Sid Valley Ring Walk

Today was Day 4 of our East Devon trip and our longest (and hilliest) walk of the week, the Sid Valley Ring. It is meant to be a 13 mile walk with options to cut it a bit shorter and we chose one of the options, the Byes Link which should have made it 9 miles...

This was the invite from Joyce...

"Thursday Oct 7th: Please sort out breakfast yourselves and then we will meet at Drakes Avenue Sidmouth 9am and start our circular walk from there. I haven’t done the walk before but I know that it’s not as flat as we are used to. A walking pole might be useful. All sorts of distances are available so depending on the weather we can decide on the day. Bring your snack/drinks with you." 

This is the official map, and we were starting and finishing at about "D"...

This was our actual route...

...and I'm not sure how it ended up as being 12 miles.

Here are a few of my photos...

Off we go, north from The Byes.

We were soon into the country walking along the babbling Snod brook.

We got a view of Buckton Hill which we would go round a little later.

At Harecombe Farm these geese protested at us passing, but nobody had to say "boo" to them... reminding me of 21A in my latest crossword for the weekend (published here).

We had got high enough now to get a good view back to Sidmouth.

We stopped for our drinks break in the lovely village of Sidbury. This is Bridge Street.

St. Giles church was open and I visited while others sat in the porch or outside.

We marvelled at the spelling on the notice in the porch.

A selfie in progress.

Now it was on uphill towards White Cross.

Here I was bringing up the rear as I had to change batteries in my camera. This was maybe the steepest bit.

But we got some lovely views at the top, seeing quite a way but not as far as the Bristol Channel.

Ottery St. Mary was down below.

...and in the distance we could see the tors of Dartmoor.

We descended via Beacon Hill.

In the woods, Roland and Julian held back a pesky tree branch to let others pass on the boardwalk.

A group photo with me in it for a change.

As we crossed a field it got muddier and muddier. Miranda found a better route and filmed the rest of us....

Yes. You saw right. I had a fall and landed on hands and knees.

We thought we were nearly down, but then had to climb again passing Wheat Hill, where we found some cute ponies.

What sort of ponies were they? We decided Sidmouth.

At the seafront at last we visited the Fort Cafe again. While the others ordered afternoon refreshments, I had a paddle to wash my legs and socks and washed my shoes in the sea. They were a bit squelchy, but a lot cleaner.

Some had a cream tea...

..while a microlight pilot buzzed us and eventually landed on the beach.

Our final evening meal was at The Holt. And very nice it was too.

 

I was leaving to drive home after the meal, and sadly, would miss the final breakfast and stop at Stonehenge on the way back that the others would have tomorrow, but before I went, we had an awards ceremony.

What a lot of fun. Thank-you Joyce for organising it and looking after us all so well... and to everyone else for the great company.

You can see more of my photos here on Flickr and more details of our route here on MapMyWalk.