One for the Road........

When we were in Barnstaple recently I noticed THIS....!
 see the image below....

One for the Road.......

 The can of Fosters had been opened so it looks pretty certain the driver had been drinking whilst driving......
No matter how many don't drink and drive educational messages are sent out on TV and in the media it seems that with some people the message will never sink in..!!

The driver must be pretty thick anyway, as driving around with a can of beer on display is just asking to be pulled over and breathalysed by the men in blue.....

Note the high banks .....

Still on the subject of things vehicular.....
I took the above picture in one of the many lanes around our campsite..... 
Just imagine driving along this lane with it's high banks and no passing places for a long...long...way with your caravan in tow. Then you meet a tractor coming towards you with a trailer stacked  with hay bales higher than the banking.....
It could be a bit of a nightmare.... :-)

It Arrived....Well just a Little Did..!!

In my last post I predicted that some snow was likely to arrive in our area....
Well it arrived..Well just a little did..!! 
It wasn't a huge dump of snow which you can get sometimes up here on Dartmoor, but it was certainly more than a dusting.....

The snow actually fell overnight Thursday/Friday....
When we woke up on Friday morning the temperature had dropped further since the overnight snowfall.....

All the snow that had fallen on our awning had now frozen solid and it took me quite a while to remove it..... It's important to remove it if possible, because the weight of it all could eventually do some serious damage to the roof of the awning.

The empty hard standing pitch next to ours was a solid sheet of ice and the internal campsite road was too icy to attempt to walk on initially....
However it wasn't long before our campsite manager had spread salt/grit around and the site road turned back from a skating rink and became useable again....

We didn't venture out of the site on Friday as the reports we heard concerning the condition of the moorland roads made us feel that it would be more sensible to stay put even with a 4X4.

On Saturday it was Anne's birthday so we decided to venture off site to have a meal and a drink........
We set off up onto the top moor around Princetown and what surprised us was that although some of the snow had by now melted away, the roads were packed with cars parked everywhere. Lots of people had decided to visit the moor for a walk and a play in the snow..... Vehicles were parked up on the banks at the sides of the road and there were snowmen in almost every field.

Cars parked at the side of the moorland roads 

A lot of the snow had now melted

Although there wasn't much snow left it had proved to be a real visitor magnet.... 

According to the Dartmoor Ranger all these visitors had caused a major field invasion.... Although there are acres of access land that people can walk and play on, lots of these visitors chose to just park anywhere and enter fields where they had no right to be....

One farmer on entering one of his fields with his tractor to feed his sheep, had to avoid lots of loose dogs and children running everywhere only to find that his sheep had been scattered and had to be gathered and moved  into an area two fields away.....
Result... One very disgruntled farmer....

Most of these visitors seemed to be be 'Townies' who seemed to think that they could park and go wherever they wanted.
 Just a pity that they hadn't bothered to double check where they could in fact go.......

More vehicles parked everywhere

 As well as lots of cars being parked up at the side of the road, the moorland car parks were all packed solid and even 'Willy's' Ice Cream van was parked up at the car park above Pork Hill...

All the Moorland Pubs were packed solid too and it eventually became clear that we were going to be very lucky to find somewhere to shoehorn ourselves in and get a drink and a meal.....

The Plume of Feathers in Princetown itself was packed solid..... more like a Friday night than a Saturday late lunchtime.......
In the end we headed back down into Tavistock and had a very nice meal there.... Also I eventually got my much waited for pint (or two) of beer.
I chose a pint of Dartmoor Breweries Jail Ale which apparently is the best selling pint in these parts......

Princetown...The Plume of Feathers Pub on the right

My Pint- Darmoor Brewery Jail Ale

A Few Days Away.................

We had a really good Christmas and New Year on site, with the site managers arranging a couple of events over the holiday....
On Christmas Eve we had a mulled wine and mince pie get-together with other campers and on New Years Eve a barbeque and bubbly meet-up.

Anne and I were really surprised how many people were camping out over the holiday period the site being almost half full over Christmas and every useable pitch in use over the New Year.

Since then Anne and I have spent a few days away from site on a visit to Ifracombe on the North Devon Coast....

I haven't been to Ilfracombe since I made a trip to Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel a number of years ago.
I wanted to go back for another visit as I had heard that Damien Hirst had arranged for one of his sculptures to be placed there....
As the sculpture has the same name as my daughter (Verity) it had found it's way on to my 'must visit' list.

View of Ilfracombe Harbour

 The harbour at Ilfracombe makes a very attractive scene as can be seen in the image above.
Unfortunately during our visit we had some very heavy rain but it didn't spoil our visit too much.....

Lobster pots stacked up in the harbour area

Ilfracombe harbour is a working harbour and as we walked down from where we had parked the car we passed lots of lobster pots all stacked up waiting to be used....

Our first view of Verity on the harbour wall

 As we walked from the car park we had our first view of Verity standing on the far harbour wall.....
Verity is 20.25 metres tall and is situated at the entrance to the harbour and she looks out over the Bristol Channel towards South Wales.

Verity - A closer view

 The statue is made from stainless steel....bronze and glass fibre reinforced polymer.
She is on a long term loan from Damien Hirst to North Devon Council and is an allegory for truth and justice.
She stands on a base of scattered legal books and holds the traditional symbols of justice....a sword and scales. 

Verity - Another view.

 She arrived in Ilfracombe in three sections in October 2012 and she took a week to assemble on site and was hoisted into position with a 250 tonne crane...
Unlike my daughter, Damien Hirst's Verity is not the prettiest female I've seen and as a sculpture might not be to everyone's liking but she was certainly worth a visit.....

A general view of Ilfracombe town

We enjoyed our visit to Ilfracombe very much in spite of the continuing wet weather....

Now we are back at Eva the Eriba  the rain has stopped and it has now got a lot colder... they even had a dusting of snow today up at Princetown just a few miles up the road from our campsite.....
I wonder if we will be getting snow here next....?