The Acland family were a little late starting and so opted to take the car to the top of Ausewell hill. They passed us near the bottom of the hill, but no amount of persuasion could even get Charles to ride it with us, much to Ashley's frustration!

An unmarked path across the moor led us to Buckland Beacon and the Ten Commandments Stone. It was here in 1928 that a stonemason from Exeter was engaged to engrave the Ten Commandments into granite slabs by the Lord of Buckland Manor. The work took six months, during which time the stonemason lived in a cow shed on the site and was supplied with a loaf of bread each day for his efforts! Nobody except Michael had been here before so there was a race to find the stone first. Sam won, but only by asking another visitor where it was!

When we had found the only letterbox on the tor we headed along a different moorland track to Cold East Cross, passing some rather lazy-looking black cows along the way. It was getting rather close to lunchtime and nobody really fancied Michael's idea of climbing Rippon Tor (not even Michael himself), even if there were several letterboxes there. We headed instead for Bonehill rocks which offered shelter for lunch and an abundance of letterboxes. Ashley, whilst looking around for boxes, discovered a young Australian man and his friend with full mountaineering gear trying to climb a big boulder that was only twice their height!

A steep downhill brought us quickly to Widecombe, where the Green cafe provided useful refreshments for those who had neglected to bring a packed lunch. Freddie, always cautious here after the time he put hand wash liquid into Michael's water bottle, returned to the table to discover everyone looking at his own bottle that he had left there unattended. Their looks alone were sufficient to convince him his bottle had been doctored, even though it hadn't been touched!

We headed back to Leusdon for the downhill to Spitchwick which everyone thoroughly enjoyed. Charles and Heidi then took the left for Buckland and the car while the rest continued through Spitchwick Common itself which was pleasantly deserted today. Hembury tracks provided a grand finale to the day's activities, with the usual computer games to follow.