We spent last week on holiday in Exmoor, a national park located in the south west of England. Exmoor is on the smaller side (267 square miles) and its landscape is a mixture of open moors, woodland, river valleys, and rocky coastline. It's pretty sparsely populated; villages are small, few and far between. It's very green, very hilly, mostly populated by livestock, and generally skipped over by American tourists. We rented a house for six nights with Richard's colleague, Simon, and his 10-year-old daughter Tia. We stayed in Oare, which is listed as a village, but is really a church surrounded by two or three houses. You can see a photo of our house below. The Victorian novel (now slightly outmoded) Lorna Doone is set in Oare and the surrounding countryside. My bad photo does not do it justice; it really is gorgeous. This part of England tends to be cool and wet; highs in the summer are only in the mid-60s (Fahrenheit, of course; I've never ...