Vur Tor Sunset

Vur Tor Sunset

Friday 3 September 2010

Belstone to Watern, Wild camp 27-08-2010

Wednesday evening and work was over for the week, the joys of fighting my way through the Plymouth rush hour traffic was set out in front of me, before hitting the open moorland roads heading north to Barnstaple and onwards to Ilfracombe.

The drive was enjoyable once clear of the outskirts of plymouth with no hold ups, just the pleasure of low vissability with the mist setting in over the moors, driving through the clag , thinking about  the weekends walking and wildcamping left me wondering if the mist would still be lingering when it was time for us to head out on foot over the moors.

Ariving in Ilfracombe my first greeting came from the over energetic Taz (the lurcher cross collie) and a brief hello from Louise, next thing on the cards for me was food (I should be fat with the amount i eat).

Thursday was Taz walking day for me with a bimble round Ilfracombe.

Friday soon came and a lazy start was had before we set out for the drive to Belstone, two rucksacks packed and the Dogs pack loaded up with his bed for the night (this to be his first camping trip).

Leaving the car at Belstone we strolled up through the village, past the stocks and pub before dropping down into Belstone cleave and skirting round the woods before cutting through a section of woods towards Ramsley with the intention of picking up the track towards the stone row below Cosdon, only to be sent off on a un-needed detour down through some woods and into ramsley itself, i shall have to find the woman and thank her for telling us we were ment to go through the field for the footpath when we were actually walking on the bridle way that we wanted to go along (note toself to ignore locals and stick to reading the map).

A bonus to taking the route around the outskirts of the moors, was coming across the fairy's house.






Once back on track and heading back out onto the open moor we followed our way up through the walled feild network and out to the triple stone row.
From here it was an easy to navigate route out to Hound Tor and onwards to Wild Tor, a descent down into the valley before ascending to Watern Tor and our wild camp spot, the stream in the valley offering an ideal spot to top up with water ready for the evenings cooking.
The nights accomodation was to be the Shangri-la3 with full nest (the first outing for the nest and i was dissapointed to find out the tie out points are not long enough to match up and use the Fly pegs).
To add even more interest to the evenings camping having Taz along with us for the first time camping, this could have been a disaster with him having a bad habbit for wanting to chase sheep, lucky for us having loaded him up with his doggy pack, once in the tent and the sheep were out of sight he settled down quite well.

The Following day was an easy stroll back heading from Watern Tor over to Hanging stone, and then following the track back to Belstone past Oke tor and Winter Tor, before finishing in the pub for a cold drink and a nice Ploughmans lunch.

1 comment:

  1. Sounds like a great loop, nice black and white photo.

    ReplyDelete