I have always wanted to regularly get away on weekend camping trips throughout the year but have never found it easy living in Warwick. There aren’t any close mountains, and it takes a bit more planning than I usually have time for to get to a wild area. Then in early September an upcoming heatwave was announced and I had…
I have now been to Bempton Cliffs in Yorkshire three separate times. And each time the spectacle of thousands of birds nesting on the 100m high cliffs amazes me. The cliffs are a guaranteed place to see at least eight species you may struggle to find elsewhere in England. I have loved Puffins ever since I was little. There was…
If you’ve followed the Exploration Journal for some time, you will know by now that I love waterfalls. They make frequent appearances in many of my posts and a lot of my time involves scrambling down muddy ravines or long walks just to reach them. I find the prospect of locating waterfalls just as exciting as arriving at it and…
I recently started a project to visit all the waterfalls on Bodmin Moor and Dartmoor, which is quite the undertaking! Fortunately Bodmin Moor is easy as there are only two – the main one at Golitha Falls that everybody knows about, and then there is the complete opposite at Cascade Woods, a secret spot that isn’t talked about much and…
The weather in Cornwall can be atrocious, especially in winter when the storms roll across the Atlantic Ocean to batter the coastline and cover the county in torrential downpours. Which is why it is valuable local knowledge to know where you can go for a sunny walk when the weather looks bad everywhere else. The Tamar Valley is known to…
The stretch of Cornish coastline named High Cliff (aptly named due to being the highest cliff in Cornwall) is also home to my favourite local beach – the Strangles. Regardless of where you park, the route to the beach involves winding down for over 200 metres and then using a rope and rickety steps to drop the last couple onto…
The walk from North Hill through Cascade Woods and up onto Bodmin Moor is one of my favourites in North Cornwall. You can park at the village hall in North Hill (providing there is nothing going on) and have easy access to the valley. The parish is full of history, so much so that they have a website dedicated to…
I spent Saturday clambering on top of Dartmoor to reach Sandy Hole Pass and the beautiful East Dart Waterfall, and on Sunday the weather caused me to drop down off the high moor and after a quick review of the map I decided to pursue my second Dartmoor waterfall of the weekend – Venford Falls. This walk is recommended in…
The first waterfall in my new blog series ‘Waterfalls of Cornwall and Devon’ is East Dart Waterfall, or as I prefer to call it, Sandy Hole Waterfall. It’s less than half a mile downriver from Sandy Hole Pass and I’ve always visited both at the same time and so grouped them together. Last weekend I decided to undertake my first…
It’s easy to assume that the name ‘Twelve Men’s Moor’ refers to the line of craggy tors that stretch down the middle of this part of Bodmin Moor. I’ve counted them many times and always end up at way over twelve but figured that they probably counted each tor differently back when it was named. I couldn’t have been more…