Dartmoor

Between my two visits to Dartmoor, I managed to get out to a number of places on the moor.

It is an interesting landscape, not what I expected, and surprisingly diverse.

There are not many people living within the moor area these days, but there is a lot of evidence of large neolithic communities having been based here.

This is a view of Grimpound from the top of a nearby Tor. Grim would be a good description for living here In winter I feel.

 

There are plenty of horses living on the moor, and on my way up the Tor where I took the above photo I saw this little guy.

One of the most interesting little spots was a really cool patch of woodland, with really old gnarled trees and lots of boulders all covered with enormous amounts of moss and lichens. The Wistmans Wood was definitely a good spot for taking photos, unfortunately there was a large group of photographers doing exactly that when I was there, so it was hard to just get a photo of the trees and rocks without the people.

I found myself a nice camping location on the east side of the moor just near the river Dart (hence the name of the moor), and quite a lovely forest area. I went hiking here for about half a day, and while I was at it, I composed a poem. I have posted the poem with some photos on my blog, if you haven't seen it check out the recent post entitled Poetry - 1. It was my first attempt at poetry, so it is a very basic effort.

I like checkng out some of the old buildings and ruins, so I went to the nearby town of Totnes to find the old castle. It was an old Mott and Bailey style, which I think basically means a big circular wall on top of a hill that you hide inside. Despite being on top of a hill, it was actually hard to find in the narrow twisting streets, but I eventually found Castle St, and figured I had to be close.

On the way back to my campsite I saw an interesting train off in the distance, I could see the track and the road I was on followed the same path, so I pushed ahead until I could find a spot to park and get a photo of the train as it came by.

There are a number of small tourist railways that aren't part of the national passenger rail network, and I saw these trains on a few of them, I'm sure it makes for a great day out for the kids.

The next day, on my way out of the area I went to a town called Bovey Tracey, because I had seen an information brochure for a house of marbles and was intrigued enough to go and check it out.

They have a number of old style marble runs, which I had to admit, I watched all of them run long enough to track all the possible runs a marble could make. Here is couple of them.

And some really, really, big marbles.

They sell a wide array of old toys, puzzles, board games etc., and also have a glass blowing set up out the back, where I watched a vase being made. All in all it was an entertaining visit to a somewhat unusual place dedicated to simpler times.

Leaving Dartmoor I was off to visit some friends just north of Exeter who I hadn't seen for a few years, when they were living in Perth for a year. Since then they'd gotten married, and on my arrival was to discover the also had news for me that they would be expanding the family later in the year.

I was then off to visit another friend in Swindon, which I will cover in the next post, as we got up to a bit of old fashioned archery.

Cornwall

I have a number of friends from Cornwall, so I was looking forward to seeing the area, everyone says that it is different to the rest of England. I headed along the coast and visited the castle at St Mawes, part of the coastal defences built under the orders of Henry VIII. It seems that his manner of accumulating and discarding wives was upsetting to the catholic Spanish, particularly since one of them, Catherine of Aragorn was Spanish, and he was afraid of reprisal attacks.

I reached the King James Ferry to cross the Fal and Truro rivers and was thinking about stopping for the night, so I asked the ferry man if he could recommend a pub that I would be able to camp behind. Just up the road was the Punchbowl and Ladle, near Feock, and sure enough they had a flat patch of grass out the back. The publican was a bit excited when I told him what I was doing and was more than happy for me to camp, as he had done some motorbike travelling and camping through France in his younger days.

Most of my Cornish friends live in Australia, but one still lives there, so I continued on to Hayle to visit Phil, a friend I'd met about 5 years ago when he worked as a lifeguard for the summer at my surf lifesaving club in Perth. We set off to go and explore for the afternoon and went to see the Minnack Theatre, a stunning outdoor stage set pretty much on the edge of a cliff.

This place was mostly hand built by one woman over many years, and has had hundreds of productions performed here, from the full gamut of the works of Shakespeare to locally developed material.

From here we went to Land's End, and so we did the touristy thing of getting someone to take a photo  of us under the sign.

For those who are doing the trip to John O'Groats, known as going "End to End", there is a big sign telling you where to start, the only problem is, you aren't allowed to go that way ...

We then went to a nearby cove, with a lovely little beach, called Sennen Cove, I had to visit, because a friend of mine liked the place so much that she called her daughter Sennen, which as a beach / ocean loving person myself, thought this was a very cool idea. The photo doesn't do it justice, it was a really nice little spot.

We finished the day at a pirate restaurant in Penzance, where they serve your meal on a trencher, a basic kind of wooden plate, and it is fingers only, no cutlery.

Phil had the next day off work, and we started the day with a pre-breakfast run to the surf club and back, with some sprint sessions on the paddling ergo machine while we were there.

We went to St Ives, which is a stunning little harbour village very popular with artists who claim that there is something different about the light there. I'm not sure about that, but it is certainly a pleasant place to wander around, whilst avoiding having your food stolen by the seagulls. It sits on a narrow section of a peninsula and has a beach on both sides.

The harbour is on the north side where it is protected, you want to know what the tide is doing if you plan to use your boat though, as the entire harbour drains at low tide.

The next morning Phil and his girlfriend Kirsty had to go to work, so I set off to The Lizard peninsula. I never figured out how it got the name, I did however find a stunning place called Kynance Cove. I know the water is only about 8-9 degrees, but it looks beautiful and tropical from above.

That evening I was back to catch up with Phil and Kirsty one more time before setting off north up the coast, where I went past a place called Hells Mouth, and made friends with a few horses in the neighbouring field while I was there. I continued up the coast through small fishing villages, Port Isaac and Padstow were lovely little villages, but difficult to get through even on a motorbike. In fact I don't think I was meant to go in to the middle of the village on my bike during the day.

After camping for the night at a horse riding school I went and explored Tintagel Castle, supposedly the birth place of King Arthur. There is not much of the castle left anymore, but it was a nice place for a walk.

That night on my way out of Cornwall I was trying to find another basic camping site, and passed a lady walking a dog as I was going through a small village. Further down the road I saw gates on the road out of town, they were open, but it appeared going forward was onto private property so I turned back. As I was returning through the village the lady with the dog asked if I needed help, when I explained I was just looking for somewhere to camp, I was given directions back to where I'd seen the gates, and to talk to the man painting a bench seat in a field next to the house (her husband). I was offered the choice of pitching my tent in a field, or sleeping in the barn, this was easier, and more interesting, so I chose the barn. 

In the field next to me was 7 cows and a horse named Harvey. After a quick chat the couple left as they were heading out for dinner, and the next morning I continued on down that road passed the gates, it wasn't private property, the guy had just put them up so he could move his cows across the road by himself without them straying.