A very active week!

The fantastic weather has prolonged the lovely autumn colours in our garden and across the moor.

We have just had a very busy week with bed and breakfast guests – half term combined with great weather and various activities on Exmoor. From ghost walks at Dunster Castle, master puppeteers at Tropicana and the famous Exmoor Beast cycle event across the moor.

Over 1700 people took part in the Exmoor Beast to cycle either 60 or 100 miles. The weather changed that night and we got up to gales and lashing rain. At 5.00 in the morning and peering out to such conditions would make most people go straight back to bed but not these hardened sportsmen! Not a lot of conversation was flowing (including from me) but 7 men, single focused (if a little doubtful), set off at 6.00 for the ride they wouldn’t forget. Ian's wife Heather, got up to take him to the start of the race (true dedication) but then very wisely returned home for a leisurely breakfast leaving Ian to it!

Making up our cycling guests were Tom and 2 friends from London, Al and his son from Dorset (never done an event like this - a baptism of fire methinks), Ian and Andy. Andy stayed with his family and he owns a cycling dynamics company which offers a specified range of bike fitting and analysis services plus a specified range of bikes to get maximum power, speed, efficiency and comfort – website is certainly worth a look We also had Phil staying who owns a photographic company specialising in bike, marathon and triathlon events and his photos of the riders in action are amazing. He was taking photos for a feature for Cycling Weekly and for his website.

Apparently it was one of the toughest rides ever with gusts of wind up to 70mph on Dunkery - Andy got blown off his bike twice! There were quite a few slips and collisions involving cattle grids, punctures 20 minutes into the race but it must have been a great sense of achievement for everyone who took part.

More and more activities are taking place on Exmoor and its great to see the area become such a focus for so many different events – cycling, Ironman, Wooden Spoon, running competitions, Duke of Edinburgh, Prince of Wales Trust and many more many of which raise a lot of money for charity.