The Run That Broke Me - Part One
A Tale of Two Castles
I went to Dartmoor for a relaxing weekend to watch the Ten Tors Challenge. Rachel had other ideas.
Wanting to see both the start and finish of Leo’s event (which I wrote about last week) and not too thrilled by the prospect of driving there and back twice, Rachel and I made the decision to make a weekend of it and stay overnight in Okehampton.
I had been envisaging a nice walk, a pub lunch, a swim in a river. That sort of thing. Rachel, on the other hand, had mapped out a ridiculously long run all over Dartmoor.
It would have been quite fun being out and about on the moor at the same time as 2,400 teenagers taking part in Ten Tors. But it also felt like we should leave Dartmoor to them for the weekend. Mainly to spare Leo the embarrassment in case we accidentally passed near him. Based on our history of Dartmoor runs, it’s unlikely it would have looked good.
‘Leo, isn’t that your mum and dad?’
‘Oh god. Yeah.’
‘Why are they both waist deep in a bog?’
We couldn’t risk putting him through that. So I looked for an alternative route.
My map showed a trail heading west from the centre of Okehampton, invitingly titled the Two Castles Trail. I’d never heard of it, but a quick google showed it to be a waymarked route following footpaths, bridleways, and minor roads between the old castles in Okehampton and Launceston, across the border in Cornwall.
It was 24 miles long.
I thought we could run part of it and turn back. Or, if we were feeling ambitious, complete the full thing and get a bus back to Okehampton.
Rachel had other ideas. She wanted to run it there… and back.
I had 24 miles to try to dissuade her.
Bypassing the trail of cars trying to exit the car park after the start of the Ten Tors Challenge, we headed downhill from Okehampton Camp into town. It was 8 am. We reached the White Hart Pub at the bottom of the hill. The pub is now a Wetherspoons but was once the site of a legendary night during my penniless Land’s End to John O’Groats trip, when Ben and I had to wash the outside of it in exchange for dinner and a bed. We ended up drinking beer with Arek the Polish pizza chef in his flat above the pub until the early hours.
Crossing the West Okement River, we stopped briefly to admire the ruins of the medieval Okehampton Castle, built between 1068 and 1086. The castle was in use until 1538 when its owner at the time – Henry Courtenay – was beheaded by Henry VIII for a suspected treason plot, and the castle was ordered to be demolished.
We had already covered two miles before even getting to the official start. Just another 24 to go until the next castle in Launceston.
Leaving the banks of the West Okement, the path climbed up through woodland full of bluebells, into a nature reserve, and then out onto Okehampton Golf Course.
We rejoined the river, crossed over at a footbridge and then trudged up the steep valley in the direction of Meldon Viaduct. Before reaching the viaduct, we took a right, past Meldon Farm, up a tree-lined tunnel and out onto the open moor.
It was here that Rachel and I had our first of many navigational disagreements. I’m usually the one who navigates any run, walk or bike ride we go on. I had downloaded a 19-page leaflet of the Two Castles Trail onto my phone, which described step-by-step instructions for the entire route. The route also promised to have waymarkers the whole way, although four miles into the run and we hadn’t yet seen one. Uncharacteristically, Rachel had downloaded a digital GPS route onto her watch from a website of a guy who’d walked the Two Castles Trail.
The problem was that Rachel’s watch and my leaflet didn’t quite agree with each other.
Relying on Rachel’s watch meant we had to trust that the random guy had actually gone the correct way. Out on the open moor, we began climbing steeply up onto Sourton Tors. I took a sneaky glance at the directions on my phone and found we should have turned right at the base of the hill.
‘Er… Rachel,’ I said tentatively. ‘Sorry, I think we should have turned right down there. I don’t think we need to be going up this tor.’
She looked at her watch and continued climbing.
‘Well what are we following?’ she snapped. ‘The route on my watch or your leaflet thing? Because we can’t follow both.’
She said this as she continued striding uphill, which made it pretty clear we were following her watch.
‘Er… I guess we are following your watch.’
After going up and over the hill, we eventually rejoined the route described on my leaflet. And to be honest, you never regret climbing a hill. I don’t think it was even a proper tor, to be honest. It was more of a rocky outcrop. Over to our left, the mighty tors of Dartmoor stood proudly. Leo was out there somewhere, and he was going to be climbing ten of those proper tors over the next 36 hours. I couldn’t really complain about this little diversion Rachel had taken us on.
We ran down the spongy moorland, into the village of Sourton, crossed the main road and through several fields.
A fallen tree in a field offered an inviting photo opportunity.
‘Are you going to climb onto it for a photo?’ I asked Rachel.
‘Ok. You can do it on the way back.’
At this point, I hoped Rachel meant when we turned back a few miles later. I had not anticipated that the sun would be beginning to set the next time we saw this tree.
