Devon

I have been away for the weekend, visiting my grandmother in Devon. I have been promising to go for over a year now but there has always been too much to do. There still were lots of things to do but last month I decided there would always be lots to do and booked the train tickets any way.

Even though I don’t often take them I do enjoy train journeys, and bus journeys but train journeys more. There are so many interesting back gardens, allotment sites and smallholdings along railway lines, and it’s always nice to ‘have a nose’ and gather ideas, which is not something I really ever get chance to do being the boring stay at home that I am, but that is where I am happiest.

On the journey down I started to keep count of the interesting things I saw, there was many, of the different types of livestock there was. I always feel uneasy about the thought of keeping any of our animals so near to a  trainline or busy road but people do and it seems to work out fine.

So I have been to the beach. Paignton is a nice sandy beach with lots of beach huts which I loved, I don’t remember them being there last time I went to visit which must have been about four or five years ago now. Beach huts seem to hold a promise, a promise of something interesting behind each door all done up in shiny coat of white paint and a brightly coloured door. Or to me they do. The beach was busy even though it was a dull day weather wise, I guess I should have expected that in the middle of the summer holidays, and the tide was in so there wasn’t much room for people to spread out. I don’t like crowded beaches as much as I could, they don’t seem to be as thoughtful or healing as an empty wind swept beach. And the rubbish… But I still had a nice walk.

We visited Torre Abbey to see the Antony Gormley Field for the British Isles exhibition. It visited Gloucester Cathedral not long ago and I thought about going to see it then but never got round to it. The exhibition was laid out in an old barn on the out skirts of the grounds and the little figures filled most of it. It was interesting standing infront all of the little clay figures, the pencil holds that they have instead of eyes look strangely human and questioning.

The abbey seemed to have mostly been turned into an art gallery, there was a big felt mobile hung on the stair way all the way up through the building which I guess had been made by a school. It was made up of white felted people with natureal black wool felted in for the hair and face and a letter on the front. It was very simple but I would imagion that it was a great community project. The garden was nice, it had a big glass house which I would have filled with vegetables or fruit of some kind.  

And that was all there was time for. Being away did make me realise how picky about food I am but as I’ve been writing this post for a few days now (it is very busy at work this week) I will just post it.