Our Epic Fail Adventure

Adventure Mama
Mar 20, 2020
3 min read

Updated: Apr 15, 2020

We reserve Tuesdays for Mummy/Orla adventures and this one was no exception. Trying to mix things up a bit, I decided to try a walk in the Coly valley (somewhere I haven't explored before) from @OneMagDevon.

We were promised a picturesque walk through rural Devon where we could "discover the beauty and charm of the villages of Farway and Church Green" and having been cooped up for days sheltering from storms Ciara, Dennis and Ellen, we were ready to see, breath and feel some fresh air.

All started off well with blue skies and the sun on our faces. Relying on a couple of torn out magazine pages for directions, we managed to locate the start of the walk in Church Green fairly easily (some query as to whether Church Green was even a place) and headed off on our adventure. The circular walk took you down the lane to the right of the church and onto the public footpath over fields. This is where we became unstuck - or most certainly stuck as all the wet weather meant the fields were completely saturated and one big mud bath. While there was a footpath marker pointing into the first field, once through the gate I had no idea which direction to head in. Did I need to head straight across the field (gate behind me) or down the field or even diagonally? The topography of the land meant that I also couldn't see any gates or stiles in the surrounding hedgerow to give me any clues. My foremost thought was that I should have brought a map and how did I not, being the daughter of an expedition leader (sorry Dad)!

Negotiating ankle deep mud and a hangry toddler (who I coaxed along with the promise of a picnic) I decided to head down as the magazine directions said "follow this path straight DOWN through the field". WRONG! After walking up and down the field opposite in search of a wooden footbridge (the next landmark) a sympathetic farm worker took pity on us and very kindly pointed us in the right direction - back to where we had come from and ACROSS the first field to our footbridge.

Exhausted from carrying 13kg's of toddler for almost 1hr we sat on the steps of the bridge and made ourselves a picnic spot. The views around us were glorious in the East Devon sunshine and with renewed hope that we were now back on track, headed into the next field. Unfortunately this is where my renewed hope ended. Trying to decide which direction to head through this field brought us to a gate at the bottom with a footpath marker, but the surrounding area did not look like that described in the magazine. I certainly knew we weren't in the right place but had no idea where the right place was. Deciding then and there the whole idea had been a mistake we splashed in pot hole puddles along the farm track and soon came across another lovely farm worker who advised us to keep following the track to find a duck pond (and who doesn't love a good duck pond 🦆?).

We continued along the track some more after a good while watching the ducks and stumbled across another footpath marker. Now maybe it was my determination to see this walk through or that I just needed to be outside feeling the sun on my face a little longer, but for some reason my instincts said "why not" so we gave traipsing through the fields another go. Only this time I was faced with steep steep terrain where I just had to grit my teeth, put my head down and focused on putting one foot in front of the other (as Orla was now refusing to walk), all the while Orla's shouting "giddy-up mummy". I thought I was doing well, until we reached the summit of a particularly steep section where Orla announces that she'd lost her dummy . . . and I lost my rag! We retraced our steps a little to see if she had lost it in the surrounding bracken but instinct told me it was at the bottom of the hill we had just climbed. Giving the dummy up for lost we continued in the direction the footpath marker pointed only to be faced with a dead end. I had had enough by this point so we turned round and headed back the way we came. At least I knew it was downhill! And low and behold, there at the bottom of the steep section was this sodding dummy!!