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Horridge
Deer Farm
Nestling in the very rural middle of Devon, about midway
between Exeter and Barnstable is Horridge
Deer Farm, where we spent a very pleasant week in May. It's a working deer
farm, with a herd a several hundred red deer, and very tasteful modern
accommodation in one wing of a converted barn attached to the main farm house,
with a view from the garden looking down the valley into the deerpark. (More
pics)
Unlike
many farms, it's very quiet and peaceful, given that there's no early morning
milking, no chickens and the deer don't go "moo"! There's a large bath and
shower room, a bedroom, lounge, and dining room/kitchen with all mod-cons. The
lounge is well equipped too, with all the audio/visual accessories you could
need should you wish to spend a day in due to bad weather. (Widescreen TV,
selection of CDs, DVDs, VHS tapes, books, maps, etc).
Apart from much touring about in the narrow leafy lanes of
Devon, Martin shot a 4-min video (test) for the farm's owner, John, showing the
deer handling system which he has built and is starting to sell. You can view it
here or on a web page
here.
The old boiler
After twenty years of faithful service and minimum
maintenance, our gas heating boiler sprang a major leak during a recent cold
spell, flooding water under the adjacent door and into the garage. Nothing too
serious, and we quickly shut off the supply and drained the system. However, the
plumbing and heating profession in our area all seem to be fully booked up in
the weeks before Christmas, so we are without central heating for the holiday
period but expect to get a replacement fitted in the New Year.
Unfortunately for us, the rules and regulations for gas
boilers changed in April 2005, so although we were perfectly happy with the old
boiler and simply wanted it repairing (at a cost of under £1K), we have to have
a new-style high-efficiency condensing boiler, which is actually only about 12%
more efficient, costs around £2K, looks about as complicated as the inside of a
jet engine, and is unlikely to last more than 15 years even with regular
maintenance. And that's progress. I never thought of myself as a luddite, but
I'm beginning to mourn the passing of technically simplistic devices that
require little more than common sense to understand how they work.
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Our old faithful servant |
Our new Christmas friend |
This page was updated on
24/12/2007. |
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