Day: 059
Date: Friday, 29 July 2022
Start: Simonsbath
Finish: Barnstaple
Daily Kilometres: 32
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 1662
Weather: Mild to warm and mostly sunny
Accommodation: Guesthouse
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Full English breakfast
Lunch: Ham, cheese & salad sandwiches
Dinner: Sweet & sour pork & rice/Chocolate mousse
Aches: Dave - a few niggles and left ankle particularly troublesome. Julie - nothing reported.
Highlight: Late in the afternoon, we followed an old bridleway, Smoky House Lane, for about 5 kilometres. It was like walking through a circular tunnel that had been drilled through the earth and foliage. The high earthen walls, topped by hedgerows and trees that closed over the top were responsible for the effect with a little bit of sunlight finding its way through here and there to dapple the trail. It was very pleasant and easy walking.
Lowlight: We encountered a delivery van coming the other way while walking down a very narrow lane and as usual we stopped and got off the road surface as best we could to let it pass. It slowed a bit but made no effort to give us any clearance, with its wing mirror clipping the top of Dave’s pack frame, just above his shoulder and to the left of his ear, and slamming back against the van. While Dave banged the side of the van as it drove past, Julie fell back into the brambles and nettles mixed in with the hedgerow to avoid being hit, and had to be pulled out. The van stopped but the driver showed no concern before driving off while Dave shouted that he was calling the police and photographed his van and licence plate..
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We enjoyed our full English breakfast at the hotel, even though it was later than we would have liked. This was our most expensive accommodation of the trip, but we had little choice in the middle of Exmoor. Having said that, the accommodation and food was excellent, delivered with friendly service, so the higher prices didn’t hurt quite so much.
We started walking at 8:45am after conversations with some interested fellow guests and with the “Walk for George” charity walkers and support crew (see yesterday’s post). To get back to the guidebook route, we decided to take a road, for 6 kilometres, that we feared may have been busy, but turned out to be relatively quiet and a beautiful walk. Along the way we were cheered by some of the “Walk for George” supporters in several vehicle convoys that passed.
When we left the road to rejoin the guidebook route, following some field paths along a ridge, we were treated to “dress circle” views across Exmoor and into the valleys below including the village of Challacombe on an absolutely perfect day. We dropped down off the ridge near the village and then had some challenging ups and downs as we crossed some valleys before stopping for a break in the late morning. More undulations followed, though generally the walking was good, before a longish roadwalk descent from Exmoor to the village of Bratton Fleming, where we stopped and had a cold drink and ice cream from the village store while we waited for sandwiches to be made to take with us.
It was on the descent from the village that we had our encounter with a delivery van (see above) but, after we recovered from our surprise (we have become used to very courteous drivers on the narrowest of roads), we carried on down into the valley. At the bottom, we began walking downstream through an attractive pine forest before finding a spot to eat our late lunch.
After a stressful one kilometre roadwalk on a very busy and winding road, the balance of our journey into Barnstaple was on lovely trail through woodland and along Smoky House Lane (see above). At Barnstaple, we had to journey through the suburbs on a complicated route using our navigation app before eventually reaching our guesthouse accommodation at 5:45pm, happy with our day’s work and having enjoyed more superb scenery.
Day off tomorrow.
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