Dragon Rambles

Halloween marked the start of a weekend away that I had been looking forward to for weeks. Two friends from work and myself were heading off to do some walking in Dartmoor. We stayed at Jo’s house Friday night and got a reasonably early start on the 1st. We got dropped off in the middle of Dartmoor somewhere before starting the walk back to the town where we had left the car. I think the walk was to be about 12 miles. Yes, I’m talking miles people. I’m learning to go with the flow ? For those still living in the metric world, I think 1 mile is about 1.7 km – do the maths yourself

When we got started the wind was cold. It pretty much just got colder. Although after a few hours we changed the direction we were walking in, so it wasn’t an icy wind straight into the ear anymore. We had lunch sheltering in the middle of a collection of very large boulders to try and get out of the wind. Didn’t work. I have to say it was the shortest lunch break I’ve ever had during a walk.

And because we were walking the first few hours off the trail, following some slightly vague directions, we got lost. Andreas managed to figure out where we were though after we climbed to the top of another great big hill so he could take out height on his handy little GPS and look around at the landmarks. Yay, we were saved! Hehehe.

You may be thinking at this point that we didn’t have a good day. You’d be wrong. I even had fun of walking through all the boggy ground. Jo and I fell over a lot, while Andreas with his walking poles had a much easier job of walking through. At one point either Jo or I were falling down almost every 2nd step. Sometimes we were laughing so hard we just couldn’t get up.

The views were so stark and lonely and often it felt like we were the only ones up there. We walked past ancient iron mines (or rather the spoil mounds that are left of them), ruins of ancient settlements and weird looking wildlife. Ok, ok, so cows aren’t quite wildlife, but they were black with a big white band around its middle. Never seen anything like it.

As we were coming to the end of the trip ready to walk back down off the moors, we were gifted with a gorgeous sunset. Of course like everything else I didn’t get a photo of this as the cold tricked my camera into thinking the battery was flat. I plan to get copies of Jo’s photos off her.

And finally, as we walked through the gate off Dartmoor, we stopped being cold. For the first time since getting out of the car we were no longer in the icy wind. I’d love to go back to Dartmoor again, but I think I’ll wait til Spring. Or Summer.

The next day I had very sore legs. From all that springy walking through the bogs. Before we headed off on the drive back to Cardiff, we stopped at Plymouth to have a walk around. Here are the photos that I took that weekend.

I decided to take a page out of Vicky’s book and try my hand at some Halloween cupcakes. I made spiders, Draculas and mummies. Everyone at work had much fun eating them and I had much fun icing them… well, at least for the first 2 hours ?

In a bid to start to meet more people outside of work I decided to go along on one of the Tiger Bay Ramblers walks. Jo came along too. We went to the Brecon Mountain Railway where we started our walk. It was a great day and I met some nice people. I think I’ll be going on another one, just not sure when yet. I took a few photos – just not as many as I thought I had.

Another weekend walk for Jo, Andreas and myself. This time we signed up and went with a group, so we had a guide. It was a bit different, as I’m not used to walking through villages. And the walk was very easy. We three were out the front for most of it and easily chatting the whole way. But it was still a good 4-5h walk. Here are the photos.