Dartmoor, Devon

 Dartmoor national park. Beautiful area with no cathedrals and lots of walking tracks. Made for us.

We stayed at a hotel called Weeke Barton - I mention it here in case you want to Google the location, but, no, I don't recommend it actually.

The owners were very nice and tried their best to make our stay interesting, but we had a few problems as it turned out - not their fault though.

Day 1 they recommended a walk for us. It started nicely. They told us about a town nearby called  Ashburton.  Oh yes... we had to visit Ashburton. We buy most of our fruit in Ashburton back home.

So we bought some lovely Ashburton sandwiches and then set out for our walk - leaving our car at a parking station that had no ability to pay other than via coins. 

Oops... I wrote a beautiful note and left it on the dashboard explaining we're from Ashburton, Melbourne and please have a kind heart not to fine us - no coins!


The walk started beautifully with all the necessary ingredients to make us smile: A babbling river; An old bridge; Green trees; Absolutely stunning sunshine; And a clear walking path. What could possibly go wrong?


Birds too even.

Jo and Sam (the hoteliers) gave us a briefing on the walk along with a nice little reference book to take with us. In the comfort of the breakfast room it laid out the path beautifully and simply.

It referred to places on the river bank where people take picnics.  Nice grassy spaces.  Very peaceful indeed.

It took us past spectacular spots where young people with more courage than is good for them jumped off very high places into the river.


We kept walking but somehow, the further we went, what was written didn't seem to match the surrounds.

So... as risk averse people we are, we turned around and went back to the start.  Yes... Julian must have had the map upside down! Lets head the other way.

Yes... That's what it was.  How incredible that it all seemed to fit the book even though we went in totally the wrong direction. 

So walk V2 began going diagonally opposite to V1.  Yes...Beautiful again.

On and on we went soaking it all up amazed at how stupid I was yet how lucky we were in enjoying nice surrounds that we otherwise would have missed.

Beautiful river walk.  Up hills.  Through private pastures and through public gates.  This place is made for people who like walking and enjoying the natutral surrounds.  And the councils have continued commoner's rights to be able to walk these places.

But!  Even though we had thought the new direction was now the right one, eventually we concluded that the walk didn't match the walking instructions again.

Yep... Oh dear... we must have had it right the first time.

Oh well... lets go back.

By the time we got back to our car we had done our 7Km.  We were very pleased with the experience. You can imagine how the two love birds (Ruth and Julian) communicated with each other congratualating ourselves on the paths taken.

Yes... Well... maybe "pleased" isn't the most accurate of descriptions after all.

We sat on the riverbank next to that bridge from the first photo in this posting and absolutely enjoyed our sandwiches in magnificent peace.  The only sounds you could hear were the jealous birds eying off our lunch.

So when everything was calm... back in the car and we drove back to our new favourite location, Ashburton for afternoon tea.

Fully refreshed, and thanks to reliable Dr Google, we navigated our way back to hotel but not before noticing a nice spot to take a photo:


Not Hadrian's Wall or anything, but this looks like a nice little walk for us hey?

Yes... it was what the moors are all about.

I turned around and OMG... there's a dead pony right there in front of us.  Maybe it was hit by a car?  It's mother didn't seem concerned.  Or maybe it had just been born?  I don't know - I'm a city person.  There was nobody to ask, and I didn't know how to ask Dr Google, but I thought horses slept standing up.


We decided it's none of our business and let's go up the hill and enjoy the moors.

We just found it to be a lovely 30 minute walk to a rocky outcrop that typified the area:

We had interesting company too:

I'm pretty sure we were safe from this beast - he needed a haircut before inflicting any damage on us I think.

Oh... Great news.  The foal had only been resting.  We got back to our car and...

Phew!

We drove back to the hotel relieved a) The foal was fine and dandy; b) We actually arrived back in time for dinner; and c) Ruth and I were still happily married!

Tomorrow would be another day.

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