Yes, it is a silly title for this post, but Mick and I are getting a little excited. (I actually can’t remember the last time I ate a slice of devon, but I do remember the last time I bought some – about five years ago for my two very young grandsons while we were shopping, and their mother, my daughter, was horrified and looked at me as if I was feeding them dog food!! She used to love it at their age!)

Anyway,…

Three weeks has gone very quickly at our house sitting location near Chagford, I think more so than when we are staying somewhere we are really enjoying, caring for animals we have grown to like, but more because we can see the end to our adventure in Europe. We will depart the UK in a few days, heading towards our final destination and home – the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. This was our fourth house sit on this trip in the UK.

This is a property very close to where we were house sitting that I used to walk past on most days. Often the gardener was there ruining my opportunity to get a sneaky photo over the fence.

But not on this day! Incredible. I wondered if they need house sitters?

We spent twenty-two nights near Chagford, none with the home owners, which is unusual. We had a short hand-over with them before they left for their holiday, and did not see them again. Today, Storm Dennis was seriously impacting driving conditions and they were running late from Bristol. So we agreed that it was best for us to leave so we could safely return our hire car in Exeter – we had to do that before 4pm, as Avis closes at that time. We had been told that if we were late it was not a bother as we could leave the keys in a security box, but of course we’d be charged for the extra day. I was determined not to let that happen.

We had a few hiccups during our house sit, but none we could not manage or were urgent enough to concern the owners about until their return. The most annoying was to do with the smoke detectors, all four of them, in their home. About a week and a half ago there was a scheduled power outage for annual maintenance, and during that four hour period, one of the smoke detectors went ‘off’. That triggered the other three to do the same. The noise was crazy, but Mick knew what to do. He pushed in a button on one of them and waited for about 10 seconds, and then the noise stopped. This continued several times during the blackout, but what got us bothered was that it continued, while not as frequently, after the power had come back on. After a few hours, I phoned the electricity company to ask if this was a common error and did they have any advice. And the answers were ‘yes’, and ‘yes’.

The batteries in the detectors had possibly drained during the outage and they may take some time to restore to full power – so we were told to ‘wait’. That actually worked. The alarms eventually stopped going off, and we were able to go to bed that night without fearing we were going to be disturbed.

Then, during the weekend when our son and his girlfriend were here, the alarms started to go off again. The noise was deafening. It could not have had anything to do with the batteries draining this time. But Mick worked it out!! Through trial and error with the four alarms, he found the faulty one that was triggering them, and simply took it down. We explained all this to the owners who will now have to get some more permanent solution to the issue.

The only other hiccup, was an error of judgement on my part. I mentioned before that we loved cooking with the AGA , and one time I had a very hot pan that I thought should be placed somewhere insulated for a few moments while I selected some further ingredients, and the only trivet in the kitchen was already in use with another hot item, so I placed it on top of a cotton hob cover. When I took the pan off I noticed that the pan had left a circular singe mark, and despite several goes at washing the cover, the mark did not disappear. Fortunately, I was able to buy a very similar pair online through Amazon, but only after I had tried the hardware store in Chagford that we thought sold everything, but in this case not AGA hob covers.

Mick’s and my memories of this sit will be to do with the animals.

Like the way the dog subtly let Mick know that he was ready for (a) his walk, and (b) his dinner.

And then to the cat with no name, who soon adopted Mick well and truely.

Getting a little too personal at times and then once on Mick’s tummy, sharpening her claws or…

…. sleeping soundly.

But someone else used to get a little jealous.

And the way the white wether would not wait for Mick to finish loading the hay into the feeding contraption, and would help himself to a few mouthfuls.

And the time Mick was very lucky not to get rammed by the ram who through Mick was trying to do something other than give him a handful of hay. An important lesson learnt – don’t trust animals you don’t know very well.

We will also remember the great walks we went on with the dog each day. Sometimes when the weather was not so wonderful, but the countryside around Chagford was always beautiful. The walks sometimes got a little crazy though, with the dog and Mick playing some silly games.

The dog’s selection of sticks for this game did not improve during our stay.

And of course we won’t forget Molly, who learnt very quickly that I always had a pocket full of horse pellets and she was not going to miss out on some. (The video clip goes for 4 secs)

It snowed several times while we were here, and it was nice to be able to enjoy the fire, that was if we could get anywhere near it.

Someone else loved the fire too.

Mick and I are now going to spend our last three nights in England in Exeter, where we hope to find out a little more about what this city and surrounding areas have to offer.

But there are lots of ‘high fives’ here at the moment – as it is such a good feeling when you have successfully finished a house sit, and when you have returned a hire car without any issues (or scratches).