October 6th. Arrival night dinner at our holiday accomondations in Ilfracombe, Devon.

October 7th at Ilfracombe's Tunnels Beaches. The tunnels were there from mining works and then swimming pools (one for the ladies and one for the gents, plus one more) were created. We stuck to collecting shells, filling buckets and flying kites.

Hold tight!

October 8th. Our Ilfracombe apartment is in the pale green house that you can just see peeking up from the bottom of the hill.

Woolacombe Beach. I was amazed at the huge distance from the start of the beach to the water. So much lovely soft sand.

It was very warm as you can see from Hazel's lack of clothing. We played on the beach and flew our kites for a couple of hours then ventured into the town for some Cornish pasties for lunch.

Then it was back onto the beach to check out the rock pools.

Afternoon, back in Ilfracombe.

On Wednesday October 10th we headed back to Woolacombe beach. While she and David were exploring the rock pools, a cheeky seagull came and attacked her juice box. Then it wandered around to have a look at me.

We remembered Hazel's Little Mermaid swimming costume this time.

A round of mini-golf in Ilfrcombe on Thursday.

Then it was back to the Tunnels Beaches for more rock pool and cave exploration.

Friday October 12th was overcast so we headed out in the car to a village called Clovelly. It has been privately owned by the same family since the 1700s. The website for Clovelly is http://www2.clovelly.co.uk/index.php

There are no cars allowed through the village which is arranged around a very steep cobbled main street called Up-along or Down-along. Everything used to be transported by donkey but these days the residents use sledges. Each house or shop had its own sledge outside the door with the number of the house written on the side along with 'Hands off!' We arrived to see the rubbish collection sledge in action. Boy does it move fast down the cobbles when it is fully loaded. The guy in charge of it needed to be very strong to control it.

We walked down through the village to the quay to eat our picnic lunch. After an arduous walk across the pebble beach to a waterfall and back, we headed back up, up, up.

Some of the still-resident donkeys had been brought down and were available for stroking. Hazel is sitting on Noah, a twenty-something year old. You can read all about the donkeys past and present, including Noah, here: http://www.clovellydonkeys.co.uk/index.htm

Here's a GoogleEarth view of Clovelly that shows many of the places David, Elizabeth, and Hazel visited.

Hazel singing in the bathtub.

My Little Brother

Snow White

(These movie files will open using Windows Media Player.)