Imagine back in the days of horse transport making the journey from Okehampton to Tavistock. You may be visiting family or conducting important business. The journey will take you through Sourton, past Lydford onto Black Down, down through through Mary Tavy and on to Tavistock. Consider then that you stay …

 Here is a story about how Mrs Brown won the brush with the Dartmoor hounds. I will let her tell the story in her own inimitable way: “One day last week I says to Josiah, “If you’m goin’ down to Buckfastleigh – I knowed as he was goin’ down for …

“I have a dream…” as most of us do but usually it does not involve transforming a whole landscape. Back in the 1800’s one man’s dream was to recreate a mystical land on Dartmoor, he wanted to bring the Isle of Mona to the moor along with a fabulous grotto …

Here’s a tale with something for everyone, it has murder, highway robbery, a manhunt, a love interest and it all happened on and around Blackdown. But first to set the scene, Blackdown consists of about four square kilometres of moorland, with the old main road from Exeter to Plymouth hugging …

This story appears in a book of 1910: “I dunno if you chaps ever met my Pal, Billy Stidstone. You oughter! You’d cotton to him straight away. ‘E’s a raal good soort is Billy! ‘E’s what the papers call a Filanderpist: ‘E’s all for givin’ of ‘is things away, for …

At Moretonhampstead in the early 1800’s there lived a family called Bidder which comprised of William the father, Elizabeth the mother and three sons, William, John, and George. The family trade was that of stone masons and when George, the youngest son was born in 1806 it looked as if …

When looking at the literature of Dartmoor there probably was no greater character as the author Olive Parr who wrote under the pen name of Beatrice Chase. Possibly the word ‘character’ is a bit kind, eccentric would be polite and egotist nearer the truth. There is no doubt that the …

Wistman’s Wood There’s eeriness in Wistman’s Wood, Where stealthy shadows slowly creep About the boles of moaning trees. There’s terror where the foaming stream Streaks all the gorge with ghostly light, And creaking willows toss their arms Naked and lean against the flood. There’s mourning on the bleak hillside, And …

THE WINDY POST. Lonely there, betwixt moor and sky, Where great grey clouds go drifting by, And the peewit utters her plaintive cry, The windy post stands silently. A little old cross on the windy heather, Roughly hewn out of granite gray, Fretted and worn by the wind and the …

Tom Pearce. Tom Pearce, lend me your grey mare, All along, down along, out along lee, For I want for to go to Widdecombe Fair, Wi’ Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davy, Dan’l Whiddon, Harry Hawk, old uncle Tom Cobley and all, old Uncle Tom Cobley and all. …