A Walk in the Rain !

Having found our way to our isolated b&b just outside Hartland in Nth Devon the previous day, it was time to put on our walking legs as we attempted a 'smallish" 15km section of the beautiful 1,000km Sth West Coastal trail.

First though we had to survive a 5km drive to our nominated start point at Tichberry Farm along some incredibly narrow lanes and with H in charge of navigation using our b&b's kindly provided local map.

High hedges surrounding the car had me jumping at shadows every time I rounded a corner expecting to be fronted by a massive milk tanker or the like. Our host had explained that the lanes were at their worst at this time of the year as councils are loathe to disturb possible bird nests meaning that overgrowth well and truly hid potential passing points.

With H treating the map like a hedge maze we somehow arrived unscathed at our starting point some 8kms from our destination at Hartland Quay.

3kms in as we traversed the narrow walking trail with occasional views of seriously steep drops, I made the mistake of remarking how easy the trail was in comparison to other nearby sections I'd done !

My remarks were a bad mistake !

No sooner had we moved on from having a cuppa at a cafe at Hartland Point, arguably the remotest cafe in the UK, than the seriously steep climbs and descents emerged. In between our ragged breathing the peaks and troughs provided for stunning views of a geological landscape that suggested past violent upheaval.

With conditions starting to become gloomy we finally scrambled into Hartland Quay a former Quay and single street of same coloured buildings perched right on this wild looking coast.

After a lunch that comprised of ice cream and little else we partly retraced our steps in the now heavy drizzle eventually taking shelter under a swathe of overhanging branches.

With the weather finally breaking I put up the drone for a quick flight over the cliffs and coastline

Despite a couple of hiccups where H had us heading into cow paddocks we finally made it back to our car both now pretty fatigued from our constant climbing and descending.

There was only one more challenge for the day and that was making it to Hartland just over 2 miles away for dinner along some of the narrowest lanes I have driven on in my life.

So narrow in fact that a passing walker would have had to have clambered over our car roof as our wheels were just about wedged into the hedge lines. A right angle bridge had all the car sensor alarms going off at once with corners completely blind and approaching houses giving the appearance that we were about to drive through the front living rooms - this is definitely not an area for the nervous driver !

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