D9- The FINALE-2 MOORS WAY/ Devon C2C- Withypool to Lynmouth- The BEST- The LONGEST- a day of Rainbows

Here’s ‘watching you’ at breakfast

Oh, it happens to be raining again!

Some Exmoor residents

STUNNING SCENERY!!!

The River Barle was followed all the way from Withypool to Simonsbath…with a few more local residents standing in the way and having to be mooooved along 🤣

MORE STUNNING SCENERY

..and then a short cup of tea stop in Simonsbath at the Exmoor Forest Inn…they had NO CAKES 😱

EVEN MORE STUNNING SCENERY

Then heading to Exe Head across Dure Down, which must be the boggiest place in Exmoor. Shouts of ‘my bog is boggier than your bog’ ensued as we tramped through squelching grassland and ‘bog’.

Then to the Chain Valley.

…a ford…where shall we cross?

Needed a bit of exploring and finding an appropriately short ‘jump’

…then some more local residents

And lunch by the Hoar oak tree

The original oak tree had lived around 250 years before succumbing to a storm in 1916, or so it is thought. This one was planted afterwards.

The Hoaroak water originates from the Hoaroak Hill near the Chains valley.

Then came the 2 miles of ‘lengthy trudge’ (Ref: Sue Viccars) Cheriton Ridge which looks over and acrosseastward to Brendon Common and ‘Doone Country’, said to have inspired the novel Lorna Doone by RD Blackmore.