Today we packed up from our campsite at Dartmoor, and headed for Exmoor national park. We’ve booked another adults-only campsite for 4 nights.

Now, I know I’ve said I’m not going to take the back roads in England again, but somehow we ended up there again. Old habits die hard.

I figured to get from Dartmoor to Exmoor it might be nice to drive along the moors. But… the moors had other ideas.

It started ok, with only 2 or 3 “I am NOT going down that road” moments. I really wanted to keep Berties sides in tact and I wanted to make it to my birthday.

So we drove along a nice two-laned road which was fine until it suddenly ran out. Well, there was a sign saying the road was closed ahead. So we took a diversion. It was a narrow one-lane road but do-able.

Then, at the end, it narrowed even more into a goat track. Mike would have gone for it, but I refused. I was thinking about Bertie.

So I made an executive decision as I did not want to be sitting in the car all day. We would take the Devon expressway (that undercover motorway from the other day) and just get to our destination.

So we backtracked and hit the highway. For the 10 minutes we would be on it, it seemed a good compromise.

I’ve realised you have to take on a different mind-set when travelling in the UK. It’s no longer about the road tripping and the slow journey on the back roads wondering where you will end up.

It’s now about getting to your destination that you have booked up well in advance, driving via the most efficient method possible, and staying put for more than a day. So that was our new plan.

Mike had booked the Exemoor campsite earlier in the week, in the national park for 4 nights. We’re hoping to do some hiking and visit some local pubs, maybe find a cream tea (we missed the Devonshire tea, dammit), or a ploughman’s lunch.

We arrived at the campground mid-afternoon and it was already busy. Thankfully we were early enough to grab a decent spot as people were streaming in after us. We were in reception when a man came racing in with his caravan and we heard a loud bang. He’d scraped his caravan on the metal pole at the entrance and ripped some of his caravan off. Oops.

By 5pm, the campground was full! I thought that choosing adults-only we would have avoided the mad holiday crowds, but nope! Just a lot of people and their dogs.

But it’s a nice enough spot, right on a river Exe, which is more of a creek.

After dinner we went for a walk into the quaint little village. Just a few houses and a pub – the Badgers Holt – where Mike is taking me to for my birthday. And a phone box on the edge of town. Yes, these still exist!