Parke

While we were in Devon we paid a first visit to a National Trust place called Parke, just north of Bovey Tracey. A place where, as it happens, BH's mother was stationed, as some kind of a nurse, during the war, at a place which I believe is now some kind of large, golf flavoured hotel.

Location

Not clear why the Ordnance Survey does not recognise Parke, in the centre of this screen shot, as belonging to the National Trust in the way that they usually do. Perhaps there is something a bit different about it, with the big house not being up for tours, although there was unconfirmed talk of it being a Trust area office or base. It was certainly the case that the café was run by a tenant called Home Farm Café (of reference 7), rather than by their own people, which I think is usually the case, unlike many other visitor attractions (like Wisley) which do make use of franchises and catering contractors. But I was not able to confirm that the Trust only use their own catering people on their jobs website: maybe they don't care to own up to using zero-hours contracts agencies at busy times. See references 1 and 2.

Started the day with the hooting of owls at 0600. Followed by a session of 'cheep, cheep, cheep's, rather deep noises suggestive of rather a large bird, but no idea what.

Van art

Off to a bad start when we arrived at the car park, with this van covered in pictures. Something I find tiresome anyway, and a visual distraction I could do without when I am on the road, on a bicycle or otherwise. A camouflage, a road safety hazard.

Trusties' shed

An unusual shed for the trusties and their equipment, unusual in that it had a pointed window at the end. Much more expensive to build and maintain than a rectangular window. But entirely traditional roof of corrugated iron.

First stop was the walled garden, quite steeply sloped, maybe a couple of acres of it, with some large part given over to an allotment society, the remainder looked after mainly by volunteers. A cheerful bunch they were too, minding an interesting garden.

Ironmongery

Substantial iron fittings used to hold the espaliers on the wall. Perhaps the place really is an area office with a blacksmith's shop. One would have thought such fittings would be quite dear to buy.

Kiwi fruit

Note the substantial wire the vines are hung off. Clearly not a place to cut corners on fixtures and fittings. But do the fruit ripen to the point where one can enjoy them for more than their novelty?

Garden wall

The substantial wall, with the garden sloping down and away to the right. One knows one has arrived when one has the space and money to have such a thing around one's own kitchen garden - as the one-time owners of the house clearly had.

Bugs

Bugs on the nasturtiums. Maybe this branch of the Trust does not believe in the slaughter of bugs by chemicals.

Trolley

Next stop the garden shed, on the way down to the River Bovey, a tributary of the River Teign, the one which comes out at Teignmouth, where BH went to school, and which is now home to many seekers after benefits - who quite reasonably think that in the absence of a decent job, they might just as well live by the seaside where, in this country anyway, there is apt to be plenty of underused accommodation.

The garden shed contained a rather different sort of trolley, once used to carry granite down the granite railway, off the high moor, down to the canal. Snapped on our last visit to Haytor and noticed at reference 3. Never having seen such a thing before, I did not expect it to be so solidly made. But then, if you are bouncing great lumps of rock down the hill, I guess you need to be.

French gadget

Down in the cow field, we came across a nifty French gadget for water the cows. The cow nudges the yellow cap top left to work the pump bottom right, pumping water up from the nearby Bovey. We did test it, but not with our noses. As it happens I was right that 'la buvette' was to do with drinking rather than to do with cows, but I did not know that the word was usually used for a milk bar or something like that. Maybe the Shepherdess at Old Street would qualify if it was in France. See reference 5.

Pink spot

The pink spot disease. It looks as if, in their wisdom, the Trust are going to chop down most of a pleasant grove of trees by the old weir. Their excuse was the need to let more light it, to let more plants grow and so slow down the erosion by the river. I was not convinced, and if it was up to me I would let the trees be. If for no other reason than that they are the best carbon sink known to man, and we need all the sinks we can get if we are to get a grip on global warming. The National Trust should be setting a better example. In any event, I don't like chopping trees down, and my opening position is always to leave them alone. See reference 6 for another outbreak.

Wasps' nest

One tree by the weir had been chopped down some time ago and there was a busy wasps' nest in the bole, the right hand of the two dark patches which can be seen in the snap above. Oddly, although I took half a dozen or more snaps, I can't see any wasps in any of them, even if I zoom in. Maybe Cortana decided that she was focussed on the tree and fuzzy brown things in front of the tree were to be edited out. Their wings, after all, do move very fast, even for the shutter of a relatively modern (Microsoft) telephone.

BR shed

On the way back to the café, along the old railway line, presumably a casualty of Dr. Beeching's review, we came across the wreckage of an old shed. The bent concrete roof beams of which caught my eye, never having seen anything of the sort before.

At the café, we took cottage pie with vegetables, complicated but satisfactory. But not quite full, so I took half a pulled beef sandwich - which turned out to be something rather like savoury tinned beef in gravy in half one of those small baguettes you cook from frozen. Not very nice at all, but it did fill me up.

A heron flapped overhead during the proceedings, the only other tweet of the day having been a grey wagtail, down by the weir somewhere. No fish, or in any of the other rivers we had visited. But a good place, with lots of pleasant, pensioner-suited walking available. Lots of good sized trees and a good sized river - including spots suitable for picnics and paddling if not bathing.

Farm shed

A second traditional shed when we got back to Holne, this one with corrugated asbestos. We also had a mouse at the bird feeder outside the kitchen window, rather than the rat mentioned in an earlier post. Both brown.

On the way we had noticed a large pillar of nasty looking smoke, on the moor on the other side of the Dart. As far as I could make out from my telephone, fires of one sort or another on the moors were quite common, most of them being set for management purposes - of some sort or another. Possibly the safety and well being of grouses - until it was time to shoot them.

Reference 1: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/parke.

Reference 2: https://www.nationaltrustjobs.org.uk/jobs.

Reference 3: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/05/haytor.html.

Reference 4: http://www.labuvette-waterers.co.uk/aquamat-2-va.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/07/midi-monday.html. Also French flavoured, as it happens.

Reference 6: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/10/innocent-tree.html.

Reference 7: https://homefarmcafe.co.uk.