A walk around a familiar area with a change to norm. I’d joined a walk with a group, the Walk Dartmoor 365 group had arranged a gathering, not a long walk but a chance to meet like minded people and walk an area I’d been to lots of times. However with Paul taking us around…
Another walk along this eastern stretch of the South West Coastal Path towards Portland, as I push further east towards Chesil Beach. We’d had a few days of decent sunshine so I decided on a walk that deserved a day befitting of the weather. The highest point on the entire south coast of England should…
Finally out for a walk, after 2 weeks of watching rain pour and wind blow, plus a couple of days of decorating in the house. I spotted a chance of a walk in somewhere that had grey clouds but not necessarily rain until mid afternoon, the wind was just a yellow warning so it felt…
A weekend where the weather wasn’t playing ball for me, the strong winds and rain coming into the south west seemed to correspond with the time that I could walk. So I had a search and managed to find a weather window between 10am and 2pm in a place I hadn’t walked on the coastal…
This walk was an attempt to tick off a number of Dartmoor 365 squares as far away from home as it gets on Darrtmoor for me. The 3 squares of Blackaller Quarry, Drewsteignton and Greystone are full Dartmoor 365 squares with Crockenwell and Cheriton Bishop being a couple of bonus squares. I also managed to…
Another of those three walks I needed to finish off to complete a long section of coastal path from Charmouth to Whitsand Bay, sorting this one means I just have a section around Torquay to do on this long stretch. This is another section which has parts of the path which are a short distance…
I’ll be honest I’m not sure why I walked from home on this day, I just did. It might of been the lack of gumption to drive to somewhere else, either way I have a few good options on the doorstep and I took advantage of one of them for a decent walk which takes…
First walk of the new year and choices on where to go. Dartmoor, coast, east, west, north. In the end it was the weather that made my mind up, a few days earlier I had walked on the north eastern side of Dartmoor and the weather had altered from the gloomy drizzle to the west…
Well 2021 has now passed and we all start to make plans for the new year, I will get around to mentioning my plans lower down but for now lets look back at 2021. It started badly for the first 3 months with lockdown and the dreaded words “a short drive”. I had no idea…
This walk involves a fair bit of water and bridges over it. There are weirs and bridges galore in this area alongside a set of stepping stones which also cross the river. The river is question here is the River Teign and in winter is nearly always running fairly high, on this day it was…
The title says it all, nothing more than this location. The walk is an easy one, no more than a mile but between Christmas and New Year its sometimes all you need, just to get out for a bit of fresh air. This bimble bookended, nicely, the walk around Clearbrook, two days before. Being the…
Its taken me a while to get round to writing up these walks from Christmas onwards, as I type I’m four walks behind. All four aren’t huge walks, in fact one is barely a mile but the others are 5 to 8 miles ish and all very enjoyable. This one was constructed around picking the…
This perambulation was one of the 3 walks I needed to do in order to have completed a section of the South West Coastal Path reaching from Lyme Regis to Whitsand Bay. I’ll be honest I haven’t a clue how far that actually is but I might try and work it out for my annual…
A day off work and a chance to make up for the previous weekends washout where walking was not possible. The plan was to head out on a short walk today and then bag another one in a couple of days. Fingers crossed for Sunday. This walk is a simple one, heading out from one…
When it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The theme of this walk was again, lanes on the edge of Dartmoor and a walk up to a couple of tors to give some fine views. This was my third of these type of forays and again allowed me to visit a couple of neglected tors in…
A bit of a gap since the last walk with the boys due to my eldest getting a bout of Covid (or Rona as he calls it). He had very little in the way of symptoms and spent the 10 days off school mainly playing games and lording it up over his friends. The 11th…
A walk deep in the Roseland Peninsular in perfect weather which made for a spectacular walk. I was looking for walks for this weekend and was deliberating back and forth. Coastal or Dartmoor. I have plenty of Dartmoor to explore and the weather was set fine, but at this time of year the light is…
Back on the coastal path trail and a walk I wasn’t expecting too much from. Look at the best days on the coastal path and this area won’t feature, but don’t be too quick to dismiss it, its a good walk along here. That said the walk back can be a bit scruffy to start,…
After the success of a moorland and lanes walk a few weeks ago up at Cosdon Hill (here) I tried another. Again this was a ticking list of Dartmoor 365 spots first and foremost and then an attempt to get up to Dartmoor and a tor but this time from a different way than previously.…
Time for another bimble with the boys, and carrying on with the coastal path at Slapton. We had previously done the section to the south of this last summer (here) and we enjoyed the area, so a return was in order. Again we weren’t great at getting out of bed and settled for lunch at…
The day after my mountain walk around Esk Hause, the weather was slowly taking a turn for the worse, we decided to make the most of the next day of maybe some drizzle but mainly low cloud. Aira Force is always a great outing for bad weather days, plenty of waterfalls and a nice loop…
The big walk for this visit to the Lakes (apologies for the large amount of photos!), this was a bit of a concoction of fells thrown together to make a loop and pick off a load of Wainwrights. These fells would normally mean a couple of walks to pick them off, and all requiring a…
This is one of our regular walks when we come to the Lake District, and one we rarely change. We really ought to include Rydal Water in the loop and walk back via the coffin route and make a bit more of it. However today the weather was a bit gloomy, cloud was down and…
A walk of two halves this one, the first on Dartmoor proper, tors, hills and boggy ground (which is prevalent in this area). The second half is around the lanes of north eastern Dartmoor, picking off the Dartmoor 365 squares. The weather was lovely all the way through, sunshine and a chilling breeze, which made…
Back to the northern coast this week and a good forecast which looks very promising indeed. I was a bit worried driving over Bodmin Moor area, driving through low and some very dark clouds. As I descended towards Bossiney to cloud cleared but not enough for the sun. I needn’t have worried, before long the…
As is the case on the coastal path, sometimes you have to walk through a town, along streets and pavements with cars whizzing by. People all around being busy, the weather was warm for October. This walk was a result of me struggling to get the boys out of their pits at a reasonable hour…
A walk to hopefully change the fortunes a bit with the weather, as a rule east is better than west for the weather and the same goes for coastal rather than moorland. So I went east and coastal hoping to double up the luck. The forecast itself was very positive with sunny spells forecast all…
It was my birthday, a Thursday, I had 3 days off work (Wed-Fri) plus the weekend, meaning plenty of scope for walks. However as is the way, home chores pile up, gardening here, flat pack building there and plenty in-between. I decided, looking at the weather that any of Wednesday to Friday would do for…
Those will a keen eye will recognise this starting point from earlier this year, when I walked the other direction towards Boscastle and back over High Cliff (here). Nothing quite that high today, but the distance was there and then some. The ups and downs where there as well, making this a tough walk but…
A different day today and not one I’ve done before, first I had a day off work as I had a eye appointment in Ivybridge, which meant I started reasonably early for that. Eye appointment done I had a coffee in Ivybridge and sat in the car looking for a plan. I needed to go…
After a couple of weeks away from a walking path, still on antibiotics and not wanting to push myself too far I sought a route that didn’t involve too much ascent. Distance would be ok if I could find a way not to be heading up and down hills too often. That ruled out the…
No the title isn’t a misspelling, it is the name of the house, a Grade 2 listed property near to Bovey Tracey and is the headquarters for the Dartmoor National Park, despite being a mile or so outside of its boundaries. It offers a simple couple of miles of walking around the River Bovey, with…
We hadn’t camped since our visit and walk along the coast at Boscastle, back in July (here). It was time for another outing and the weather was forecast to be good for the bank holiday weekend. In fact we were in a bit of a warm section of weather in which it had been pretty…
Another week and another coastal walk, and one I’d had my eye for quite a while and never got around to. This weekend I wanted not to drive as far, less than an hour and this one fits the bill nicely, especially as I found a nice National trust car park inland near to Hendersick…
Back to the coastal path this week and choices of where to go. The south west coastal path is vast, and it can take a good 90 minutes or more to get to its furthest points to walk. Naturally I’ve picked off lots of the nearby spots and some of the good spots, but recently…
This was our first walk after returning from the Lake District and a pure Dartmoor 365 bagging walk, a list ticker! We’d had a lazy morning and eaten some lunch, before heading out to the furthest point away from our home on Dartmoor. South Zeal takes over an hour to get to and if I…
After the visit to hospital I knew that my youngest needed to rest this holiday, so we had a couple of days just mooching around the house and Grasmere and doing very little. By Friday I wanted to walk again, however the weather had turned a bit and the fine weather of earlier in the…
Its taken a bit to get round to writing this post, a walk to one of the great mountains in the Lakes and picking up a few other Wainwrights on the way around, with any luck. The walk is a very good one and is a change from the previous walks on this holiday (Carrock…
After our first walk in the Lakes in nearly two years, we sweltered in a heatwave the next day, we decided to walk after tea that evening. This would hopefully give us a slightly cooler walk and meant the fell needed to be reasonably near to the house in Grasmere. I had Armboth Fell still…
Well, finally, we could make our way to the Lakes to stay for a holiday. One Covid cancellation and one burst water pipe in the holiday cottage, had meant that the last time I set foot in Lakeland was October 2019. Which is far too long ago for me. Those that say that the hills…
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…
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