Dartmoor

It is a pretty miserable way to spend the winter, stuck indoors, with the wind and the rain lashing at the windows. Having fallen off my bike, with an injured arm, I was pretty limited as to what I could do. But, in typical Christine style, given my legs were still working and cabin fever was most definitely setting in, I needed an adventure.

Sometimes, something just goes off in my head, and I have to get out of the house. I grabbed a map, a rucksack, my lightweight camping gear, a stove and some snacks, then hopped in the car and headed straight for Devon.

I'm hugely into wild camping at the moment, albeit mostly from my sea kayak. But sea kayaking wasn't really an option as I could barely lift and hold my arm for a few seconds. I decided to head out to Dartmoor. I have quite a history with Dartmoor, having done the Ten Tors two years running as a child. It is a magical, mythical place. There are a few places that I'd never been or at least could not remember visiting. I had avoided Burrator Reservoir as it's something of a tourist trap. I don't think I'd ever been to Crazy Well Pool either. So, I created a little route that took in all of these sites and set off walking from Princetown.

It was a foggy, murky morning. I'd recently bought myself some Shokz headphones, mainly for swimming training. They were the perfect accompaniment to my morning’s walk. And I decided to scare myself silly by listening to the audio book of The Hound of the Baskervilles, which I had not read since I was a child. It was seriously atmospheric, listening to the words of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, complete with sound effects of the howling hound, as I trudged into the thick mist across the silent moor.

I will forever be grateful that I was taught the old school way of navigation. I'm super comfortable whipping out a map and compass to pick my way through the fog. When I was training with my school friends on the moor, we didn't have mobile phones back then. GPS devices were in their infancy, and we weren't allowed to use them in any case.

Nowadays, we are spoiled with Google Maps, Komoot, Strava and all manner of walking apps, not to mention my Garmin trustily strapped to my wrist as if it were part of my body. We are spoilt for choice as to which navigational aid to use. But the only one I ever truly trusted was my map and compass, which I would pore over obsessively, checking out contour lines, rocky features and trying to figure out if the pile of rocks looming ahead was the Tor I was looking for…or perhaps it was the next one.

My shoulder didn't seem to mind carrying a rucksack. I always use walking poles when I'm out in the hills or on the moor. They're great for stability, save me from tripping over when I'm top heavy and they're great for testing the depth of bogs and rivers.

The first day I only covered 13 kilometres, which was pretty pathetic in comparison to the distances I was doing in training for Ten Tors, where often we would cover up to 20 miles a day.

Crazy Well Pool

The weather was dank and a little bit grizzly, but I was just delighted to be out and doing something in the outdoors. I visited Crazy Well Pool and then carried on to Burrator Reservoir. Both were annoyingly busy, so I headed away from the road up towards Sheepstor, which seemed a reasonable place, off the beaten path to spend the night.

I'm one of these sad people who get really excited about camping kit. I love trying new camping meals, the latest camping gear and trying out various ways of keeping warm during the night.

In the Ten Tors of 1996, there was heavy snowfall and high winds all across the moor. I woke up in the middle of the night to an enormous slab of snow that had dumped itself in the entrance of our tent. Luckily, we had made really good progress and we're already on our way back up the moor towards Okehampton when, unknowing to us, the event had been called off. It took everything we had to finish the event, and we completed it in good time and received our medals. The rivers had burst their banks and, in an attempt, to jump one of them I become completely submerged. I think everybody was on the brink of hyperthermia and many of the children that year we're either airlifted off the moor by Chinook helicopters or simply could not be rescued and were forced to spend another night up on the Tors with the Army.

Cozying up for the night on Sheepstor during a relatively mild winter was a bit of a doddle in comparison. Not only that, but I was older, wiser and had a significantly better kit!

I put up a few social media posts sharing my little womble and was a little disappointed in a few folk, who seemed horrified that I was sleeping out by myself. It really was the easiest and nondescript overnight camp that I think I’d ever done, but somehow it filled them with utter terror on my behalf.

Perhaps it just takes a lot more to convert excitement to fear for me, but at no point did it cross my mind that anything I was doing was in any way unsafe. There didn't seem to be any logic to what they were saying. “But what if something happens to you, what if you get injured, what if you get ill?”

Wow. If I lived my life by all those ‘what ifs’ I would be sitting on my sofa right now wrapped in a serious amount of cotton wool.

There's something about being self-reliant, well organised, planning for all eventualities and leaning on all my experience, that means that the likelihood of any of their fears coming to fruition is extremely unlikely.

And in any case if they did, I would have done everything in my power to sort myself out before requesting help. I’m a Paramedic, after all…

What it did show me was that there is a huge spectrum of what people consider to be acceptable risk and what they consider an adventure to be. I'm loathe to call this weekend an adventure because honestly, it was just an easy walk with a little bit of camping.

In my world, I think the word ‘adventure’ was even a little bit extravagant. But to some people the concept of going out onto the moor camping alone was just a step too far. I tried not to let it annoy me and spoil my weekend and reminded myself that this was a reflection on them and their lives - not mine.

At about 2:00 in the morning I heard some voices.

What the actual hell?!

I come all the way up here into the back of beyond to be alone and yet here we are - people!

The voices passed very close to my tent and then faded as they went around the edge of the Tor. There was the rustling sound of tent material and then silence.

When I woke in the morning, I had a mooch about and bumped into two young lads who arrived very late at night ready to start climbing in the morning. We exchanged pleasantries over coffee, and they set about trying to climb the extremely greasy, lichen covered granite. I pulled a face; rather them than me and I packed up my tent ready for the second phase of my walk.

On the way down from my camp, I bumped into a very pleasant gentleman walking his spaniels. We had a long and pleasant chat which culminated in him enthusiastically telling me about a sign on the church door, down in the village of Sheepstor.

I almost didn't bother going but it was such a short deviation that I popped up to the pretty little church to take a look.

There was nobody around and the whole place was dead. I walked up to the church door and found the sign that he was talking about which, no word of a lie, actually moved me to tears.

I'm not a religious person and as I've got older, I do feel a little resentful at the amount of time I was forced to spend at church concerts, sitting on a hard floor in my primary school singing hymns instead of learning maths, where I struggle, and going to confirmation classes, which was a complete waste of my childhood.

The sign was so moving that I was almost tempted to push the door and go inside. But I just couldn't bring myself to do it. So, I turned my back, walked away and continued on my journey, thinking about everything that sign meant.

I covered about 15 kilometres more, working my way back around Kings Tor back into Princetown. It was hard going under foot mostly on the old railway lines and my feet were definitely starting to feel the lack of walking over the years.

The dark shapes of Dartmoor ponies came out of the gloom and disappeared back into the mist along with the occasional highland cow and dog walkers, who didn't seem to stray very far from Princetown. As I approached my car, the soggy blues and pinks of Christmas lights in the drizzle greeted me. I had hoped for golden, crisp, frosty mornings and blue skies, but they seem to be a thing of the past in England now.

I promised myself that I wouldn't leave it so long next time and given that Dartmoor is barely 2 hours away from home, there really isn't an excuse not to visit more often.