosts were Caroline and Mark and their kids Rose (3) and Joshua (5). Caroline and Mark were accountants from London leaving the city to live the good life. They have a ‘Smallholding’ in beautiful Devon countryside with a few sheep, pigs, dogs, ducks and the chickens were eaten by a fox the day before we arrived. We had dinner with them the first night - delicious homemade sausages. Joshua and Rose took us off to their rooms and showed us all the toys. Thomas read them a bedtime story. Joshua kept correcting him when he pronounced a word wrong (not in a English accent). We had parked up by the house on a nice flat spot, the field was too wet and muddy to park in.

Next to the house are two cottages that Caroline rents out for the summer holidays. One cottage was the stable of the historic farm and the other is the ‘Roundhouse’ where the flour was ground by horsepower. A builder was coming in to put in a new kitchen in the round house so we spent the day demolishing the old kitchen. William was dismantling the cabinets while Thomas removed the tiles. The hardest thing was dragging the old night store heater into the barn. We liked the idea of drinking tea while in England so Caroline waited on us with cups of English tea. Mum had made another pot of vegetable soup so we had that for lunch. We borrowed some movies and watched them in the camper.

Joshua went to school, Rose to Playschool and Mark to work. Mum and the girls started cleaning up the camper and organising some things to make packing easier. William and Dad make stands out of recycled wood for Caroline’s new beehives. The bees are coming later this year. Anneke and Thomas spent most of the morning trying to find the right tools for making a small fence and picket gate to protect the Hives. It was very muddy so the posts went in the ground easily. Caroline had cooked a delicious pork ‘Tikka Masala’ for dinner. We ended up watching almost all the Harry Potter movies. A Ute of Firewood came and we slpit and stacked it in the barn. We helped the nieghbour hill start his car when the rain had briefly stopped. Wiiliam and Dad crutched a sheep with some scissors. It ended up a warm and sunny day but there was a cold frost overnight.

We left West Aish farm and said goodbye. Caroline gave us some screws and staples to put in our new home so a part of them was with us.

We drove to the seaside town of Weymouth and for one of the first times in England (and Europe) we paid for parking. We went to the Sealife park and Aqurium with our Merlin Passes. All the rides and outdoor attractions were closed for the winter. The animals and sea creatures were just like the other Sealife centres in Scotland. The octopus was out and about and there were some giant spider crabs. We were underdressed for the cold because we thought it was warm with the sun shining. We watched the seal and Penguin feeding then left and drove to Salisbury where we stayed in front of a truck in a business park.