As we all know the weather recently has been hot, days without a breeze are rare down in the south west but when coupled with hot sunny weather, it makes for unpleasant walking conditions. This was one of those days and as a result I was up early and parked at 8.30am for my favourite…
It was hot, too hot to do anything more than a gentle stroll for 15 minutes before returning home for a cold shower. Typical Britain, in that we all moan about good weather!! This weekend, I had one boy isolating due to being within a quarter of a mile of someone with a sniffle (no…
A short walk today mainly due to the heavy rain forecast to arrive around midday at home. I headed east to try and extend that time a bit and actually found an area that missed the worst of the rain, whilst I was there anyway. I’ve walked from here with the boys last November around…
Back in February in lockdown I decided to stick some pins in a map of places I wanted to walk and visit, when we all could again. A few in the south west (Brown Willy in Cornwall already in the bag), some in south Wales, Snowdonia, Peak District and a few aspirational ones in Scotland.…
New places and new walks, that’s the motto for this year. I’ve been extending my walks around the South West Coastal path, new places on Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor, and now a new area altogether in the Beacon Beacons. The choses of walks here are pretty wide and varied. However having driven up from Plymouth…
A slightly different area this week, and not one to have featured on the website before. I’m in Wiltshire, staying with my boys at my brothers and his wife’s house. It had been nearly a year since the cousins last saw each other and it was time to sort that out. Whilst there my brother…
There are a few walks I look forward to every year. The bluebell walk (tick on that for this year here), a snowy walk in the winter (all the snow on Dartmoor was in lockdown so I missed all of that) and a sunset walk. Time to tick that last one off for this year.…
The plan of getting out and getting away whenever possible continued. Things are booked for the future weeks and months and loads of plans for weekends inbetween. Revisits to places, new visit to places, the idea is not to stay in the same town that I’ve been forced to frequent these last 12 months and…
Well this was it, the last ones. The final 2 on my Foster 500 list. Those that have read my website posts for a while now will say that I’ve been here before. Very true, back, what feels like a lifetime ago, I finished my initial list of 287 back in February 2017. Well that…
Well its been a couple of weeks since my last post, not because I haven’t been out walking, far from it, this was down to a laptop failure (daughter board under the power button for those with IT knowledge). Most of my photos have been taken on my camera so I was unable to get…
The one thing about these lockdowns imposed upon us is that they can damage and hurt people. Simple things such as staying overnight with your children is one of life’s simple things. I’ve not done that since September (two camping trips) with these two rascals. A combination of not having enough rooms for them to…
Now I know what your going to say. He’s been away from posting for a couple of weeks and he returns with a walk from home, “what’s happened to Dartmoor or the coastal paths” I hear you say. Well the weather has happened, constant forecasts of heavy, potentially thundery downpours hasn’t encouraged me to get…
I felt I’d done walking in Cornwall a bit of a disservice last week with my post on walking in northern Bodmin Moor, so I set out to put that right. This walk should do that nicely, and then some. This is arguably one of the best days coastal path walking in the country, you’ll…
Somewhere different this week and one I was looking forward to. It was about time I headed to the highest point in Cornwall, for some reason I had never made it this far north on Bodmin Moor but today was about putting that right. I’d previously walked around the Minions area of Bodmin Moor, which…
This is another walk around the Lustleigh area, having visited Knowle Woods previously last November (here) I thought I might have finished finding new things around these parts. Not so, a bit of tweaking to my 500 list has brought 3 more fine outcrops and the last one on this walk is a cracker. I…
After last weeks successful foray into the centre of the South moor, I fancied something similar. Fur Tor is always a trek, no matter which way you approach it. You can go from Postbridge, along the East Dart. You can head from Bagga Tor, across rough ground or from Lane End, through Tavy Cleave. I…
It had been a while since I’d been to the seafront of Plymouth, probably about 18 months. Which seems ridiculous when I live here. So I thought I’d put that right and take the boys for an ice cream. I expected it to be busy and it was with plenty of cafe’s open selling the…
Restrictions loosened, I decided to head further into Dartmoor. Still on its southern side but the walk is straight into Dartmoor proper, once at Redlake you leave behind the last few remains of people and head off for some solo time. The best part about this walk is the route to Redlake, using the Zeal…
Back, back to the coast and further from home. Finally a release and a chance to move a bit further and get back to some coastal path walking which I have missed hugely. If you had told me this back in 2019 then I would have said you were talking c**p. Last year was my…
The last walk before restrictions on distance you can travel are lifted. You can’t stay overnight, but out and back home is all I need for now. This walk however stayed fairly local and included parts of a walk I did with the boys a few weeks back (here). This walk headed up towards Pew…
A chance of a walk with the boys, but not very far at all from home. We’d spent the morning planting seeds to grow veg during the year, had some lunch before heading out for a walk in some sunshine. This walk is around the National Trust property of Saltram, the normal route around the…
I wasn’t sure what to title this post and walk, its a walk in the area of Burrator but most of it tries to avoid the crowded hotspots around the reservoir itself. In fact if you headed uphill from Leather Tor Bridge you could miss out Norsworthy Bridge and the busy road section at that…
I’ve been slowly creeping further east on each of my walks recently, with this walk being about 15-20 minutes from home. I probably won’t go any further east until we get into April now and have a couple of walks in the Yelverton area planned next, to finish off this lockdown. This walk is a…
Another walk on the edge of Dartmoor, however this one also walks a bit into the moor before returning to the edge. This one follows, yet again, a short drive. For those that question it, a week earlier the NHS has seen it fit to send me for a diabetic eye screening to this distance…
Well Spring has sprung, or at least an early version has. We may well get another blast of the cold stuff but for now we all are looking forward and willing to fight anyone who wants to stop our plans, we all know what I’m talking about. This walk was a beauty, the weather was…
This is another walk, after a short drive which has inched me slightly further east. The start point was within a mile of the last starting point however the views were very different, gone were the clay works (until I got round to Rook Tor), replaced by open moorland. The weather started a bit damp,…
Whilst the rest of the country has been covered with a blanket of the white stuff, us down here in Devon have endured (rather than enjoyed) day after day of strong winds from the east and plenty of rain. This was another of those days, but we managed to pick a gap in the weather…
Well hello there Dartmoor, I have finally made it back, at least to this little pocket of it anyway, sitting right on the South West edge of the moor. Parts of this walk aren’t actually within the moor boundary (marked by the yellow line on the map below), but for me this is a great…
Another walk from home but this one felt different to the previous weeks. Not sure why but I just didn’t enjoy it as much. The weather was good, the scenery was brilliant considering what some people are having to put up with. However I just wasn’t feeling it, maybe its this lockdown, another one. Maybe…
The title is a nod to the director of the 7up series of Tv programmes, Michael Apted who has died recently, he was also known for Gorillas in the Mist. The title is relevant as the website has hit a quarter of a million views (approaching 100,000 individual visitors). The numbers are mind-blowing for me…
So far this walkdown I’ve found myself improving on walks I did in Lockdown 1 or combining a couple of those walks together. Anything really to have some variety to things. It still makes me laugh (or is it groan) when people ask what you are doing at the weekend. The answer, well not much…
Those with children will know that to get them outside sometimes involves a bit of a white lie. Something like, it not that far, we’ll be back before that tv programme or I’ll buy you a cake on the way back. That sort of thing. Well we had festered in the house all morning, watched…
Well we are back, walking from home. With all the faff about driving 5 miles and getting a fine I decided that I would stay from the door at least for a bit and allow things to calm down a bit. The over zealous police have got things wrong, clearly but lets leave that there…
I’m writing this as a wave of deja vu appears to wash over the UK. Back in March 2020 I wrote about a walk around Holne before the lockdown and here we are again. No more than 5 miles further north I’m on my last proper Dartmoor walk before we are shutdown again. Looks like…
Where do you start with last year, best not to dwell on it wherever possible in my opinion. A pandemic and a response to it which has left us all shaking our heads, u turns, broken promises, a tier system which nicely protects big business and leaves the small business owners piling on debt to…
