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…
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 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 coastal…
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 Dartmoor 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…
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’s 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…
Between Christmas and New Year the whole country of England has a bit of a covering of snow. A fine time to share some times with your family. Unfortunately those in charge said that we should not play out, or in for that matter. The rules were fun, to say the least. To be exact,…
Well having worked up to, and including, Christmas Eve I decided that I would take a few days off and indulge a little. Alright then, it was a fair bit. Today was a walk day, well at least a bit of a walk day. I wanted to stay near to home and I chose my…
This is a great walk from Hope Cove to Bantham and completes a long section of the South Devon coastal path for me, this pretty much means that I have completed everything from Slapton Sands to Plymouth, except the short town walk of Salcombe and a mile or two at Mothercombe, which I am pretty…
After a week of heavy rain which threatened to strip off the tarmac from the roads, we had a weekend which promised plenty of sunny patches, lots of cloud and showers. That will do me nicely, take a coat and good footwear and you can walk anywhere in that. All around this walk we watched…
Another double weekend walk after the previous one at the start of November. I was still in a fine mood, having managed to get out for a pub lunch alongside a fine walk with the boys around Burrator reservoir, the day before. And to improve things further the weather was set for a cracking day.…
A walk with the boys, well to be honest not just a walk but a trip to a pub to have some food after a walk. It shows how bad this year has been, when I see a trip to a pub as something to look forward to. The great news for me was that…
Finally some sun in November. It feels like it has been years since I last had a good November walking day. This one was perfect, no wind, cold to start but warming as the day went on and a haze that only appears at the start or end of winter. The sky felt liquid, photos…
Another weekend in November and they seem to be going the way of every other November weather wise. More often than not they are wet with low cloud and high winds. Well this one had the wet and the low cloud, but very little wind. It was a truly dank day. North Devon and the…
The weather for the weekend wasn’t looking too good, I ummed and arred about going out. Looking closer at the weather there was a window, not too long but a few hours before 2pm on Sunday, where the odd passing shower was forecast but the main rain would be at 2pm. Well they got the…
The last time I wrote with this title it was to thank those that visited my site and helped me reach 100,000 views. That was mid 2019 and can be found here. Now I’m writing again, to thank for the next 100,000 which I’ve got to within 2020 alone (by November to be exact). I…
The second walk in two days, and walk 2 of Lockdown 2. I’m on to Dartmoor now, or at least the southern part. I’ve given myself 30 minutes from home for a walk, as that’s my interpretation of a short drive. I quite like this area of Dartmoor, there is a fair bit of moorland…
Today was my first proper walk after Lockdown 2 The Revenge had started, and as it turned out this was also the end of the blonde buffoon in the good old United States. For me, during this lockdown, I’ve kind of drawn a line from Tavistock across to Bovey Tracey and decided to stay south…
I had planned a week off and was trying to make the best of the week. The weather wasn’t really playing ball and I found myself trying to crowbar walks in between the heavy rain storms or days of rain. This turned out to be the only proper walk I did all week as after…
Another National Trust walk to go nicely with my last one a couple of days ago at Cotehele. The good part about a Trust walk is the grounds tend to be full of trees, and at this time of year they give good colour and help with the photos, even if they are taken on…
Another week where I should be in the Lake District, cancelled again. the rule of 6 and all that. Left to make up another week of things to do in the area I live and visit most weekends anyway. I wanted to make it different than the week in August and today was another National…
Another fantastic coastal path walk today. The weather was perfect, sunny and a bit of a breeze. Yes it was a little hazy but it didn’t detract at all. This walk is a brilliant one, the coastal path is rolling, more gently up and down, than other places. Only once you get past Hemmick Beach…
I had been watching the weather most of the week and unusually as we neared the weekend it was getting a little better. It was set for a dry Saturday with some sun and the same for Sunday. I thought a walk around the high points, of the north western corner of Dartmoor, would be…
A poor weather weekend was forecast by the Met Office and duly delivered by the weather gods. High winds and heavy rain for 3 days throughout the area meant a walk was out of the question. I instead had a look in the area for something similar to the tank museum that we went to…
2nd walk in 3 days and if I’m honest my legs were still aching from the previous days’ hike over Dartmoor. Once I got going though the aching went away as I made my way along the coastal path towards Branscombe. The day had started well, I was up early and parking in Sidmouth at…
Time for another walk on Dartmoor and an attempt to pick up a couple of tors not visited before. I’ve had Coombe Down Tor on my list for a while now but wasn’t able to put together a decent walk to pick it up. I also realised that I had never been to Hurston Stone…
