I Ran Here

Ivybridge has a railway station, and for Seanna Fallon that has always been the point of it. It’s where you get off the train to start a day on Dartmoor. A jumping-off place.

On the evening of the first day of the South Hams Way, they got there on foot. Forty-five kilometres from Totnes, in the first dry spell after what they called a winter of biblical rain. They stood in a town they’d used as a starting line many times and thought: I ran here.

Then they went looking for dinner. Outside the pubs, a few young people took against the backpack. Then the chest pouch. Seanna was told how geeky they looked.

A chest pouch, apparently, is funny at closing time.

The plan had been to camp in the woods by the viaduct, a spot Seanna had picked out years before and promised themselves they’d come back to. It was closer to the town than they remembered, and after a camping trip two or three years earlier that had gone wrong, they didn’t like it. They booked a B&B at the last minute and felt, in their words, a bit of a failure, “because the camping feels like half of what the adventure is.”

I asked whether it still felt like failure. It doesn’t. It feels like the sensible thing, and the rest of the trip made it look more sensible still.

Seanna lives in Totnes, runs ultras and fast-packs, and doesn’t drive. That’s part of why a trail starting five minutes from the front door was always going to be the one. They were filming it for a small YouTube channel, partly because there’s so little online about the South Hams Way yet. They wanted to make a proper story of it. It turned into a different one.

Day one, they told me, was everything they love about a big day out. Lunch beside Avon Dam Reservoir. Coffee and food at a friend’s house in Buckfastleigh, who had appointed themselves trail angel. Then Dartmoor, gradually uphill and slow going through a grass that is difficult to get around (“mollard, something like that”), and finally a runnable path off the tops with the whole view opening out.

I asked if they’d arrived in Ivybridge thinking they had absolutely nailed it. Mostly, yes. If every day could be like that, it would be the dream trip.

Day two wasn’t. The forty-five kilometres had taken it out of them. They were aiming for about 27, finishing at Mothecombe, and felt sick leaving the B&B. They’d booked a campsite in advance this time, two and a half kilometres off the trail, which lengthened the day, so they cut a corner off the trail to make it up. A slog, they called it, and in the same breath mentioned crossing streams, and being grateful to be out there at all.

By the third night, in a hotel, they’d had two nights of very little sleep, and the psychosis Seanna lives with had come back. It was mild, but it left a practical question. If it got worse, alone and miles from anywhere, how would they get out?

They left the hotel on day four meaning to start, at least. Get towards Dartmouth, and if they were close enough to home by halfway, go back, sleep properly, come out again. Somewhere on the way they decided to go home instead.

I told Seanna something I’d half-formed beforehand: that if you never fail on a trip like this, you’ve no proof it was hard. They agreed. “I have definitely learned more from my failures than I have from my successes,” they said. This time the lesson was sleep, and planning the next one a little more comfortably.

They’ve been back since. Fifty kilometres along the coast from East Portlemouth to Totnes, which covered a good part of what they missed. What they want now is the stretch from Noss Mayo round past Salcombe, the big coastal days they’d been looking forward to and never got.

It’s waiting to be done, they said. The start is five minutes from their door.

Seanna Fallon

Ultra runner and fast-packer based in Totnes, who shares their running adventures on the YouTube channel Seanna's World (youtube.com/@seannas-world). In March 2026 they set out to run the South Hams Way from their doorstep.

A trail where you get such diversity in landscape all within a hundred miles.