Exmoor

Over the Easter weekend we stayed at a bed & breakfast in Dulverton, within the Exmoor national park. Exmoor spans two shires, Devon and Somerset. Don't feel bad if you have never heard of these places, as neither has your average punter in London.

This is a photo from our bedroom window. For those of you familiar with the board game 'settlers of catan', you will understand why I felt like I had a monolpoly on wool production and required a 2:1 sheep port.


First off we visited the Exmoor Pony Centre. This breed of ponies live wild on the moors of the national park, and are very rare. Unfortunately though this doesn't stop them from being rounded up and culled for dog food and so the pony centre buys as many ponies as it can to foster them out and save them from being tinned.







On a brighter note, the Exmoor pony is similar to a high maintenance girlfriend. Basically you need to groom it and pay it lots of attention before it feels comfortable with you riding it.

The next day, we went for a long trek (16 miles) from our B&B to a place called Tarr Steps. We had to traverse many open fields along the moors which didnt really match up with our map...or our compass! So we were quite relieved to stumble along a local farm house at one point when we were hopelessly lost.







The farmhouse had a sign out the front welcoming visitors and declaring that 'Baking is our speciality'. This was a terrible shame for the JeTZ as it was Passover and hence we were unable to partake of the delcious scones on offer.

It was difficult to explain to the local farmer running the tea-house that we couldn't eat leavened bread at this time due to our celebration of the Exodus from Egypt. As you can see, he had a bit of trouble trying to pronouce the hebrew word for Passover: Pesach.

TZ also managed to irk him so when she pointed to a dead sheep and asked if it was ok. It was a bit of a tumbleweed moment really...

To be honest, he didn't take it too well and asked us to wait outside the farm house.

We began to feel a bit (more) uncomfortable when we noticed the on-site butcher shop. When we read the sign in the window 'Home-killed meat' we decided to make a run for it.










On the way home, we drove through many country villages relishing all sorts of lovely bakeries and patisseries. But we had learnt our lesson...

Instead of going inside to find out what unleavened options might have been available, we had a new plan: We pulled over, popped open the boot, pulled out a box of matzo and in full view of the public, pretended that there was nothing we'd rather eat than matzo and chocolate spread.



Click on the picture below of Jez waving to us from Tarr Bridge for a quick video...