Gee, Toto...

... I don't think we're in London anymore.

No, we're definitely not. I'm in Devon (about 3 hours west of London) and spent most of the day in Dartmoor National Park. Unfortunately, I couldn't get "up on the moor," because at this time of year the buses don't go up there in the part I was in (except for Sundays), which the guidebooks--and the staff at the Exeter visitors center--don't tell you. Ahem. Still, I had a lovely 10-mile hike through field and forest, up hill and down dale (now I see where those phrases come from), and with the help of two farmers in the field and a knock on a farmhouse door, I didn't get lost, though I did lose the trail once.

Yesterday I came to Exeter on the train from London and went to Evensong in Exeter's marvelous Gothic cathedral. This morning I started the day with a bus trip to Moretonhampstead, from which I'd been told I could get up onto the moors, but couldn't. Moretonhampstead is a lovely little town, and the folks at the visitors center there dissuaded me from trying to walk the last 4 miles up onto the moor on a very narrow road. "It's just not safe," they said, and later I saw how narrow the roads are, with hedgerows nearly thick as thatch that simply won't let you jump far from an oncoming car. Tomorrow I'll try to get to the northern part of the park via a bus to Okehampton, if the weather isn't a factor. From there (I'm told), I can hike up onto the moors. The folks in Moretonhampstead talked me into a hike over to Fingle Bridge and the River Teign gorge, under the shadow of Castle Drogo. (Don't you just love these names?) I had the walk to myself, except for the farmers, their sheep and dogs, and the woman in the farmhouse who put me back on the trail when I'd missed a signpost. ("Do you want the long way or the short way?" she asked. I took the long way.) I scared up a pheasant, saw some wild ponies, hawks and ravens, and came upon two standing stones. There were other people hiking in the river gorge, and there's a cozy riverside pub and inn at the bridge, which made for a nice stop in the afternoon.

All in all, a lovely day, and not a drop of rain.