Tim Sandles

Tim Sandles was born in Chipping Norton and first came to know Dartmoor in the early 1980s while working as a veterinary pharmaceutical sales representative across the south west. He later lived in Denbury and near Chagford before moving away from Devon, and says he has kept up his connection with Dartmoor as resident and visitor for about forty years. Letterboxing was his real introduction to the moor.

A local publisher asked him to write a book on the stone crosses of Dartmoor, and A Pilgrimage to Dartmoor's Crosses appeared in 1997 with his own drawings of each cross. He has since studied archaeology and landscape history (a certificate from Exeter University in 2003 and a master's in landscape history from the University of Wales in 2008).

He started the Legendary Dartmoor website in 2005. It now has more than a thousand pages and a quarterly newsletter, and in 2021 it won a Dartmoor Society Award for a website that is rigorous in its research and always a good read.

In his own words: About the author, on Legendary Dartmoor. Photographs courtesy of the Legendary Dartmoor website.

Books on this site

• A Pilgrimage to Dartmoor's Crosses (1997)