Day 11: Devon mud

Distance: 13.4 miles
Lyric-in-my-head-all-day:

Why don't we take off alone
Take a trip somewhere far far away
We'll be together, all alone, again
Just like we used to, in the early days ...

During the planning stages, I would describe to people how Dawn and I would be doing this three month adventure together. Some people really got it, some thought it was nuts, some just didn't understand. We've had the same variety of reactions here as we meet people. At the Endsleigh, one receptionist told us, "that sounds fun"; her tone suggesting it was the least fun thing she could imagine. But one young man there, who we've been calling William because we don't know his name (he's likely reading this - sorry William), had the nicest reaction we've heard. At breakfast, he told us that it sounds like a wonderful way to spend a lot of time together. And I think at the end of the day that's what this trip is about for us. So far, we have really enjoyed each other's company 24x7. But then again, it's only two weeks in.

As I've said before, we really love your comments. So I thought I'd use today's post to respond to some blog comments, and just publicly say thank you to our commenters.

At the very top of the list is my Dad! Dad, your comment without Erin's supervision was great! You would just love the streams here. The Endsleigh people claim that the River Tamar is the best fishing river in England - I read that they have wild brown trout, so you'd feel at home. It seemed today that every hour we crossed another stream that looked like it could have trout.



Julia, so glad we met in Penzance for lots of reasons - just one of which is what you've added to the blog! In our time in the drawing rooms of high class England, we didn't have much experience with gassy elders, but we did see a few folks that we thought we be contenders for this competition.

Larry, a few days ago you asked about my reaction to the ferry over the river Fowey. It's been tough. For those of you not following, we are supposed to be walking from Land's End to John O'Groats. But because no one has built a bridge over the Fowey within 10 miles of the ocean, we had to change our plan. Now we're walking from Land's End to Fowey, and then from Polruan to John O'Groats. Someday, I'll come back here and run from Fowey up to the bridge, across, and down the other side, just to make it all right.

Andrew from the Ladock pub, thanks for being the quickest ever from meeting us to supplying a comment! Pass on to Robbie that the Toy Story card game looks cool, and here's a picture we got in Harrod's last week before we started walking:



A special personal thanks to the commenters who have said nice things about my new bearded fedora look! Bruce, Ian, Scott - thanks! I did bring a beard trimmer, but I'm not carrying it. It went in the box that we sent to Bath. So the beard gets trimmed every 3 weeks. Sadly, no need to trim sideburns, since I seem completely unable to grow any.



Ian, I can't believe that I missed the Simpsons/Eden Project connection. Would have been great to throw a Simpson's still in as one of our pictures, though I'm not sure I know how to do it with iPad technology.

Thanks to all the rest of you that I haven't mentioned too! Helmut, we will miss you. We're still wondering what happened to Gordon and Stephanie - they didn't respond to my blatant comment trolling!

Today, we had another windy day, but thankfully continued our streak of no rain. At one point, walking along the edge of a wood, there was a mad barking scramble and a pack of happy terriers came bounding out of the wood to say hello. A voice in the wood called them back. After some more walking, we came to the gate you can see just to left of center near the top of this picture.


In the very upper right you can see a round feed trough used for horses (you may have to click on the picture to get a higher resolution version). The ponies like to come into this part of the field and churn it into a nice two foot deep mixture of horse shit and mud. Our challenge was to get from the far side of the gate to the near side of the mud. The first move was to the trough, because right at the trough it was a little firmer - you only sank in a few inches. I managed to kind of quickly pick my way from the gate to the trough, my size 13 feet acting like canoes and keeping me from going in too deep. Dawn had a misstep. Her leg went down, she fell over: "aaarrgghhh. I'm falling in poo!" I reached over and pulled her out - fortunately her boot stayed on. She was in almost to her knee. She got a fair amount of mud - and poo - seeping through her laces but her gaiters and leggings protected her from the worst of it.

So we were stuck on this small island, surrounded on all sides by the mire. We tried setting off in various directions, but they were all bad. We had a fair supply of Jaffa Cakes, and some water, so maybe we could just hold out a while. But after quite a few minutes of contemplation and discussion, we decided to just go for it. I wouldn't say our mad scramble was completely successful, but we did make it to the other side.

An hour later, we were in the village of Bridestow. A voice, strangely familiar, called us over. The voice belonged to the weathered, strong looking face of a woman who did not look to be well over seventy, as she claimed. She'd seen us walking, and was wondering if we'd gotten through the mud. The 14 dogs were hers, and the land was hers as well. "Bad year for muck", she told us, the way other farmers would describe their daffodil crop. "Worst in years. Terrible stuff."

We had a snack (HobNobs) in the churchyard, and decided to take the bicycle path to Okehampton, rather than venturing through more boggy, mucky footpaths.



Tomorrow we have a short day to South Zeal. Our default path goes through the edge of Dartmoor. We've read that the boggy terrain in the moor makes where we've been a garden path, so we'll see. We may end up taking the lanes instead. I think I understand why some of these footpaths are most popular in the summer, when things are a little drier.

Location:Station Rd,Okehampton,United Kingdom