Dartmoor

Between my two visits to Dartmoor, I managed to get out to a number of places on the moor.

It is an interesting landscape, not what I expected, and surprisingly diverse.

There are not many people living within the moor area these days, but there is a lot of evidence of large neolithic communities having been based here.

This is a view of Grimpound from the top of a nearby Tor. Grim would be a good description for living here In winter I feel.

 

There are plenty of horses living on the moor, and on my way up the Tor where I took the above photo I saw this little guy.

One of the most interesting little spots was a really cool patch of woodland, with really old gnarled trees and lots of boulders all covered with enormous amounts of moss and lichens. The Wistmans Wood was definitely a good spot for taking photos, unfortunately there was a large group of photographers doing exactly that when I was there, so it was hard to just get a photo of the trees and rocks without the people.

I found myself a nice camping location on the east side of the moor just near the river Dart (hence the name of the moor), and quite a lovely forest area. I went hiking here for about half a day, and while I was at it, I composed a poem. I have posted the poem with some photos on my blog, if you haven't seen it check out the recent post entitled Poetry - 1. It was my first attempt at poetry, so it is a very basic effort.

I like checkng out some of the old buildings and ruins, so I went to the nearby town of Totnes to find the old castle. It was an old Mott and Bailey style, which I think basically means a big circular wall on top of a hill that you hide inside. Despite being on top of a hill, it was actually hard to find in the narrow twisting streets, but I eventually found Castle St, and figured I had to be close.

On the way back to my campsite I saw an interesting train off in the distance, I could see the track and the road I was on followed the same path, so I pushed ahead until I could find a spot to park and get a photo of the train as it came by.

There are a number of small tourist railways that aren't part of the national passenger rail network, and I saw these trains on a few of them, I'm sure it makes for a great day out for the kids.

The next day, on my way out of the area I went to a town called Bovey Tracey, because I had seen an information brochure for a house of marbles and was intrigued enough to go and check it out.

They have a number of old style marble runs, which I had to admit, I watched all of them run long enough to track all the possible runs a marble could make. Here is couple of them.

And some really, really, big marbles.

They sell a wide array of old toys, puzzles, board games etc., and also have a glass blowing set up out the back, where I watched a vase being made. All in all it was an entertaining visit to a somewhat unusual place dedicated to simpler times.

Leaving Dartmoor I was off to visit some friends just north of Exeter who I hadn't seen for a few years, when they were living in Perth for a year. Since then they'd gotten married, and on my arrival was to discover the also had news for me that they would be expanding the family later in the year.

I was then off to visit another friend in Swindon, which I will cover in the next post, as we got up to a bit of old fashioned archery.