Devon is nice. Holidays are nice. These are my wholly original observations. The world right now feels stressful, the daily news is awful and in order to keep on fighting for what I believe in, I badly needed a break. So we took ourselves off to Devon for a week. Dartmoor isn’t the easiest place to holiday without a car but we made it work and it was pretty awesome in the end. We had ideal weather, stayed in a cute dog-friendly glamping pod thingy and all got weirdly used to seeing very few people. Which may have ruined the dog for city life – she’s going to need a week or two to get used to people again.

Thanks to a very generous Christmas present from Tim, I now have a new SLR camera that’s much more portable than the old one I had basically given up on for being too much weight to carry around. So for the first time in years I took a bunch of photos on this holiday on a real actual camera and they really are so much better than phone photos. Which was handy as within a couple of minutes’ walk of our holiday park we were in ancient woodland and a mile later on the moor itself. And it was all beautiful.

Almost 20 years ago, the last time we holidayed in Devon, Tim introduced me to letterboxing. This is a form of orienteering where you combine treasure hunt style clues with a map and compass. The prize at the end of each clue is a stamp, so you need to carry an inkpad and notebook to collect them in. It’s really fun and mostly a means to plan a walk off the beaten track and pay attention to your surroundings in a slightly different way.

But it can also be quite frustrating, as many of the letterboxes are years and years old, meaning the landscape isn’t always exactly as described; or the plastic pot containing the stamp is now thoroughly overgrown with gorse or brambles; or maybe it’s even been stolen/taken away by a well-meaning person thinking they’re collecting up litter. And sometimes the clue says it’s hidden under a gorse bush or a “partially vegetation-covered rock” and all you can see is hundreds of gorse bushes / rocks.

I grew up in a national forest. I love to be among trees. When my parents (who still live in the Forest of Dean) tell me how beautiful the bluebells are in late spring, or the colours in autumn, I miss it so badly. This year it looks like I have missed the Forest of Dean bluebells again but at least I spent a few days walking in bluebell-filled woods in Devon.

We also hired bikes a couple of times and went on long rides. Tim had to carry the dog as my shoulder wasn’t quite up to that yet. She also got some time running alongside us on the Granite Way – an offroad cycle path that makes use of a disused railway line. It was really fun and I am looking forward to being able to carry the dog on my back again myself so we can get back to our Sunday adventures.

And did I mention we spent most mornings just sat around reading in the sunshine? I miss holiday already. Stupid real life. But it was pretty awesome while it lasted.