Ken woke up feeling worse with a cold and fever(?), so we had a slower day today. Sara actually thinks he should get a medal for walking more than ten miles today over sometimes steep terrain while feeling sick.
We initially weren’t sure about where the
path began. We asked a man and woman walking together, and he seemed uncertain
but suggested the direction of the circular walk. A few minutes later we asked
a group of men who were doing the Devon Coast to Coast Walk, and they pointed
us in the right direction, towards the upper car park. It was a steep path at
first, and we gained height quickly.
We saw the usual sheep, then the less
usual cattle (who didn’t bother us when we went through their pasture). I noted
that the landscape was the opposite of Kamloops, which has dry sandy coloured
hills with little tufts of green on them, like a chenille bedspread. Here,
there were green hills covered with little tufts of dry sandy coloured moor
grass.
After a bit of road walking, we joined the
Macmillan Way and had another ascent.
Ken felt like if he could make it to Exe
Head (about 3 miles into the walk), he could make it the rest of the way. We
did arrive at Exe Head and sat down for lunch—ham baguettes from the Exmoor
Forest Inn the night before. We then
began the part of the walk that we had done before in 2013, which we had really
enjoyed. It began with the part Ken called the canyon walk.
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| The canyon walk |
When we got to the
bottom, we were surprised and overjoyed (well, maybe just joyed and not overly
so) that there was now a footbridge at the bottom, where the attempted fording
of the river had caused us so much trouble before.
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| The footbridge--it doesn't look like much, but it was great! |
We then gently ascended to Cheriton ridge,
and we saw the Exmoor ponies in the same area where we had seen them last year.
They cheered us up.
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| Exmoor ponies! |
I wish I had taken a photo of Ken once we
got to the top of the ridge and were able to look down into Cheriton (it was a
long way to get to that point). Ken said he needed to lie down on the grass,
and he sort of collapsed down and happily lay on his back for awhile, shading
his eyes with his map and then his hat, “waiting for the rescue jeep,” as he
said. We enjoyed hearing the songs of the sky larks who rise high above their
nests and sing a lengthy and seemingly unending song to distract people from
the nests below. As no rescue jeep came, after about a twenty minute rest Ken
felt good enough to go. He said that he felt like he was “soldiering on, like
Mrs. Flack” (a reference to a character in the TV series As Time Goes By).
We again enjoyed our downhill walk, which
last time had blooming gorse, this time had blooming hawthorn. We saw a fox on
the path, briefly.
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| Ken beneath the blooming hawthorn |
We entered the National Trust part of the
land along the river, and again thoroughly enjoyed this peaceful, lovely walk.
This time, the café at Watersmeet was still open, so Ken got a Pepsi to revive
him a bit. He heard the cafe playing the song, "Nothing's gonna stop us now," with which he agreed. We remembered this time to actually take a photo of Watersmeet.
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| Watersmeet |
When we came lower down the river, we saw a
huge and majestic heron standing on a rock.
Sara really liked the architectural look of
this tree.
We did finally arrive at Lynmouth.
Throughout today’s walk, we appreciated that there were new fingerposts and
better waymarking than there was six years ago. The quill on this fingerpost
indicates the Coleridge Way, named for the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge who
lived and walked in this area.
After a pub dinner, we’re settled in at our
B&B Hillside House, where we are happy to stay again after enjoying it so
much in 2013.
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