Travelling to Torrington

Friday is moving day as we have to head south west from Gilmorton (near Leicester) to Great Torrington in Devon. This is about a 4 hour drive most of it down the M5.

We set off with another great cooked breakfast from our hosts Sue and Alan. First stop was Warwick. This has an intact castle which has been turned into a 'working' castle with all sorts of themed activities. It was very pricey so we just walked around the outside a bit, took some photos of the other interesting buildings in town and headed on towards Stratford-Upon-Avon again.

Lord Leycester's Hospital

Since we had already stopped in Stratford earlier in the week, we paused at Anne Hathaway's House (Shakespeare's wife's family home) but didn't have time to look around. We had a quick coffee and a cake and then hit the road heading for the M5.

Once on the M5, it was 'set the controls for the heart of the sun' and sit back for a 100 mile run at 70mph! Once past Bristol, we decided to pop off the motorway and find somewhere to have our picnic lunch. Clevedon is a small seaside town south of the shore of the Severn Estuary with a pier.The weather was sunny with a cool on-shore breeze so we had our lunch on a park bench and set off for the final two hour drive to Devon.

Clevedon Pier

We finally got to Torrington around 5pm and were warmly welcomed by our alpaca host, Sue Ashmole. Having never actually met her before, we were impressed by her friendliness. We were shown to our room, offered a beer and wine and sat down to a lovely meal of home-made Chicken Pie and home-grown vegetables. She lives with her partner Phil and ex-gun-dog Sam, the labrador. Phil is a keen rugby follower so we watched the All Blacks beat Georgia - a pretty bruising game.

Sue has 11 alpacas but they are kept in a small piece of land she leases about 5kms away across the valley. The terrain here in Devon is incredible with very narrow valleys interconnected by the usual narrow country lanes. There were amazing straight runs down and then up the next valley with very steep gradients (one of 25%).

From Sue's to her Alpaca paddock - in the trees across the valley on top of the hill