” Thar be piskies up to Dartmoor And ‘tidn’t no good you say there baint I’ve felt um grauping at my heart I’ve heard their voices calling faint“. For the rest of the verse see – HERE. Why is a grown man writing about fictitious piskies you may well ask? …

Both Mangersford and Manga Rails (which sound a bit like a 70s porn star) are  landscape features located at and near to an old fording place on the North Teign river. As to the ford itself, William Crossing notes;  “We shall also pass a fording place, which may possibly be …

  The first seven days of August 2016 was the annual ‘home alone’ week when the rest of the family go to soak up the sun in some hot resort or other and I stay at home to ‘look after the dog’. So the idea was to spend as many …

Down a small and narrow lane which leads off  Beetor Cross is the small farm called Hele and it is this that lends its name to an ancient wayside cross and also a crossroads some 600 metres to the north. The place-name ‘Hele’ is a common one in Devon and …

If you look at the two maps below you can see on the earlier version a farm called Liapa or sometimes locally it was referred to as Leeper. You can also see that on the modern version the farm is now called Moor Gate. When and why the name was …

The Fox’s Prophecy was written in 1871 by D. W. Nash and presented to the then master of the Ledbury Hounds. It the respect of Dartmoor it bears no relation but when Dartmoor is taken as part of the United Kingdom it very much reflects our times. It is eerie …

As with any wild expanse of land there have been many reports and sightings of ‘Big Cats’ on Dartmoor. People talk of ‘The Beast of Dartmoor’ when more likely as not it should be ‘The Beasts of Dartmoor’. Talk to any body that spends a lot of time on the …

Wednesday July 6th 2016. On the 6th of July 2016 Dartmoor Zoo took delivery of a 2 year-old Carpathian Lynx called Flaviu who had come from Port Lympne Wildlife Park in Kent. After making his grand entrance at 7.30 pm when he was placed in an existing pen which had …

Throughout the centuries there have been many momentous occasions when the British populace has had reason to celebrate. The last occasion came in the June of this year (2016) when Britain voted to leave the European Union although there very few national celebrations and plenty of demonstrations. A couple of …

  Today if the house gets cold we simply turn on the gas or electric fire or light the logs in the hearth, probably without a thought. But go back a couple of hundred years or so and the heating in a Dartmoor home more than likely came from turves. …