13th July 2013 - Dartmoor

An early start for the long journey from Norwich to Bude. Woke up at two in the morning and realised I'd accidentally fallen asleep. We were supposed to be leaving about half two and I hadn't finished packing stuff-that-wasn't-clothes. Mad rush to make sure I had everything, then time to bundle it all into the car. Fell back asleep fairly quickly, but woke up periodically with cramp from trying to curl up.

We arrived in Dartmoor about half eight and quickly came upon a herd of ponies. We parked up near the caravan in the picture and hopped out. It was incredibly hot despite being so early. I couldn't be bothered to put my shoes on so I wandered around barefoot, getting myself into crazy-photographer-photos trying to keep at the eye level of the animals, many of which had decided to lie down because of the heat. As we left the ponies, I took this out of the window of the car. How lovely would it be to park up at night then wake up in the morning surrounded by wild ponies?

We made our way on to the two bridges, a spot I'd visited eight years ago as a child, and paddled in the stream as I did back then as well. The cool water was lovely relief from the burning sun. I waded out into the middle to try and take a photo of the bridge, but bits were getting in the way of my composition and I ended up not liking any of the photos I took there.

We continued driving around and then went to Widecombe to find some lunch (though at this point I’d lost all concept of time and had no idea it was lunchtime). There was a mare and her foal wandering free on the green and loads of foreign (I think French) students in groups sat on the grass.

When we’d finished our lunch and had a little look around it was time to head towards the cottage we were going to be staying in for the next week. We made one more stop on the way to watch and photograph the Dartmoor ponies, then made our way towards Bude.