Springtime on Exmoor

Lots of young animals out and about now enjoying the lovely spring weather and many birds are performing their mating ritual. It never ceases to make me smile to see the male doing all the work with dancing in exotic plumage for the female who then just flies off totally unimpressed. Some things are the same in every species!

We went up onto Ley Hill a couple of evenings ago. It was lovely up there – huge sky with loads of swallows darting and swooping and skylarks singing. The views across the channel were clear with the mountains of Wales visible in the background. All was peaceful and quiet until Soda thought she found a rabbit and promptly spent the next 5 minutes barking down a hole. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the rabbits had long since packed up and gone!

The trees are beautiful with the oak long out before the ash. It will be interesting to see whether the old saying of ‘oak before the ash and were in for a splash. Ash before the oak and were in for a soak’ comes true this year and we have a dry summer. The ground is desperate for rain now and the fields are starting to crack open.

Colin and Sue came to stay with us again for bed and breakfast and they had a great 3 days meeting up with old friends and exploring Exmoor. We have also had 2 different parties staying from Switzerland this week. Giving them maps and directions, they too went off exploring and fell in love with the area.

We have Helen’s walking party of 12 staying at the moment so it’s full on here this weekend as we provide evening meals for groups. Derek, Lucy and Charlotte do tend to like it when this happens as I usually cook too much. Lucy was looking a little green last night after eating a lemon posset closely followed by a rather large sticky toffee pudding (with clotted cream of course)!

Paddy cut his leg and is now on stable rest for a couple of weeks and is feeling a little sorry for himself and bored. The image on his bottom isn’t a tattoo but a bird that was whizzing past when Derek snapped the photo!