Saturday's slight loss

It was our first weekend in a while without anything in particular to do (apart from the usual DIY based activities) and we spent a considerable time debating what to do. The fine weather was holding for now (although a strong breeze was evident as one of the plants had fallen off its shelf in the garden), but the forecast into next week wasn't looking so good. So it seemed sensible to make the most of the outside world. The obvious choice would have been the beach but a few things put me off this:

• Social media would suggest that a lot of other people were headed there
• The wind would potentially be a problem
• One of my favourite things to do at the seaside is to bodyboard, with the current high pressure there are insufficient waves to make the wetsuit application, removal and cleaning worthwhile.

Instead we decided to go for a walk. Coastal walks would be afflicted with the problem of the car parks being full of the aforementioned beach-goers. So we would go for something inland. The moors would be afflicted with a lack of shade. So we would go for something countrysidey. There are good walks that would have fitted the bill very locally but as we didn't have any time pressure we could go a little further afield. Going further west into Cornwall would be afflicted with the problem of lots of other people going west into Cornwall (it being a Saturday in the school holidays). So we would go for something in Devon.

Starting out at Totnes

I found just the walk I was looking for in a book of Devon walks – along the river Dart from Totnes. This book has a lot of nice walks in it but is very light on both directions and maps. For example on undertaking a previous walk from the same series we were instructed to “go right at a rock that looks like a shark”. And today's particular walk had no map at all. Still, it was basically along the river so surely wouldn't be too challenging geographically. Once we had worked out what side of the river we were supposed to be on, the first part of the walk was indeed straightforward. It wasn't looking promising as we started off walking past some light industrial units but we soon hit rural paths. I ran into a bit of trouble with some stinging nettles but did my best to resist the urge to scratch and the pain soon subsided.

An undulation

For a walk beside a river it was remarkably undulating. Our first geographical dilemma arose when we came to an “undulating field with parkland trees”, the book's instruction was that the route continued around the bottom of this field, the sign suggested that the path was up one of the undulations. Given our previous experiences with the book we opted for the sign option so duly marched up the undulation and joined the path here.

River Dart, looking back to Totnes

The next geographical dilemma occurred when we came to a point with 2 signs to Ashprington, one suitable for bikes the other not. We knew that we had to get to Ashprington as part of our route but the instructions said that we shouldn't change paths until we got to a gate with a no entry sign and then that we would walk through a larch grove. There was no sign of a gate, let alone a no entry sign and although I couldn't be sure what a larch grove looks like I assumed it involved trees and there was no sign of this either. Additionally, according to the book, we should have passed a disused quarry and neither of us had seen any evidence of this. We'd hardly seen another soul so didn't want to chance waiting to ask someone; so we continued, enjoying more of the beautiful South Hams scenery.

When we arrived at the Sharpham farm shop and restaurant we knew we must have gone too far. It was busy with (mainly very posh) people lunching but we had no time to rest ourselves as we had just about hit the halfway mark with our car parking allowance. The lady in the shop (clearly disappointed that we were not buying wine) confirmed that we had indeed gone too far and helped out by giving us vague directions that you had to go up The Hill to get to Ashprington. So we retraced our steps a little bit until we got to the first path that looked like it was going up The Hill. This looked hopeful as it followed along beside a road, so if it didn't go to Ashprington maybe it would go somewhere else with some sort of amenities, or a bus.

But it did get us to Ashprington. This turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous place – exactly what you might imagine an English Village to be like, only with more parked cars. If I was going to live somewhere out of the city it would be somewhere like this (although a later investigation of house prices indicates that maybe I wouldn't live somewhere like this barring a lottery win). We were now back on the suggested and route and reviewing our schedule decided that we were well back on schedule to avoid a parking ticket, so we could stop off at the pub for a drink and a loo visit. It was a proper pub and one that we'll try to get back to for a meal sometime.

Ashprington

15th century church

 Suitably refreshed from one of my favourite types of ginger beer we returned to the book. It instructed us to “simply retrace” our steps. This would have been disappointing had we not taken such a major detour on the way (I am generally a fan of more circular routes) but since we had gone wrong we could aim for the right path on the way back. This was actually quite easy and we even experienced the larch grove. There was the added excitement of keeping an eye out for a lost buoyancy aid. We eventually rejoined our original path where there were the 2 signs to Ashprington, but there definitely wasn't a gate with a no entry sign. We walked back along the river and this time did see the disused quarry – quite obvious so unsure how we missed it on the way, maybe we were too engrossed in some other view. 9  miles (approximately), three and a half hours later (approximately) and a nice mix of sun and shade we avoided a parking ticket by a whole 25 minutes and were really, really hungry.

On the way back