Postcards from Devon

Some more shots of North Devon, from the 80s.  From the look of things, the weather was pretty murky.  Nice though, eh?  All that rolling countryside and what have you:

I recall going for a drive across Exmoor, towards Barnstaple.  By the time we got there the rain had set in and the cloud was hanging low over the town.  To be honest, it looked like a really miserable place - but then pretty much everywhere does in weather like that.  According to that online encyclopedia site, the name comes from the Old English bearde (battle-axe) and stapol (pillar, or post, set up to mark a religious or administrative meeting place).  But we didn't stop in BeardeStapol, all those years ago - we kept moving.

I'm not quite sure about that sunset one there - would that be South Wales from the North Devon coast?  I'm not sure that it is that close, but it could be.  The Kodachrome is definitely part of the North Devon film, that much I do know.

Not many on the beach that day.  It was winter, or perhaps early spring, as I recall.  Probably a bit nippy.  Nice light on yonder hill, though.  Presumably the heather giving it that reddish colour.  Not many trees around, anyway.

Nice and atmospheric that one, I thought.  You can almost feel the precipitation just hanging in the air.  Here's another of me, propped up by the sea wall:

'Tis strange looking at old photographs of oneself.  I mean, I recognise the person looking at me and the place, the story behind it and everything.  I wonder about the process of getting to where I am now, from there.  All those decisions I took, good ones, bad ones, OK ones.  All that moving around, the people I was close to then, but no longer, the few that have kept in touch and the ones that didn't make it this far.