South West holiday - the Guide

Drove to Dartmoor - a harder task than it looked!  It was a drizzly morning in Dorset, but as I got into Devon everything went very grey and saturated and 'orrible.  I was driving through quite a thick fog bank at one point, and getting rather worried!  However as I got towards Exeter it ended up as just a bit spitty and even a little blue sky.
Getting onto Dartmoor is a mini challenge in itself.  Once you turn off the big roads suddenly it's all steep climbs and sudden turns, much like the Peak District, and then you pop out the top onto an expanse of moor like entering another world.  There are vast spaces, Tors everywhere you look, moor ponies (shaggier and rougher than their New Forest counterparts) and the heights were hidden in clouds.  As was Princetown, where I was meeting my walking guide Simon Dell.



Hiring a walking guide was the only bit of holiday planning I'd actually done.  Since I'd never been to the area before it seemed like a great way to learn about what I was going to see during my stay, and what to watch out for on a somewhat notorious landscape!  I emailed Moorland Guides and although they normally take groups, Simon was kind enough to slot me in as a lone walker (as well as giving me a discount that he really didn't have to!)

The weather looked miserable but really Princetown was just in a cloud and really quite warm.  I had some soup and cake in the Fox Tor cafe and was feeling more optimistic when Simon walked in the back door and spotted me.  He turned out to be a twinkly-eyed, white haired man in his sixties, and a non-stop talker.  Immediately likeable and friendly, he invited me to sit with him and his friend as they caught up over coffee and cake.  He decided that although the weather was likely to lift, there wasn't much point going to see a long view.  Instead he took me to Merrivale (parked at Four Winds) which was great!  Within only a few square miles he took me from millions of years ago all the way up to 1940.

There were stone hut circles from the bronze age, with their south facing door posts to get the best of the sun.  They'd be built round a tree, which became the central pole for a thatched tipi.  The smoke from the fire at the back collected at the top and dispersed, making it a good place to hang and smoke your meat.  Once you've learned to identify one hut, you realise there are literally dozens, scattered all around you.  Here specifically, there are twenty four.



There were burial chambers, full of imported flint ("Oh look!" Simon exclaimed, bending down and producing a sample out of a puddle "See that edge?  That's been knapped, that has."), and marked by menhirs that attract a dowsing rod when you put your hand on them.  Ancient calendars that line up with each other and cast shadows from one standing stone to another on the solstices.  He showed me the difference between the stocky hill ponies ("See, that's one!") and the larger, darker heritage ponies ("That one's got a foal!") that have been bred to try and replicate older stock.



He walked me round a medieval longhouse, with its thresh-hold and kitchen garden, and a manmade rabbit warren.  He explained to me the formation of the granite tors, and how men had drilled holes along them, like perforating a stamp, to split the hard stone.  I even found a new one for him, where someone had made a mistake and had to re-drill the holes!

Simon performs magic, producing water out of rock!

"You had one job, Brian!  Do it again!"

  He pointed out the yellow four-leaved Tormentil that was used to make a cure-all tea, and the Spagnum moss that grows lime green in the bogs ("You've heard of the famous Dartmoor bogs that swallow ponies  and escaped criminals whole, haven't you?"  "Yes.  Yes, I have."  "Want to see one?"  "Okay!" and off we trotted) and was used to pack wounds in World War 1 to prevent gangrene.  It self-roots in the water, floating like seaweed, and the greener it is, the deeper the drop beneath.  And we found the beautiful tiny red Sundews, no bigger than your smallest fingernail, that are the carnivorous fly-catching mouth of the bog.  As they digest the flies they catch, the nutrients feed the other plants too.

That patch of bright inviting green behind me?  That's a bog 8ft deep.  Try to run through it and you'd go straight down.

He pointed out way-markers, fifty metres apart, to guide travellers across the moors in the dense fog.
And finally, in the car park which had once been a school, the pine tree that had been once a Christmas tree gifted to the students in the 1920s by the inmates of Dartmoor prison.  Now it's huge and the canopy fills the schoolyard.

Mother and foal at Four Winds

The A's lead to Aschcombe.  The T's on the other side lead to Tavistock.

Despite mixed weather - coolly pleasant to driving mizzle, I had a really great time.  Simon knew so much and was so enthusiastic, and had all the names for the weather and the features of the landscape.  Well worth the money, and a great first day.  Always take the guided tour!

I'm staying at the YHA at Bellever, sharing a dorm with some other women.  There's a surprising (Is it surprising?  Why is it?) number of singles here.  We have
- a middle-aged lady from Ireland doing a cycling tour of Devon, who had come up from Exeter that morning.
- two couples with at least one German-speaking partner both with younger kids.
- a woman waiting to move into her new house
- a sole female walker from elsewhere in Devon
- a mid-twenties marathon trainee from Southampton
- three teenage girls bunking together
- lone dad with grumpy bleach-haired teen
- hardcore walking sports psychiatrist guy

The variety, and the high number of female singles, most of them older than me, having a perfectly nice time and enjoying each other's company, is very encouraging to me.  In the evening we all just sit about and chat, which is why we chose to hostel in the first place.


Bed + board: £15 (I'm self catering out of the contents of the freezer bag)
Guide: £30
Parking in Princeton: £2
Top-up groceries: £5