August long weekend in Devon | alison richards | graphic designer and artworker

The UK has a summer public holiday in August so people can actually get out an enjoy the weather, which is supposed to be good by then. It usually is, though like always in the UK it can be a bit hit-or-miss. This long weekend, however, it was a definite hit!

I left London early Friday morning, catching a train from Waterloo to Devon, where Mum and Dad were waiting to pick me up. We then went to a cafe for lunch before going back to their place and relaxing.

The next day, we drove to Moretonhampstead in Dartmoor, where we parked and tied on our hiking boots. The walk we were going on today went up from the village to an Iron Age hillfort. I don't have any photos of that because, to be honest, it doesn't really look like much. What's left is mainly a lumpy ring around the top of the hill which was used as fortifications for the village that would have been enclosed within. But the view from the hill was pretty awesome!

We stopped in to Drewsteignton, another moor village, for a cider in the pub.

The next day, we were up and at it again! The drive to the trailhead for this one was a little sketchy, through some rather tight single track roads with few passing places! We made it to the parking area at Sheepstor, where there was a cookout happening for people who had obviously been out for some very early morning trekking. We parked and set off.

This walk had it all. Cute cows and sheep, an old house used in the film War Horse, and an impressive array of standing stones including a couple of giants!

Ditsworthy Warren House, used in the film War Horse. It has been abandoned since 1974, but I would totally buy it and live there. Unfortunately it is used by the army in their training on Dartmoor, so I’ll have to forget my dreams of living remotely on Dartmoor. It did, however, have full 4G there!

This is named the “Bone Stone”, the first stone of the Drizzlecombe stone row. This row forms part of a Bronze Age settlement on Dartmoor. There’s actually three stone rows in this location, but this is the most obvious one, the others had fallen stones and weren’t very visible. All that remains of the settlement now are these stones and some cairns nearby, the biggest of which is called the Giant’s Basin.

This is thought to be the biggest standing stone on Dartmoor, at 4.2m high. Myself for scale.

The walk them took us around a hill to an old tin mine. However, it wasn't quite as easy as that as we lost the path for a bit there and ended up walking across the open moorland for a while, meeting some ponies and cows, before we finally found the path again and walked to the mine. This was Eylesbarrow mine, which was abandoned in the mid-1800's as the tin deposit became depleted.

This weirdo thought standing on a wall of the tin mine was a good idea.

Weirdo horse looks like he is mediating a discussion between other horses.

The side wall of stamping mill number 2, with sheep.

Honestly, I don't know what was going on with the animals on Dartmoor today, but when we were walking back to the car we came upon two highland cows, standing in a leat. Must have been hot for them, with all their shaggy hair!

The sign behind them says “Please do not obstruct the leat stream”

Then, when we were sitting on the grass eating lunch, a cow decided to sidle up to the car and shimmy alongside it, licking the mirror, before Dad shooed it off!

We had a relaxed morning the day I was to go back to London. I was catching the bus back, as the train had been too expensive, but it wasn't until after lunch so Mum and I went for the standard walk around the village. We had an early lunch then drove to Exeter for me to go home.

Turned out that it was truly one of the worst bus trips I've ever had! We got to Taunton services for the driver to swap over, and we were allowed off the bus for a little bit so I stood in the sun for 20 mins. Then we got on the bus and had truly horrible traffic all the way to Heathrow, the next stop. Because the traffic had been so awful, it meant that the driver had to change again, as they are only allowed to drive for a certain number of hours. This meant that the stop in Heathrow, usually about 10 mins, was going to be about an hour. Bugger that.

Myself and a couple of other people from the bus instead decided to get on the Tube, and I was home in just over an hour. The bus had left Exeter at 1:15pm, and I finally made it home just after 8pm.