Family Holiday to Holsworthy - Part One.

Hi Everyone just come back from an amazing week away with ALL my family.  For the last few years we started taking a family holiday as all of us live different parts of the UK, including Northern Ireland. So getting together is rather difficult. This year we were blessed by the most amazing weather. We stayed in this wonderful barn, in Devon but almost into Cornwall.

This barn is called Stone Barn and here is a link to the website.

Great space for the ten of us. On the side was left a rather yummy jam sponge cake!

Ample seating area.

Had to show you this bath was it was truly amazing. I've never had a bath like it. You could sit up in it to read or just lie and laze around - fantastic.

This was our bedroom, but don't worry that travel cot was moved into the right bedroom! We also had a lovely seating area to gaze outside.

On our way down we stopped at Castle Drogo, determined to make the most of our National Trust cards.

I thought this wall was amazing.

Day one was spent exploring and we discovered Widemouth Bay, just south of Bude.

This was our first trip to the beach and unbelievably it was too hot! Part of the sand was too hot to walk barefooted! So we had a few hours relaxing before we headed into Bude for a nice cool drink.

Here's a daft picture for any duck lovers!

After such a lovely day the evening proved to have the most gorgeous sunset.

Here is my No 1 daughter modelling her newly knitted coat - think she fancied herself as Kate Bush!

Day Two - the family probably lost its marbles and went to Gnome Reserve! It is very cheesey but you just have to go with a certain daft attitude. You have to wear a silly gnome hat as we must not frighten or embarrass the gnomes!

Here are the twins waiting to get their gnome hats!

We came to the conclusion that going to the gnome reserve was much cheaper than taking your babies to a photo studio, as there were many many pictures taken of them in various places.

Here is Rowan - trying to remove the gnomes hat!

The lovely day was finished with a lazy afternoon in the garden. Rowan making us laugh with trying to squeeze as much as food as he can into his mouth and the girlies eating very sedately - such lovely different characters.

Day Three. A trip to Port Isaac. This is where the television company filmed Doc Martin. There are plenty of episodes to watch again if you click here.

Port Isaac is a gorgeous Cornish harbour town. It has been years since I last went to Cornwall and this scenery is what I remember missing the most.

Here's a viscous seagull attacking my baby!

This reminded me of the time, many years ago, when we visited St Ives and had some sausage and chips on the beach. A cheeky seagull swooped down and grabbed the sausage out of my sons bread roll. We were left with a rather distraught son!



















The day ended with dinner outside in the garden and Poppy (the dog) enjoying a walk in the fields to another glorious sunset.

Day Four. More glorious weather and time for another trip to the beach. This time we headed to Crackington Haven.

We stopped and had some lovely freshly cooked lunch at the cafe.

I had wonderful crab sandwiches with lots of different salads and Mr P had a Cornish Pasty and chips. We had a wonderful relaxing day. We had planned to visit Boscastle for a Cream Tea but it just didn't happen.


Day Five. Mr P didn't have such a good day as he ended up chauffeuring me and my younger son around. But Mr P and I did manage to get a quick visit in to see Tavistock.

It looked a super town but we only had one hour to see it in. Then we headed down further into Devon to have a return visit to Greenway - one of the homes of Agatha Christie. I know I went last year but today there was a book signing event, as a previously unpublished novel was released this day! Wahay! Agatha Christie's grandson (Mathew Prichard),  Dr John Curran ( renown Christie expert) and Tom Adams(who illustrated and wrote the introduction) were there signing the new book. I just had to get a copy and get it signed!

The buildings, on this cover, are parts of Greenway.

See I got them to address me as "Nice murder knitter!" It was also stamped with the Greenway stamp. Maybe one day this book will be worth a fortune?

Here is Mathew Prichard - but note the dog. It is the same type of breed that Agatha Christie has in her book Dumb Witness. The dog was called Bob in the book.

























Oh I could talk for longer about our wonderful time at Greenway but I think I have probably bored you enough today with my holiday rambling ons! I'll finish this blog in the next few days.