Roots

OMIGOD, I'm stuffed. We just went for a walk (it's a holiday Monday here) and decided to stop in at a cafe. Well, they were offering a large or small cream tea (scone, jam, devonclotted cream, tea coffee). The small was 2.99 and the large was 3.25. With the large you got two scones; with the small, one. "Well for Heaven's Sake," quoth Don, "why wouldn't you take the large for .26 more?" "Yes," I agreed, "I can always wrap up the second for later." When I finished the first, I decided it might be rude to wrap it up, so I ate it. Now I need to golf to take off that extra weight!

Yesterday was ancestor-hunting day. We drove to Peters Marland, a hamlet with a population of about 200. There was a church and houses, but that was it, basically. A search of the churchyard yielded all sorts of results. When we met a local, she told us to come back in the afternoon because the town was holding a historical photographic exhibition of Peters Marland. What kind of a coincidence was that? We returned at 2 and although we didn't meet any modern-day Luxtons, we found the family tree and pictures of Sam Luxton, the nephew of my great-great grandfather (Sam's father James was my gg grandfather's brother). Here's a photo. Sam is in the first row on the left:

I got the name of Sam's great-granddaughter Marlene (who is in her 60s). Apparently she's completed a huge family tree, so I look forward to getting in touch with her. Here's a picture of Peters Marland from a hill nearby:

At 4:00 we landed at the Royal North Devon golf course. It's a VERY challenging course and I lost about four balls. I found three, though, so that's not a bad average. The course had sheep and horses roaming around it. Although Don insists the horses are wild, I pointed out that because they were shod and were wearing horse blankets, they couldn't be all that wild. Maybe they're wild as in "wild and crazy."

The first shot is of the evil bunker that wouldn't release my ball. I ended up chucking it over the wall by hand. The second is a shot of three sheep cavorting in a bunker. Too cute: