The original inspiration for these photographs was T. A. Falcon's Dartmoor Illustrated, published in 1900. I have had enormous fun hunting down all the sites he visited and this present selection, like his, is a tour around some of the scenery and history of the open moors, starting at Widecombe. One major objective has been to allocate a similar number of pictures to each quarter; a list of all the places visited with their map references is in the back. Many of the sites involve walking more than a mile from the nearest road (or 1.609km for those imperially challenged; I am unashamedly old-fashioned and all my walking is done with feet that move by inches and know when they have been for miles!).
The open moor possesses many tracks and paths though only some, like those within the Okehampton artillery range and one between Nun's Cross and Eylesbarrow, are maintained in any systematic way. Most of the others are overgrown, not always well defined and sometimes even discontinuous, so tracing their routes can be difficult.
I have found a large-scale map the next best thing to a comfortable pair of walking boots. Ordnance Survey, "OS" in the text, make an excellent 1:25000 version in their Outdoor Leisure series: for now one map-printed on both sides - conveniently covers all the moorland, but it is a devil to handle on a proper Dartmoor windy day!
“But this was only an illusion; a small hillock, on rather higher ground, sometimes but a few yards distant, being the object to which the treacherous mist had given the appearance of a hill.”
Also on Our DartmoorThree hut circles on Wigford Down — An unenclosed settlement of three stone hut circles, 4.5 to 7 m across inside, on the eastern edge of Wigford Down, outside its coaxial field system.
Dartmoor quizPhotograph by Glavind Strachan Photography
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Photograph by Glavind Strachan Photography