7th May

About 11 miles today, and should have been quite an easy route.  We are between moors, and we all found it a bit ‘samey’ in that it was field after field, gate after gate, hill after down, not much light relief - and it was hot!  So we all felt a bit drained after the walk today and everyone was asleep on the bus back, so thank you Carol for staying awake to drive us!

We do have a couple of tales to tell; firstly Alan took a tumble and grazed his knee (no more damage though).

Alan's knee!

 Some farmers really don’t want walkers across their land so they make it quite difficult; there was one point where there obviously had been a bridge across some very muddy land, but it was completely overgrown, so we had to pick our way through the mud!  Then there was a place at the top of the field where it was just crusty mud and cow dung and poor Stuey got a boot full!  If only the farmer had kept the bridge up and directed us to the correct route we would have been off his land a lot quicker.
At lunch today there was a lot of boot washing in the stream.

Boot washing

Towards the end of the walk we came to a part that Carol and Phil were walking as part of their circular walk from Witheridge.  We found they had put a couple of large arrows for us, and left a couple of biscuits for us (the sort you get when you have had coffee - now where did they have coffee today?)

Stick arrow and note!

The walk ended about 2.30 and typically the pub was shut again; so home for tea and cake - yum.

Today's walk had a lot of little ups and downs as you can see - 30 hills Tim!! (The scale of this does look quite dramatic as it does squash up - the flat bits are coffee and tea breaks)