Dry.

It was a quiet dry morning when I got up after only a few hours sleep (thank goodness I'm a morning person), to make a hearty breakfast for everyone. Fortified by sausages, hash browns, beans, mushrooms and scrambled eggs we headed out to Woolacombe for a walk along the beach. There were no spaces along the road so we parked in the car park (£3). From the beach we could see the cloudbank that was blocking out the sun at home but above us the cloud was more broken up and we even had some sunny moments. Milo the Jack Russell enjoyed this rare opportunity to run off the lead though with his poor sight he had a tendency to wander off with other people. 

Retrieving Milo used up some of Sam's energy, he would have liked to march all the way down to Putsborough unlike the rest of us who were happy with a moderate stroll. We went as far as the first set of rocks where we stopped for tea and coffee before heading back to Woolacombe. 

At least on the way back we had the wind pushing us along. There were a lot of people out walking dogs and children and a few hardy surfers were catching the waves. It's the first time we had been out to the beach this holidays and it was so good to let the wind blow the cobwebs away. Back home we lunched on home-made butternut squash soup before Sam and Kate set off for Tewkesbury.  

That's the holiday nearly over. We've had a good chance to rest and enjoyed having family and friends to stay. Now it's time to think about taking down the decorations and the tree, not a needle has dropped and it's still looking so festive. I split some logs and brought in another load for tonight's fire. Tomorrow it will be time to start making plans for the spring. Who knows, maybe this was our last Christmas here.