More Dartmoor. As noted in my last entry I last hiked and wild camped on the moor back in 2012. However I have been there more recently when I took a couple of short courses in forest gardening at the High Heathercombe Center in 2019. [see various entries in February and May of that year] These were on the eastern edge of Dartmoor and I took the opportunity to do a couple of short walks.

 My long hikes across the moor were in summer yet I was often soaked to the skin and freezing cold. Most of the moor is a morass and my feet were basically submerged in water for much of the time. I was buffeted by the wind and had to make my way through dense fog.

 Strange to say the conditions during my visits to High Heathercombe in late winter and early spring were mild and dry and the ground was solid underfoot!

I noticed on the OS map that I was in striking distance of Grimspound, a Bronze Age settlement. To quote English Heritage: "The remains of 24 stone roundhouses survive here, within a massive boundary wall about 150 metres in diameter."

 

Stone is a defining characteristic of the Dartmoor landscape.

In winter or summer the stark grandeur of the moor stirs the soul.