Friday, May 10, 2013

Day 02 - Ivybridge to Holne - 21km


Day 02 - Ivybridge to Holne - 20km

Today started out ok with the weather being bright, fresh and a bit breezy. I walked out of Ivybridge uphill into Dartmoor and as I got higher the breeze became stronger and stronger until by the time I had got to the top of the first peak, a full-on wind was nearly blowing me over. The views were terrific but the wind was seriously strong! 

I headed off across the moor until I reached the course of a dismantled railway and followed that for miles and miles; and miles and miles! The track got higher as it went deeper into the moor and I started to get cold since the wind was still blowing very, very strongly. Eventually I put on my waterproof top to act as a wind block and carried on but after another hour, the rain started. Eventually I decided it wasn't going to go away so out came the waterproof trousers too. And that's how things stayed until I arrived in Holne a couple of hours later. The wind roared and the rain flew sideways. Thankfully it was all coming from behind me to I was driven along with a gale at my back. Any time I turned around to look where I had come from I was met with a deluge of stinging raindrops in my face so I ended up not looking. The cover got blown off my rucksack so i had to stop to fix it back on again or everything it it would have been soaked! At the 11km mark, the Two Moors Way left the old railway and so my path headed off across the moor. Just a footpath across a boggy mess. From here on progress was harder. And still the stinging deluge hammered at my back at times gusts forced me into an unintended run. For a couple of hours I was driven along across mud, hills and streams but thankfully the boggy bits looked worse than they actually were. Nothing deep enough to come over my boots. I'm so glad I was heading in the same directions the wind or it would have been a really, really hard day.
As I descended from the moor the trees were thrashing about wildly and it was lovely to stop, look and listen to them going mental!

The pictures necessarily kind of stop after the weather tuned wet as I had to put my phone in a waterproof bag or it would be a dead phone by now! I had an inch of water inside a pocket on my waterproof when I finished. And the pocket was sealed with a supposedly waterproof zip! The phone lived rose another day !

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