The long and winding road

We decided to get away from the builders for a bit. We headed to Crow Point, at one end of Braunton Burrows. A toll road (£1.50) takes you to a car park and then it's about a mile's walk (partly along this boardwalk) to the beach. The beach fronts onto the estuary of the Taw and Torridge rivers but, another mile or so further on, it becomes the southern end of Saunton Sands. Saunton is amazing beach, of the kind that I didn't realise we had in this country until we moved down here - and North Devon has lots of them. Soft, golden sand and so long and wide that at one point in the past they used Saunton to practice desert landings and take-offs for Hercules military transport planes before invading some sandy country or another. At the northern end, where the café and car park (£7) are, the beach would have been heaving with people. Where we were, it was almost completely empty.

We walked along to the automatic lighthouse and then round the bay where, because the tide was out, the boats were stranded on the sand like they'd landed in the middle of the desert. The boy loved it. He ran, he sang, he danced, he drew and wrote in the sand, he threw stones into the water. He'd been so happy to be sleeping in his own bedroom again, and now he was happy to be outside.

We came home and found the scaffolding off the house and the builders finishing off the last of the plastering and trying to make the whole place as clean and tidy as they could. We have a week when nothing happens now, and then we have to carefully choreograph an elaborate dance involving carpenter, plumber, electrician and decorator.

In the post today arrived the boy's new walking shoes. You have never seen anything quite so dinky and adorable as walking shoes in child size 8. He's very excited about trying them on and so we're off out to Lee Bay tomorrow for a little trek through the woods.