It has been like the best of summer days today despite the strong winds. As I drove to work through the leafy lanes with flowers dancing on either side of me I thought how wonderful it is to be living here. I may not have any holidays but when I think about my journeys to work in London, an hour on a crowded hot underground train or 6 miles by bike dodging the lorries and the fumes, there is no way I would give up these daily snatches of beauty for 3 precious weeks by the sea. On a clear day like today I first see the hills of Exmoor a few miles away, then the distant plateau of Dartmoor and finally just before I drop down the hills into Barnstaple I can see the sand dunes of Saunton with the sea behind and 10 miles away across the bay the cliffs of Hartland Point. Sometimes I can even see the white line of the surf but not today, just the blue, blue sea.
Blue is the latest colour to appear on the roadsides.
Combined with the green and the the white of the cow parsley and the brilliant shining yellow of the buttercups which are just appearing, it is the perfect colour combination. Which is why I have those colours in the kitchen.
This is the ideal weather for silage making and the road home was filled with contractors' vehicles rushing back and forth from the fields before the forecast HEAVY rain sets in. I had a smashing day at school, though it wasn't a good start when my classroom needed sorting out before I could start setting up for the week. It didn't put me in the best of moods though I've since heard that it was in a far worse state at the end of the fayre and a lot of effort had already been put into sweeping up the sand and washing tables etc. However it was beautiful weather today and I couldn't have planned the activities better if I had tried. I spent most of the day outside in the Secret Garden with the children hunting for minibeasts and then attempting to fill tally charts. Some of the children claimed to have seen an awful lot of minibeasts. We kept finding woodlice under the turves of grass. The local name, which the children all used is chukkie pigs but I had to smile when one child declared loudly that she had found lot of guinea-pigs. ( I did hear a programme on the radio once saying how woodlice had the greatest variety of local names of any British creature, I had never heard them called chukkiepigs before I came to Devon but that is what every single child here calls them). And then because they had managed to get the registers done in time 10 times, the children choose to have extra play as their class reward and I was only too happy to oblige.I found out today why, when I had gone to collect Romas at 12.00 on Saturday night, after a gig , we had seen lots of groups of ladies walking over the New Bridge in the middle of the night. It was a sponsored Ladies only Nightwalk along the Tarka Trail between Bideford , Barnstaple and Braunton, in aid of the local hospice and Macmillon Cancer support. One of the TAs in my class did it and she said that it was excellent. There was enough moonlight for them not to have to use their torches and the whole 12 miles was well marshalled with checks being made at various points to make sure no one had been mislaid. Last year there were nearly 2,000 walkers. The Tarka Trail is a 150 mile looped path part of which runs along the line of the old railways along side both sides of the estuary and is popular with cyclists and walkers. I've only walked a little of it as I'm always drawn to the wilder cliff paths by the sea.
