After a day of solitude, it seems only right that today was spent meeting, being passed by, passing, remeeting and briefly joining a group of walkers. They are, they informed me, the Old Gits Walking (I may have that name slightly wrong, since my internet search for their website turned up similar groups but not them), and they are a bunch of men over sixty in very good shape for climbing hills, who do all sorts of walks all the time and all over the country.
But before I met up with the old gits, I had a pleasant enough start walking on my own in peace and quiet. The rain from last night was gone, and the weather forecast once again seemed like something made up with a random words-and-times generator: 8am showers, 9am sun, 10am siroccos, 11am scattered hail… It looked sunny and the air was crisp, so after some scrambled eggs and bacon, off I went.
In a ‘town’ as small as Scoriton (a few houses, the pub), you’d think I couldn’t miss my way, but somehow I missed the place down the lane where the trail left the road into a field, and so I kept on down the hill until, meeting a crossroad, I knew I’d missed something. Took out my map, worked out that if I turned left on this small country road, I could get up the other side of the valley to Holne, the next little town only a few miles from Scoriton (but compared to Scoriton, Holne is a bustling metropolis: it has a tea room/shop, though it doesn’t open until 10am…). And today’s walk is only 9 miles by the guide, so adding three quarters of a mile or so didn’t seem too bad–and avoided retracing my steps.
So I had a pleasant mile and a half or so walking on tarmac with one or two cars making me lean into the hedge so they could pass, and then through Holne and down the other side of that hill to meet the River Dart (as in Dartmoor, the moor I am in the midst of).
The descent to the river was long but not too rough or muddy, and the river is wonderfully musical, gushing over rocks to make a good small-scale river sound.
The path runs pleasantly through the woods alongside the river until meeting a road and a bridge. You have to cross the one-lane bridge (the road’s not busy, though I happened to get there when three cars were all going across the bridge in a row, so it seemed trafficky) and then pass through a car park to go under the bridge and resume the path, now on the left bank of the river. The car park was surprisingly bustling, with nine or ten cars and an ice dream truck.
As I learned from my guide, the nearby green bank is a popular picnicking spot, and this bridge is also a kayak launch for an exciting stretch of (relatively mild) white water kayaking.
As I reached that big green picnic area, I was passed by this cluster of eight older men, some with a single walking stick, some in hiking shorts and some in long pants, but all looking very fit and chatting happily in twos and threes. They had with them a very happy dog who looked like she was in heaven.
They passed me mostly because I slowed down, partly because I figured it would be helpful to have someone who knew where they were headed in front of me. Of course, I’d have to make sure we were on the same path, but periodic check-ins on the ages torn from my guide, tucked in my pocket, would ensure I didn’t follow them off into the wrong direction entirely. At the end of the green, just as the guide described, they hustled up a switchback trail up a steep hill, an ascent of several hundred feet that went on and on through forest and then into ferns and stinging nettle and finally out to cross a road. These men were in really good shape, and though I kept up, only slightly behind them, I felt that hill.
When we crossed a road, they set out up a small path up another bit of hill, but my guide said I should stay on a rough dirt track for a few hundred yards before turning uphill, so I did. When I turned uphill heading up toward a crosspath around the hill, I could see them off to my right, and realized their was going to hit a crosspath: They’d turn left at the top and meet me. And sure enough, because my uphill path was a bit easier, I just barely beat them, and met their dog, who had come ahead. Then I set the pace for a few miles of high, relatively smooth trail around one hill and connecting onto another. Somehow, the fact of other people, and the kicking in of my slightly competitive edge, meant that this was not a time for deep reflection about life and goals and choices. It was just good steady walking with an awareness of voices twenty or thirty yards behind me.
Then I slowed a bit, and a few of them passed me (they were spread out in groups of two and three), and at a turning point where the trail seemed clearly to be going right up and around, they turned off to the left onto some rugged higher ground over rocks. As these two set off, I paused to check my guide and the rest of the group came and made their turnoff, where one of them said “we’re going to high ground for a tea break.” So I left them to it and continued on. It was cool (mid- to high 50s, I’d guess) and windy, but so far I hadn’t had my rain jacket on. But it was starting to feel a bit chilly, and a few scattered showers led me to put on the jacket. It does keep me warmer than no jacket, but I find it just holds my sweat in rather than keeping my dry.
More pleasant hiking, figuring that my path and that of the walking group had diverged. I missed the path slightly and hit a road about a hundred yards north of where I should have, stopped to look at my map to sort out why I wasn’t seeing the little gravel parking lot noted in my guide and worked it out. These moments, when I slightly lose my way but work it out with the map and get back on track, give me inordinate pleasure.
And then after descending again into another valley, who should come bounding up behind me but that happy dog and her eight friends. It started to rain as we descended a long steep hill on a road, but we weren’t exactly walking together, just at the same time on the same path, if you see the difference.
Some of them were stopping to put on rain gear, so I got ahead of them to the bottom of the hill and a gate where the path plunges into woods along another little streamside. Check out the hand-forged hook on that gate.
Then a hundred yards on or so, with them coming up behind, I stopped to photograph a flower, giving them an opportunity to pass. Instead, they stopped to observe the flower and we chatted briefly about what kind it was. One of them offered a firm opinion (I don’t remember what he said this was), and I nodded as if to say ‘that seems right.’ As if I knew!
And so began a companionable hour or so, in which I was woven into the group, with one or two or three of them walking and chatting with me about where they’d walked and where I’d walked and where I’m from and who knows what. They’re an interesting mix, and despite all the claims about the English being so very class-conscious, I note that one is a retired London taxi driver and another is a retired dentist. Imagine a cabdriver and a dentist in Chicago hanging out together. But I suppose any activity-based group like a walking club forges friendships across all kinds of lines. We worked out that we’d be on the same path until a turning toward Widecombe for me while they headed on over a different path to get to their second set of cars; they’d parked two cars at the end of their planned walk, then driven together to the car park with the ice cream some miles away. Now they’d get to their end point, drive back and retrieve the other cars.
Just a little before our parting, when one of them explained about the Old Gits Walking and how they kept a tally of how far each person has walked, they urged me to join them in a brief diversion to see a medieval site, Hutholes. It’s only thirty yards or so off the path, but I’m glad they were with me, because I would have skipped it if I’d been on my own.
Hutholes was really just a jumble of big stones that only made sense if you looked at the sign showing how this pile was a little hut with two rooms, and that pile was a smaller hut. Here, they announced they were stopping for lunch. It felt like the right moment to part ways, so I said my goodbyes and headed back out to the path and on for the last mile to Widecombe.
Widecombe-in-the-Moor is, let’s be blunt, a tourist trap. It has a parking lot for coaches of pensioners to get off, look at the three art galleries and the significant medieval church, stop in the National Trust shop and look at the same scarves and blankets and postcards they could get in a hundred National Trust shops, stop in the large café that exists only because of tourist trade, have tea, and cluck about how expensive things are.
I know this because I arrived before two and my B&B strictly doesn’t open until 4:30, so I killed a few hours walking around and listening to people, punctuated with long lazy spells sitting on a bench when it was sunny enough to warm myself.
Not a day for profound thought, not a day of wild adventure, but a very nice day of walking, in which I was, briefly, and Old Git Walking.
ramblinghank 