Tuesday 5th July Manaton to Lustleigh

A tricky day with the weather. Heavy rain first thing in Horrabridge and on the journey to Manaton, so everyone had the dreaded waterproofs on.  This would have  been fine on a cool day but today it was very, very humid. Just arriving as we were setting off was just-in-time Hudson.  So off we went through the churchyard and took the path with many stiles.








Up to Manaton  Rocks where normally you do get a really-good-view, but at this point this was not a really-good-view day.  In fact you couldn't see much at all...

 

Next we missed our turning on the footpath and completed a short circular walk nearly back to where we had started a short while previously!

Eventually we found our way down to the river by Foxworthy.
 

At this point we started the climb up - it wasn't raining quite so hard and it was very humid so we took off the waterproofs.  By the time we had come out onto the open moor by the rare breed cattle it was raining hard again so on went the waterproofs.....

....and we continued up to Hunter's Tor

As we got there it cleared in the valley below and we headed off to the wooded bit....

....and took off our waterproofs off again just before Raven's Tor.

At last we got to the The Cleave in Lustleigh - at least it wasn't raining inside so we didn't need the waterproofs in there. Last time we were here we all had Croc Monsieur and we have talked about this many times so for most of us it was Croc Monsieur again and very good it was too!

Walking again we went past the May Stone in Lustleigh where the names of all the May Queens since 1954 are recorded in the granite.

We picked up the cleared path...

....and made our way down to the river crossing with the very old and closed off clam bridge. Closed off for Health and Safety reasons but really because there is a new and modern bridge next to it!

Then on to the part of the walk we had all not been looking forward to. Mainly because it just goes up and up and up, but we all got there in the end before eventually having an excellent view out across to Hunter's Tor.

Back to the cars - Colin and Amber (departing next week for 6 months in the USA) wished us all a very Happy Christmas and we drove home in the warm sunshine.

Walking today Colin, Amber, Roger, Paul, Terry and Rosemary.