Walking and Wild Swimming: Woodcombe Sands and Ivy Cove Circular

In keeping with our plans to walk and wild swim more we decided to do one of the walks recommended in the Wild Swimming Walks: Dartmoor and South Devon book.  I won't go into a long description about the route as it's written in this book and, for once, we did actually keep to the recommended route instead of our usual getting distracted and wandering along different paths.  I will say though that this walk was really good and we will probably do it again, or at least a variation of it.  It has the perfect amount of walking (a good mix of easy and a little bit more challenging, which is exactly what you want for a Sunday walk) and swimming.

It definitely helped that we lucked out with the weather, which was clear skies, lots of dryish heat, and the right amount of cool breeze to make it bearable.  However, that is perfect weather for burning if you're not careful and one of us may have gotten a little red from it.

We were worried that as it was a Sunday during the summer holidays this route would be a little busy, but thankfully we were able to find a parking space in the village that you start and end at (East Prawle) without getting in anyone's way and the beaches we swam from were pretty quiet too with only a handful of other people.  As for these beaches (Woodcombe Sands and Ivy Cove), they were a great find as they are clearly not used very often, probably because you do have to go kind of far on foot to get to them, you can swim out quite far without having to worry about boats etc being a problem, and they had very clear waters.  Unfortunately we didn't see too much wildlife when we were snorkeling, but the visibility was still really good.

We wanted to travel quite light and so didn't take our heavy wetsuits with us instead, I just took my swimming top and went with the knowledge that I might not be able to spend too much time in the water.  It did feel very cold when we first started to walk in, but I actually got used to the temperature and was able to stay in much longer than before.  The distraction of snorkelling at Ivy Cove really helped and I floated around until I noticed the beds of my nails started to go a little blue - a pretty good indicator it's time to head back out.

Both of us have had Covid and we're both having to deal with a prolonged cough so we weren't sure how easy we would find this walk, but both of us were pleasantly surprised.  It did highlight some fitness issues we need to work on before we do any multi-day walks in the future, which is good information to know.  However, I do feel that the swimming did actually help with my cough, at least for a day, so more wild swimming can only be a good thing.  I would definitely recommend this walk if anyone is looking for a nice way to spend a few hours.  The book recommends that you take about 2 - 3 hours to do this walk, but once we had taken our time and done all the swimming and relaxing on the beach it actually took us about 4 hours.  We also followed it up with a relaxed drink at the cafe in East Prawle.  Definitely one of our favourite ways to spend our days off together so we'll definitely be doing more of it in the future. 

Walking: Sharrah Pool Circular

We made a plan to go walking and swimming whenever we had a day off together (and didn't have errands we couldn't put off) and when that day came we decided to do a short walk which included a wild swim to get us started.  This was the Sharrah pool circular walk in the Wild Swimming Walks: Dartmoor and South Devon book.  

I'm not going to go too much into the details of the route as it's already in the book, but it's a 4 miles circular walk that takes you through some ancient woodland along side the River Dart and a little bit of the open Moors.

We were a little bit lazy in the morning and so didn't get to the starting point, New bridge car park, until late morning.  Which unsurprisingly meant that the free car parking was full and as we didn't have any change on us for the other car park we decided to change our plans and drove to Holne, one of the stops on the walk, to find a parking spot there.  Normally I wouldn't park in a small village like that as I don't like taking up parking spots the residents would normally use, but as we planned on eating lunch there it felt like it would be okay.  We then started the circuit from there instead.

The start of the walk was predominantly in the woods and I'd almost forgot how nice, cool, and peaceful it is to walk through woodland.  The smell always makes me feel like the air I'm breathing is really clean, which is a nice feeling even if not necessarily true.  This part of the walk was pretty easy, though there is a bit of a hill half way along, and it felt like we'd been walking no time at all when we reached the pools.

It's been a while since I've been wild swimming and I will have to admit that getting into the cold water was a bit of a shock to the system.  I really need to increase my wild swimming so that I can get use to this again and it might also be a good idea to stop having scolding hot showers every night as well 😂.  Despite the cold at the time and the slight struggle to keep my breathing in check when swimming, it did feel really good afterwards and was worth all the discomfort.

It did take us a little bit of a while to find the path that goes straight up the hill and out of the gorge, and if you were still feeling a little bit cold after the swim the incline of this section will definitely heat you up again.  Once you've reached Bench Tor you get a good view of the gorge and some of Dartmoor, which made us wonder if we could actually do a larger loop that would include the other side of the gorge (turns out you can and we'll be trying that out in the not so distant future).  

Unfortunately you only get to walk a little bit in the open moor surrounded by coconut scented gorse before you have to walk along the road back to Holne.  It's never a good way to end a walk and I can see why the original plan has you walking through a section of woodland before you're back to the car park.  However, it did mean that we ended the walk at the Church House Inn for a lovely, and it was lovely, pub meal and a stroke of the even more lovely pub dog Guinness.

This was definitely a lovely way to start walking and wild swimming again.  The legs got a good stretch, I got a nice reminder (if I needed one) of why I love walking and wild swimming, and I got some useful information like I'm not great with cold water anymore and my legs are no longer used to walking up very steep hills - at least for now.  More practice is needed and, with that in mind, there are more walks planned.

Exploring Devon: Part 1

It's been a little bit difficult these last few weeks to match up mine and my partner's days off so that we could do the exploring of Devon we've been hoping to do.  Due to this, we haven't gone as many places as we originally hoped, but we have managed to get in a couple of trips and they have definitely been worth it.  

Wild Swimming - Sugary Cove

This was our first (and only so far) wild swimming trip since getting our wetsuits, but it was definitely a good one to start with.  Sugary Cove is a lovely, small cove that apparently doesn't get a lot of visitors other than the locals.  To get to it we started by parking above Dartmouth Castle and then walked along the South West Coast Path for a couple of minutes before reaching the very steep steps that take you down to the water.

I'm not going to lie, the water was very, very cold, but it's a good, sheltered bay that feels very safe to swim in.  It would be good to come back with snorkelling gear and have a proper exploration of what's lurking under the water.  Especially as these waters are pretty clear, which means there should be quite a healthy ecosystem to stare at.  We didn't spend too long in the water as I'm definitely not used to that temperature anymore, but I'm hoping I'll become more acclimatised to the temperature so I can spend more time enjoying the swim.

Walking - Wistman's Wood looped walk

This was a lovely short-ish walk to get back into the swing of things and it felt really good to get my walking boots back on.  We decided to do a looped walk as the path to Wistman's Wood on its own wasn't going to be long enough.

We started off at the Two Bridges car park and heading along the well-worn path to Wistman's Wood.  Don't be fooled by the small size of the trees (mostly beautiful oak) as they think that this wood is the remains of an ancient forest.  Most of the trees have a contorted form which, along with being covered in mosses and lichens, would give the woodland a wonderfully eerie feel on a foggy day.  This is what most of Dartmoor would have been covered with and it's a shame that it doesn't cover more area.  I liked it, but I think it would be good to go back in summer to see what it's like when it's really green.

Once we'd had a good little wonder through the woods we headed uphill towards the Tors.  We decided to walk a little further north than we had originally planned as it was so lovely to be outside and headed for Higher White Tor which we could see directly in front of us.  It did go uphill quite steeply, but I felt very comfortable doing the incline despite the lack of walking recently and, better still, I felt like I was breathing very comfortably (a problem that I've had for a few years).  

Once we'd had a good look at the view we turned back south and carried on along the high ground to the east of the woods, scrambling over Longaford Tor and walking past Littaford Tors.  Then it was back onto another well-worn path that carried us downhill towards the car park.  

In total, the walk probably took us about 2.5 hours and gave us a good view of the other areas of Dartmoor we're planning on visiting in the future.  

So, only a couple of trips this time around, but definitely more to come in the future.  The nicest surprise how easily my body took to walking again despite the length of time since I've done it properly.  The cold during swimming has been the less enjoyable part, but I'm sure I'll get used to that soon.  However, we now have a taste for it and are already planning our next trips out into the 'wilds'.  On the plus, if it keeps raining the way it has been on our days off together that doesn't affect our ability to swim.