HIKING ACROSS ENGLAND'S WILD MOORS

Photos and story by Kate Pocock

After just two days of tramping across the moors, I knew that two ingredients would be necessary if I was to survive this week-long trek: a pair of rugged, waterproof boots and a wacky sense of humour. How else could we 15 walkers and two guides be huddled against a drenching rain in a sheep barn and be laughing about it? Wacky. Actually, we were waiting for shepherd Alfie who was going to put his border collie through his paces with the sheep.

As we trekked back to the welcoming fire and dinner at our country house hotel, more wackiness. Suddenly, dozens of horses appeared in the mist. Their riders were completing a two-day endurance course through Exmoor National Park, some 100 miles through pelting rain. “God, you’re as daft as we are,” shouted one stout horsewoman as she flew by, and we all laughed again.

In truth, we were not daft at all. For decades, the Wayfarers have been leading Canadians and Americans across pockets of Britain, and it seemed to be a winning formula. Take a group of like-minded people who like to “ramble” —from 30-something backpackers to 70s couples with collapsible walking sticks. Let a good guide lead them across some 75 kilometres of terrain while their suitcases are ferried from hotel to hotel. Let them hike through fields and up hills, over moors and back down into valleys to smell, touch and even taste what was being offered up by nature including the rain. On this walk through a former Royal Forest of the Norman Kings, we encountered windswept moors, rushing rivers, stunning seascapes and forests covered in bluebells, all at a pace of some 10 to 15 kilometres each day. It was countryside in slow motion.

We slept in rambling country house hotels and quaint inns in town squares and ate from sun-up to sun-down—from full English breakfast and lunch in local pubs to delicious dinners followed by rousing nightcaps in the bar. The schedule and itinerary were flexible, particularly because of the weather. When rain threatened a planned picnic one day, our guides arranged lunch in a neighbor’s barn. The “neighbor” turned out to be explorer Ranulph Fiennes, the only man in the world to have crossed both Poles and the Antarctic and unearthed a lost city in the desert. “Welcome to the Manor, ladies and gentlemen,” said Fiennes, standing amidst the straw and gesturing toward his barn roof. We sat on straw bales and ate a scrumptious lunch in his company.

On other days, the hiking was fine and we set out across moors edged with yellow gorse and into woods coloured with bluebells. It wasn’t all easy terrain, which showed on my muddy and scruffed up boots. Along the cliffside overlooking Bristol Channel, and up to Dunkery Beacon, we did many “undulations” or “lovely bits of up” as our guide Geoffrey called them. At the end of the day, we were certainly ready for hot baths and drinks by the fire. When Geoff announced on the final day that we only had two miles to go up to the top of Dunkery Beacon, even the keenest walker complained, “But that’s two thousand, six hundred and forty-two steps.”
     No matter the weather or terrain, we were all keen on our leader, a ruggedly good-looker from the West Country whose ancestors had roamed the world in search of plants. Full of encouragement and good cheer, he led with compass, map and sturdy walking stick. He knew wild garlic and when the cuckoo was about to sing, how to cure the bite of a stinging nettle and where to find the best place to cross a stream. As we climbed and descended the terrain, he peppered his remarks with “Good Job” and “Well Done.”
Our walk manager, Annie, not only ferried our luggage but also ran errands. She retrieved a camera that had been left on a picnic table and fetched ginger wine from the chemist for someone with a sore tummy. As one walker confided, “I feel like a kid again, when someone always took care of me.”
Our last surprise of the week was full cream tea on the sunny lawn of a National Trust Estate near Selworthy, a village of thatched cottages and flowers. The other tea drinkers, ladies in hats with babies decked out in bonnets, looked as if they were a film set. We were the country cousins in muddy boots but no matter. At a long table set with fine china, we poured numerous pots of tea and devoured dozens of scones with cream and strawberry jam. And we clinked our chintzy tea cups.
We’d walked the moors and come upon the famous wild ponies. We’d fought the rain and won. And we’d made new friends as we tramped the ups and downs. So we toasted to our fellow walking companions and to our boots, ready to go another three thousand steps.

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For a booklet listing all walking holidays with The Wayfarers (including Exmoor comined with Dartmoor plus new walks in Austria, Slovenia and three walks for Women Only), visit www.thewayfarers.com

* Kate Pocock is an award-winning Toronto-based travel writer.