Moving onto Lemonford campsite and visiting Trago Mills

After two weeks each at the Devon campsites Widend and

A Dornafield rabbit 

Dornafield, we are now settled in at Lemonford, near Bickington, for a week and a day before we head into Somerset. We were a little sad to say goodbye to our new Dornafield friend who you can see checking out our stuff in this photo. This not-so-little wild rabbit was so relaxed around people that it wandered into our awning several times!

Lemonford was less than a half hour drive from Dornafield and getting to the campsite doesn't involve any single track roads which was nice with the caravan on tow. I am always a little nervous of those kinds of road! A seasonal deal means that we are now paying £100 per week including electric here instead of the £99 at Dornafield. Lemonford is nowhere near as immaculately groomed, but the upside of that is that it seems much quieter. There is continuous background traffic noise, but I can tune that out. Our pitch is hardstanding in a grassy area with trees and the water and waste water are only a short walk away. There is a bit of a step up to both so I now know not to let the waste master get too heavy!

The little shop-reception has basic groceries and a couple

Out pitch at Lemonford 

of shelves of books to swap. They also sell local pink Ordnance Survey maps at a very good price of £6.99 so we got number 191 (Okehampton and North Dartmoor) to go with our existing number 202 (Torbay and South Dartmoor). It is possible to walk onto Dartmoor straight from Lemonford and we did one such route today which I will blog about soon. Other facilities include a laundry area with communal drying lines and sanitary buildings which are a bit dated, but clean and with a good sized shower cubicle that stays warm because it is effectively its own little room. Lots of the pitches here seem to be set up for the season, but with their caravans unoccupied so we have much of it to ourselves which seems ghost towny. Perhaps that will change over the weekend?

As well being very near to Dartmoor, Lemonford is also

A Trago Mills tower 

within easy driving distance of the locally famous Trago Mills - huge retail and entertainment complex which we had heard about from our friends Chris and Marta. We popped along for a visit after pitching up on Wednesday afternoon and found it to be a rather surreal experience! I was reminded of the huge Roy's of Wroxham department store(s) we saw last, but Trago Mills is even weirder! Most of the buildings are topped with these white towers, even the Co-op, and the items on sale range from motorbikes to furniture to food to musical instruments. Having not really intended to buy anything, we came away with two pillows, a box of DVD-Rs, a DVD of The Crucible and a banoffee cake. There are concession shops too which sell jewellery, goth fashions, fudge and sweets, swing sets and goodness knows what else, plus a large area of recreational attractions including radio controlled boats, a ride-on train, a model railway and amusement arcades. I couldn't quite believe the extent of the attractions crammed into the park! And I am not sure I would ever want to go back there - even though the cake was pretty good!