Travel Tips

Now that summer is officially with us (although the weather is not quite in agreement with officialdom) we are blessed with not one, but two, DAILY buses out of the village but only until the middle of September. The normal bus "service" is once a week on Wednesday - I'll save further information on this for a separate page anon.

Anyway to get back to Widecombe Hill: it was a beautiful sunny morning and my day off - a very rare coincidence! I decided to get the bus into Newton Abbot and duly arrived at the bus stop at the appointed time and waited........and waited............and.....................after about twenty minutes gave up. Plan B - walk into Bovey Tracey (about 6 miles) and get a bus from there.

The only problem with this walk is getting up the bloody hill! As you can see from the pic it's a long way down and I can assure you even longer on the way up!

And of course the inevitable happened, 5 mins walking, face purple, sweat streaming, heart rate trebled.............beep! beep!.........vroom! vroom!...........hello bus!.........vrooooom!.........bye,bye bus! Good old village bus services, I love them.

Never mind, such is life..........spit!spit!

However I am always a "glass half-full" sort of a person and on reaching the top of the hill the views were absolutely fabulous, and here are some of them:

Having just walked up the hill I'm going to pass on walking up Haytor as well. Level ground is good, downhill is even better.

Devon is definitely the most beautiful county in this country and this is just Dartmoor. Memo to self - must try to get up to North Devon before end summer. (update: went to Lynton last week, see page)

And its not just the landscapes that make it such a wonderful county, the people are just nice people.

Not just that but they even went to the trouble of growing a few thistles purely to make me feel at home.

(This pic is me playing with close-ups on my new camera, I'm really rather impressed. Enlarge to see what I mean.)

And there are so many places to go.....

From Widecombe Hill, turn left for St Jose, right for Amarillo, or just keep going and see where you end up.

Just as a little aside: A couple of women came into the Ruggle the other night, having obviousy been imbibing elsewhere, and gigglingly asked, "Is this the way to St Jose?".
"Oh no, my dear." was the reply, "You should have turned left at top of Widecombe Hill!" which is how this narrative came about.

This is The Union in Newton Abbot, at the start of East Street. Not a bad old pub. See my Newton page for more pubs.