The River Exe

It's been a while since I posted anything on this blog – three and a half months in fact! I got very ill in August; I caught an unpleasant and virulent dose of e-coli – which I don't recommend to anyone. I was in hospital for two days and off work for nearly a month; since then I have been largely engrossed with a new writing project that has been gradually taking shape for a year or so, now more than half way to completion. More on that before long.

On Saturday my friend Celia drove me down to Exmoor:

We arrived in Exford, from where the plan was to follow the River Exe downstream. This was in a sense research: the writing project I mentioned is a new departure for me – writing fiction. The character I am writing about has arrived on Exmoor and I have been following his route across the moor and along the river. 

Trouble was, we couldn't figure out where the path beside the river began; eventually we checked out the bridge in the middle of the village, so locating the river, and then we returned to the car park and found the path – which went in the opposite direction to back-into-the-village (which is what we had done so far). After that it was a lovely walk along part of the upper reaches of the River Exe, with a footpath designed for just such an expedition. I took pictures along the way and I think they speak for themselves: