Eleni Drinks Tea in the Car

In honour of my Ma's birthday, my family and I spent last weekend in a lovely dinky cottage in Devon.  I have never been to Devon before, but I kind of knew I was going to love it.  The trip started off well, with my potentially uncomfortable wedged-into-the-back-of-Ma's-car-by-loads-of-unecessary-stuff journey being saved by a nice cup of tea:

Bless my mum.  You see where I get it from?  Two hour car journey: tea in flask, proper mug to drink it out of (preferably with a picture of a cat on it).  I had no chance growing up!  Destined to be a Crazy Cat Lady someday.

Luckily I can't be a passenger in a car for more than 15 minutes (tried and tested fact) without falling asleep, so the journey went swiftly for me.  We beat my sister to the cottage, so I got first pick of the bedrooms for the weekend:

 

Very nice, although I hold my hands up to discovering that I am a complete city-bound, seen-too-many-horror-movies wuss, and confess I got spooked at night because it was really dark (no comforting orange glow of street lights outside) really quiet (no neighbours) and not one of us could get a mobile phone signal.  Now I'm all for voluntarily switching off for the weekend, and I am not an obsessive phone-checker (I don't have that many friends), but it would have been reassuring to know that the authorities would have been easily contactable had the (in my mind) inevitable Axe Murderer put in an appearance.

Naturally, no Axe Murderer appeared, and so we were still alive and able to enjoy our weekend in the country.  We weren't far from a cute little town called Bridport, which looks like this:

I had to laugh when we stopped for a cream tea, and all four of us visibly grimaced when the waitress informed us that they had run out of English Breakfast, and would we be happy with Earl Grey?  See?  It runs in the family.  My mum also refused the scones because they had raisins in.  She's a purist.

Anyway, we survived the cream tea (the poor waitress had to run down the road and buy us some proper tea) and pootled leisurely back to our abode.  My favourite thing about the cottage was definitely the garden.  When I said we didn't have neighbours, I wasn't being entirely honest with you.  Here are some of our neighbours:

 

This is an action shot (well done, phone!), the sheep were trotting eagerly towards us.  Sheep are great: you can hear them munching up grass and they feel really weird.  However, not as weird as...

...pot bellied pigs!  Have you ever stroked a pig?  Very very weird.

Another surprising discovery for me is that I am fond of goats.  I thought I hated goats, because they have faces like demons and freaky horizontal pupils.  They look like they know too much (this is also the reason I don't like crocodiles, incidentally).  I was converted by these three little friends:

Miniature goats, I presume.  They made cool noises and they were so friendly, I was totally smitten.

They were also quite happy to pose for photographs.  Here is a nice goaty close up:

...and here is an Extreme Close Up: