The Rose Tattoo: Tiny Tim and Surfing

Friday, March 30, 2012

Tiny Tim and Surfing

On Thursday morning our friends were leaving us for the train journey back to Sheffield, so we drove them to Barnstaple station and dropped them off. From there we went to Arlington Court, a National Trust property. A very fine house, huge gardens and woodlands, and the National Carriage Museum.

We walked up to the museum, which I suppose is interesting in a funny sort of way! There was a very fine coach on display which was thenSpeakers State Coach, all painted and gold everywhere, but we weren't allowed to take photos of it by order of parliament!
Whilst we were there, there was a harnessing demonstration. Now, this didn't sound too exciting, but it was fascinating. The women who gave it was excellent, explaining everything about how horses pull carriages, and how the harness etc work, but the star of the show was the horse. A huge, beautiful grey horse, I can't remember what breed, but I know it was European and bred for temperament, called Tiny Tim, slightly inappropriate given his size, but shortened to Timmy, he was lovely. got so bored during the demonstration he went to sleep, and only woke up when he heard the applause because he knew that's when he got patted and stroked by the audience.

There were plenty of woodland walks, and we went on a short one down past a lake into a valley, and back up to the house, past a haha, and to a very old oak tree that would have been mature when the house was built. Many hundreds of years old, it was now dying, but was still providing a habitat to bugs, fungi and birds.

Then we went round the house, which was lovely, and I'm now looking at things like furniture and decoration for when I start furnishing my dolls house.

After Arlington, we drove along to coast,to Westward Ho! Only because I wanted to visit the only place in the UK where a punctuation mark is really a part of a town name. By then it was getting cloudy, and it was quite chilly when we got there. Not much to see, I always think seaside towns look a little sad out of season when everything's boarded up. There was a huge beach though.

It's also very popular with suffers, and we watched a couple for a while, there were some fairly big waves, and they seemed to be having a good time. Looks like hard work, and cold, to me!