On the run in North Wales

 

Devon is very special and Dartmoor in particular has been wonderful to explore. But for us you can't beat the Vale of Clwyd - here's Vicky on her way up to the summit of Moel Famau on a sunny November day. We'd decided that it was time to return to Denbighshire. Our time in Devon was marvellous and we enjoyed our time there but COVID and associated travel restrictions were enough to prompt us to bring forward our move back home. Mind you moving house is fraught at the best of times but when different parts of the country are in different tiers and Wales goes its own way then it's a little more stressful, and on top of that our completion was delayed because of problems further down the chain of house deals which were at the top of. 

We've made it my lovelies!

Well would it all fall apart or were we on? Fortunately the transaction went through and thanks to the very accommodating family removal firm of Packfirst we made it back to Wales. They were a friendly bunch and they certainly took much of the hassle out of moving day - but it seemed strange to the ear to hear their round Devon vowels in Prestatyn!

And without further ado on our return to North Wales we managed to find a fell race! Having done just one race on Dartmoor in February that could definitely be categorised as a fell race I was having withdrawal symptoms, the chief of these being that my climbing legs had disappeared. This event on the Clwydian hills was our first entry into the night time Out-Fit Winter Handicap series - not feeling super fit in climbing terms Vicky and I decided to 'run with poles'. Having invested a couple of years ago in a set of British made Mountain King running poles I thought I'd take them through their paces. I thought they might be a bit cumbersome going downhill and maybe they were a bit but they sure helped on the last long uphill. There's a funny little loop at the top left hand side of the map and it was indeed a funny little loop which we're glad we got right.

Here we go - Westward Ho!

Westward Ho! is the the name of a novel by Charles Kingsley - it's also the name of a seaside town in Devon (complete with exclamation mark!) Kingsley was born in Devon and set his story in Bideford on the north Devon Coast. In the nineteenth century local entrepreneurs decided to capitalise on the popularity of the novel and named a fledgling tourist spot a few miles away with the name of the book. It's now an attractive seaside resort and we thought we'd spend a few days there to cheer up our November. We pottered along the seafront and explored to surrounding nature reserves with Skip and had a thoroughly relaxing time. Kingsley is not the only literary connection which the area possesses and Rudyard Kipling  spent some time being educated at the United Services College in Westward Ho! where he wrote some of his early work. His short stories entitled Stalky and Co were apparently based on his larking about with chums on the cliff sides overlooking the town. We were aware of the Staffordshire Kipling connection as we'd run around Rudyard Lake several times, this is a reservoir in attractive surroundings near Leek which was quite a tourist trap in the 19th century - and indeed Kipling's parents met there on a day trip from the Potteries - they liked it so much they named their son after it! And a further curiosity - the lake was named for Ralph Rudyard a local chap who was reputed to have been the soldier who killed Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field.

No we have no doggie ice cream!

No trip to the seaside is complete without ice cream and even on this bracing but sunny morning we found a van from the world famous firm of Hocking's who ply their trade in several North Devon locations. They are very traditional in respect of their fare - it's vanilla or vanilla but it's vanilla of the highest quality. You can have a cone or a wafer, you can have a Cadbury's Flake stuffed in it and there are several other variations of style but it's vanilla only. Scrumptious

Do come again!

A red post

It's the pillar box from Easter Island, sloping backwards slightly (perhaps from a collision with a vehicle) this iconic letter box is on Le Molay Littry Way. No we're not in France - this is Bovey Tracey in Devon which has, as a twin town, Le Molay-Littry in Northern France. The road you see is a by-pass which takes some traffic away from the middle of town to break the speed limit. Like a lot of letter boxes nowadays this one was looking drab and dirty until someone knitted a very nice combination waistcoat and hat for it to brighten things up. After a couple of weeks the knitwear was removed and, guess what, it's has a very spruce paint job! Was the Royal Mail embarrassed into painting it up? I must take a look at other local pillar boxes to see if it's just a one off or a new broom policy by the post people. Or maybe a local resident has crept out at the dead of night with a tin of pillar box red!

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Well this is a new one to me! There is a whole society devoted to surveying historic graffiti in Devon. These are especially found in medieval churches and rather than getting the idea that churchgoers 500 years ago got bored and started to scratch their names on the wall there are other reasons for the appearance of graffiti. In many cases it seems that symbols such as pentangles were created as ritual protection marks, others were stonemason's handiwork and could have been the equivalent of their signature. The Devon graffiti surveyors seem to have particular fun trying to decipher some of the writing styles of long ago, with varying degrees of success.

Here's St Winifred's in Manaton a fine Devon church brimming with medieval graffiti. Manaton (as opposed to Manhattan) is a pretty village on the edge of Dartmoor and on a sunny day we packed a picnic and set off on a ramble having parked our car near the village green but at a judicious distance from the cricket pitch. We didn't go into the church to survey any graffiti but this photo gives an idea of the fine clear day it was. We set off past the remains of a large granite cross in the graveyard - this was sabotaged by the vicar in the mid-19th century as he wanted to stop the villagers carrying coffins thrice round the cross before burials took place. He considered this to be the relic of a pagan rite! There seems to be no record of whether or not villagers carried on carrying coffins round the rather substantial remains of the cross. We took our lunch up to Manaton Rocks a secluded viewpoint well worth the rough climb up.

And to round off this post full of miscellany, here's a selection of beers suitable for mountain runners. Scafell needs no explanation but the brewer, Northern Monk is continuing to come up with superb ales, one of our favourites. Brewdog have a new clear pale ale - and we've traversed many jagged edges on the hills. Buxton Brewery have gained an international reputation and I'm sure the beast on the front of this one chased me on a particularly dark night in Derbyshire. Finally another Derbyshire brewery, Thornbridge has recently teamed up with the North Brewing Co in Yorkshire to produce the excellent North Bridge which is described as a 'Mountain Ale'.

Darting round on Dartmoor

What sort of dogs were around 3000 years ago?

Skip's resting here at the top end of the old stone row on the eastern slopes of Cosden Hill. We'd run up there from the village of South Zeal and were on our way to the top of what is one of the highest peaks on Dartmoor. The stone row is a bit of a mystery and there are many theories as to the function of the many Bronze Age stone rows scattered all over Dartmoor. This row does seem to point towards the summit of Cosden but tracing an exact line towards the peak shows that it misses the top by some distance. Heading in a southerly direction on an old track marked as a bridleway on the OS map we made dismal progress through the bog. We saw no sign of this route being used by any horse riders and the Dartmoor ponies didn't seem interested in wading through the wet ground. And the local council have obviously not done anything about maintaining drainage for this ancient byway - very remiss of them I'd say! The track headed up and round the southern end of the ridge south of Cosden and suddenly, having not seen a soul since we set off, we spotted a couple of runners travelling rapidly along the skyline. A few minutes more of our painstaking progress led us to a clear wide north-south track - what a relief! We plodded up with renewed vigour and close to the peak we bumped into Tim L, whom I recognised from several races I'd done in the past, he was happy to stop and have a chat and we were happy for the opportunity of a breather.

Dartmoor is full of unexpected surprises, for a start what looks like a clear path marked on the OS map may not be found anymore (at least not where they're meant to be), and elsewhere broad tracks exist which are not indicated on the map. You have to have an open mind about route-finding and it's a good idea to avoid a misty day. Following one such broad track recently on Trendlebere Down I decided that I should be heading right down towards the river which could be heard gushing in the distance - I followed what looked like a path but soon found myself (with Skip) scrambling down a steep gully having to look very carefully at where my feet were landing. And what did I nearly tread on - an Amethyst Deceiver (laccaria amethystina) a vivid purple mushroom! What a spot! And a few days before we found a very fine specimen of amanita muscaria which is also known as the Fly Agaric. This is the classic toadstool of children's fairytales and it has a multitude of uses. Not only has it long been known as a hallucinogenic but it's also used to catch flies, hence the name. There are many agarics and the genus agaric encompasses toadstool and mushrooms with gills. Fly Agaric is thus a gilled mushroom as opposed to a grilled mushroom - you can eat them though provided they are parboiled twice before cooking! Here's our photo followed by another one of the Amethyst Deceiver (also edible) which I nearly stood on!

Fancy a bite?

Eat me for a Purple Haze!

Lighthouses and Ale

 

A nine-legged lighthouse!

Here's an interesting lighthouse! This is at Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset and it's on the beach. We'd just been up to Bristol for the day and on the way back we decided to stop for a walk and a run by the seaside, we'd done a parkrun here earlier in the year and we knew it was just off the M5. I galloped along the promenade through the middle of town and moved onto the beach on the north side of town heading up for this unusual structure. Burnham faces the Severn Estuary across sandbars and the like and the two strategically sited Burnham lighthouses performed a vital function. This is the Low Burnham Lighthouse which was decommissioned in 1969, but after the High Turnham Lighthouse was sold as a residence they had to switch this one back on in 1993. You can if you like stay at the holiday let in the High Lighthouse! 

Thirsty work pitching forks!

You will know of The Waldorf Hotel in New York, The Ritz and The Savoy in London, even Raffles Hotel in Singapore. The Royal Clarence Hotel in Exeter ranks with these historic rooming houses as it was the first establishment to be called a hotel in England in 1770. However The Royal Clarence Hotel that I ran past was in Burnham-on Sea and is slightly newer dating from 1792. The reason I am dwelling on this fine establishment (as opposed to dwelling in it!) is that it was the home of one of the earliest microbreweries in the UK and I recall driving down from Bristol in the 1980's to enjoy a fine pint looking over the sea at a glorious sunset. The brewery has moved and changed hands but some of the excellent ales are still in their portfolio including Pitchfork, a golden light ale which won Champion Beer of Britain in 1998. This was a regular on the bar during our stewardship at the George and Dragon, Macclesfield - always in fine form and a firm favourite with the locals!

Whilst on the topic of lovely beer another of the pioneers of micro brewing from the last century is Roosters from Knaresborough in Yorkshire. Roosters was founded by Sean Franklin as Franklins Brewery in 1980, he was one of the first to bring hops from the US over here and his regular bitter was fabulous - I came across it at the Bridge Inn in Otley and thought that couldn't be beaten, Ian Botham said the same in his autobiography a few years later, he'd also been to the Bridge Inn. Roosters under new owners has gone from strength to strength and here's a tinny of theirs named for a Manchester United football manager!

Who's lost their marbles?

You might find them here!

Running by the upper reaches of the River Bovey proved to be quite an alternate experience to our previous week's gallop on Dartmoor. Skip and I had trotted from tor to tor admiring the views over the surrounding countryside. Today there was a thick clag covering the tops and we decided to take a lower level approach through ancient woodland along old stony track and paths. There was no shortage of interest and tracking along a deserted trail we came across this stone monument at the entrance to a grassy field - The Lost Marbles Dept - No Entry! We carried on no wiser as to what happens to people's marbles in this curious corner of Devon

No swans on this river!

My OS map showed that there was a clear crossing of the Rivey Bovey further up the valley and a fairly new footpath sign pointed straight across the boulders in the middle of the river here behind me. Skip didn't look very interested in climbing over these so we waded through the pools below and got our feet thoroughly wet. The path on the opposite side wasn't at all clear and we found ourselves following a faint trail back downstream on the other side which regularly seemed to fade from view appearing again after a few minutes of floundering through rocks and bracken. We were making painfully slow progress until after about 20 minutes we found a wide easy path which took us straight down to the Old Clam Bridge.

Nothing to worry about!

This has nothing to do with collecting clamshells or anything like that and the word clam refers to a particular style of bridge which at one time was a relatively common feature of the Dartmoor area. In this case an oak tree trunk has been felled across the river and a sturdy hand rail is attached to its upper side, it seems that there were at one time dozens of clam bridges crossing streams and rivers along the steep valleys that criss cross Dartmoor - this is one of the last survivors. For those travellers who prefer to take a less risky line there is a stouter wooden footbridge built more recently alongside this ancient relic.

 En route we called by at Posh and Beck's place!

If we'd made a slight detour we'd have found ourselves at Becky Falls which is a bit of a tourist attraction. For some reason the adjacent farmhouse is called Beckhams - we couldn't see any goalposts though!

The Spa Town Tour

Yummy ale!

Up north on a sad mission unfortunately. We did however manage to book a lovely apartment in Buxton one of our old stomping grounds. In the days when we were there the choice of beer was OK and there were some pleasant hostelries but the big change has been the Buxton Brewery. We were in town Monday and Tuesday and the Buxton Brewery Tap is closed on those nights - however the local supermarket stocked the local produce (well done Morrison's) and we were able to sample an aromatic Moor Top ale and a hoppy Lupulus X Simcoe. And I managed to get slightly lost on Comb's Moss. Setting off to attempt a run I'd done many times I realised once I was on the tops that it was going to take longer than I had first imagined.

Try again another day!

I had originally thought I could run round the good path on the edges of this big brown shape in an hour or so. But the good path was not so good and I thought I'd cut across the bog and cover a shorter distance. That's the top right section of my figure of eight however most of the brown bit consists of thigh high heather with an understorey of thick peat bog and my speed diminished dramatically. Deciding to cut my losses I headed home. Next time I shall start out earlier and stick to the perimeter path in order to get back in good time and enable us to have some more of that marvellous Buxton beer.

Some contours there!

Leaving Buxton we headed south to another splendid spa town. The lucky people of Great Malvern have a wonderful playground on their doorstep. And we could step straight out of our hotel over the road and onto the hillside. I took Skip for a gallop up North Hill and then to the summit of the Worcestershire Beacon, poor fellow Skip wasn't coping very well with the heat so we were lucky to find a stream on the side of this otherwise very dry range of hills. Our favourite dog friendly pub, the Nag's Head was open and we found more excellent beer in tip top condition and some good pub grub - I thought I'd found a small piece of bone in my cottage pie but - oops - it was a filling out of my tooth! Thanks goodness I already had a dentist's appointment booked two days later.

Here's Skip contemplating the descent!

All downhill from here!