A nice walk around the north eastern side of Dartmoor and one to keep the miles up in preparation for some walking in the Yorkshire Dales. This walk picks off a number of tors, hills and a number of Dartmoor 365 squares including the diddy hamlet of Sloncombe. Starting and finishing in the lovely town…
Back on Dartmoor this week having had a mixture of walking in different areas. We’d had some coastal and some Bodmin Moor recently and it was time to get back into the centre of Dartmoor. This is a walk around the Cowsic River, picking up the tors situated around the head of this river. The…
We started out with a good weather forecast, the winds from the east mean that clearer weather will be found on the western side of Dartmoor. Now its not often that this happens, mainly in the winter, but we were going to take advantage of it. The plan was to head for the Willsworthy ranges…
Those of you that have read my walking blog for a bit will have seen that I quite like a sunset, its rare that I’m up in time for a sunrise but a sunset is definitely one for me. I even try to make a bit of a pilgrimage to the Cox Tor area of…
We’d have some pretty cold weather, even down here in the South West of England. Snow had fallen on Dartmoor and heavy frosts were the norm with the temperature rarely rising above zero Celsius. We set out a little later to allow the road conditions to improve a little, especially around Chagford, meaning we only…
A late start to this walk but with good reason to allow the rain to clear and for some sun to come out. The area around Lustleigh is lovely in any weather, but a bit of sun puts a gloss on the views and the houses here. We started out from Pullabrook car park which…
Mid January and a typical weather day for this time of year, cloud too low to head up high but the odd break in the cloud to give a bit of brightness. As with the rest of the country we had, had a lot of rain recently and I thought a look at the River…
Another day in winter where the weather keeps coming in from the prevailing south west so we headed east of Dartmoor to take advantage of the normally drier conditions out that way. Again it worked out nicely for us and we saw plenty of broken cloud with some sun, plus some heavy showers. We got…
Well 2022 has passed into the annals of history and we all start to make plans for 2023, I will mention some of my plans for this year lower down but for now lets look back at 2022. It started with lots of coastal walks, in fact I’d only done one walk on Dartmoor by…
The second day of the new year and our second walk, I’m pretty sure we won’t continue at this pace (if we do the post updates will be getting a little behind), however its lovely to have the opportunity to get out again. Like Boxing Day the weather was stupendous and it would have been…
First walk of a new year and one to hopefully take us to new places for some new adventures alongside old places with new people for some better adventures. I’m really looking forward to getting out this year and enjoying being out. This walk was done on New Years Day and as I type this…
Boxing Day can be a tricky one to judge, depending on indulgences on the day before, will decide your start time. Also the fact that it will normally be very busy as 26th can be a popular day for getting out and walking and finally the weather, which can be fickle at this time of…
In the middle of December the UK weather finally turned towards winter, after a very warm autumn the snow arrived across the whole country. Even Dartmoor got a bit, especially the high tors near to Okehampton. Princetown had received a small amount so we headed there for a cold walk, with just enough snow, to…
A Sunday in December and the weather has turned over the last week, finally. After a long warm autumn we finally hit some gloomy and cold weather, and some rain. This walk was squeezed in between rainy days and luckily for us, it fell when it was at least dry. The clouds however, were very…
We’d had a Sunday off walking when we’d returned from the Lake District so despite the low cloud and dull conditions we headed out ready for another Dartmoor walk. The week’s break has allowed me to catch up a bit on the number of outstanding walks I had to post and I am exactly one…
Our first walk after returning from the Lakes and we wanted something easy to get to and also fairly easy to walk, this area is easy to get around due to the Redlake tramway (Puffing Billy track) which runs from just above this parking spot. This walk snakes on and around the tramway heading north…
This is a walk in an area that doesn’t get nearly enough pages on websites. I’ve said it before that if the tors, inside the square mile of Shaptor Woods, were out on Dartmoor proper, then you would have thousands of visitors flocking there. They are stupendous. So much so that a new book has…
This was a walk to pick up some tors in the north eastern side of Dartmoor. I have been meaning to come back to Whiddon Wood now for a while. Lots of woodland here, and at this time of year, plenty of brown bracken to bash through and the odd awkward fence to hop over…
Another walk on Dartmoor here, this one was near to home and the plan was that there wasn’t really a plan. Other than the starting point the only real plan was to be around Burrator, with a hope to get across to Sheeps Tor. As it was we decided to head out a little further…
Some of the best walks that there is on the moor, will include Tavy Cleave at some point within it. This route not only walks the length of it but also heads out to Fur Tor, over the settlements at Watern Oke, before looping back around Cut Hill and Little Kneeset. The finale is a…
It was the day of Queen Elizabeth’s funeral and we’d decided to head out early and take in the blue skies forecast. However we faffed a bit and didn’t get going until after 10am, luckily its a short drive to Gutter Tor so we were off and walking around 11am. This is a really easy…
The end of a list and one which I’d probably only found out about when I was actually half way through completing it. The Dartmoor 365 list will take you everywhere across Dartmoor and I mean everywhere. Villages, tors, woodlands, valleys, churches, ruins, streams, pools, bridges, crosses, farms and one particular square with nothing in…
Time for another Dartmoor walk and this time its out on the eastern side around Lustleigh, I hadn’t been to Lustleigh this year and I think it was April 2021 when I last walked the area and possibly 2019 since I was last on Harton Chest which is really remiss of me, seeing as its…
Back from the Lakes and I was keen to get out for another walk, the only issue was the blistering sun. So I decided again to follow previous plans of staying close to water in order to cool off, alongside lots of stops for breaks and shade. The place was Postbridge, which meant a nice…
Just prior to heading to the Lake District for our family holiday, myself and the boys had a chance to head out for a short walk. We chose the western side of Dartmoor as I don’t think the boys have been to these tors before, which is a big error on my part. The best…
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 very 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…
A simple evening walk with my youngest as the evenings approached the solstice. The walk itself isn’t more than 2 miles, but its perfect for an evening and if you get here early enough it could easily be extended up to Piles Hill and Sharp Tor, or across to Ugborough Beacon. The walk starts by…
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…
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…
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…
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, covid in the household meant that I was encouraged to be out all day to allow for me to stay away from it, and the patient, a break from bedroom isolation. Not needing to be asked twice (I had planned to…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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 last time I wrote with this title 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 can…
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