Post #292
Walking on Dartmoor
11th March 2004, early evening | Comments (25)
I don’t know what you did last weekend, but I spent my two days off in a little piece of British heaven.
Dartmoor National Park (along with the Lake District, Wales’s Snowdonia and the Scottish Highlands) is one of the few remaining bits of ‘wilderness’ left in the UK. Its gentle, gorse-covered hills, picturesque streams, and soggy bogs, make it a lovely (and easily accessible) place to go walking in the South West of England.
The four of us (James B., James S., Chris, and myself) were fortunate enough to find the moors in glorious condition, with sun shining, and ground firm under foot. Our two day walk was to take us only nineteen miles (thirteen on Saturday and six on Sunday), but we’d be seeing some of the nicest scenery the area had to offer.
Previous trips (The Lakes in mid-winter, the French Alps in September) had been tests of endurance and hill-climbing ability. This trip, however, was to be a Nice Weekend Away, nothing too strenuous, nothing too primitive.
On Friday night we convened at an edge-of-the-moor pub (built in 1477) for food, drink, and comfy beds. Supplies were dished out, new kit was ooh’d over, and curses were issued as we remembered mugs left in dishwashers, and coats left on hooks. Our bags were packed, unpacked and repacked.
How many eggs do we have? I’ve brought ten.
Who’s got a medi-kit?
Holy crap! My bladder’s leaking!
How many tents are we carrying?
I think my bag must be miles heavier than anyone else’s.
Oh dear. I think this has been in here since our last walk…
Preparations complete, we finally took to our beds around twelve-thirty.
Day 1
Alarms rang at 0700 on Saturday morning, and after the usual Who’s idea was this stupid trip? I wanna stay in bed
we were up and about; peering out at the surrounding hills, commenting on how nice the weather looked, and making last minute changes to our kit.
After a cooked breakfast we strapped on our bags and headed off to the moor: to adventure, excitement, and hopefully to see James B. fall waist deep into a hidden bog again (as had happened on our previous trip to the Lakes).
There’s not much to say about the actual walking on Saturday — the sun shone, the wind was cold, the going was easy. However, what is worth talking about is our ever improving prowess at making camp, and the delicate art of outdoor cooking.
Our spot for the evening was found at the junction of the moor and the hilly pasture land that surrounds it. We walked down through steep fields, climbing over their dividing dry stone walls, and stumbled into a beautiful, sheltered dell. A big stone set into one side of the dell made a perfect reflector for a campfire, and the view into and across the valley below was glorious. The only section of horizontal land for miles around and by good fortune our route had led us straight to it.
When the tents were up and the lanterns lit, our thoughts turned to food. The evening meal — steaks, sausages, potatoes, and Spanish omelette — was cooked over a roaring fire. The steaks were done to perfection on hot stones (heated to super temperatures in the heart of the blaze), the sausages were cooked in a wire basket (fashioned from a derelict section of fencing and suspended above the flames on a stick), the potatoes were re-heated in silver foil on the coals, the omelette was fried in a saucepan, and our two bottles of red wine were kept delightfully warm on the stone ‘mantelpiece’ above the fire.
Our weary backs were rested against the reclined seats we’d fashioned from large, flat stones, and, late in the evening, when Chris discovered sparklers in his bag, we leant back and ooh’d and ahh’d as we each wrote our names in the smoky air.
Perfect food, fine wine, pleasant company, the warmth and adventure of an open fire, the chill of the night air, the relaxation of tired muscles… I don’t think we’d have swapped our spot for anywhere else in the World. England truly can be God’s Own Country when the fancy takes it.
Day 2
As always when we camp, I’d hardly slept a wink, tossing and turning, sitting up and rocking in frustration at my inability to slip in to unconsciousness. The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that I’d shared a tent with Mr Beverley — a man who starts snoring some fourteen-thousandths of a second after his head first hits the pillow. By morning I was exhausted and so droopy-headed that Chris provided a caffeine pill to perk me up. (It was rather obvious when it kicked in as I started talking non-stop, naming everything I saw.)
For Sunday breakfast we knocked up sausage, bacon, beans and scrambled eggs, before going to wash up in a lovely little waterfall. Good planning meant we were able to dump a great deal of kit in a car, and spend the day walking with a reduced load. Always nice.
The hours preceding Sunday lunch saw us following a river through a wooded valley, the rocks and trees covered in an unbroken carpet of thick, green moss. Every few minutes one of us would say My God, look at that pool
and we’d all stare in wonder at the natural, crystal clear depths before us.
We have got to come back here in the summer.
*open-mouthed nodding*
Uh-huh…
Eventually the cover of trees gave way and we climbed out of our valley on to moorland again. Excepting a few distractions and diversions (such as Chris testing his trousers for water-proofness by sitting in a river), it wasn’t long before we found ourselves back at the car. And that was that.
A short, easy, wonderful little trip completed. And already talk is of our next foray into the wild…
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