Exhausted, we fell into our very comfy beds. Me in my very spacious 'king' and Maice in the ‘lower bunk' of her bunk beds. We were that tired we hadn't even opened any of the eight bottles of Prosecco we'd brought with us! Good night everybody x
The day had started like any other, up at six to feed Millymou, the Millymeister. Bless, she too was off on her holidays again, to stay in a 'log cabin' at the Home and Away Cattery. To be honest it's not that far away, just three minutes down the road, but for a little kitty cat it probably seems like miles. Happy that she was now in the capable hands of her 'Aunty Paula' I packed up the car with my stuff, suitcase, box of 'things' and two large Reindeer and headed off to pick up Maice.
Arriving on time at 09.50am we headed off to Lidl's to do our food shopping, oh, and we picked up an extra two bottles of Prosecco in case we didn't have enough! We returned with an extra three bags of groceries to add to the eight big bags, one suitcase, a quilt, a pillow and a Christmas tree that were waiting to be packed into the already full booted car!
We regrouped in Maice's kitchen, taking stock of the task ahead.....the objective being to pack everything neatly into Missy Micra, my little Nissan. We fell into an unspoken routine and voila, it must have been the Christmas magic because everything just fell into place. I suppose we thank ourselves that we decided not to travel in Nifty Nissan, Maice's Nissan which is considerably smaller and would certainly have been more of a challenge.
All packed up we got into the car ready for the off, the keys were in the ignition, Mary Mabel and Dotty Doris, our two dashboard reindeer were standing to attention, the radio was on and SatNav Steve was ready to offer up his first direction. We were just going to pull away when we both decided we felt peckish.......so we switched the ignition off and shared a cheese twist in Maice's drive. Don't know what the neighbours must have thought but it was just what was needed before the start of our journey.
It was 11.23am when we finally made it out of Maice's driveway and we decided to take the coastal road but SatNav Steve had other ideas and kept trying to redirect us at every 'wrong' turn. He was quite irritating really. He eventually conformed to our route and synchronised with us after a couple of miles. Thirty minutes later we were sitting in The Hive café enjoying a couple of well deserved cappuccinos......as you can tell, we weren't in a rush!
We were hoping for a smooth journey on the roads........we'd already encountered a severe case of erratic driving on the way to Lidl's where we had to keep our distance behind a car that kept clipping the kerbs and swaying all over the road. Not too sure whether it was a case of drunk driving but we weren't taking any chances and kept well behind. Happy to say that was the only incident on the roads that day. Poor Missy Micra did struggle up the steep Dorset hills, but to be fair, she was, let's face it, carrying quite a heavy load.
Check-in at Jacksons Cabin wasn't until 4pm so we decided to spend an hour or two in Totnes and have a wander round the shops. We both bought ourselves a pair of silver earrings......mine were long and dangly and Maice's were short and dangly, a jar of chutney, corn nuts and a packet of sundried tomatoes. And that was it, it was time to drive the last part of the journey. We whizzed past the sign post to The Brake, it being a very small sign dug into the side of the road, even SatNav Steve was confused. Having found a suitable area to turn round we were soon bumping our way up the very uneven path to our destination 'on the left'. Hurrah, we were here......in true Chris Rea style we had 'driven home' for Christmas'!
Oscar, the son, met us. Apparently Dolly and Nick, the owners are on holiday in Greece of all places and Oscar, who lives in Portugal is here with his wife/girlfriend looking after the place in their absence. He showed us to our cabin which is absolutely gorgeous, told us how to use the log burner although Maice knows how to sort that out and left us to it. Before he left though we did have to ask for one of the bunk beds to be made up. Thinking we were a 'couple' they hadn't bothered to make up a second bed. Thankfully this was sorted within ten minutes.
We unloaded the car, packed everything away, sat in front of the fire and cracked open our half bottle of prosecco to toast the start of our holiday. Ah what bliss, no TV, no radio, just the birds and the trees and the absolute silence! Best unpack our radio then and get a bit of 'noise' in here!
Supper consisted of nachos and cheese with what looked like Milly's Felix wet food but was in fact refried beans, washed down with two very strong Cesar's........to say they were strong was an understatement!
Soon we were roasty toasty in our little log cabin. As a treat I’d downloaded onto my IPad 'Absolutely Champers' which had just been shown on TV where Jennifer Saunders and Joanne Lumley travel to Epernay, France, the home of champagne. It was hilarious, their antics and their friendship similar to that of me and Maice. It was meant for Christmas Day but it was so quiet in our little log cabin we decided to watch it tonight, so in true Morecambe and Wise style, we sat up in my bed and laughed our way through the episode.
We went to bed laughing, me because Maice was back in her bunk bed and I was sprawled out in my king sized bed......oh what bliss.
We didn't need to lock up as the doors have no locks, no kidding, and we bid each other 'good night' and fell asleep, snug as two bugs in a rug..... xx
Good night all…
M&A xx
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