Animal tracking

I was out this afternoon with Ros (who is also a tracker) for a walk in the local woods. It was a short walk just before dusk. There was plenty of spoor, both ground and aerial to keep us entertained. A lot of evidence of deer criss-crossing the whole of the wood which was also nice. We started losing the light so had to leave as it was starting to get interesting.

A pheasant too far!

A few nights ago, a fox left a present for us, half buried in the garden. All you could see was a wing sticking up out of the ground. Bless him though, he came back the next night to collect it!

The story so far (part 3)

Well, by now we are almost there. We managed to get most of the dirty work out of the way by Christmas which meant we had some furniture and carpets in. There is still a lot to do (like decorating) but some of the pressure is now off. We are not totally freezing anymore - which is nice.

The story so far (part 2)

As I said, we were going to start by doing some decorating and starting off with something like this...Then we discovered some problems!

We were aware of a bit of a damp problem and needed to sort out a new damp course but the damage to the plaster work was more extensive than we thought. So we bit the proverbial bullet and started taking the old plaster off the walls. This is the sort of thing that we ended up living in for the next few months.

All good fun, really - bearing in mind we are heading into winter, had no insulation, no radiators, no walls etc.! The things we do :)

The story so far (part 1)

Well, we moved to a small village in Exmoor around the middle of September (just in time to start George in his new school). This all happened before completion! Ros and George had to live, in a caravan, in the garden of the house we were buying, for 2 weeks. Then I moved down when we had vacated the Surrey abode - and spent 4 days in the caravan with the others until we could move in to the house.

All a bit stressful but well worth it for the cottage we now own. A 300 year old beauty with 1.5 acres of paddock and a stunning view of the beacon (see previous post). As we had all our stuff in a container we decided this was the time to do some work on the house before moving all the furniture in. It started out as being a bit of decorating .....

Why Exmoor?

This is why! The view from my kitchen.

It's a long story (one for later perhaps) but we ended up moving to Exmoor in September this year. One reason was to get away from the rat race in Surrey. The other reason is that I am setting up a tracking, bushcraft and survival school (called Tracks4life).

I decided to start a blog about our experiences on Exmoor. I hope that it will be entertaining and enjoyable.