Plenty of July and now on into August has been pretty hot for us here in the south west of England, as a result I’ve avoided walking on occasions and instead headed for a swim. This one is from mid July and previous wild swim spots of Shilley Pool, Sherrah Pool, Spitchwick and Cadover Bridge…
Having missed my annual trip to see the bluebells at Holwell Lawn, I was determined not to miss this outing for a sunset at Cox Tor/Pork Hill area. The really hot weather at the start of July gave plenty of evenings with the right sunset conditions, plus walking in the day would have been madness.…
The promise of some nice sunshine, warm weather, but not too warm. Perfect for walking and I figured a good time to head out along the River Erme. Parking at Harford Gate still appears to closed off and as it was Sunday I figured parking on the road at the church might be a bit…
A damp day and not much chance of it clearing enough to do a decent walk on Dartmoor with the boys. I figured that I would take the opportunity to head to Becky Falls (yep there’s a cost to get in) and tick the Dartmoor 365 box to say I’ve been. To be honest there’s…
We are nearing the end of June for this walk and the recent weather had been changeable. As I sit here in baking hot sunshine with sweat dripping from every pore, it seems strange that a few weeks ago we were wondering whether summer had been and gone in a blink. Plenty of heavy showers…
Every now and again the pull of a new coast walk means I need to scour maps looking for somewhere along the South West Coastal Path to walk. Petrol prices currently are meaning that if I’m heading out I’ll be going along quicker roads to minimise the fuel used, and not hitting too many lanes…
Arriving back from the Lakes after my Easter holiday, I had a look through my stats page after posting a walk I did before heading 400 miles north, and noticed that I was sat on 490 odd posts. As I ogt back and posted all the walks of the Lakes I kept an eye on…
Slightly different extended bank holiday outings for me. I thought about walking out on Dartmoor or the coast, the weather was certainly forecast to be good enough. But I chose instead to head to a couple of National Trust places, make use of my membership and have a couple of simple days out and a…
A classic pub quiz question asking, “what is the only town in England with an exclamation mark in its name?” Westward Ho! of course. A question I got right time and again at Uni in the north of England. Living in Devon it isn’t even asked, an easy question. Its taken me a while to…
A walk around the lanes on the south eastern edge of Dartmoor, starting out from Ashburton, with a return route which included a section alongside the A38! The main reason for this walk was to mop up a clump of Dartmoor 365 squares that were left together, leaving me with just 5 now which are…
Another day out on the edge of the moor, the north eastern corner of the moor to be precise. I’ve done lots of this walk previously (here), that time I headed straight from Christow up towards Kiln Down and then up towards Bridford. This time I added a section further south to pickup my last…
I can’t remember the reason why we headed out on a Friday night for a walk, rather than a Saturday, it may have been Saturday’s weather forecast, either way this was a short walk from the house, across a few fields and back. Nothing difficult, but it was a chance to see the yellow fields…
This walk was my first one back in Devon after the Lake District holiday, the map below looks a bit scruffy and too be honest the walk is a bit of that. I didn’t start out on the best foot, forgetting to take my walking boots, however my Merrells did me just fine, showing how…
Time for one last walk on the penultimate day, the weather all week had been getting better and better with lots of sunshine. With only one patch of rain/drizzle, which happened to be from midnight until about 8am on the Monday. It had been a good weather week and it had been too good not…
Post 4 from the Easter trip to the Lake District. With two posts of big walks, firstly Yewbarrow, Scoat Fell and Haycock, followed by Eagle Crag around to Ullscarf. This walk is a mix of days, the weather continued to stay kind, with lots of blue and some nice evening sunsets. The first batch of…
Not sure why I picked this walk straight after the last one. Looking at ascents up a fell, Yewbarrow and Eagle Crag are two of the most fearsome in the district. From my list I’m only missing Sharp Edge on Blencathra and I’d have had a hattrick on this holiday. Now here comes a warning,…
First of the big walks on the Easter visit to the Lakes this year. My Wainwright map has far too many dots in the south western side, particularly around Eskdale and Wasdale. Time for a visit out that way. Now some would say that heading to Wasdale on an Easter Sunday is asking for trouble,…
Grasmere is a walk I’ve done lots of times in the Lakes, alongside that of Aira Force probably, it might even get close to my favourite walk here in the South West (Cadover Bridge to Shaugh Bridge) with the number of visits. Considering its 400 miles away it’s a fair effort, but then considering I’ve…
A decent stretch of good weather has meant that Dartmoor has dried a little and is perfect for a trek into some of the more central areas, far from roads. This area stacks up the tors, 16 of them in such a small area, some of them are very impressive, others smaller outcrops, some just…
Cold nights and clear days, frost on the ground in the morning and good views to the distance as you walk. Conditions were perfect, as they had been for a week or two now. I decided to head up to the north western corner of the moor for a bit of Dartmoor 365 bagging and…
This visit came after our stay in Weymouth and I’ve said this before, that myself and the boys love this place, it sits not too far from Dorchester and for us its a couple of hours away from home. Here the boys put into practice their school history lessons and take back more intricate knowledge…
This is a first of two posts regarding another visit for myself and the boys to the Tank Museum in Dorset, this one involved a stay in a Premier Inn in Weymouth overnight, in order to make the next day drive far easier. This was instead of an out and back from Plymouth, with a…
If you are heading clockwise around the South West Coastal Path then after the heights of High Cliff this part will be a doddle. A lovely flatish section of coastal path, without the climbs and drops of the previous parts. A chance to walk along a beach as well, without worrying about the high cliff…
After three walks in a row on Dartmoor it was back to the coastal path, specifically the south Cornwall area around St Austell. I’d previously walked around Gribben Head from Fowey to Par Sands and the other side I’d walked from Porthpean to Pentewan. This walk joins those two sections together through the town of…
Now tell someone that you are taking two teenage boys to an abbey on a Saturday afternoon and they will either suggest you make an appointment with a doctor or laugh out loud and think you are joking. Well this is something I did, firstly its a Dartmoor 365 square, so it needed visiting and…
After the false start on the previous walk, which necessitated a different walking plan, I decided to return to the area a couple of days later, park a bit further north and set out again to bag some Dartmoor 365 squares. In this case 4 squares and a nice summit of Manaton Rocks. This summit…
I’d booked a couple of days off work and planned a walk or two, I was pouring over the maps to see where was best to go. The first outing was the Cox Tor one on my previous walk here, this was number two and I have one more to write about. Everything was set,…
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…
Another weekend and 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 can 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…
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, I 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 a regular walk when I head north to the Lake District, and a simple one at that. I 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 the 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 with 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 were 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 hot…
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 therefore decided to walk after tea in the evening for our second outing. This would hopefully give us a slightly cooler walk and meant the fell needed to be reasonably near to the house in…
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 choices 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 visits to places, the idea is not to stay in the same town, Plymouth, that I’ve been forced to frequent these last 12 months…
treksandtors 