Author: Mo

“When the weather is bad in Dartmoor, it is really bad!”, that’s what Mohamed’s friend who lives in the area told him, that statement could not have been truer, and yet it was great to see how the club members and prospective members managed to enjoy themselves that weekend despite the weather.

Having arrived at the campsite on Friday afternoon to early evening in droves, the team settled in early to be ready for an early start on Saturday ahead of the forecasted afternoon rain.

Saturday

Having split into two teams of climbers and a team of walkers, the groups made their way to their respective destinations.

Team Dewerstone followed the beautiful approach walk up through the forest. David warmed up on the first pitch of Central Groove HS, with Ollie and Katherine seconding, and Ollie taking the lead up the second pitch.

Chuck decided on the hard-core warm up of Leviathan VS with Anne and Ali in tow and an ab down from the top. Andrew and Nick couldn’t resist the excellent Climbers Club Ordinary Route so followed up after David’s crew.

Katherine and Ali then set off cross country in search of Needle Arête, which was eventually located, and conquered (Katherine’s lead), but unfortunately also resulted in picking up some small , bloodsucking freeloaders along the way. The climb was an odd mix of fairly dull and very bold, with the enjoyable and interesting section frustratingly short!

David and Ollie progressed to Leviathan, whilst Andrew and Nick took on Central Groove and picked up some crag swag in the form of an old nut on Route B.

With three multi pitch climbs for each of them, this group couldn’t have been more chuffed with what they accomplished before the rain started towards 4pm.

Team Walkers

After a bit of a quick change in plans, Petra, Mike, Josh, Emil, Wendy, and Christine went for a circular saunter from the campsite. The route wasn’t an established one – instead they followed their map and some lines on the OS app. (we’ll come back to this later)

They wandered across beautiful country lanes and through Buckfastleigh town, finding the café they planned to return to at the end of the day and continued onwards through the fairly gentle (and occasionally not gentle) hills.

They even made some friends along the way including some scout leaders (while lunching at a country crossing). There was even a poster warning people to call a farm if their orange cat followed them to that point! No orange cat had followed the group though.

After lunch, the group passed and said hello to some locals with an adorable spaniel, followed by a group of incredible (and probably old) looking trees. This resulted in a short photoshoot (with the trees that is) of course.

Some time after, the OS app led the group to a point where there were no actual gates, or even paths. In fact, there was quite the steep drop! Fortunately, they stopped the locals they passed earlier and quickly established that the best route was around and that’s what they did.

Some kilometres (and an extra bit of time) later they finally got back to Buckfastleigh to the café with 15 minutes to go before closing time. The wonderful owners let the group sit while they cleaned up around them, letting them enjoy their warm drinks and homemade cakes (tiramisu cheesecake, who’d have thought!).

By the time they got back to the campsite, they walked 19.6km, ehem, 20km as they then strolled around the campsite to round the number up.

Team Hound Tor

Mira, Mohamed and Ilia joined Jamie, a friend of Mohamed who lives in the area, in Hound Tor. While Jamie and Ilia managed eight routes before the rain started at 4pm, Mira and Mohamed managed only three, their execuse was that this was their first day out trad climbing this season.

Bizarrely enough, a route that both pairs found the most fun was the boulder problem on the left wall of Barnaby’s Crack, while this was an F3, it ran up to eight meters so they pitched it and climbed it as a trad route.

Just before the rain started, Mohamed lead Perched Block Chimney, while Jamie was just to the right leading Sheep May Fly Safely. As there was a crow’s nest with newly hatched chicks in the chimney of the Perched Block Chimney, the group decided not to disturb it, so Mohamed built an anchor at the ledge and brought up Mira and both waited for Ilia to climb up to Jamie; Mohamed and Mira then traversed right and followed Ilia up Sheep May Fly Safely.

At 4pm the rain starter and in the evening, all twenty members met at the Totnes Brewing Company for drinks and dinner before heading back to the campsite to end the day.

Sunday

It started ok, but even the Met Office’s best tea leaf readers couldn’t have predicted what type of day it was about to turn to. They expected rain starting just before midday but what we had was half a day of tropical weather with periods of torrential rains followed by sunny spells lasting no more than five minutes each.

Otters, Butterflies and Agatha Christie

As the weather wasn’t the best, and given that Christine, Mira and Mohamed were all recovering from some sort of injury or another, and Ilia was tired from the the previous day’s climbing, they went for a leisurely walk to Buckfastleigh where they met Petra, Michael and Joshua and went to the Dartmoor Otter Sanctuary and Buckfast Butterfly Farm, where they spent a couple of hours trying to make sense of the otters’ habits and antics, and following a lunch break at Birdie’s Kitchen across the road, they headed back to the campsite.

With no climbing possible that day, Anne and Andrew joined Emil on a hike around Buckfastleigh that took longer than they thought it would have, as they spent most of the time stumbling in and out of rain jackets and downpour trousers given the day’s weather.

Meanwhile, Chuck and Wendy chose to have a cultural day and drove south to Dartmouth for a walk and a visit to Agatha Christie’s Greenway House.

Ali and David go Kayaking

After some morning planning for his upcoming Alpine adventure with Harry, David picked up Ali and drove to Dartmouth for a half a day of open sea kayaking. Having met their guide, the singularly named Driad, they paddled out down the estuary and poked their noses out past the headland. It was fairly windy so they attempted a little surfing on the small waves before heading back into the shelter of the estuary for a bit of playing around in the rocks, squeezing through some tight gaps and practicing their turns and timing. They then paddled back up past the harbour, through all the swanky yachts and even spotted a seal hauled up on one of the pontoons digesting its lunch.
After a well deserved ice cream, Ali and David made it back to the campsite before heading to meet the rest of the group for dinner in the thousand year old building of the Rattery Church Inn; by then the group was down from twenty to twelve, as some had given and headed back to London after varying times of the day.

Monday – Spring Bank Holiday

As the weather forecast predicted more rain in the early afternoon, the remaining twelve decided to pack and leave in the morning.

Chuck, Wendy, Andrew and Anne stopped by Chudleigh on their back home and Chuck, Andrew and Anna climbed Inkerman Groove, but due to the downpour, they had to abseil down. Once the rain subsided, Chuck led up the first pitch of Never on a Sunday, and while Andrew was supposed to lead the second pitch, he missed the step out right into the arete and finished off on the much harder second pitch of Scar – a very common mistake according to the UKC, enough to make it an official variation. A pleasant half a day of climbing for them.

It might have not been the most successful of mountaineering trips, but otters, kayaks, Agatha Christie, shared meals and seeing eight year old Joshua through enjoy the 20km Buckfasleigh trek made it a memorable one. We can’t wait to go back to Dartmoor for some climbing and hiking soon… or maybe more otters, butterflies and water sports.

Editor: Thank you so much for summarising the meet Mo! You’re a super star. ^_^