Running Away To The Country

City people make most of the fuss about the charms of country life

Sometimes you just need to detach from reality and run away to the countryside for a couple of days. This is exactly what my boyfriend, Alex, and I did at the start of November. We were looking to go away for our anniversary but money is a little on the tight side at the moment so instead of jetting off anywhere out of our budget - we decide a cute little staycation was what we needed.

While I absolutely adore the city and London is one of my favourite places in the UK - I do love being surrounded my nature and breathing the clean air. Even more so when I leave my laptop at home, there's barely any signal and I'm with great company.

It had been a few years since my last trip to Devon, and I was super excited to head back and explore the cute villages on the north coast of Devon. We stayed in Blackbird Barn just outside Great Torrington, and it was the perfect base for us. Within easy reach of  A39 it was a lot easier to find than I first feared. We had our own kitchen, bedroom, living space and even a parking space! It was honestly a home away from home, we only saw our hosts when we checked in and didn't see them again until we checked out but they were readily available if we needed them. I'm definitely going to be booking more Air Bnb's in the future as it's a great way to have a little weekend break without spending a small fortune on a hotel.

It's easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of city life, and just general life. I know that personally I very rarely stop and take time for myself. I can't remember the last time I had an evening where I wasn't sneakily checked my work emails, planning up coming content or even just tidying up around the house and doing daily chores. It just seems like there's never enough hours in the day - I'm constantly playing catch up in basically all aspects of my life and it's not a very nice feeling. I'm 22 and I feel like I should have achieved so much more but I spend 90% of my life working and doing general day to day tasks - it's not often that I step away from my laptop and just have some fun. Going to Devon reminded me of just how much I love to explore new places.

During the 3 days we were away we visited Clovelly (which is where most of the photos in this poster were taken), Bude, Bideford, Barnstaple and stopped off at Exeter on the way home. Cloverly and Bude were both places I visited last time I went to Devon but both looked completely different - but still very similar, plus due to the time of the year it was nice a quite in Cloverly that we even managed to have a drink and some fresh squid in the harbour! This was much needed after we'd trecked along the pebble beach to one of the waterfalls - although we did get a jeep back up as the cobbles were wet and we didn't want to risk any broken ankles attempting to walk back up.

Home away from home

Barnstaple surprised me quite a bit - we went along on the Saturday to visit the market and we were highly disappointed as we'd hopped it'd be some things unique...instead it was the same stuff you get at your usual Saturday market. Instead we had a snoop around the high street, had a cream tea in a cafe and got soaked. Luckily we had a nice cosy barn to go home too, and we'd planned to head to Torrington fireworks that evening but due to the rain they were sadly postponed to the weekend after. Instead we played a couple of the board games that were readily available and drank wine. I'm already looking for the next place we can run away to. Escape our crazy life for just a couple of days and take a moment for ourselves.

photography

All photos within this post were taken by myself & Alex on my Olympus Pen E-PL7 with 25mm lens in natural lighting. They were then edited on Lightroom CC.

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