As Promised...The Teardrop..!

For all you Reliant Robin and Teardrop Camping Trailer fans out there, as promised I managed to get some 'hitched up' images before the miniature rig left the site....

The owner told me that he was now heading off to Devils Bridge in Wales with his tiny unit to spend a month there....
At 40mph I think that he was going to have quite a long drive..... but hey....I would rather be driving this tiny rig than the monster Wildcat 5th wheel trailer I posted details about the other day.......Lots more fun to drive and camp in I think.....

Don't you just love it.....!!

As a bit of extra interest concerning the Wildcat......
He left the site today with his 5th wheel towed by a breakdown tow truck and his 7.2litre truck on the back of another breakdown tow truck....
It transpires that when reversing the monster rig on to the pitch here at the site he blew his gearbox to smithereens. 
I had wondered where all the oil on the campsite road had come from....the site manager has been working hard trying to clean it all up..........

Out on the moor.....

If we get one good day of weather we seem to pay the price with two or three days of rubbish weather.....
The other day we had one of the good days so it was a day out on the moor for Anne and I.....

Years ago when Anne lived in this area she often used to walk up to Pew Tor. As this was one of the Tors that I hadn't visited it was to be our lunch stop for the days walk..

Dartmoor Pony..

 Being camped right on the edge of the moor means that we can head off on a walk without having to use the car to get somewhere first which is always a plus mark for a site in our view...
The route up to Pew Tor took us along some very pretty Devon lanes before opening up on to the moor proper.....
We saw quite a few of the delightful Dartmoor ponies on route.....

Anne taking in the view from Pew Tor

 When we got up to the tor the wind was blowing quite strongly... 
One of the good things about choosing a tor as a lunch stop is that you can always find a nice little spot out of the wind...just tuck yourself in amongst the rocks and you will have a 'room with a view'...... a perfect place out of the wind with a superb view for you lunch stop...

The view from our lunch stop on Pew Tor

 After we had finished our lunch we checked out the map...... Anne had told me that she remembered that there was a cross not too far from the tor..... she seemed to think that it was the other side of Feather Tor which we could see in the distance.... looking at the map we planned the rest of our walk creating a loop that would take in the cross before heading back toward the campsite by a different route from our outward leg......

The Beckamoor Cross

 The cross stands to the north west of Feather Tor.....
It is a granite cross known as either the Beckamoor Cross or more romatically the Windy Post and Windy Stone...
It stands next to the murmuring Grimstone and Sortridge leet.....
English Heritage notes that the cross is of medieval origin and date it to between 1400 and 1499. (Although that is disputed)
Nowadays the cross is showing the effects of time from having cattle and ponies rubbing up against it and giving it a somewhat drunken tilt.....

Apparently the purpose of this cross was to act as a marker on the Tavistock to Ashburton trans-moor track which was a medieval route connecting Buckfast and Tavistock  Abbeys....

Another view of the Beckamoor Cross

I have always had a fascination for standing stones and crosses and have spent lots of time over the years taking images of them.....
Normally I prefer to take B&W images of these interesting subjects and have shown a few on my photographic blog..... However for this blog I have shown the cross in colour....

Little & Large...

The weather has been slightly improved today...
Instead of continuous rain, today has been bright and sunny one minute followed by sudden very heavy showers.... But I will settle for heavy showers every now and again if it means we don't have any more of the non stop stuff....

I thought that you might be interested in details of the largest and smallest units on site at the moment....

First the largest....it arrived today!  A Wildcat 5th wheel trailer.....
Naturally I asked the owner if he minded me taking a picture to share with you all on my blog and he said no problem and invited me in to have a look around.....

I realize that my readers in the USA see a lot of these and if you travel to Spain you would see a number of them as well. 
However in the UK it is not often that you will come across a 5th wheel trailer on site.....

The Wildcat 5th Wheel Trailer

 I have to say that when looking around the Wildcat it dawned on me that it is not really camping by any stretch of the imagination.....
With two large slides on one side and a huge canopy on the other.....a large lounge and kitchen area..... a large fixed bed.... full size shower and a porcelain (not the usual plastic) toilet unit plus electric everything it is certainly 'beyond glamping'.

Kitchen area of the Widcat

In the picture above you can see the kitchen and the start of the lounge area at the camera end....
Even the kitchen cabinets rise up and down to various heights at the push of a button to suit the height of the occupants.......

The Wildcat main bedroom

The unit can sleep four people ...two in the main bedroom and the other two in fold down beds in the lounge.......

Would I want one.....?
Well the luxury would be very nice....but towing it...well that's another matter. 
I would need something a lot bigger than the CRV to tow it.....The owner has a truck with a 7.2litre engine......
It's bad enough towing Eva along narrow Devon country lanes... Towing the Wildcat up here to the site must have been a bit of a nightmare...well it certainly would have been for me.

Talking of nightmares...that's what it must be when you look at your fuel bill for towing the flipping thing........

Interestingly, the owner told me how much he had paid for it... He bought it secondhand and it cost half as much as Eva cost me.... A pretty good bargain I would say.....

However.... Great as it is I will stick with Eva the Eriba....

And now for the smallest unit on site..... I mentioned this unit in one of my previous posts.......

Currently the smallest unit on site,,,,

Yes it's the Sleeper Teardrop trailer towed by the little three wheeled Reliant Robin.....
Even the awning is bigger than the trailer.....
Small as it is the owner seems to have all the mod cons (like the Wildcat?) including television (checkout the aerial).

If I am around when the Reliant leaves the site with the teardrop on tow I will try and get a picture and share it with you......

Summer...?

It's now a week since we had a couple of nice sunny days...luckily while my Daughter and family were here, since then it's been rain....rain...rain and more rain...
Today our view from the awning:- Was.....

Yes...It's more rain...

Yes...It's more rain....

I must say that I am pretty fed up with this continuous bad weather,
We are now half way through our month long stay here and due to the weather I have not been on my bike yet.....

We are constantly glued to the weather app on our phones.... watching out for that break in the weather when we can get a walk in between the torrential rain....

Not much else to report at the moment..!!

Summer..? Typical British summer weather......

Two good days....

On Monday my daughter and her husband came to spend a couple of days with us...obviously my two grandsons came too....
Despite having terrible traffic congestion on the way down, they did at least bring nice bright sunny weather with them.....

One of the most entertaining things when staying on a campsite is watching new arrivals setting up their camp....
I offered to help them with putting up the awning but my daughter told me it was all under control so I settled back in my chair and watched the proceedings unfold...as I said always good entertainment...
Anne on the other hand did something far more useful than just watching them with their awning and made them all a cup of tea and got the cakes out.....

My daughter and her husband sorting out their awning....

If you checkout the picture of them above with their awning, look at the background on the right hand side and you can just see a tiny tear drop caravan with a small porch style awning.....
This is actually towed by a Reliant Robin three-wheeler. 
I don't think that I have ever seen a tear drop caravan quite so small......

Not long and the awning was up...(Reliant Robin in the background)

 Anyway it wasn't long before they had everything set up..... 
That evening we had a game of football with the boys followed by a board game in our awning.....it was midnight before we all got to bed......

The plan for the next day was a moorland walk taking in a couple of the many Tors that are scattered all over Dartmoor....
The weather was absolutely perfect for it....

The first stage from the campsite was a climb up to the car park that sits below Cox Tour....
As luck would have it, just as we arrived at the car park the Ice cream van that is regularly there arrived from Tavistock so it was ice creams all round.....

We then headed off up to the top of Cox Tor...Having done that we headed off in the direction of Great Staple Tor where we had lunch....but not before the boys had climbed to the top for a photo....
Scrambling to the top is one thing...getting back down again can often be a bit more of a problem as they found out.....

The Lads on the top of the Tor.....

Getting back down proved harder than scrambling up

On the way back we took in Middle Staple Tor and also Little Staple Tor.....
In all it was a great fun day and everyone enjoyed themselves.

I have to admit that I was so worn out I had to have a 45 minute lie down after my evening meal in order to prepare myself for another session of game playing in the awning.....

Today they had to leave us and return home and what a change in the weather again.....
We woke up to non stop rain so it was a good thing that they had had the foresight to pack away their awning last night.....

We all had breakfast in our awning and then they headed off back home at about midday....
It hasn't stopped raining all day........

Uphill everywhere......

Well, we have been here now for almost a week and I have to say that whatever you want to do, be it walk or cycle, it's uphill everywhere....
Mind you one of the great pleasures of going up, after the view, is the coming down....
I have just seen a cyclist coming down pork hill and he must have been touching fifty miles an hour so I can't wait to have a go too.....

Anne and I have managed to do a bit of walking again and the Dartmoor countryside is a mighty fine area in which to do it....
Anne grew up in this area and knows it well so who better than to be on the moors walking with......

I've added a couple of pictures below from a recent walk as well as a snapshot view of the start of pork hill as it passes our campsite...

My Daughter and family will be arriving tomorrow for a short stay with us and we are both looking forward to seeing them all....the weather forecast is looking quite good too......

Walking up towards Cox Tor

They build substantial walls in these parts...

The lower slope of Pork Hill as it passes our campsite...

Our new pitch...

We woke up on Monday morning to lots of rain.....it continued most of the time that we were packing up our pitch at Acorn Farm.
The journey down here to Tavistock was heavy rain the whole way too.... 

Torrential rain when travelling on Devon's roads also means lots of mud - 
When we arrived here at the Tavistock C&CC site Eva the Eriba was covered in the stuff...
Luckily for us after the one hour journey the rain stopped and the sun came out...I even managed to give Eva a bit of a clean up and now she is back to her bright shiny gleaming self again.

When I booked this pitch I had asked for a quiet area of the site and that is exactly what we have.....To be honest, from our perspective I think we have the very best pitch on the site, we are tucked away in a top corner with no pitches in front of us and we are set aside from the main area making it perfect for us.....

Tuesday and Wednesday of this week the weather improved and has been bright...sunny and warm.....
Today..? Well today we have had strong winds and back to torrential rain again....but the forecast for the weekend and the early part of next week is promising to be back to good weather.....This is good news as my Daughter and family are coming down to spend a couple of nights on site with us........

On the cycling front......one of the cycling climbs listed in Simon Warrens book '100 Greatest Cycling Climbs' passes right outside the campsite. 
This is Rundlestone/Pork Hill graded in Simon's book as a 7/10. The climb is 8950m in length with a height gain of 346m and has an approx climb time of 28mins.

 I am here for a month so hopefully at some point I will have an attempt at it...
It is one of the climbs that has been used on the West country stage of The Tour of Britain in the past....

Our new pitch... [including washing :-) ]

Setting Off Again.....

Tomorrow we will be setting off again....
We are not going too far, only about an hour down the road. Our destination this time is the C&CC site at Tavistock.....

Anne used to live in Tavistock some years ago before we met and one of her sons still lives close by.... 
The site is right on the edge of the moor so we are hoping to get out on some good Dartmoor walks and the cycling can be pretty good too if you like the stiff climbs....

Yesterday the weather was pretty stunning with almost a clear sky and bright sunshine... Today it is dull and overcast with odd spells of drizzle... What tomorrow holds I don't know although the forecast is not looking too good....

We packed up the awning last night just to be on the safe side as we didn't want to pack it up in damp weather so at least that is one of our major tasks all done and dusted.....

The picture below has absolutely nothing to do with us moving on..... 
I took the image the other day when we were in Great Torrington and I rather liked the contrast between the natural softness of the plants in the basket and the hardness of the rusting swing gate......

I will post again once we have settled in on our new pitch........

Nothing to do with moving on :-)

More Walking.....

Due to the very strong winds that we have been suffering over the past few days, riding my bike has not really been an option....
Still... with a book of walks to work through we have had plenty to occupy our time....
There really are some tremendous walks in the area and Anne and I are determined to make the most of them.

Dolton is a nice village of about 900 inhabitants one of which is a Rolling Stone....
Charlie Watts the drummer with the Stones has a home here...
He and his wife run their Arabian Stud farm here and he can often be seen driving along the Devon counry lanes around the village when he is not on tour ......

Heading off on another walk....

Most of  the farmers in the area appear to be very friendly......
Mind you on one of our recent walks we came across the farm gate below.....
Judging by the notices pinned to the gate this farmer was not of the friendly type...

Not all the farmers are friendly..

 On the same walk we found this very attractive duck pond in the grounds of a large estate...the footpath went right through the grounds but at some distance from the main house...
I thought that the small boat really made the scene complete and was worthy of a photograph..

Attractive duck pond...

 On the way back into the village at the end of this walk we saw this garage at the side of a cottage.....
Judging by the plant growth working it's way up the garage doors they haven't been opened in sometime.... 
It makes me wonder whether there is some nice classic vehicle stored inside just waiting to be 'discovered'.....!

This garage isn't used very often.