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To Barnstaple yesterday afternoon with The Gardener, who, not wishing for a second day of coming home like a drowned rat, decided he could legitimately be rained off and do something more pleasant than wielding wet hedge trimmers above his head in clouds of petrol fumes.

There were only two days left of this exhibition of James Ravilious' wonderful photographs of rural life in North Devon, and we just had to catch it. 

We drove over Exmoor in changeable weather, had a cafe lunch, people-watching as we ate.

We wandered off to the museum, saw the exhibited photos of a largely-lost way of life, including the rather moving BBC documentary that accompanied them - narrated by Alan Bennett - as I struggled with the rich, rolling accents.

Cheerful Olive Bennett, seen here with her cows in 1979, was particularly impenetrable to my untrained ear. You can see her and the other farmers and smallholders here:



Then we had a pootle round the town. We didn't have time to go inside the parish church with its wonky steeple.

Another coffee stop.

The Gardener employed certain tactics to avoid having his photograph taken, but persistence won through, and at last his exaggerated sense of privacy has given way to polite requests to have him, and not just his manky old boots, shown on my blog. Here he is, looking far more serious than he really is; the man who often makes me laugh helplessly.

On our way to the car park, having been handed a flyer for a play about The Hunting of the Snark, we were not too alarmed to be charged most ferociously by a pair of fearsome pirates.

My new (old) bench had been delivered in our absence, and was sitting quietly outside the cottage.

It's in for some gentle refurbishment and fresh paint, and suits me and my short legs very nicely. Catkin approves too. Like The Gardener, she can look misleadingly serious.