A Walk from South Zeal

I had picked up one of those community leaflets, the type that offer “5 walks around South Zeal” in this case walk 5 to Shilley/Shelly Pool, caught my eye. There always seems to be two names for things around these parts. Having parked up, walked out of the village into the countryside, up a rather steep incline I looked back, and made a photo of the view (above). Continuing forward a small stream bubbled out of the field and across the path. Ferns and rocks, bubbling water, I made a photo (below) but it does not really convey what I saw somehow!

At this point the walking directions were (as all to often) too vague. “continue until “A” grassy track forks left” – well Dartmoor has many tracks and even more grass! At this point the best thing to do seemed to be set up the tripod again!

Spot the track? No neither did I, so I went where seemed sensible, which turned out to be completely wrong. Never mind it was a nice walk anyway.

Digression (feel free to skip!): Obviously the point of a leaflet like this is to get people out in the fresh air, have a good time, and show off the best of your local area to visitors. Same with instruction books, especially for “technical things” where one may actually need the instructions. One hopes that they are written by people who know what they are talking about, but it often seems to me, that this is also the main problem with them. Before anyone puts such things into print, why don’t they just give it someone who’s not been there/used it before and silently follow on behind. Sort of “physical proof reading”. Many frustrations could be avoided. I’m not alone, while up on the moor I met a couple who had the same leaflet, they couldn’t follow it either – and they had an OS map too!

I took an obvious path and ended up dropping down to the River Taw, and took the bridge (above) to climb up to the village of Belstone. They have a very good website which can be visited here. It’s home to about 250 people and has a church that dates to at least 1260. I cannot get the colour balance of this image “right”, I’ve ended up with something that reminds me of late 1970’s Agfachrome!

The village also has the Tors Inn that provided very welcome refreshment! I was driving so in this case it was in the form of Coke, welcome none the less! I also paused to make a photo of the “Telegraph Office”, I liked the red against the stone and the blue sky (below), Walking on I ended up a very short distance from the Oakhampton dual carriageway, headed towards the village of Sticklepath, what I’d driven trough to get to the start, then back to South Zeal.

It turned out to be about a 5.5 mile walk, unfortunately the last half on roads with no pavement (sidewalk) not as nice as hoped for. That said, I saw a steam engine trundle past me within touching distance and speed. I saw what plants and flowers were growing in the hedgerow rather than passing them at 40 miles an hours in the car.