Badger and Snakes - Another Slice of Devon with this Hand-Picked Selection of Photos

A curated selection from my personal photos

Mar 11, 2026

Hello there,

The sun has been shining today, and the magnolia outside my writing room is coming nicely into bloom. Meanwhile, a chap known by everyone in the village as Badger (I’m not sure why) has been pulling down our fence - it’s OK, we asked him to do it.

A fencer by trade, we assumed he’d retired because he is by no means a young man, but when Mrs C asked him if he could recommend a good person to build us a fence, Badger said, “You’re looking at him.”

Badger, it seems, is determined to keep working for as many years as he can, and I say good luck to him. He’s been out there, taking advantage of the sunshine and ripping up the ivy and brambles which, I fear, were all that was holding our poor old fence more or less upright.

The neighbours have been peering in, of course, now that the fence has gone, and one lady clocked my newish pond and said, “You don’t want a pond. You’ll get grass snakes.”

I am happy with this, since in all my years, most of it lived in or near the countryside, I have only seen one grass snake, and that was for a fleeting second.

In the age of brick-paved driveways and plastic ‘grass’, British wildlife needs all the help it can get. Which reminds me, I must ask Badger to cut a hedgehog hole in the fence to make sure these little creatures can roam in and out, eating slugs as they go. I’ll make sure the pond is safe for them to drink from too. Now that the danger of F,R,O,S,T ought to have passed, and no, I’m not going to say it aloud, I should be able to finish the pond with artfully placed rocks and wood, then I’ll plant it and get the solar pump running. I’ll share some photos later.

That’s it for now. I hope you enjoy the photos - there will be more very soon.