Short take: muckiful! Which translates as mucky but beautiful.
Excellent dinner last night in the Royal Oak, and an excellent stay in the King's Farm B&B. I have taken a little flak at times from some of the more particular members of our hiking group with respect to the quality of the accommodations... some were heard to say, perhaps 30 or 40 times, that more spa-like accommodation could have been booked. But I don't think I'll hear any complaints about last night.
Two days ago the weather for Weds (today) was forecast to be moderate rain all day. Yesterday they said light rain. Today the forecast called for sun and cloud but no rain (and indeed it was so). I no longer believe that forecasts in Devon and Cornwall for anything other than the current day have any validity whatsoever... they are to be read for entertainment value, nothing more.
Russell, poor fella, once again did not hike. One of his feet is hurting too much. Our resident medical team (two ER docs and an intensive care nurse) were unsure of the cause... a stress fracture or inflamed tendons or pulled ligaments were some of the theories. But regardless of the cause, he felt that walking was out of the question. Marcus, pointing out that he was primarily here to see his friends, and only secondarily to hike, decided to take the day off too and spend it with Russell. So the hikers today were only Sally, Rochelle, and I.
We walked out of Withypool under sun and clouds, climbed up to and crossed a section of Exmoor, descended back to the River Barle, now running between grassy hillsides, and walked along it for the rest of the morning. Lovely. In the afternoon we did more or less the same thing, although the moor crossing was greyer, longer and boggier.
At some point I noticed that I was getting significantly more dirty than Rochelle and Sally... a fact which I attributed (and attribute) to my greater expertise and familiarity with moorland walking.
:-)
There followed a descent into a lovely combe, along which we walked for awhile, before climbing once more onto a last northwards stretch of the moors. This, like most of the hiking today, was pretty mucky... it apparently rained a reasonable amount between the end of our hike yesterday and the start today, so we were squishing stuff underfoot most of the time. Hence the short take description of muckiful (the alternate portmanteau seeming a little uncouth :-).
Once more we descended into a beautiful river valley, this time of the Lyn River, and in dappled sunshine went down to one of the more enchanting spots in Devon: Watersmeet, where the East and West branches of the Lyn River come together. There we had tea, and then walked the last half hour into the beautiful village of Lynmouth (which produced exclamations of pleasure, immediately followed by criticisms that I had not planned a free day here). Sigh.
I'm pleased to report that I feel ing reat shape... no aches and pains at all, despite having hiked the last 8 days straight. We'll have dinner in our 14th Century Inn, and then tomorrow return to London. The CMT is over... but will not soon be forgotten. A lovely day and a lovely month.
