Dartmoor Hike

On Wednesday night we headed to Dartmoor for our first overnight hike of the trip. We had a night free between housesits as we headed south from Hampshire to Cornwall and what better way to fill it in!

Dartmoor is one on the UK’s oldest national parks, is covered in free roaming sheep, cattle and ponies but also manages to be an active military training area. All of which I find hard to fathom, but luckily the wasn’t a live fire exercise so we could actually get up there.

I planned out a vague route on my phone using the ViewRanger app, totally forgetting we aren’t hugely fit just now and that we’d have well less than 5hrs walking time each day to allow for travel.

Anyway to cut a long story short we cut our long walk short and instead camping by a beautiful clear meandering stream on a patch of grass so flat and smooth you’d think it were mown. Getting there meant traipsing up and down hills that I hadn’t really thought about (despite all be labelled as Tors which is the local word for a peak). It was probably good training. On the way back down we found a spectacular little plunge pool which I had a very quick dip in!

We are now at our new housesit near Plymouth looking after a gorgeous little six month old Jack Russell.