Devon Part 1

 I've already mentioned that we broke our journey to Devon in Gloucestershire spending an afternoon and evening with my sister and borrowing jigsaw puzzles, and we spent the night in Cirencester which was a bit further south and therefore slightly nearer to our eventual destination. We got an early start which allowed the OH to indulge in a bit of a trip down memory lane. We had already passed the church where we got married on the way to see my sister, and next day we passed the place where he was born, then he visited the family plot in Cirencester graveyard and made a detour to a small village to look at the house where his grandparents used to live. There he feel into conversation with the Aged One who lives there now and really he was at the gate for so long I had visions of us getting no further than Bristol that day. 

Because it was the beginning of the holidays we expected the motorway to be busy so rather than take that I navigated with the help of a Real Road Atlas all the way from Cirencester to Okehampton. Because of a closed bridge on the outskirts of Bath we wended up having to crawl our way through the city centre, which wasn't optimal(!), and to avoid the same  sort of thing happening in Taunton we used the motorway for two junctions, which also allowed us to queue up for a long time for some not very nice fish and chips. Overall though we made good time and arrived at our destination not long after 5.00.

It looked lovely 

For some reason I never got around to taking a photo of the downstairs but the bedroom upstairs was huge!

It lacked that feel that holiday cottages often have which is that it is furnished and filled with things the owners can;t quite bring themselves to be rid of but which they don;t want to see everyday themselves. In fact I could quite see a single person living there quite happily. So that was good. It did put me off ground source heat pumps though as that was how it was cooled and heated and honestly it resulted in such a stuffy atmosphere that most evenings we sat with the door open to get some movement in the air. Which was fine while we were there as it was a very warm week, but I wouldn't like it much in the winter. 

The real downer though was the absence of the promised rowing boat. It was not available because of 'Covid'. Since this was the only reason for picking this particular cottage over several rivals I was not at all happy to hear that it wasn't actually available. In fact I have written to the booking company expressing my disappointment, suggesting that they let everyone else who has booked any of the four cottages on the property for the rest of the season know that this advertised amenity is not actually to be had, and also asking for a small refund. I have so far only had an automated response, promising my comments will be addressed 'in the next 28 days'. They have about 14 left. Honestly, while not wanting to minimise Covid related disruption in any way, I do think a lot of companies have seized upon it as an excuse to cut down on their customer service. 

The lack of the boat, to which we had so much been looking forward, did cast a shadow over the first few days of the holiday. But it was a fun time nevertheless ....