I may be getting confused here: am I right in thinking that one of the objectors is Amber Grob, formerly Minister for Undrinkable Coffee?
That's Louise Grob, who lives in the house where Laura Dune was written by Frank Herbert as the fourth part of the trilogy.
Now, now ... you're being naughty. In 2005, the
Daily Telegraph wrote
When 1950s Royal Court playwright Ronald Duncan was looking for somewhere to live with his wife and mistress away from prying eyes, he settled on the secret community and coastline of north Devon.
Unusual family relationships were then a feature of these closed combes and valleys, where few words were exchanged between neighbours and visitors were rarely welcome.
As was chillingly potrayed in the film Straw Dogs, the defensive attitude to outsiders was accepted and understood.
A settled insularity hung over Exmoor, as solitary as a stag and as enclosed as the mists that still descend here at a moment's notice.
All that has changed in the past 20 years, with the advent of the North Devon link road that slices off the M5 at Tiverton, taking cars directly to Exmoor and Barnstaple.
The explosion in the popularity of surfing brings young people to Croyde, Puttesborough and Ilfracombe.
Within striking distance of both the coast and the moor is Court Place Farm, home for the past 15 years of art dealer David Grob and his wife, Louise, the beguiling face of the Gold Blend coffee advertisements in the 1990s.
Although their work takes them to London and America, it is in the small moorland village of Parracombe that they have made their home with their children - 12-year-old William, Ella, seven, and Arthur, three.
Court Place Farm is set in a hamlet called Churchtown, whose name is taken from the 12th-century St Petrock's church. There are no longer regular services there, but it is open and the owners of Court Place Farm have the right to use it. In a roundabout way - almost out of a scene from a Ronald Duncan play - the Grobs were married there three years ago, followed up the aisle with its box pews by their three children and fox terrier. It was the first wedding in the church for a century.
Many of their friends followed them to north Devon - among them artist Damien Hirst and his wife, designer Maia Norman, Simon and Alice Browne (he was the chef at the deeply fashionable London Green Street Club in the 1990s) and literary agent Sarah Lutyens.
"We feel we were almost pioneer arrivals here," says David Grob, 50, as we sit in the walled winter garden of Court Place Farm, "although Louise's mother had a house in the village, so we were not complete strangers."
When they found what was to become their home, it was really two farm-worker's cottages with a thatched roof and a bigger house in which relations of Lorna Doone writer RD Blackmore had lived.
A carved inscription outside marks the residency of John and Elizabeth Blackmore in 1787, and they are buried in the churchyard.
The old Lynton railway used to run outside and its cutting may still be seen in the folds of lush, rolling grass beyond the lawns. This may also have meant that the farm had railway connections and enthusiasts have dropped in at the house over the years.
Their place was being offered for sale at £1.2 million at the time ... more recent activities suggest that no sale was made at that point, as Ms Grob continued to take very much of a local interest.
We're a bit off topic here ... not a Beeching closure. General Manager Herbert Walker of the Southern Railway met the deputation who came up to London to protest the closure. The story is that the deputation drove to London and that may have lost them their case. To this day, Southern do not run any trains to Lynton; they seem to be struggling a bit on the Brighton line, so perhaps it's best left to a local operation.
