{"id":8157,"date":"2024-04-03T22:04:33","date_gmt":"2024-04-03T22:04:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/searching-for-wildlife-in-exmoor-england\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T09:45:59","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T09:45:59","slug":"searching-for-wildlife-in-exmoor-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/searching-for-wildlife-in-exmoor-england\/","title":{"rendered":"Searching For Wildlife In Exmoor, England"},"content":{"rendered":"

Walking through the Valley of the rocks<\/a> really does help you work up quite the appetite and so with that, we headed over to the pretty little village of Dunster for dinner at Reeves<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The original plan had been just to find a place to park and hot-foot it to the restaurant but once we arrived, we were very quickly distracted by how cute the village is!<\/p>\n

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It kinda reminds me of Castle Combe<\/a> in some ways (a more colourful version perhaps?).<\/p>\n

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It was decided \u2013 a quick jaunt through the streets was necessary before dinner!<\/p>\n

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Eventually though, the rumbling in my tummy reminded me that I\u2019d put off dinner for far too long and with that, we headed over to the Reeves Restaurant<\/a> for some much need grub.<\/p>\n

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I started off with pre-dinner cocktails in the garden outside (sparkling water for Lloyd on driving duties) before being ushered in once our tables were ready.<\/p>\n

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Dinner here was absolutely fantastic \u2013 I might as well start off with that! I knew it would be in advance though because everyone I\u2019d spoken to about my dinner plans had nodded enthusiastically in approval.<\/p>\n

We both started off with scallops (served on haggis)…<\/p>\n

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…before tucking into a perfectly cooked, tender steak for myself and beef wellington for Lloyd.<\/p>\n

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For dessert, I went for the cr\u00e8me brulee while Lloyd went for the chocolate fondant (as per usual \ud83d\ude00 ).<\/p>\n

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With that, we headed over to the Beach Hotel<\/a> in Minehead, for some well-deserved kip pre the following day\u2019s activities.<\/p>\n

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Now, because we don\u2019t really have \u2018dangerous\u2019 animals in the UK (no bears, wolves or mountain lions…etc), I sometimes forget we have proper animals in the UK.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s because you can just go roaming anywhere and your main concern would probably be the weather, not getting trampled by a herd of wild bison or being stalked by some big cat and so I forget about wildlife all together most times we\u2019re out and about.<\/p>\n

I do however find wildlife in general so fascinating and so my excitement the following morning, at going on a bit of safari to find wild deer (amongst other indigenous wildlife in Exmoor) is probably easier to understand.<\/p>\n

We met with Andrew of Red Stag Safari<\/a> shortly after breakfast and hopped into his Range Rover, in search of Exmoor\u2019s wildlife.<\/p>\n

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To be fair, it was also a tour of the local area but, as I said, I\u2019m a sucker for the wildlife. <\/p>\n

And so off we went, nipping in and out of parts of Exmoor I certainly wouldn\u2019t have seen otherwise.<\/p>\n

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We soon came across our first sightings of the deer in the distance (turns out, they\u2019re very skittish and will do their best to steer clear of humans where possible \u2013 which I guess I kinda expected anyway).<\/p>\n

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We also found out that they tend to lose their horns once a year (the stags do), and you can just pick them up in the forests.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s crazy because they grow them all back again \u2013 even bigger than before and it\u2019s this weird boney thing that\u2019s covered in fur initially and can be a tad disgusting (to be frank) when the fur\u2019s falling off it and the bone\u2019s slowly being revealed underneath it.<\/p>\n

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Oh, and it would typically be white but it gets stained from the soil and the streets when the stags use their horns.<\/p>\n

Leaving the deer, we happened upon truly wild Exmoor ponies. It\u2019s funny but because horses are domesticated, I also totally forgot that there were actually wild horses available anywhere \u2013 let alone somewhere just a couple of hours away from London.<\/p>\n

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They\u2019re pretty magnificent beasts!<\/p>\n

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We carried on through the moors, past ancient bridges and even spotting a kestrel randomly as we went by.<\/p>\n

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We learnt the tale of the Lorna Doone<\/a> (US version available here<\/a>)\u2013 an old English classic, written by R. D. Blackmore who lived here when he was younger and even got to see exact spots from the book. (Truth be told, I\u2019d never read the book prior or even heard about it so a quick synopsis was required at the time but I found out later that it\u2019s quite a revered piece of English literature).<\/p>\n

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Distracted by the stories, we happened upon even more red deer (albeit a fair distance away from us again), before deciding to call it a day.<\/p>\n

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Ironically, I\u2019d come to see the deer and although we didn\u2019t get quite the experience of seeing them as well as I\u2019d have liked, I left thoroughly entertained!<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if it was the interweaving of the tale of Lorna Doone with the real landmarks, the rustic beauty of some of the villages we came across or just finally seeing those wild ponies but it turned out to be a great way to spend a morning in Devon.<\/p>\n

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Oh, and by the way, if you\u2019ve never seen grouse properly (I\u2019d seen one like twice \u2013 they seemed so rare to me, living in London), then this is the place to see them! There are sooooooooo many and they\u2019re everywhere. They\u2019re almost like wild chickens here. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

Anyhoo, with that it was time to head back to London \u2013 albeit not without a good taste (quite literally in some parts) of the English beauty that is Devon. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

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Walking through the Valley of the rocks really does help you work up quite the appetite and so with that, we headed over to the pretty little village of Dunster for dinner at Reeves. The original plan had been just to find a place to park and hot-foot it to the restaurant but once we … Continue Reading<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8158,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,396],"tags":[588,359,355,800,361],"class_list":["post-8157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel","category-travel-journal","tag-devon","tag-england","tag-europe","tag-exmoor","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}