Holiday Heaven Pt 2

Thursday we had a VERY LONG DAY. Had intended to spend it with cousins, but M was sick so had to stay away from her really, given our “don’t want tummy bug in a field” status. Got lunch and ate that under Kestor, then took a walk up to see if anyone had found our letterbox. A few had so the girls were delighted.

Climbed about a lot, Josie was particularly determined to be intrepid 🙄

Then we started to walk down toward Batworthy Corner, scene of mine and Max’s best Dartmoor tale, which the kids like to be told.

Josie did a Buttercup…

…. but eventually we convinced her we were prepared to go without her and she followed and did the rest of what was probably a 4-5 mile walk on her own 2 feet. What a little star.

Maddy fell in a hole and wailed a lot; Aspergers kids are supposed to have high pain tolerences, not Maddy 🙄 I’ve never heard so much fuss about a scraped finger. Humphf.

Met someone taking photos for this site on the way down, she took a photo of our crocs, but i don’t see it on the site! Eventually made it down to the Teign River/Stream, which Amelie immediately dubbed “a magical place”.

We’ll gloss over the part where Frances decided to behave like a mountain goat skipping across the rocks in the river (which was in full flow from so much rain), lost her footing, skittered down through the rocks, white water rafting on her bum, lost her shoes, missed a million rocks with her head by about a millimetre and then decided her shoes were more important than her life and tried to retrieve them. 🙄 🙄

Sometime later, i ceased screaming at her about how i can buy more crocs, would have to work bloody hard to get another Frances and people die making stupid bad decisions like that. By this time i had reduced all 4 children to sobbing wrecks. 😳 Amelie continued to wail “when will i forget about Fran nearly drowning at intervals for the rest of the day. 😥

However, we got over it, Max put the big two through the “whooping rock” (big rock with a hole through it) – at least, Max knows it as that, but i can’t find a reference to that particular one anywhere. Maddy later fell through it again, up to her neck (fortunately i wasn’t looking and Max pulled her out without me knowing.) Edit – i think it is this rock actually.
She was delighted to find it had a dimple the perfect shape for a Maddy bottom though.

It was very beautiful down there.

Then we walked them up the other side to see the stone circle, a particularly good one with lots of odd triangle stones

and then all the way back, stopping to retrieve various bits of sodden clothing as we went. I think at one point Fran and Maddy had every item of clothing they had had on, on a rock of tree somewhere 🙄

Luckily i had spare clothes.

Ice cream in Chagford was in order, along with a trip to put flowers on Gran’s grave in an attempt to give Amelie some closure on it all. Moderately successful.

Took them all into Moretonhampstead then for the carnival with Joe and Iz, which was excellent this year, thoguh my camera batteries ran out. One particularly fab dalek, which so convinced Josie that for the rest of the week she asked if the daleks were still there every time we went through the town! Finished with fair and food and home for a very late bedtime indeed .