Dunns On Tour

  We took advantage of the best conditions of the week to tackle a 10 mile circuit round some of the wilder terrain on the moor.  Starting from Princetown, home of HM prison, the disused Dartmoor railway track meandered around Ingra Tor and Leeden Tor, before branching off to ascend to Sharpitor and Leather Tor at 390m. Panoramic views all around the National park, though not as far as the coast due to the haze. The descent towards Burrator Reservoir was a bit of a scramble across bracken and gorse, though provided a scenic picnic spot for our lunch (courtesy of yesterday’s leftover flapjacks).  We crossed the Devonport Leat, a C18 waterway providing freshwater to the naval dockyards, a couple of times, en route to the long ridge that leads back to Princetown and its austere buildings. Jail Ale was a bit too heavy for an end-of-walk celebratory tipple, though it’s Dartmoor IPA cousin was perfectly potable. Just unfortunate that we had to contend with the steady drum ‘n ba...

  At my request we took a day off from hiking and bimbled instead, though Joff was a willing conscript.  First stop was The Garden House, a few miles south of us near Yelverton. It’s not a massive garden, but beautifully varied with sweeps of my favoured prairie-style planting, jungly bits, wild meadow bits, an acer glade and more. The walled garden is a riot of hot colours, and in fact it was pretty warm, so we had a spell on a shady seat trying to track the daredevil aerobatics of huge dragonflies and diminutive damselflies. After a light lunch we headed back to Tavistock, a place we both liked. We learned some stuff about tin mining in the area - I didn’t realise there were tin mines this far north - and followed a short heritage trail taking in remains of the old abbey. A window designed by William Morris tempted us into St Eustachius church. This is a detail of it. The Guildhall and town hall are substantial and serious looking, and tucked behind the latter is the panier ...

  After our soaking yesterday, this morning started far more propitiously in weather terms, but not in energy levels. The Round House is a good place to stay apart from the bed, resulting in far fewer hours asleep than ideal. Our walk started at Postbridge, pretty much smack bang in the middle of Dartmoor. A beautiful medieval clapper bridge spans the East Dart River here. We were delighted to discover a charging point in the National Trust car park, and we couldn’t quite believe our luck (particularly given previous experiences) to find that we already had the requisite app, the little visitor centre had free Wi-Fi to enable us to connect, and, Brucie Bonus, when you’re charging your car, you don’t have to pay for parking! We were somewhat less thrilled on our return to see that the charging was so slow that even after more than four hours we’d only added 17%. Hey ho. The walk was a pleasant one over eight miles, through a mixture of open moor, bracken and gorse, quiet lanes, step...

After several weeks of drought, the rain decided to make a strong appearance on the first day of our Dartmoor adventure. You win some, and you lose some, when long-distance walking in the great outdoors is your holiday of choice. En route to our base near Tavistock, we stopped over in Okehampton to explore the northern edge of the national park, following a 9 mile circuit that leads straight from the town centre to the slopes of Belstone Tor. Within 5 minutes we were changing into wet weather gear. The promised sunny intervals never materialised; it basically varied from light rain to heavy rain, with middling rain in between. Undeterred we took an attractive woodland path out of town, past the relics of the old castle, erstwhile seat of the Courtenay family from Norman times, to reach open moorland. Pretty bleak up here, with clouds circling the granite hilltops. Disconcertingly, there was a military exercise taking place in the nearby MoD firing range, out of sight but definitely wit...