Wednesday

The ditch clearing continues, walking back along its length the little tributary is now singing a different tune.
It’s rather muddy on the campsite after some heavy showers and the coming and going of a couple of work vans being manoeuvred across the grassy area without much thought of the resulting mess.
I’ve formed a small trench to direct some of the surface water away from the area directly in front of our walkways and door ways.
After preparing a picnic we headed over to National Trust property Arlington Court, we were slightly delayed as we had to help a damsel in distress who had vehicular issues and was told by an RAC answer phone that thy were too busy to get to her for several hours. After several phone calls and a short drive to the Toyota dealer I was able to get the help she needed and after an hours delay we were on our way again.
Unfortunately the house, cafe and gardens were closed and only open at the weekend when I guess there are more visitors to cover the costs of running the staffed areas? The house has been lavishly decorated for Christmas and is open for visitors at certain times at the weekend.
Regardless, Dippy and I spent four hours strolling around the grounds and chatting to a few of the volunteers in the Gardens who were tidying up. We walked to the bird hide and spotted, coal tits, blue tits, nuthatch, robin, moorhen, mallard and heard jays in the woods.
We visited the fascinating old church and chatted to the couple who were in charge of looking after its wellbeing, they were there for an annual meeting with some inspectors who apparently after their visit send a hefty bill for their work
Suitably exercised we headed home and sat in queues of traffic for the last couple of miles across Barnstaple, what took us 20 minutes to get there took over an hour to return home.
The last portion of steak and kidney stew was bumped up with some extra mushrooms, smoked bacon and some delicious kale from the Arlington vegetable garden.
See a few snippets of our day in the extras area.
Zzzzzzzz