Getting fit enough to mow grass

Having had a couple of less-than-perfect opening training walks (too much wind, too much up and down, not enough time) I yesterday decided to do a reprise of a very straightforward, quite long but favourite local walk from 2012. So yesterday, in cool sunny spring conditions, I took a bus from Tavistock to Okehampton and walked back. It was 19 miles and I took about 7.5 hours, walking over bits of Dartmoor, a lot of fields and tracks and only a very small amount of road. Not bad.

This sort of walking is more typical of an end-to-end walk than pounding up and down the horrible slopes of the coast path. Of course, there will be many steep bits on the main walk this summer but the success of the walk depends more on my capacity to slog it out day after day over normal territory.

Coming up out of Okehampton is mostly a slow drag up onto the moor, passing underneath the impressive Meldon viaduct that once carried the London and South Western Railway over the West Okement River. It now carries a cycleway which is rather a sad end for such a splendid structure. The railway used to connect London to North Cornwall, but after Dr Beeching butchered the railway system, the bit up from Exeter to Okehampton was kept open only because it also served Meldon Quarry from which railway track ballast was obtained. Well, the quarry is now closed but a summer shuttle rail service does run from Exeter to Okehampton on what we now call a 'heritage railway'.

This route was one of those considered for reopening following the damage last year to the mainline railway at Dawlish. As well as the existing track that I've just described there is some still in use from a point just south of Tavistock to Plymouth and a good deal of the trackbed between there and Okehampton is still intact. In fact, there has for some years been a proposal to reinstate the railway in full from Tavistock to Plymouth so the issue is primarily one of re-engineering the railway close to my route yesterday. Certainly expensive but not impossible though unlikely from a government that's got a fixation on northern powerhouses.

So my walk took me past Sourton Tors and then along a bit of the cycle path before crossing through edge-of-Dartmoor farmland to another bit of moor close to Lydford where I sat on the same bench that I used 4 years ago, to eat my squashed cheese and pickle sandwiches. There are few greater pleasures when it's sunny.

Lydford also lost its railways in the 1960's. For such a small and sleepy place it's hard to visualise the broad gauge line that connected Launceston to Plymouth via Tavistock and which subsequently became a junction and one of the places where the Great Western and London and South Western Railways fought their battles to capture the lucrative tourist trade in Devon and into Cornwall. Should a Dawlish by-pass line ever be built using this route, Lydford would again become a railway village though I'd be surprised if its residents were all in favour.

Back over a bit more moor to MaryTavy, then to Peter Tavy (what lovely names for villages), a swift walk across fields and along a road into Tavistock and the day was done; I felt very pleased with myself. It only remained to go home and slump by the fire. Today I have been mowing the grass - a task that requires extreme fitness.