So... the plan was to have a short walk from Princetown out to Foggintor, along the old railway line, and then either back the same way or circling through town. It had started foggy enough that I hoped to get a bit of low visibility navigation in, but the cloud quickly lifted so that visibility was around the 200m mark, making it unnecessary.
The first realisation that my walk was not going to be at its normal level of preparedness was when I stopped to take my first photo. Yes, I had taken all my camera batteries out to charge them fully. No, I hadn't put them back. Oh well. I can use my phone camera. Now, my phone is very bad at holding charge, but that again isn't a huge issue as I always carry a battery pack. And I DID have that with me. No cable to connect it to the phone though.
But all of this was no big deal: I was walking around 6km, mostly along a well defined track. So no problem.
At maybe the 1.5-2km mark there is a lovely scatter of Bronze Age Hut Circles on the bank below the old track. I stopped briefly, to ponder the slope of the floor inside a couple of them, and to wonder whether the hillside had become steeper in the 3500 odd years since they were built, or whether the floor had always been at a bit of an angle. This led to considering the great number of settlements in the area, and whether they were neighbours or if the earliest had been abandoned before the next arrived; which in turn led to me consulting my map.
Except, I had taken my map out of my map case in order to carry it instead in my pocket. And while for some reason I had my map case still in my backpack, my map was, I now belatedly recalled, still on the dashboard of my van. With my morning snack sat atop it. Botheration. But again, no big deal. I have walked this route many times. All good - certainly not worth going back for. I was getting close to my half way mark anyway.
And thus I sauntered on... except, of course, I decided that instead of heading back from Foggintor, I would make this a decent walk and go around Kings Tor too. And then, I wondered if it might be fun to go round Ingra and Leeden as well, since this would be half of a longer route I am planning for the summer. But then, having done that and faced with a 3 or 4km homeward walk along the Princetown/Yelverton road, I decided dropping down to the Devonport Leat, walking along that for a while and then cutting north via Black Tor and across the moorland was much more the walk finale I fancied. So I dropped down and walked along the leat to the aqueduct, where the water cascades down the hillside opposite before being channeled across the infant River Meavy and on towards the reservoir.
My attention at this point was caught by a Chinnook which was repeatedly circling the head of the small valley I was in. Obviously I got my phone out to video it... but alas, the battery decided that moment that it had had enough and died. So I packed my phone into my backpack and stopped to glance down the valley - where a wall of fog was advancing swiftly towards me.
So. No map (but I did have my compass so I took a quick reading on Black Tor while it was still visible), no phone (which has an electronic copy of the OS map on it). I wasn't too concerned - I know Walkham Common very well, so I knew that as long as I headed north to Black Tor and then NE to the road I would hit civilisation at some point. If worst came to worst I knew that there was a stream becoming a river which came from the road and circled Black Tor to meet the leat - whichever I met would lead me to where I wanted to be eventually. So with visibility down to around 10 metres I struck out to the north.
It is amazingly easy to get lost in the fog. There are no certain reference points, and it becomes a matter of fixing your eyes firmly on that tussock, advancing towards it and then checking your compass and choosing another tussock to walk to. I found Black Tor with an accuracy which surprised me, and then set off sort of east towards the road. Before long I could hear the occasional car, so I stopped paying much attention to the compass direction and headed towards the sound.
I am not sure at what point the engine noises were exchanged for the constant roar of tumbling water... but I gradually became aware that I could no longer hear cars and that the only water source nearby likely to make such a sound was the leat I had recently left... yes, I was heading south again. A quick correction and before long I was stood on the tarmac road.
The final stage of my walk - around 2km of trudging up and down the (admittedly not particularly steep or high) hills over which the road passes were fairly grim. I was very tired, having walked much further than I intended, and had little idea of what sort of distance I had left to travel. Although, I did, during that walk, find a perculiar sense of silence I have rarely experienced before. The only sounds seemed to be mine. There was no traffic noise; the rush of water had faded to nothing; the air was still: no breeze, no insects chirping or birds singing; just me, alone in a 20m circle of moorland, with clouds hiding the rest of the world from view.
But the world soon returned, and eventually so did the welcome sight of my van. I tottered over to it, dropped my backpack in an exhausted heap, and rooted around in my pocket for the keys.
Ah, yes. The keys.
I didn't cry. I feel this is a measure of how much better I am at coping than I was even a year ago. Or maybe I was just too tired. No keys. No phone. Just me and my van, in the approaching evening, still surrounded by fog. Brilliant. At least it wasn't raining (spoiler- yet).
There is an entirely happy conclusion to this tale, which involves a very nice woman in Princetown Stores who ordered me a taxi, another in the Old Police Station Cafe who charged my phone enough for me to let my family know where I was, a third lovely woman (Angel Cabs) who arrived through the by now pretty much torrential rain to drive me home, and my sister (also a lovely woman) who drove me back out the following day and walked with me through the still torrential but now also driving rain to find where I had dropped my keys. At some point on my 15km hike. And I mustn't forget Moss, my niece's rather exuberant hound who seemed rather confused by this unexpected walk in the weather.
We did find them, and happily reasonably quickly.