The heart of Devon, Dartmoor is huge, bleak and beautiful. It is a mixture of landscapes – on the edge are farms, not really moorland, but as the land rises up and the wind scours the thin soil, leaving only thin grass and gorse, the High Moor, where the granite protrudes in rock towers, carved by the wind into fantastic shapes.
It is inevitable that someone has devised a ‘Dartmoor Way’. It runs a ring around the moor.
Parts of the Dartmoor Way I have walked just in the course of walking on and around the moor. I am not going to walk the whole thing, but do go out and explore.
The odd thing I though was that it runs around the moor, not through its heart, over the wild moor. However in that way it does show more or the moor, and a wider variety of the landscapes encompassed, and the middle of the moor is trackless.
For those wanting a walk over the high moor, there is The High Moorland Link, published alongside the Dartmoor Way, and that can be a second article.
The Dartmoor Way route takes in some of the highlights of the Moor and the moorland towns and villages: Tavistock, Lydford with its plunging gorge and lost Anglo-Saxon burg, Okehampton with its castle, Chagford, Moretonhampstead, Ashburton, Shaugh Bridge and others.
I have started the map of the route in Tavistock, ‘the capital of Dartmoor’ and the place I know best (and where I first came across the route markers). The publishers of the route suggest Ivybridge, where there is a station. Really it can be started anywhere. The moor is there to be enjoyed
Maps
- Ordnance Survey Explorer Series:
- Explorer OL 38: Dartmoor
- South Devon and Dartmoor Guide: OS Pathfinder series