Tuesday's walking

Tuesday 14th May, continued

I would say it was the hottest day of our trip so far, and definitely the most humid. Therefore it was probably not the best day to be on an epic march around a double-sided cliff, but that's just the way things turned out. The Mediterranean Steps were marked on our awful touristical map with a line which, based on the distance we had covered so far, might (obviously there was no scale) be about 800m. They turned out to be an immense zig-zag path, up and down and roundabout. Under normal circumstances I would probably have dawdled a lot, but we had a boat to catch so had to take it at quite a pace, since we didn't know how long the walk actually was. We didn't want to be the Felicity and Terence of Gibraltar.

We made it to the end of the path and had to decide whether to descend to walk into the town (via “Engineers Road” - that looked about as scenic as it sounds), or ascend back up to the cable car station and take the down trip to the town. We had two hours to make it back to the ship. Some local men came to the consensus that it would take about an hour to walk to the cable car station. We decided to risk it, we had after all bought return tickets. So we started our march – this route was at least tarmacked which was an improvement on the Mediterranean Steps' shrapnel.

We'd not long been going when I was driven into by a mini-bus. This could have been really nasty, I was right on the side by the cliff edge and it was going reasonably fast, but fortunately I was only clipped by the wing mirror. I was lucky that I was able to keep my balance and come away with just a bruise. Matt, who is usually the most mild mannered of men, was livid. I was just a little shaken and sore and crossed over to the other side of the road – maybe I could get a matching bruise on my other arm.

We made it to the bottom of the cable car line with about an hour left to return to the ship, and I was now feeling slightly heat stroked. We'd been walking fast (we made it to the top cable car station well ahead of the one hour estimate we had been given) and I hadn't drunk enough. Plus the downwards cable car ride had left me feeling a bit wibbly.

I revived myself with an ice-lolly and we were left with just enough time for a little bit of shopping on the way back to the ship. Having started the trend for souvenir tea-towels in Ajaccio I got another in Gibraltar and, to really make my day, a souvenir hand towel too. Gibraltar is famous (well my mother-in-law told me) for cheap duty free. Neither Matt nor I are big drinkers but if we were going to buy any spirits any time soon now would be the time to do it. I inspected a one litre bottle of quality branded vodka priced at £5.95. Matt wondered what the difference between this one and the one next to it was – other than the price and the colour of the label. The difference was about 10% proof. We've now got a litre of 50.5% vodka – it was only 80 pence more which seemed like good economics. I also picked up a bottle of Angnostura bitters, a dash of which seems to be required in lots of cocktails.

Once we were back on board we had to endure the spectacle of the “Great British Sailaway” - everyone with their Union Jacks doing bacd karaoke to various well known tunes from around the British Isles. Lewis the cruise director was in his element. I was tempted to stay to enjoyed a Pimms but Matt and I grabbed a pizza and chips and headed to the relative sanctuary of the Ocean Deck.

Moored opposite was a French cruise ship – many passengers there waving cheerfully at us. I'm sure they must have wondered what was going on. Matt and I resisted the temptation to do a rendition of Les Mis for them. I had the misfortune to spot a not young, not slim Frenchman (at least I assume he was French) on his balcony in a white thong (the pant type, not the flip-flop type). The “why does he have to do that” level on a par with the not young, not slim, British men who insist on frying themselves on deck in only a pair of branded sporty swimming trunks. They don't look like they've done any sport recently. The not young, not slim, French man would be higher up the disgusting scale were it not for the (thankful) fact that he was situated at a more reasonable distance from me.

Monday's sea legs

Monday 13th May

After 5 busy port days, it was relaxing to have a day at sea to recuperate. Fortunately yesterday's storm had abated. I spent most of the day on the deck with a good book, interrupted only for frequent re-application of sunscreen and a longer break for lunch.

In the morning Matt kindly set off to do some laundry while I went to the “ladies fashion event”. This was a disappointment as it largely consisted of larger-sized middle-aged ladies barging around looking at clothes that (even to my untrained eye) clearly would not suit them. I was neither apologised to when I was trampled into, nor thanked when I made way for, the larger-sized middle-aged ladies. I did not stay long but my escape route up the stairs in the atrium was blocked by larger-sized middle-aged men spectating on the larger-sized middle-aged ladies.

Once I'd made my way through this obstacle course I had a clear run (well, trot) up the stairs to the Ocean Deck – by now our preferred outside location. I passed the time of day about the hammering our knees were taking with a man also going upwards. We agreed that going downwards was much worse. At the top of the stairs something really great happened to me. A kind Scottish lad said (to me), “ooh, here's the lady with the lovely long legs; the legs that just go on and on”. It's a special kind of compliment that comes from a stranger. Particularly when it's a compliment that makes you forget the pain in your knees. I'm going to try to compliment strangers more.

After an hour or so on deck I began to get a bit worried about Matt. I contemplated going to look for him but thought better than this because I figured that the chance of us crossing paths was very small. I tried calling the cabin from the phone on deck to see if he was hiding from the sun there – no answer. While trying to use the phone I ran into the our friends from the deck from a few days earlier – the chap who was going to be an unofficial tour guide in Rome. Apparently it had been a great success.

I read a few more chapters of my book. I tried calling the cabin again – no answer. I asked one of the stewards for the number for reception. I don't know quite what I expected reception to do: send out a search party to the launderette? Put an announcement out over the tannoy? I hadn't heard any lost person announcements the whole time yet. Now I could understand why I've seen some passengers walking around with walkie-talkies. Matt turned up just before I made the phone call to reception so I never found out what they would have done.

We had lunch with 2 fairly jolly middle-aged couples. One of the men insisted on telling us that the secret of a happy retirement is a good pension; maybe he thought we should be saving and not cruising.

The afternoon was punctuated only by further copious application of factor 30 (factor 50 for Matt) and I also took the opportunity to walk from one end of our deck (12) to the other – 334 paces. I had had to return to the cabin because I got factor 30 in my eyes. I tried to deal with it with a wet wipe but if anything this made the situation worse and I needed running water. It's not as painful as getting chilli in your eye. The cabin area was very quiet in the middle of the afternoon so I could walk the whole way along counting the steps without attracting too much attention.

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