Wild Tour of Devon

Photo: Casey Orr

WILD TOUR OF DEVON
Promoted by Beaford and Carn to Cove

In mid-May Boff and I finally premiere These Hills Are Ours. We do so in ludicrously grandiose style.

We're running from show to show, between performances in five rural locations across the whole county of Devon, and covering nearly 120 miles in the course of the week. The shows will be in a range of non-performance spaces: barns, fields, hilltops; and mostly outdoors.

We begin our journey at 3pm on Sunday 16th May in Northam Burrows, at the mouth of the River Taw on Devon's north coast. We'll be sung on our way by a small choir singing an arrangement of one of the songs from the show. Then we'll run off on the first leg of our journey.

Along the way we'll sleep in campsites, barns, and on one occasion, the pavilion of a local amateur league football club. At about halfway, we'll pass the sources of the rivers Taw and Dart, which rise within half a mile of one another, and whose mouths mark the beginning and end of our journey.

We'll finish, exactly a week after starting, at Sugary Cove, by the mouth of the River Dart, where we'll be welcomed by a larger choir singing the same song.

​Then we'll collapse with grateful exhaustion.

The whole Wild Tour is a celebration of all the things we've been unable to do over the past year: perform live, sing together, and run in places too wild to be accessible from our front doors.

​You can follow our progress live via OpenTracking here, where a map of the approximate route will be visible from a few days before our departure.

There'll be daily updates via various social media. A good place to start will be my Instagram and Twitter accounts. Beaford, our commissioners and promoters in Devon, will also be posting more regular updates at their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.

For the numerically-inclined, the itinerary and approximate mileages are:
Sunday 16th - Northam Burrows to Woolsery - 12 miles
Monday 17th - we'll rehearse in person for the first time and open the show in Woolsery.
Tuesday 18th - Woolsery to Dolton - 22 miles
Wednesday 19th - Dolton to Bondleigh - 10 miles, with a show in the evening
Thursday 20th - Bondleigh to Chagford, via Taw Head and Dart Head - 25-26 miles, with a show in the evening
Friday 21st - Chagford to Ashburton - 16 miles, with a show in the evening
Saturday 22nd - Ashburton to Blackadon Farm - 12 miles, with a show in the evening
Sunday 23rd - Blackadon Farm to Sugary Cove - 20 miles, final choir performance, collapse

(Please note that these shows are all very-limited capacity and are on sale only within the local communities.)

Finally, during the course of the week we'll be making a film with the wonderful Bevis Bowden, which will arrive on my YouTube channel later this year. I wouldn't rule out updates turning up there during the course of the week, either.

​It's going to be a hell of a way to open a show.

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