According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, a moor is "an open area of hills covered with rough grass, especially in Britain." Indeed, there are plenty of grassy open spaces in England, but some of the most famous are within its southern peninsula. So for the long Thanksgiving weekend, TJ and I trained to Bristol, where we rented a car to explore the hills.
On the way to our accommodations, we skirted the northern coast of the peninsula, cutting through
Exmoor National Park. We made a pit stop in
Minehead, a coastal town at one end of the
South West Coast Path (top left). It is also the start of the
West Somerset Railway Station, the longest heritage railway in England. We didn't ride the rails, but we did watch a steam engine rotate on the turntable (top right). We also went all aboard a few of the the old railcars sitting along the tracks (bottom left), as they were home to booths for a Christmas market (bottom right).
From Minehead, we headed south and inland to
Exbourne, a small town in
Devon just on the edges of
Dartmoor National Park and home to
Hayes Orchard, a small family farm with holiday rentals. Our apartment, on the ground floor of a renovated barn, looked out over a small sheep pen (top left). One morning, I caught the patriarch herding his flock out to pasture (top right). Sage could only smell the livestock, but he definitely spotted the guineafowl that came tapping on our windows every morning (bottom left). And he certainly couldn't ignore the pony we passed on the way to our car (bottom right).
I was just as excited about the ponies as Sage, so I found us a
circular walk that would take us into the heart of the national park, known for its wild herds. The trail started by weaving through the
Teign Valley, along the coast-to-coast
Two Moors Way and the port-to-port
Mariner's Way (left). Within the woodlands we came across
Gidleigh Chapel, a 19th-century structure built on the site of a 15th-century Saxon church (right). Within its graveyard is a tombstone belonging to, as some believe, a Crusader knight.
In a field right across from the chapel, Sage got a close look at a more domesticated variety of equine (top left). It was good desensitization for when we finally encountered some
wild ponies, which weren't separated from us by a fence (top right). From the middle of the moor, there are supposedly good views of the surrounding rock outcroppings, including
Hound Tor, which inspired Doyle's short story
"The Hound of the Baskervilles." But the atmospheric mist of the moors kept them a mystery to our eyes (bottom left). Within the fog, we spied the
Scorhill stone circle, which dates to the Bronze Age (bottom right). Legend holds that livestock will not be led through the circle, but Sage had no qualms about following TJ into its circumference.
From the circle it was a short walk back to the car, passing the
Tolmen Stone, a boulder with a hole resulting from river erosion; some believe the human-size void was, and perhaps is, used for purification rituals. TJ and I cleansed ourselves with some refreshment in
Totnes, a town just southeast of the park that promotes a triple ale trail (top left). Our first stop was
Albert Inn (as in Einstein), home of
Bridgetown Brewery (top right), a reference to how the
River Dart, which bisects the city, necessitates numerous spans. As the sun went down, we headed to the city center to
Totnes Brewing Company (bottom left), then made one last stop, at
New Lion Brewery, before heading out of town (bottom right).
A gentlemen at New Lion recommended a restaurant for our evening repast. We lost cell service -- and therefore GPS guidance -- along the way, but somehow, we managed to find
The Cleave in
Lustleigh (top left). After we finished our dishes, full of local ingredients (top right), we chatted with a couple living the dream: working as bartender and manager at a gastropub while house sitting in the English countryside. After dinner, we let instinct guide us back to Exbourne; we knew we had navigated correctly when we passed
The Red Lion, the pub where we had our "Thanksgiving meal" the night before (bottom).
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