Time to celebrate local wildlife at Bat Festival with the Devon Greater Horseshoe Bat Project.

This September people from North Devon are being invited to celebrate some very special local wildlife at one of 25 ‘Bat Festival’ events being held across the county.

The Festival, which is now in its fourth year, is organised by the Devon Greater Horseshoe Bat Project, which is led by the charity Devon Wildlife Trust. Two North Devon events are being planned. Both are ‘bat walks’ where people can discover the secret lives of these fascinating mammals. Both take place in Braunton, the first on Thursday 12 September at 7.30pm; the second on Thursday 19 September at 7pm. Both leave on foot from Braunton’s Countryside Centre. They are free to attend.

The Devon Greater Horseshoe Bat Project, which has been running since 2015, is supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Working alongside local farmers, the community and other countryside organisations, the project is securing a future for what is one of Devon’s most endangered animals.

Ruth Testa, Project Manager of the Devon Greater Horseshoe Bat Project, said:

“We want to welcome as many local people as possible to our fourth and biggest ever Bat Festival! Devon is an vital refuge for the greater horseshoe bat. About a third of the UK’s population of this special mammal live here, making the county a real stronghold for them. The Bat Festival is a wonderful opportunity for everyone to learn about and celebrate local bats. The help of local communities to protect greater horseshoe bats is more important than it has ever been as the species has declined by more than 90% in the last 100 years.”

North Devon Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) is helping the project run its Bat Festival events. Dave Edgcombe is the AONB’s Project Officer and said:

“We are delighted with the exciting bat events that are being staged across Devon with the project’s partners. The Bat Festival gives everyone an opportunity to find out more about the secret lives of bats. Here in North Devon there are 2 bat detecting walks in Braunton – do join us for some bat spotting!"

Full details about all 25 of the Bat Festival’s events can be found at www.devonbatproject.org/events

Greater Horseshoe Bat - Photo copyright Mike Symes

Heanton Nursing Home to celebrate Aviation Day with ex RAF Engineer, Albert (Bob) Hobson

The 19th August is Aviation Day which celebrates the development of powered flight. The 19th was chosen as it was Orville Wright's birthday, who famously went on to fly the first aeroplane with his brother in 1903, so although Aviation Day is an American observance, it is of interest to aviation fans from across the globe.

One of those global fans is 90-year-old, Albert (Bob) Hobson, who spent much of his life in the RAF. He now lives at Heanton Nursing Home, near Barnstaple and they are helping him to celebrate his interest in avionics. He has lived at the home since the summer of 2015 and it is remarkable to think that Albert was born just 26 years after the Wright brothers’ historical first flight.

Albert joined the RAF as an engineer in the 1940s. He met his wife, Doris, in Newcastle when she was over on holiday from Ireland and they fell in love. When Albert’s job took him out to the Far East, she flew out to join him in on an RAF base in Singapore where they were married in 1952.

She said that she had grown up in Ireland, so moving to Singapore was a huge change for her. She went on to say that Albert had wanted to be an engineer from an early age and was always great at fixing anything around their home. In Singapore they lived in quarters at RAF Changi and Albert loved his work. It was an exciting time to be an engineer as the RAF were changing from having propeller driven aircraft to newer, jet powered aircraft.

Doris said Singapore was a wonderful place to live and she has many happy memories from their time there. Albert worked for the RAF for his whole career and it took him to other parts of the Far East as well as Aden and Germany, before Doris and he eventually settled down in Devon.

Heanton Nursing Home was recently rated as “outstanding” by the Care Quality Commission and Doris lives nearby. The Home cares for 52 “family members” who are each at the centre of every decision made. The care team make detailed notes about each family member’s life history as it is only by knowing their likes, dislikes and interests that they can truly offer the best person-centred care.

Sixty-seven years after getting married, Albert now lives with dementia, and Doris visits him in the home every week and says the Heanton care team are excellent and she really appreciates everything they do for him. (Jerry Short care writer)

Ex RAF Engineer, 90-year-old, Albert (Bob) Hobson will be celebrating Aviation Day with the help of  Heanton Nursing Home.
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ABOUT: Heanton Nursing Home is registered for all care categories and stands in the peaceful village of Heanton Punchardon in the heart of Devon. The home is set in grounds overlooking the estuary, with views of the surrounding countryside. The approach of the team at Heanton is person-centred and they uphold high standards in privacy, dignity, independence and choice.

Heanton Nursing Home has recently been rated Outstanding by CQC - September 2018.

The care categories that we specialise in are - Alzheimer's • Asperger Syndrome • Bipolar/Manic Depression • Cancer Care • Challenging Behaviour • Colitis & Crohn's Disease • Down Syndrome • Epilepsy • Hearing Impairment • Huntington's Disease • Multiple Sclerosis • Orthopaedic • Parkinson's Disease • Schizophrenia • Speech Impairment • Stroke • Visual Impairment.'

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Heanton Nursing Home, Heanton, Barnstaple EX31 4DJ - Tel: 01271 813744

 Website - Facebook

Liz Shakespeare Reviews 'A Breath of Moonscent: Memories of a Devon Childhood' by Allan Boxall

The publication of a new book set in Devon is always good news, but the publication of one as captivating as A Breath of Moonscent: Memories of a Devon Childhood is a cause for celebration. There are few authors who know rural Devon well enough to write about it convincingly but Allan Boxall, now in his early eighties, knows it well and worked on A Breath of Moonscent for almost twenty years before he ventured to publish it. His hard work has paid off. The book describes the area in intimate and affectionate detail and will delight anyone who loves the Devon countryside and its people.

Allan Boxall moved to North Devon with his parents during the Second World War, when he was four years old. It was a wonderful childhood, Allan was free to roam the countryside and he soon made friends, acquiring a Devon accent along the way. He attended school in Dolton and then Torrington, and worked on a farm for eighteen months before eventually leaving Devon to join the Navy.

A Breath of Moonscent focusses on an area of North Devon that has been lovingly documented before. The Dolton area was the subject of much work by the eminent photographer James Ravilious, who created an invaluable record of rural life when he worked for the Beaford Photographic Archive. The aim of the project was to capture the very special and individual nature of North Devon just as it was starting to change. Allan Boxall’s written account depicts the same area at an earlier time, before change was envisaged, and he portrays in words what Ravilious achieved in images.

This is not a romanticised account of rural life. There are hardships, there are deaths, there are regrets, but the author shows that these events are part of the natural cycle of life. Reading his portrayals of the people of Dolton, one feels one has known them personally – or, at least, seen a Ravilious photograph of them:

‘Tom Baker was a tough old fellow, gnarled and stringy as a war-scarred tomcat, a face weather-beaten and ravaged by seventy years of sun, rain, and biting winds, pocked by the savage stings of angry wasps which had attacked him when he accidently hacked into their nest whilst paring a hedge, mean and short-tempered through decades of failed harvests which he remembered more than the successful ones.’

Some of the people Boxall writes about were indeed photographed by Ravilious in later years including one of Ravilious’s favourite subjects, Archie Parkhouse, who is as familiar from Boxall’s description as he is in the photographs.

Until comparatively recent times, life in North Devon was dominated by the seasons and the weather, because most people either worked on the land, or walked or cycled along miles of narrow lanes to reach school or work. Boxall recalls in loving detail the skeletal woods and barren fields of winter, the magical return of spring when ‘Snowdrops lined the brook like a carpet of green-tinted snow’, the summer hedgerows ‘awash with summer seas of umbellifers and red campion; honey bees and bumble bees, wood wasps and butterflies; a kaleidoscope of pastel colours shimmering and swaying,’ and autumn, ‘with the beech leaves golden, the oak secreting fawn-brown acorns neat in their pitted cups.’

Alongside the lyrical descriptions of landscape, there are many amusing stories. The account of moving house, - when a steep, stony lane had to be descended with a china cabinet, Calor gas stove and other household bits and pieces piled high on a cart drawn by an excitable horse - is likely to make the reader laugh out loud.

A Breath of Moonscent takes us back to a magical era in North Devon, when life was hard but the rewards were great; when there was no roar of distant traffic, when the stars were brighter, and the silence was disturbed only by the hoot of an owl or the bark of a fox.

Devon Author Allan Boxall

A Breath of Moonscent: Memories of a Devon Childhood by Allan Boxall

Archie Parkhouse. Photograph by James Ravilious for the Beaford Archive  © Beaford Arts
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A Breath of Moonscent: Memories of a Devon Childhood by Allan Boxall

Published by Blue Poppy Publishing

Available from www.bluepoppypublishing.co.uk or from bookshops.
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Liz Shakespeare is the author of five books set in Devon. 
Tap here to visit Liz Shakespeare's website
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About Beaford Arts "The Beaford Archive is an extraordinary collection of material about North Devon dating back to 1890. It is best known for its photographs by James Ravilious, for whom the Archive was his life’s work, and it was one of the first commissions taken on by Roger Deakins, now an Oscar-winning cinematographer." 
Tap this link to visit "HERE: Uncovering North Devon"