Considering how near it is to Bristol I don’t know why I’ve not spent more time on Dartmoor. With a view to changing this Gabe and I decided to head down for the weekend. I put together a route with a mix of well-travelled paths and a few more off-piste sections, a couple of squelchy boggy stretches, and a river crossing for good measure. My good friend and Plymouth local Matt had given us the suggestion of heading down towards West Oakment River for the night if the weather was looking wild, making it a short climb up to High Willhays in the morning. This is the highest point on Dartmoor and a great place to soak up the beauty of it all, especially first thing in the morning when there are fewer people about.

Saturday morning we came across a load of teenagers with huge packs twice the size of their bodies out training for Ten Tors. There’s so much information and emphasis online about lightweight backpacking, it’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole of thinking you need to spend a fortune on fancy kit to have a good time. These kids were a refreshing antithesis to this, and I’m sure many of them were hiking further and faster than a lot of us with our fancy tents, carrying whatever cheap and heavy kit they could persuade their parents to buy them.

A lot of our chat turned to how great an experience this is for teenagers, and how important it is that open access to natural landscapes is maintained and improved upon. We both spoke of how we’d have loved to do that sort of thing, but for whatever reason, it never appeared to be an available option. I’m sure we were busying ourselves with other things at 15! I think I was riding skateboards down hills wherever possible, sometimes even on Dartmoor.

On Saturday, we’d been heading southwest from Sticklepath aiming for Scorhill stone circle. At one point I saw a circle of cows standing in the distance and thought that was it – Gabe quickly pointed out that some of these ‘stones’ were moving. I think I need to get my eyes tested, or at least start bringing my glasses on walks. On reaching the actual circle, we stopped for lunch and I had my usual favourite, a wrap containing banana, strawberry jam, and peanut butter. Gabe one-upped me big time, with a huge baguette and a beer. It’s always fun seeing what different people bring on camping trips. I find it tricky to combine tasty food with being reasonably compact and travelling well and am always open to suggestions for good camp food. Dehydrated meals make me fart something ruthless and are quite expensive, so those are out. Hit me with your best suggestions, the winner gets a high five and an honourable mention.

I suppose you may have been wondering about the title… Well, I recently got myself a Sawyer mini water filter, which has the same thread as the ActiPH brand of bottled water. I’d been out and got myself a pair of these bottles so that I could have a ‘clean’ one to drink from and a ‘dirty’ one to collect water from to be filtered, and had also found a nice little pack strap mounted bottle holder. I don’t really like hydration bladders or reaching behind me into my bag pockets, so this seemed a great idea. Buying single use plastic water bottles didn’t really agree with me, but I figured these would last me many journeys and the matching thread to the water filter was very handy.

On reaching the river crossing we found we could shimmy across a steel fence which bridged the river, and around the stone pillars it was fixed to. I went first, shimmying along with no problem, and swung my leg around the first of the stone pillars. at this point I leant forward, straddling the big stone pillar, and dropped my bottle from its nice little holder and straight into the river. I make the effort to stick to the principle of ‘leave no trace’ wherever possible, so felt quite bad about dropping a plastic bottle in the river. I imagined myself tutting and moaning about dickheads littering had I seen a bottle on the riverbank. I had a good go at trying to fish it out with the end of my pole, and very nearly ended up in the river myself before deciding that there was no hope. Anyway, if you’re out walking on the moor and see an ActiPH water bottle on the river bank somewhere, I’m sorry!

The small silver lining of this is I’ve learned that I’ll need to modify my bottle holder with some kind of little paracord strap or leash to keep similar from happening in future. I can also confirm that ActiPH bottles available in Tesco and Sainsburys work well in combination with the Sawyer Mini water filter.

Accidental littering aside, the weekend was absolutely perfect. We were blessed with great weather all day, heavy rain and wind overnight, and sunshine again by morning. This was a nice opportunity to put the new tent to the test, and it shrugged off a decent amount of wind and rain with no worries. I generally sleep very well when the weather is bad, either at home or camping there is something about hearing rain and wind whilst tucked up in bed that just sends me off to sleep. Lovely.

It’s starting to feel like 2023 is really getting into full swing, with a few great weekends under my belt and a ton of fun rides, walks, and adventures in the calendar, it’s safe to say I’m buzzing, and getting into a rhythm of life that’s felt like a long time coming.