Dartmoor



This huge peat bog with occasional specks of granite (known as tors) is walked on by desperate southeners due to a serious lack of mountains south of Wales. It is in the south-west of England, between Plymouth and Exeter. The landscape is rolling and gentle, so is best suited to low level walks.



During the bronze age Dartmoor was a popular place to settle down and start a farm. This is evident from the huge number of random stones placed in "circles" dotted around the moor. These days the inhabitants of dartmoor are sheep, disgruntled squaddies and convicts. There is a big military base at Okehampton and red flags dotted around indicate they are live firing (real bullets can kill at a range of 2.5 K) so if you see a red flag keep your head down, if you hear gun fire but there are no red flags they are probably firing blanks, even "blank" rounds can kill so don't get too close. Dartmoor prison is built in the middle of Dartmoor so any that escapees will die stranded on the bleak moorland.

Dartmoor is the home of "letterboxing", a pursuit involving searching for boxes for rubber stamps. The idea is to collect as many stamps in a log book as you can, though as we found out, this can be harder than it sounds. It is a bit like munro-bagging, but on a smaller scale.



Beware mentioning Dartmoor to Bristolian members of the club, as you may be regaled with epics about wondering around this god foresaken place for two days in a quest to climb "Ten Tors".

Trip Reports
Dartmoor 1999