At 0930 Hours on Thursday 12th July 2007 the challenge of reaching all the 600 metre summits of Dartmoor in a day had started. A few weeks back I had decided to do a final walk on Dartmoor with my best mate, Howard. It was planned to be a nice steady walk in lovely summer conditions, a fitting finale to almost fifteen years of walking and climbing in most of the mountain ranges across Europe together.
The plan had been to start at Meldon Reservoir and knock off all five of the 600 metre summits as well as visiting the most remote location in England and Wales (Fur Tor). The walk is about 18 miles and we had planned to complete it in about six hours.
The omens were not good the day before we started, as the weather forecast was appalling, with heavy rain, high winds and dense hill fog! Ideal conditions for this sort of walk! The drive to the start point should take about 45 minutes, but after being stuck in a queue of traffic behind a tractor for miles, we eventually started walking at 0930hrs.
The plan had been to start at Meldon Reservoir and knock off all five of the 600 metre summits as well as visiting the most remote location in England and Wales (Fur Tor). The walk is about 18 miles and we had planned to complete it in about six hours.
The omens were not good the day before we started, as the weather forecast was appalling, with heavy rain, high winds and dense hill fog! Ideal conditions for this sort of walk! The drive to the start point should take about 45 minutes, but after being stuck in a queue of traffic behind a tractor for miles, we eventually started walking at 0930hrs.
The weather forecast was not wrong, as we could see about 100metres in the fog. It was very windy and the rain was teeming down. The first target was Yes Tor and High Willhays. A long slog up steep slopes led us fairly easily to the highest point on the moor. The going under foot was wet, but fairly good up to this point, but things then started to go downhill!
The weather really started to close in and it was almost like winter conditions, except it was not cold. The going underfoot became much tougher and our progress was slowed by long tussocky grass, bogs and rivers in near spate conditions.
Our next target was Fur Tor, but we did not reach it until 1235 hours after an absolute slog through nightmare conditions. A short stop here for lunch and it was then decision time. We checked the map and we were still not quite at the halfway point. The next target was Cut Hill, but the terrain was probably going to be worse than we had just crossed. We had a cut off time of 1530 hours and there was no way we were going to make it around in time.
We quickly revised a new route and headed for home. We got back to the car at 1530 hours after a bit of an epic. At about 1500 hours the fog lifted and we at least got a few views of some of the route. It had been horrible conditions, but still a good walk. We had been to the two highest points and the remotest point. The end of an Era!
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