Castle Hill, Devon

[debris4spike]

All the pictures are below the cut so that I don't have to make them smaller - and they wont throw out your LJs!!

My friend Christine came up by bus and I drove and met her at Barnstaple in North Devon and we then came to this stunning place.



 

The house is still privately owned, and not open to the public, at all. It was built in the 1730s, and quite stunning to look at. You can see where we actually parked - and it was great that we had good weather to enjoy all the walking - including climbing up to the castle.



This lavender walk was so strongly perfumed - and full of bees!










 

The Castle Folly at the top of the hill.

One of the 3 Temple Follies in the garden.



The pet Cemetary.



The archway on the hill opposite - to line up with the main entrance.



 

Comments

[ayinhara.livejournal.com]

What, an estate like that and no horses? Beautiful grounds, though. There still should be horses.

There is a county north of New York City called Westchester County. Northern Westchester has big estates. The towns maintain many miles of dirt roads, plus lots of the estates have bridle paths through them. In a gentler, more refined time, it was customary to let people ride their horses through your property. Madonna and Ralph Lauren have estates up there. These days a lot of the bridle paths are restricted. I particularly like the irony that Ralph Lauren, who made a fortune on the western look in clothing, does let people ride through his property.

[debris4spike]

Some of the larger estates still have public bridle paths - but in England so many are going as farmers block them off to stop the horses using them. Sadly not all riders stick to the tracks, and give the rest of us a bad name.

[ayinhara.livejournal.com]

That is truly cutting off your nose to spite your face. When I kept 2 horses in rural New Jersey, we would ride through the woods and around the edges of fields that were sometimes planted with corn. We were very careful. In the U.S., it is very easy to sue anybody for anything. The issue of liability is one of the major reasons that people like Madonna and Ralph Lauren do not allow people to cross their estates.

[debris4spike]

It used to so annoy us when we worked at a riding stables - there are some public downs in the town that clearly say no horse riding on - and some people used it ... then the people with the high profiles such as our yard got the blame - even though the only 1 time I went on them is because we were sent that way by police after a bad accident.

[ayinhara.livejournal.com]

There is a lot of public land in the western United States and very low population density. That makes it magnificent riding country. Most of the trails are multi-use. Horses have priority on trails, so hikers, bikers, etc have to make way for us. We always get off the trail to let bikers and trail motorcycles go past because they travel quicker than we do. It is nice to have the precedence though.

In New Jersey, there can be rather limited places to ride unless you want to van your horse to one of the parks.

[sarian71]

What a wonderful place! I'd really love to be able to visit a place like this someday. I especially liked your 6th picture. Is that eye-catching, snowman looking (I have weird associations sometimes... ;P) thing a fountain?

[debris4spike]

Visit and we'll go together!

Yes, I see what you mean by a snowman ... Yes it is about 8 foot high and a water feature ... hard to get a decent photo, which was why I didn't share those - LOL!