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 !

Day 01f

Time to get properly waterproof in a church porch.

Do they do thatch outside of Britain?

Pretty path next to a file full of lambs

A quaint village ...

Finished! Very sore feet!

Day 01d

Red soil

Red waterproof! Tasty wet sarni!

Out of my field!

Bluebells in full ding-dong!

More garlic! Actually loads of the stuff!

Day 01c

Lots of bluebells. More than it looks actually!

Lots of garlic. It smells terrific.

Garlic.... And me!

Is this a cute place to live or hell on earth?

Te soil is red, the crops are green and oh my! Is that bad weather I see over there?

Day 01b

A toe in the water, exactly where the founding fathers left actually. So if you are in te USA, stare in awe! Next time I see the sea will be on the other side of the country!

Mor expensive stuff

Been here a while! 

No idea why you'd put this here in the middle of nowhere 

A pretty wood

Day 01a

Setting off 

'Down'old'town Plymouth

Lots of expensive stuff!

This way if you're ready to found a nation!

Welcome home boys, how was the trip? 1836

Day 01 : Plymouth to Ivybridge - 30km

A pleasant walk through somewhat varied countryside starting with urban Plymouth which is pretty in the centre near the harbour, but less so near the periphery as winding streets give way to small industrial estates, hand car washes and McDonald's drive throughs. Within a few miles the walk had dissolved into woodland, fields and the unusual and reclusive landscape of small mud filled estuaries draining into Plymouth Sound. 

The walk was rather more hilly than I had expected. Not to bring out a chin-dripping sweat but not a stroll over undulating fields either. I had forgotten how as a child my family drove tediously through tiny lanes on our way to our annual summer holiday, climbing and falling over banks of red-soiled fields with the slow rhythm of 'forget the city' you are in a different place now. My legs remembered those hidden valleys today!

The distance from Plymouth to Ivybridge was more than I find comfortable for a day's walk. At 30km, it seems impossible to not stray into zombie-like plodding somewhere toward the end. And my heels hurt too! All that training for the Hastings half marathon in April has taken its toll! I'm left with sore Achilles that nag endlessly when asked to do anything more than, we'll actually, nothing at all! And even then they nag when I get out of my chair and walk a few steps! I'm hopeful/assuming that they will calm down and return to normal sometime soon, but maybe walking over a hundred miles isn't the kind of respite they needed?

It rained today! Morning sunshine slithered into a persistent drizzle heavy enough to have me stop, pack the fleece and break out the Goretex! For miles I trudged through dripping woods, pungent with the scent of wild garlic and occasionally, where on brighter days the sun reliably reached the ground, flushed with the purple of early bluebells. But mostly, just carpeted with gorgeous swathes of white garlic. 

As I got closer to Ivybridge, the first hills of Dartmoor came into view, naked and very different from the farmland and woodland I have walked through today. So tomorrow it's up into the moors. Thankfully a shorter day of only about 20km but perhaps challenging if the weather turns bad.

For now it's pub food, a couple of pints and bed. My sore feet can dream of Dartmoor tomorrow.