Tag Archives: Dartmoor

It was one winter’s night when the topic of conversation at the Tinner’s Arms near Lydford got around to the latest guest to be staying on Gibbet Hill. According to an elderly man who was the local font of all knowledge the man swinging in the iron cage at that …

Imagine the year is 1925 and it is a dark winters night, the sky is clear and the air is cold, a frost is starting to bite at the whitening verge side. You and your partner are driving along the B3212 between Postbridge and Two bridges after visiting friends in …

To the north of Holne Ridge lies the small valley of the O Brook, here the moorland waters peacefully tumble down through granite rocks that are overlooked by tombs of the ancient men of the moor. Today the tranquil little valley is home to the moorland sheep and ponies who …

“By day the place was inviting enough and a child wouldn’t have feared to be there. Dean Burn came down from its cradle far away in the hills and threaded Dean Woods with ripple and flash and song. The beck lifted its voice in stickles and shouted over the mossy …

“On the very edge Of the vast moorland, startling every eye, A shape enormous rises! High it towers Above the hill’s bold brow, and seen from far, Assumes the human form; a granite god, – To whom in days long flown, the suppliant knee In trembling homage bowed. The hamlets …

Many years ago, before the social services were invented, there lived a woman at a small place called Brinning. She lived in the small cot with her small baby, the father had left to work in the mines. On this particular day mother and baby were out in the garden …

Vaccinium mrytillus, in Scotland they call it a blaeberry, in Wales it is known as a whimberry, in Devon they talk of whortleberry on Dartmoor ‘tiz a ‘hurt‘. Call it what you want it tastes delicious and it is a chore to pick, you seem to spend hours plucking, squashing …

“About them stretched square fields, off some of which a harvest of oats had just been shorn; while others were grass green with the sprawling foliage of turnip.” Falcon Farm – Orphan Diana, Eden Phillpotts For anyone that has seen the now famous Warhorse movie they will recall the Dartmoor …

Summer is the time of year when you can return from a day out on Dartmoor and find you have one or more uninvited hitch hikers firmly attached to your person. Depending on how soon you discover them they can appear as a small, spider-like insect or as a reddish …

  “The great, solitary rowan-tree did much good, for it gave a welcome shade to the cattle and the traveller ; it broke the line of the level fiat gratefully, it offered pleasure to the eye at bud-break and sparkled with bunches of scarlet fruit in the autumn, which both …