Do Cars Really Drive Down There? The Rural Life in Devon - Hand-Picked Photos

A curated selection from my personal photos

Mar 30, 2026

Hello there,

The daily walk for Mrs C and me continues to be a welcome break from sitting at my desk, not least because it makes us appreciate the wonderful landscape we live in, including the narrow lanes.

In a recent newsletter, one reader saw a photo of the lanes and wanted to know if cars really drive down our winding little lanes. Yes, they do - there isn’t another route. You’ll see what I mean in the photos, along with a few spring-themed pictures.

In spring, Devon comes alive, nature busying itself from the subterranean microorganisms to the buzzards floating among the clouds. Microorganisms, by the way, may not be poetic or given their due in art, literature and common discourse, but they are rather wonderful and very important. You might say they underpin our culture.

See what I did there?

I studied biology, back in the day, and I was fascinated by microbiology. I would’ve liked to take my studies further; I had the notion I could feel the world, ending poverty and rescuing the environment. I was good in the lab and in the field. I was extremely good at learning the names of things, from genera and obscure anatomical features, right down to the obscure organelles within cells.

Sadly, I hated biochemistry with a passion, and once you get to a certain level, biology comes down to complex molecules with long names. For me, those things weren’t interesting at all, so my university and I parted company.

Still, I learned one valuable lesson: when you find something hard, it’s no good hoping you can scrub around those bits. You either buckle down and work hard or you make a better choice that fits better with your abilities.

On with the photos…