Of course you want to read this post before you go grab those questions, right?
D is for Dartmoor
In April of 2007 Daughter1 was spending the Easter break with her roommate in Memphis and Daughter2 was spending the Easter break in Bulgaria on a Service Project trip with her Young Life group so hubs and I made some travel plans too. We rented a cottage in the Dartmoor National Park which is situated in the southwestern part of England. Our cottage rental confirmation included driving directions which at first had us worried. They said something along the lines of '...turn right just past the big rocks.'
Okay.
We needn't have worried.
As we came over the rise I said, 'I'm guessing that white house is our cottage.'
I guessed right.
I've never been to the moon but there was something about the landscape here that felt lunar. Normally the moors are soggy, or as our guidebook put it, '...use caution so as not to sink in the peat bogs.' Now that would be a problem. Fortunately not a single raindrop fell during our trip and we hiked to our hearts content.
I cannot really explain how amazing it feels to stand in the middle of a moor and to look around as far as the eye can see without spying another single solitary soul.
Well, besides hubs and the pup I mean.
We hiked for hours and miles and hours and miles and while we did run into a few hikers scattered here and there for the most part we had the whole world to ourselves.
We started the day at this little bridge and were pleasantly surprised to come across running water out on the moor....a stream snaking its way from who knows where to who knows where.
We were more than ready to take off our boots and have a picnic lunch when we stumbled across both stream and waterfall.
Hubs and I have noticed in our travels that people living back in medieval times moved a whole lotta rock. I say its because there wasn't any television and they had to fill the time somehow. Hubs says he doesn't think that's quite right. Whatever the reason there are rock fences running from one end of nowhere to another. We did read that these fences marked farms and fields which makes sense since we saw more than a few sheep that weekend.
Our pup wanted to play...
The sheep did not.
There are also wild horses with shaggy manes living on the moors.
The scraggly yellow plants are called gorse and they grow wild too.
We both loved the weekend we spent hiking and relaxing in Dartmoor. I've never been anywhere else quite like it and its easy to see where Arthur Conan Doyle gained his inspiration for The Hound of The Baskervilles.
We made a stop enroute to Dartmoor which I'll write about later in the alphabet but for now I'll end this post where our hikes ended...
at the pub.
No matter where you roam in England, you will almost always end up at a pub.
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