Cornwall and Devon Diaries Pt III — Dartmoor
Tors, fellow solo travelers, and real cream tea
After too many dangerous encounters in Cornwall, I drove to the neighboring county, Devon, to see Dartmoor National Park.
As I was driving through the park to my homestay, it became apparent that this park was different than national parks in the US. The park had an odd landscape that was mostly rough shrubs and hills, but lacking the dramatic formations of a park like Death Valley. There were cattle, sheep and horses idling in the roads.
Pulling down a gravel road to the home I would be staying, I right away noticed a ginger cat perched nearby. The homestay was with a middle-aged woman who’d moved to the village from the coast of Ireland (“too windy”), but was English herself. The first thing she offered was tea, her favorite, Taylor’s Yorkshire Tea. It was a preference I picked up from that stay.
Also joining for tea was the other person staying that holiday weekend, a Londoner from Finland, Liisa. Liisa had walked all the way to the house from a bus stop 12 miles away. This whole trip I’d been thinking if I were to do it again, I’d take trains and buses everywhere instead of driving, but hearing this made me reconsider. (There’s a bus through the park now, though!).
The cat was named Harry, after the host’s longtime crush, Prince Harry. I tried to lure him into my room when I was heading for bed, but he went to his own personal room, instead. It was cold that night, so I sorted out the hot water bottle that I was supplied, and slipped that into the bed. It was my first time putting together a hot water bottle myself. I felt deeply resourceful.
The next morning I set out to find the forest I’d seen on Instagram, Wistman’s Wood. I drove to an inn, parked, and walked the long, exposed, path to the woods. There were a bunch of people, and it was really only a small grove of the cool-looking trees, but it was nice to sit underneath them for a bit.
From there, I wandered up a tor, labelled Longaford Tor on my map, to get a view.
I spotted some interesting buildings from the tor and walked down a path towards them. The path arrived at a large field and I lost the trail from there. It seemed simple enough to just walk through the field, but I was soon shin-deep in bog and surrounded to the ears with grasses. It took about 40 minutes to flounder around the bog before reaching the other side.
I didn’t know how I’d get over the fence, so I followed it until I came across a gate. On the gate was a sign marking the real path, that I’d missed, which had ran just south of my own path.
Beyond the fence there were goats, stone bridges and some ruins of gunpowder mills. I found the building I’d seen, which housed a pottery shop now. And more importantly, this pottery shop was offering “Cream Tea!”. Unlike my previous attempts at getting cream tea, I decided to just say “cream tea please” this time, and see what came out.
So, I learned what a real “cream tea” was: a regular tea, plus a scone with clotted cream and jam. There is much different about British and American English. I would have expected the “cream” to modify the “tea”, and not instead be sitting on an unrelated scone, but oh well.
It felt like my day was done then, so I started walking back to the car. I had supposed that walking along the road would be more straightforward, but it was actually a slog, too, with having to jump into high grasses when a car came by.
It kind of cheered me to encounter someone else trying to walk along the road, going the opposite direction. I realized that the person was actually Liisa, and crossed over to talk to her. For some reason, it made sense that it was her. Who else would also be doing something like this?
I told her I’d make it back to the car, and come back around to pick her up. It took forever to reach the car, but I made it, and we made it.
Not tired of walking, Liisa and I decided to walk over the moors to a pub that sat alone on the heather hills. We had beer and vegetarian chili and pies on the picnic table outside. We saw the last light on the purple moors. We talked about London and Finland and America.
The next day, Liisa and I headed out to get some more moors in before I would drop her off at the Plymouth train station.
We drove South, parked, and hiked up around Sharpitor and Leather Tor. This time there were groups of wild ponies wandering around and drinking the water that ran down the boggy hills. I had, to say the least, a lot of respect for horses now, and I keep well away from them.
Up on the tor, we heard the jingle of an ice cream truck, and spotted it zipping along the main road and stopping at the car park at the bottom of the hill. We followed some ponies down and bought some ice cream. We sat on the curb of the lot and talked about relationships and a recent breakup she had. I think we would have had a different rapport if I were single too, but it was still good.
I drove Liisa to Plymouth to catch a train back to London and continued on for a couple days more around Tintagel, where I hiked 10 miles along the coastal path to Boscastle, up and down cliffs and havens and through fields with enormous threatening brown cows (you would think I was in Australia with the amount of scary animals I encountered).
I took the train from Bodmin Moor to Paddington and met my partner for a week in London. One night, we met up with Liisa at a pub.
Recently, I got a piece of embroidery from an artist, Victoria Rose, who does aerial embroidery. The piece depicts a hill, with knots for heather, rocks and horses, and a red and blue dot for two people climbing the hill.
