Today’s walk took me over the top of the last bit of Dartmoor, and then down into the rolling countryside that lies between Dartmoor and Exmoor. It was a day of incredible variety, which started with walking over high, windblown hilltops without a tree and places where the paths divide and rejoin or break off into different directions like a spiderweb seen too close-up to understand the design.
After a long ascent from Widecombe back up to moortop and the path, I immediately began cursing once again the profound lack off marking on the Two Moors Way when it hits the wildest parts. The guidebook resorts to informing you that this might be a good place to practice your skills at siting marks in the landscape. So, roughly:
“If you look ahead, you will see seventeen hills in a sweeping arc from left to right at various distances, said distances being hard to estimate since there are no indicators of scale. If you count from left to right, the third hill, the one with a slight bump at the top, but not the one with the slight bump at the right of the top, which might look like the third hill but which we are counting as part of the second hill, because we make the rules and we are your gods, you will recognize Blithington’s Despair, where 19th Century walker Arthur Blithington shot himself in the head rather than have to write any further description of how this hill was different from any other. Recognizing this hill will not help you to find the path forward, but we thought you might enjoy this preview of your own eventual demise.”
The howling wind, at around 30 miles an hour, at least wasn’t carrying rain, but it did mean I wore my rain jacket for warmth for the first few hours. I passed weathered wooden posts, which the old gits had mentioned with the possibly apocryphal story that they were placed on the high hills to stop German planes from landing here during WWII. I am not sure I buy it, given how impossible it would be to land anything up here, but the posts added to the eerie feeling.
You can see my exhilaration upon reaching one of the path landmarks.
This part of the path actual passes some easily recognizable barrows, ancient burial mounds that primitive humans put at the top of things to give future walkers a sense of perspective and something to photograph.
It was shortly after this, about an hour into my walk, that I encountered the first other people I had seen all day, a pair of hikers who came up behind me at the annoyingly vigorous pace of the young and overtook me. A pair of college students I would guess, with long strides and big packs, to remind me that I am old and get winded on the uphills and can’t skip across the rocky bits like a mountain goat. I would later be grateful for them, but at the moment they passed me I was just a bit pleased to have my way confirmed (and the fact that all human life on the planet had not ceased while I walked into some gothic horror story by M. R. James…), but also mildly annoyed at their vigor.
I walked on, with them an increasing distance ahead, until at another high marker, I encountered two sets of two people coming up the path the other direction. Crossing over the top I saw the explanation. Down the hill was Grimspound, an incredibly easy to spot prehistoric settlement, which has an actual paved road leading to it so people can walk around it and through the vast stone circular enclosure and take a stroll up the hill, as easy as pie, while poor dumb Two Moors walkers have slogged for miles across a barren wasteland to get there.
My fit young lads had stopped for a snack in the enclosure, so I just barely passed them and started up the hill on the other side when they set off again and passed me on the ascent. The weather was starting to turn, so they had put their yellow pack covers on their packs. This would later prove very handy for me, since that yellow stands out in the landscape.
The path went down and up a few more times over a stretch of miles. And those two yellow packs stayed ahead of me, but they must have been taking a lot of stops, because several times when I had lost sight of them and was sure I’d seen the last of them, I’d spot them ahead.
This really did prove useful when it started to rain (still in high winds, so it felt cold and bleak) and I was crossing a particularly unmarked and multi-pathed bit of moor. I could see them far ahead, and it reassured me that I hadn’t lost the path as I slogged through endless squirchy, squelchy, cow-shit-peppered bits of trail.
Finally, as the rain ended and the wind settled down, I came to the end of Dartmoor, and descended past a big farm and onto a paved road, where I saw the two lads sitting under a hedge eating their lunch. So long, my brave trailblazing beacons. You saved me much worrying.
And here, it was as if someone had pushed the reset button on the day. The sun came out, and the landscape, off the moor, became farmland and hedges and little lanes and a path that went through muddy fields instead of muddy vastnesses. My spirits lifted.
This part of the day, I still had miles and miles to walk (it was a 15 mile day), but now I was amusing myself with finding unlikely walking songs (“New York, New York” has a nice walking rhythm, as does “Lollipop, Lollipop.” Also, “Old Man River,” and “I Am What I Am” from La Cage Aux Folles. Clearly, I should not be a DJ.)
The day just kept throwing little treats at me, as if to apologize for the cold and the wind and the blasted landscape and the rain.
This day reminded me that the variety, the little twists, the surprises, are what I love about these walks. I enjoyed walking with Karen along the coastal path, and there was certainly a lot of stunning landscape, but the uniformity of walking the coastal path (there’s the sea, on your righthand side, and the path is always clinging to the seaside) isn’t as enjoyable for me as rambling in countryside where you climb over stiles and go through kissing gates and walk through a field and then a forest and then down a quiet country lane. And at one point, I was walking along a path around a hillside above thrilling little valley, just gorgeous.
And the path, after taunting me with so few markers on the moors, is well-marked! Had I taken the Two Moors way early in my walking career, I’d have quit and taken up surfing or something to fill my vacations. The moor parts are tough, with long unmarked stretches and wet, tricky ground. Now, with map-reading experience and a general feel for what trails are likely to do, I can navigate this and feel good. But if I’d started with this instead of the well-marked Coast-to-Coast, I’d probably not have fallen so in love with walking trips.
Finally, the day ended in Drewsteignton (though a few of the handmade signs on the path spelled it Drewesteignton, just to confuse things a bit). My feet were wet and sore, my knees ached a bit from all the up and down, and I knew full well that the days ahead were all supposed to be 15 miles or more (16, 16, 15, 19), but I felt good.
ramblinghank 
What gorgeous landscape and photos today! But, um Hank, there’s a color thing on those beacons. I’d call them orange 🙂
Fair enough- I remembered them as more yellow than they seem in the photos…
Vacation!