I’ve told you before that she’s hopeless at taking photos – what on earth has happened to my other ear? Don’t you think she’d have rearranged me before making me look like a complete plonker.. it’s bad enough that she takes photos while I’m asleep.. and upside down..
Anyway, if you look closely you can see that I’ve got a gummy gap!! Actually, you can also see that I’d not long had my lunch because there are bits of it still on my chin. My front left tooth on the top has come out so now I’ve got an excuse to chew anything and everything and have it called “teething”. Mummy hasn’t found the tooth but I’m still wondering if the tooth fairy will come tonight and leave something under my doggy duvet.
This morning mummy had to get her car MOT’d so we went to Kevin’s Garage and while…
The bluebells in May make for the prettiest walks of all and we do love a good bluebell wood. This is an amazing walk, incredibly pretty and great views when you make it to the top of the hill.
Well I guess it’s not really secret because lots of people probably know about it, but you can only walk to it and it’s really pretty! We went on our Sunday evening walk.. and it was really pretty with loads of nice sniffs. There were lots of pheasants too but I’m not allowed to chase them which I reckon is a bit unfair. Anyway, Daddy parked the car in Winterborne Houghton and we walked from there.. all the way up the valley and to the highest point in Dorset at Bulbarrow. This is a picture from the top of the hill. It wasn’t very easy to see a long way but on a good day you could see for miles and miles and miles.
On the way back it’s all down hill..
This is a long straight bit that’s good for playing hoopy and then you get into the woods.
Me again! My geocache trail needs checking because someone couldn’t find clue no 1. I’m not up to walking that far and it’s not really buggy friendly, so I will be despatching mum to go on her own just as soon as it’s a sunny day and dad can work from home to look after me.
This has always been one of my most favourite walks with some amazing views.
A week or so ago we had an email letting us know that a geocacher had been unable to find Clue 1 on my multi-cache. They also hadn’t been able to find the one at New Barn. This morning the weather was perfect so mum and I got our stuff together and off we went. Mum wasn’t sure whether it would be ‘wellies’ or ‘walking boots’ and in the end she went for the walking boots.
We parked the car and walked up to where the first clue is hidden and, guess what, yup, it was right where we’d left it when we checked the trail in October before the winter set in. We’d come all this way so we carried on to check the all the others were still where we’d left them. No 2 was present and correct.
Next there was a small obstacle to get past… well…
Well so far February has been pretty exciting!! On Sunday it’s February 14th and mum says that’s called Valentines Day! Id never heard of that before.. but yesterday the postman brought an envelope for me!!
It’s handmade and very lovely indeed, with little hearts on it and a row of pink pearls. It’s from my twitter friend @Niqqi – she’s an adorable Bichon Frise that lives miles away in the United States! Yes, I know she’s a girl, but if we waited for all the boys to send cards we’d have to wait a long time! I’m pretty sure I won’t be getting one from my beau Kai, aka @HugeHound, or @MrKiplingwoof. Such is life. Niqqi has a lovely blog http://niqqi/wordpress.com and if you go there you can read about the great LochNess pawty we all went on, it was such fun – don’t forget to watch the video too!
Can you believe that we still have snow? I’ve seen snow every Christmas so I think I’m a lucky pup! We had even more on Monday.. big snow flurries. Dad had gone to work but only got as far as Winterborne Zelston and then he turned round and came back home again.
Isn’t that wonderful? Now that’s a decent quantity of snow..
After lunch we went for a walk.
The snow was really deep.. well, almost up to my tummy, so it was really fun and I had to do lots of springing even though I’m a cocker spaniel and not a springer spaniel.
Luckily we’d brought my purple ball instead of the hoopy, so it was a bit easier to see in the snow.
On the way back down past the farm we met the chocolate Sussex Spaniel that lives at the farm, I think his name is Buster…
This evening we left home and thought we would do one of our usual walks at Manswood. But just for a change we decided to park at Witchampton and do a walk that we’ve not done for absolutely ages and ages.
We started our walk by going through a big gate that looked like the entrance to a castle!
And then it was a long walk along a pathway leading to the sports field. You can just see the goal on the right hand side.
Usually I get a ride in the buggy for the first bit of a walk but today I walked as soon as we got out of the car… it was somewhere different and I didn’t want to miss out on any of the smells and pmail.
Dad was doing a great job of pushing my buggy… just in case I needed it!
It was a lovely evening – sunny but not too hot and not too cold.
It was warm enough for a paddle.. in lovely clear, clean water.
We went over a bridge and mum spotted this row of stones on the top! Dad was way ahead of us at this point so we couldn’t ask him what the red stones were – he used to be a geologist so he’d have known what they were, like he knows all about chalk streams!
This is a chalk stream, dad says we have more chalk streams than anywhere else in the whole wide world! Isn’t that amazing!
I’m still walking! Dad’s good at pushing the buggy and doesn’t mind doing it. I think I can smell water ahead.
I haven’t done swimming in the longest time.. this was absolutely heaven. The water was cold, clear and super clean. I did lots of swimming and hope we’ll come back here again really soon.
Another bridge.. but this one was dry underneath.
It seems that my photographer forgot to take any pictures of the long grassy path we walked to get to this point where we turn off and cross the field. Oh well, it looked a bit like this but wasn’t so wide.
We’re heading towards that sign you can see in the distance.
At this point dad was lagging behind as he’d been watching some geese flying overhead. Are they on their way here for the winter or flying away somewhere else? They make a lot of noise but being deaf I couldn’t hear them. They’re probably all confused what with climate change and the random weather we’ve been having.
This is a pretty bit of the pathway which is on our final bit of the walk.
This is the view from a little bridge. It’s not a good spot to swim because you can’t get out of the water again. And there are lots of signs saying to keep out.
It’s nice to just stop and look for a while though.
We’re almost at the end of the walk now… I’m feeling a bit puffed and am coughing quite a lot.
Mum has popped me in my buggy for the last stretch – I didn’t argue because I’m feeling quite weary and need a rest. I’m also feeling a bit chilly after my swim so it’s nice to be snuggled up and just watching the world go by. Look! It’s the big castle gate again!
And we’re back at the car.. we parked just a little way along the road from this sign.
I was shivering quite a lot by now so mum towelled me dry and then wrapped me up in three towels like an egyptian mummy. It’s only a few minutes drive to get home and by the time we got there I was all warm and dry and ready for some post walk snackeroonies.
I am going to try and get some of my old walks into blogs.. they just sit in folders on the desktop, whatever that is. Now that I’m a lady of a certain age my life is a lot more sedate and we mostly go on walks that are buggy friendly. But on a good day, and today was a good day, I have lots of bounce and even do mad bonkers zoomies. I get told off for that though because I usually end up falling over into a very unladylike heap.
I hope all your days are good and hope to take you on another walk with me very soon!
A week’s gone by so quickly… it’s our last sleep tonight and tomorrow morning we’re off home to say goodbye to our lovely house sitters before they leave to go on to their next house sitting job. They’ve been looking after the house and Pickle and Kovu.
Today we had another revisit- Cardinham Woods and then we went on the ferry to Fowey. Our mission was to buy sausages, pasties and to have a cream tea.
Cardinham woods… with the tall treesAnd fab swimming spots!
We walked up the Wheal Glynn trail which we did last time but that was in 2019 and some of the paths were closed for maintenance. It looked like there were more benches this time… and we do love a nice bench.
Wheal Glynn walkTall treesCan you see the building and chimney?
It wasn’t a huge walk but it was very nice indeed. Nice even pathways for my little legs.
On the way home we went to Fowey to complete the sausage mission.
Ferry to Fowey
There were only 5 cars on it today… the last time I think there were 13.
We managed to complete our mission… we bought sausages and also had a cream tea… and we bought gin for mum…
A visit to the Lugger as Dad was in need of beer
So with our bag of sausages and a bottle of Tarquin’s gin we had completed our mission and we’re able to head home.
Last sleep at Deerpark
Our bags are packed, even my little suitcase, so we’re all ready for out 10am checkout- a bit early but I’m sure we’ll manage it!
I hope you enjoyed our holiday as much as we did. I just hope it’s not as long before we can come back again.
This afternoon we went to see Tintagel Castle. There’s not a lot of it left now but they chose a great spot for it and in it’s day it must have been quite impressive. It was built in the 13th century… that’s absolutely ages ago.. by Richard the 1st Earl of Cornwall.
Bridge to Tintagel island.The main hallThat’s a hotel on top of the other hillLooking back at our route up the hillCastle ruins… improved by me
I’m not sure what bit those walls were.. but we walked up to the top of the hill where there was a great view all around.
The dot in the distance is dad Me and the scary man with a big sword He has a nice beardy face
This was a chapel
The chapel… is older than the castle!
It says in the information about the chapel that it was built on top of some earlier buildings that formed part of a dark age settlement.
That was about it, we didn’t walk down to the cafe or gift shop… too many steps for me, so we walked back the way we came.
On our way home we called in at Boscastle which was really lovely. It’s hard to tell that back in 2004 such a lot was destroyed by the Boscastle flood
A difficult harbour to get into!
For about an hour or so either side of low tide there’s a blow hole and we were lucky enough to see it.
The blow hole
Well, tomorrow is our last day, we go home on Friday. I’m not sure where we’re going but I’m sure it’ll be somewhere exciting!
The last time we stayed at Deerpark we went to the Luxulyan valley and it was so nice we went again today.
We started off by getting the car ferry at Fowey
Waiting for the ferry
And then we drove to Luxulyan along some more tiny roads!
Not a lot of passing places
We parked my transport in a different car park to the last time and decided which route to take.
Zoom to read
We took the higher dry pathway along the leat. That’s a man made waterway that takes water to go over the big mill wheel.
It was a big job for whoever dug out the leat, they had huge lumps of rock to deal with! This is one that has fallen over.
It was quite a long pathway.
After a while we came across something that looked familiar… but this time we were looking up at it.
The old wheelpit
We carried on walking and did a zig zag to get up to the higher pathway and then we could see all the other buildings and bits of machinery that we’d seen on our last visit.
We carried on walking along the pathway that we’d taken last time… it was the old horse drawn tramway.
Tramway line
In some places you can see the metal things the actual line was put on and in two places there are bits still there.
The old tramway!
We carried on walking until we got to the viaduct.
We walked across the viaduct to the other side and marvelled again that the people who built all this had taken the time to finish it off with these.
The branch line to Newquay runs underneath the viaduct.
A long way down
We had to get down to the bottom of the viaduct so we took another path and then cut down through these lovely woods….
Until we got to the bridge to cross the water and then we were back at the carpark.
You too can have deja vu by looking back at my last post back in March 2019..
This morning we had a good walk here in the woods at Deerpark… yesterday morning’s walk ended up with us turning back as the pathway was so overgrown. Today we walked along the pathway we could see yesterday… but couldn’t get to!
A lovely mossy track!
After our walk we headed back to the cabin so I could have a little snooze before going out again and mum and dad had a cup of tea.
Suitably refreshed, we headed out again and for our trip out his afternoon we went to Golitha Falls.
There was a nice carpark and also a cafe, saloon and public toilets. Sadly all are closed on a Monday and Tuesday.
The walk to the falls isn’t very long, we took the yellow route as the red route looked a bit challenging for me.
As it was I ended up wearing my harness and being put on the stretchy lead… very embarrassing but I tried to have a paddle yesterday, slipped and got stuck in the water. The old legs aren’t like they used to be so mum and dad weren’t taking any chances with me falling into fast running water.
Coins in logs!
There were some nice paths to walk along… mum and dad took the high road and I took the muddy low road!
A long time ago, back when they used to do mining here, there used to be a huge wheel – this was where it would have been.
Mum said the water was noisy but I couldn’t hear it.
There were some old pipes up in the air crossing the water.
Old mine shaft
So that was Golitha Falls. A great place to visit but not on a Monday or Tuesday if you are hoping for an ice cream or in need of a public toilet!
On our way back to Deerpark we went through Minions. Another really nice place to visit with some fabulous views.
And then it was time to make our way back to Deerpark.
Some of the roads were very narrow.
I’m going to sleep very well tonight. So it’s goodnight from me until tomorrow.
Teagan Times Too 