Day 18 - Winsford to Monksilver

The blog was really complicated to send last night. We picked a camp site which stated that it had Wi-Fi as we knew that the dongle would be unlikely to work in the valley, but their connection was useless as well! However, thanks to our intrepid technical team researching and then solving the problem we managed to post!

First, we had to copy into a Word document anything we had already written on the blog page (we tried to use their connection but kept losing it) and not saved, then complete our musings and copy and paste it all into a folder on my Blackberry phone. We then emailed this from the phone to the tech team, who posted it with the pictures, which always have to go separately by phone as the blog won’t upload them for some extraordinary reason! Bernie says that walking is a cinch compared to blogging!!

Tonight we have the same problem but with no Blackberry help as there is no service for that either. So it’s back to copy and paste tomorrow!

Today had a good start, though. Trying to give support to The Walker, I thought I ought to meet him and walk with him a bit, as the last time had been from Clovelly. The Samaritan’s Way is a good track to follow and I had a superb walk through woodland and across moor but I had to be the bearer of bad news and tell him that the pub at the end of today’s walk had closed down.

Les on the superb track between Sticklepath & Monksilver

From Bernie:
Today’s walk 14.0 miles : Cumulative 240.0 miles

A grey day on the moor! Stayed dry &, while it never really looked like rain, it was galling to look northwards, out to sea, & see patches of blue sky!

Difficult to believe that I’ve walked across Exmoor, west to east, in 2 days; we passed the National Park boundary marker as we drove out of Monksilver at the end of the walk. Such different days: today was steeply undulating farm & woodland but, interestingly, harder to negotiate than yesterday’s rougher terrain.

Newcombe Farm - met a couple of ladies here, walking the 'Coleridge Way'

Highlight of the Day: Navigation!
There are numerous footpaths & bridleways criss-crossing the hills, along with farm tracks, woodland tracks & spurious animal tracks. Many of these are only waymarked at the point they leave a road & even though I know which way up to hold a map I had great fun trying to find my way to Kingsbridge. I followed one wide sweeping track across a wooded hillside, believing it to be a bridleway until it came to an abrupt end. Too proud to retreat I relied on my map & compass to take me through wood, gorse, brambles & bog to find stream, bridleway & escape – it was great fun.... when it was over!

Unusual cross in Treborough churchyard - similar to the Mercat Crosses very common in Scotland

Beer of the Day: a can of Strongbow! Not sure which one was best, the one en route or the one I had from the fridge when I got back to the van! Slightly too early for ‘The Royal Oak’ at Kingsbridge, I didn’t know that the ‘Notley Arms’ at Monksilver has been closed for 18 months! It was alive & well the last time I was here. Hmm... ‘Notley’ !! To crown the whole episode the bar at our campsite isn’t open as ‘it’s not the holiday season yet’!

Leighland Chapel

Having said that we were finished with the sea for a while it’s lovely to be camping tonight overlooking St. Audries Bay, just east of Watchet. What’s more, the wind has dropped & the sky has cleared....

Di: I must show you my photo of the old petrol station just below the Five Sisters of Kintail, north-west Scotland, where Jamie spent a summer restoring footpaths – a single disused pump... but very well-kept! I would have liked to publish a picture of all 3 alpacas but they wouldn’t all pose at the same time!
Nathan: Exmoor is magical but the landscape photos depend so much upon the weather – our best views over the last couple of days have been in woodland or the villages.