Drizzly gloom – welcome back to Devon, Penloper!
With tired and excruciatingly-tight muscles after the shock of day 1 last year, I’d skipped the climb from Lynmouth to Lynton. Today I planned to correct that small gap in my swcp record.
But, first, I needed to limber up.
I chose a warm-up walk to the beautiful Watersmeet a few km up the East Lyn River.
Soggy, but warm, I was now ready to tackle the zig-zag track that criss-crosses the fenicula railway from Lynmouth harbour…
…up, up, up…
… past perilous poetry…
… to the intersection high on the clifftop where I’d picked up the swcp last year (remember the goats in the Valley of Rocks?).
A dramatic but also somewhat anticlimactic climb, I didn’t feel quite done for the day. So I hot-footed it back to Barnstaple and started another missed swcp stint – Barnstaple to Westward Ho! (yes the placename does include the exclamation point).
This isn’t the most scintillating stretch of the path – being flat and largely unchanging – but it did offer the most amazing spread of blackberries to power my stride.
Coexisting with the Tarka Trail, it follows the old train tracks beside the Taw estuary …
… to where it meets to River Torridge and swings south towards Instow where I remember enjoying a fabulous seafood pie last year.
The tides are so wild in this part of the country that, unfortunately, the only opportunity I would have to catch the Instow to Appledore ferry this year would be later that afternoon – too late to do more of the path.
Tomorrow I will have to return and go the long way round 
Stats: 34369 steps; 121 floors; 24.5 km
PenLoper 