BOXING DAY BONUS......

You know the feeling - Christmas Day has come and gone, Boxing Day is here - you have eaten too much again and all you want to do is slump in front of the tv, without really bothering about what might be on.

Some 25 years ago, I was doing just that and a film came on BBC2. `International Velvet` starred Christopher Plummer, Anthony Hopkins, Nanette Newman and a young Tatum O`Neil. It was all about an American orphan whose parents had been killed in a car crash in the States and who had come over to live with her aunt, who just happened to have won an Olympic horse-riding event in her youth. Familiar? It might be if you had seen the original National Velvet, which starred an even younger Elizabeth Taylor.

In truth, the film was distinctly average so It wasn`t the story or the acting that caught my attention - it was the scenery of the location in which the film was made. All rolling hills, lovely beaches, little offshore islands, snug villages. So when the credits came up at the end, I was very interested to see where the film had been made. And there, following the usual suspects of best boy, key grip, dolly grip, negative cutter and all the rest, the location of the Flete Estate, Mothecombe, Devon, was revealed.

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The following summer, we were on holiday in Paignton and took the opportunity to wend our way through the twisting, narrow lanes of the South Hams until we found Mothecombe. And what a find - if anything, better than in the film. We parked in a field next to the old school, walked down past the village - well, hamlet really - and down to the estuary of the River Erme, deep into the Flete Estate. The landowners have held both sides of the estaury and the surrounding countryside for generations and their benign custody of the area has meant that no `development` has taken place and so the estuary is unspoiled and much as it was decades ago.

We discovered that the Estate let out a number of cottages for holidays and so, sparing no expense, we stayed at Nepeans Cottage - an old gamekeeper`s lodge - for a number of years until the letting fees became prohibitive.

Since those days, I have looked out for films which have been made on the Flete Estate. Among others there have been episodes of `A Horseman Riding By,` `Hornblower,` `Jonathan Creek` and perhaps most notably in recent years `Sense and Sensibility,` directed by Ang Lee. And the nice thing is that, although it is some years since we last stayed on the Estate, they still send us newsletters which include reports of filming in the area.

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If you fancy it and can afford it, more details about holidays in this very special place, where the sound of silence is deafening, the scenery quite breathtaking and where the days drift seamlessly into one another, can be found at http://go.gomango.co.uk/fleteestate/innersite/?photogallery.cfm~mainframe

As for me, I`ll be slumping into my chair again this Boxing Day hoping for another cinematic bonus to see where I might go next year

Update : A curious thing, coincidence.....yesterday `International Velvet` was shown twice on TCM. For a moment I thought it was Boxing Day come early.