20. Saddle Bridge, Horse Ford, O Brook, Hooten Wheals, The Henroost, Skir Ford, Skir Gut or Girt, Skir Hill, Horn's Cross, Combestone Tor
21. Saddle Tor, Low Man, Hay Tor, Hay Tor Quarries, Granite Railway, Holwell Quarries, (Great Tor), Smallacombe Rocks, Grea Tor Rocks, Medieval Village, Hound Tor, (Chinkwell Tor, Bell Tor), Bonehill Rocks, Top Tor, Foale's Arrishes
22. Bonehill Rocks, Bell Tor, Chinkwell Tor, Honeybag Tor, Thornhill Lane
23. Cold East Cross, Rippon Tor, Newhouse, Foale's Arrishes, Tunhill Rocks, Blackslade Ford, Buckland Beacon
24. Bennett's Cross, Birch Tor, Headland Warren, Stone Row, Headland Warren Farm, Hookney Tor, King's Barrow, Grimspound, (Hameldown Tor), Headland Warren, Mines
25. Hameldown Beacon, Hameldown Tor, Grimspound, Headland Warren Farm, Mines, Soussons Forest, Cator Common
26. Prehistoric Remains, Bellever Tor, Laughter Tor, Huccaby, Brimpts, Babeny, (Dartmeet), Snaily House, Bellever
27. Corndon Down and Tor, Sherwell, Yar Tor
28. Visits to Bowerman's Nose, Jay's Grave, Dunnabridge Pound
29. Crockern Tor, Longaford Tor, White Tors, Brown's House, Flat Tor, Rough Tor, Wistman's Wood, Two Bridges
30. Drift Lane, Roundy Park, Valley of the East Dart, Waterfalls, Sandy Hole, (Cut Hill, Fur Tor), Statts House, Beehive Hut, The Sheepfold
31. Assycombe Hill, Chagford Common, Mine, King's Oven, Warren House Inn
32. Fernworthy Circle, Grey Wethers, Sittaford Tor, Quintin's Man, Whitehorse Hill, Hangingstone Hill, Watern Tor, Teignhead Farm
33. Kestor Rock, Shovel Down, Teign-e-ver Clapper bridge, Scorhill Down, Batworthy Corner
35. Moor Gate, Black Down, Yes Tor, High Willhays, West Mill Tor
36. Meldon Reservoir, Black-a-Tor Copse, Sandy Ford, Valley of the West Okement River, Cranmere Pool
37. Brat Tor, Bleak House, (Great Links Tor), Rattlebook Peat Works, Corn Ridge, Branscombe's Loaf, Sourton Tors, Ice Works
38. The Lich Way, Lynch Tor, Fur Tor, Sandy Ford, Watern Oke, Tavy Cleave
39. Higher Godsworthy, The Longstone, White Tor, Stephens’ Grave, Wedlake
40. Staple Tors, Roos Tor, Cox Tor
41. Great Mis Tor, Langstone Moor Circle, Prehistoric and Tinners’ Remains in Walkham Valley
42. Beardown Tors, Foxholes, Crow Tor, Devil's Tor, Beardown Man, Broad Hole, Cowsic River Valley
The Abbot's Way
The Lich Way
Two Moors Way
The Perambulation of 1240
The Mariner's Way
Appendix A Route Summary Table
Appendix B Glossary of Dartmoor Terms
St Leonard's in the village of Sheepstor
INTRODUCTION
Very often people have asked me when I return home after one of my expeditions to the Himalaya, Tierra del Fuego or Baffin Island, whether I do not find Dartmoor rather tame and unexciting after the great mountain ranges of the world. Settling down to write this guidebook to Dartmoor has made me pause, think and try to justify and back up my claim that I find Dartmoor a most exciting, interesting and intriguing corner of our varied world.
Dartmoor has been called, rather glibly, the last great wilderness in England. This, of course, is true for whatever that really means. It is indeed a huge, largely uninhabited, lonely area of moorland, of some 365 square miles. They also say that you can be, on Dartmoor, further from a road, and therefore I presume civilisation, than any other wild area of Britain south of the Scottish border. On the North Moor near Cut Hill and Fur Tor it is over 3 miles (2km) to a road, if you count the military road from Okehampton Camp, and on the South Moor, near Stringers Hill and Erme Pound, the nearest road is again over 3 miles away.
So that is one reason why I find Dartmoor attractive. I love the wild, lonely, remote areas of uplands and mountains. Even at crowded holiday periods you can still get away from the masses and walk all day without seeing a soul.
Then, even if I have only been away for a few days, when I return to my home near Widecombe-in-the-Moor, as I get out of the car I take a deep breath, for Dartmoor has a strange, indefinable scent that changes with the seasons. Sometimes the misty air is full of the smell of damp, peaty moorland, at others the pungent scent of gorse; in March when the farmers are swaling (burning the moor to improve the grass for grazing), the wind brings a waft of burnt heather and gorse or the smell of the smoke itself.
Meldon Reservior
Blacktor Falls, River Meavy
The rolling, sweeping horizon of Dartmoor with its huge skies always thrills me. Except for a few steep-sided valleys you are never shut in on the moor; you always have the feeling of distance and vast open spaces. Everywhere, except in prolonged summer drought, there is the presence of water; quaking bogs, small streams and the peaty, moorland rivers tumbling down over water-rounded granite boulders, while high overhead the skylarks pour out their own evocative liquid song.
Of course a lot of the landscape, certainly on the margins but also in some of the remote river valleys, where the tinners have been at work, has been fashioned and changed by man. Man has lived, hunted and worked on Dartmoor since prehistoric times and obviously has left his mark, from hut circles, stone rows and megaliths, to tinners’ spoil tips and blowing houses, to newtakes, peat cuttings and ancient fields, to china clay works, forestry and dams.
I find this history of man on Dartmoor, especially the prehistoric period, fascinating. I still feel a strange, prickling sensation in the scalp when I am alone in one of the areas of hut circles or stone rows. Almost I sense the spirits of the Bronze Age people of 4000 years ago. It is no wonder that Dartmoor has its share of legend and folklore and up in the deep peat hags of Cut Hill you could almost believe in the stories of pixies!
Sadly there are very few of the true, old Dartmoor farmers and their families left in our modern times. Men and women for whom a trip