Early rise and porridge for breakfast, the perfect start to a perfect day. Left the BB and headed into the Moors for a complete day of trekking about. Started in Batsworthy, a small town in the middle of nowhere. It too us about an hour to get there, mainly because the backroads continued to get smaller and smaller until you just prayed another car did not come along. If it did you had to actually back up (or hope they do) until you could get to a turn in the road or drive way. Luckily we only met one car and it happened right before we were going to park (that’s living right!). We chose a hike out of a book that we had bought, lots of photos and “directions”. The trail head was not marked, but we could see the first destination point “the nipple” up the hill. Off we trekked, through mud, over clumps (or TUFTs) up to the top. See photo….”nipple”. We, of course, had to climb up it until we couldn’t go further, took photos and were off to the next destination point. The first hour of the trek was quite pleasant, we laughed, pointed at all of the rock formations, saw standing stones, stone huts, round circle stone things etc. Across the river we went, after much discussion about which bridge to cross, then over another…see photo. Up another hill to the stone circle, nice! The directions said continue up to the top of another hill (they all looked the same), so we did. Again, “discussions” ensued, we took Vinnie’s choice, and down we went back into town. Well…yes, it was the wrong one. Luckily, my choice was wrong as well so no more arguments were needed. We ended up going a long way up and down skinny roads – realize you can’t see where the heck you are going because the hedges on both sides are so tall and dense you might as well be anywhere. We FINALLY, another hour later, found our way back to the trail! Oh yeah!! Up the hill we went, down the hill, then across the bridge to the bottom of the hill from hell. We panted, we stopped, we moaned, we took photo’s, just about anything to distract ourselves from the hill. Yet another hour had passed…it was getting dark (this seems to happen to us a lot over here!). We still had about an hour to go and made it back just as the sun was going down. Luckily, we had stopped a few days before and bought torches (aka flashlights) just in case this should happen to us again. We were so happy to get back to the car! Had a pleasant drive back to the BB, not stopping to see anything we might have had to get out of the car to see. Dinner was back at the Royal Inn, were Vinnie had Pheasant in a cider sauce and I had a fillet steak, underdone, of course J
