Seriously Reconsidering my Work-life Balance

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We went for a morning walk with our friends around their part of Taunton and then we set-off for North Devon where we had arranged to meet my wife's cousin and her husband, who we had also not seen in a long time.

On the way there, we stopped off at Saunton Beach for anther walk and some fresh sea air. This is a fantastic beach - wide, long, smooth sand and not that many people, or at least its size swallowed the people who were there. It's extremely flat so the tide goes out a long way and, I suspect will come back in again extremely quickly.

We could tell it was popular with surfers whilst we were still in the carpark - lots of long-hair, wetsuits and VW camper vans. We could see why as the beach was extremely windy, which was great for the kite surfers and meant there were lots of waves for the 'normal' (??) surfers.

We went for a walk and had a look around one of the two surf shops, although there was nothing there for those of us from land-locked Hertfordshire.

We loved the brightly colours beach-huts.

My wife's cousin lived just a short drive away in Croyde. We were thrilled to be given homemade scones, clotted cream and jam. These went down very nicely, thank you, and it would have been rude to have come to Devon and not had cream-tea. We did have a little concern - in Devon is it cream first and then the jam (or is that Cornwall). Apparently, that can be a serious error around here. It is cream first by the way, so we managed to avoid causing any offence.

We were well into the scones when her husband got back from his day at work, in bare-feet and a wetsuit. He teaches surfing. After a lot of catching-up, all four of us walked off the cream-tea along the short path behind their back-gate and down to the beach. I'll think of them when I'm back in my office in Hertfordshire or rather, given the lock-down, stuck at home endlessly staring at a laptop all day.

We were spending the night in nearby Ilfracombe. We went for yet another walk, although that was the pretence to actually get some fish and chips. We found somewhere to eat in doors as it was pouring with rain by that point. Despite the rain, we went we explored needed to walk-off our fish and chips with a short, wet and windswept walk around the harbour.

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Photos

Coloured Beach Huts
The colourful beach huts along Saunton Beach.

Saunton Beach
Wide, flat, windy beach popular with the kite-surfers.

Croyde Beach Path
The surfing was just a short walk away.

Ilfracombe
An evening of rain and storms.