Short take: in which Dartmoor is crossed and bogs are encountered for the first time.
Russ, and everyone else, was fine this morning, so at 9:30 (our customary starting time) we started off. A short time later we came out onto the moor... and the wind. Today was a windy day. Not perhaps quite as windy as the day to Mevagissey, but windy enough, and this time the wind was in our faces. Pretty quickly we all changed into rain jackets (as windbreakers), put our hoods up, heads down, and marched. There wasn't too much talking... too windy.
Route-finding was, for much of the day, not difficult, because we had sun and clouds and most of the day was spent going along the path of an old railway line. But around the halfway point we came down a slope, crossed a little river and came across our first bogs. In short order Russell and Oliver and I were sunk in up to the tops of our boots, Sally was up to mid-calf, and Rochelle managed to find a spot where she sank over knee-deep... and said that she didn't feel as if she had touched bottom. Good, well, not clean, more like dirty, fun.
After getting out of the bogs the route-finding got a little more difficult, but we were never really unsure of where we were. The Two Moors Way, unlike the Erme-Plym path, which we were on yesterday, is a little more old-school as regards way-marking: rather than making sure that you don't get lost by giving you helpful indications anywhere that you might make a mistake, it tends rather to confirm to you that you have gotten to where you were supposed to get to... and then goes silent until the next confirmation point. But I have good maps, so no worries. In fact we came out of the moors exactly where we were supposed to, and perhaps an hour later we were in Holne.
Our B&B here is very nice and cosy -- we were greeted by hot tea, scones, clotted cream, and strawberry jam... which more than made up for the fact that we had to shower sequentially because the water pressure was too low to handle more than one person showering at a time. Russ and Sally and Marcus and Rochelle are currently horizontal, and Oliver has fallen asleep sitting up on a sofa... the hike may not have been too long or strenuous, but the constant strong wind really takes it out of you. I just might go and snooze a bit myself!
