Short take: 35km is 35km even in fine weather and through gentle rolling countryside.
Dinner last night was delicious... up to the general level of quality of the Mill End Hotel. But there is an old saying that you get what you pay for... and pay for what you get. The first phrase is clear, but the second may need elucidation. My original plan was to spend the night in either the inn or the B&B next door in Drewsteignton. This would have made yesterday's hike an hour and a half longer... and today's hike shorter by the same amount. Sure, the luxury of the Mill End Hotel was a pleasure, but the difference between an 8 hour hike and a 9.5 hour hike is dramatic... and today we paid for that luxury.
First, though, we said goodbye to Oliver, who joined us in Ivybridge, and entertained us in many ways. For one thing, he's a gifted conversationalist... able to take almost any subject and spin a skein of observations and ideas at times hilarious, at times deep and thought-provoking. For another, he has taken to walking around in those new "shoes" that look like monkey feet, with separate sheathes for each toe. He even walked for a few hours across the moor and up and down tracks and lanes yesterday wearing them... without ill effect, he reported... but the rest of us remain amused but unconverted.
Only Rochelle and Marcus and I hiked today. Although Russell felt fitter after his day off, he thought, quite rightly, that it would be unwise to come back and attempt such a long hike, so he took a second free day... and Sally stayed with him. She had been building a case for taking a day off for a few days, letting slip various comments about how her feet were hurting a little, and her boots perhaps too stiff in the sole... but this is Sally we are talking about: if she had wanted to hike, she would have done so. No, I think that what was really going on was that she wanted to take a rest day, and since, unaccountably, none had been planned, she chose the most sensible day to do so (and rightly so!).
It is one of the mysteries of the CMT that despite having a duration of 28 days, not a single rest day was planned. It is hard to know what was going through the head of the planner when he was "planning". Was he perhaps thinking that days spent visiting gardens and stately homes were the same thing as rest days (but in that case, why no rest day during the 8 day crossing of Devon, where no visits were planned?)? Was he trying to "save" days (but if so, for what purpose... and at what terrible cost?)? Or was he just on crack? We may never know. But whatever the reason was, it was clearly a situation in which the sheep needed to rise up and make their own plans... and that is what Sally did.
So, as said, only three sheep set out this morning at the not-quite-crack-of-dawn time of just past 9AM. The first part of the hike was a delightful trail through a gorge along the Teign, followed by a steep climb to the village of Drewsteignton. There we were fortunate enough to find a little shop open on a Sunday morning, and we stocked up on chocolate bars and bananas (thereby obviating the need to make a side-trip later for lunch). And then on we marched, and marched, and marched.
There were no great ascents or descents, but lots of lesser ones. Most of the time we walked along footpaths or across fields, but there were a couple of stretches along roads. During one of them, around noon, a car pulls up beside us... it is Russell and Sally, catching a lift with the luggage. Does anyone want to join them? Nope. It is too early... if they had driven by four hours later, they might well have had three takers.
We stopped about 2PM for a light lunch on a grassy slope with a lovely view of a manor and classic Devon countryside, took off our boots, and sat for a while in the sun. It was a beautiful day -- a mixture of sun and clouds, little or no wind, but not too warm: perfect for hiking. And sitting. But sitting and a long hike don't mix. We were already stiff when we stood up after 20 minutes, our feet protested when we forced them back into our boots, and we suffered for a while until we loosened up. So we decided not to stop again.
The afternoon wore on, and, as often happens on such days, resentment began to build. Legs get tired, feet start to hurt, and thoughts inevitably turn to blaming the evil one responsible. At one point I stopped with an urgent need to water plants, telling the other two that they should go left in the next field and not take the obvious path that cut across the center. This advice was based on trail indicators nailed to a post... but as it turned out, they and thus also I were wrong.
A minute later I came out of the bushes and saw that they were working their way around the edge of the field... and that therefore the path through the middle was the right one. So I took it, albeit with a feeling of guilt. But making them wait while I imposed upon myself the same error that I had just imposed upon them didn't seem right either. "Arrgh!! I could kill you right now!!", said Rochelle, having not appreciated slogging through knee-high grass. Followed a little later by, "Did you do that on purpose?" I wasn't particularly offended... I knew what it was... just mid-afternoon resentment. No one is left unmoved by a really long hike. Some people get quiet, others lose faith, and some get angry.
Around 5:45PM, when we had already been on the trails for over eight and a half hours, we came to a gate with a sign on it saying "Bull in Field". Not what you want to see at that time of day. It wasn't entirely clear how we should go around the field, and we were tired, so we pinned our hopes on the sign either being out of date or the bull being out of sight and crossed the field regardless. We were fortunate: there was no sign of the bull.
Towards 6:30PM, footsore and bone-tired (at least, that was my state... I'm nor sure if the same applied for the other two, one of whom is a marathoner, and the other of whom seems to have received the nickname Sparky for his irrepressible reserves of energy), we arrived at our inn. I was in bed by 9PM. 35km is, I think, the second longest hike we have done in England (only a memorable day on the C2C exceeded it... if I remember correctly, that day we did 38km). We had paid dearly for our Mill End stay....
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