Monday 31st August 2020
At the end of my walk on the day before this I drove from the village of Belstone to a car park near the Dartmoor Inn and from there set off into the hills camping beside the young River Lyd. I had found a delightful valley in blissful surroundings full of gorse and heather and the following morning, after a cold night, the ground was saturated with dew, which was definitely not from rain as there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. After eating my breakfast I tried to shake off as much of the water from my tent as possible before packing it away and returning to the car park drove down the A386 road to a small car park near the tiny village of Peter Tavy. A track took me onto the moor, but I couldn’t resist soon branching off to reach the rocks of Boulters Tor before resuming my trek along the track onto the moor eventually veering north toward White Tor passing the remains of ancient settlements. Looking at the view west I thought this must have been an amazing place to live while I made my way up the rocky terrain to reach the army flag pole that sits at the top. The edge of Merrivale Range is a short distance away from the top of White Tor and a red flag flies from the top when the range is active, but not on this day so I kept going east to enter the firing range.
Soon I turned off the track at a standing stone to take a faint path through the grass across Petertavy Great Common until I reached a stream that is marked on my Ordnance Survey map as Dead Lake, where I turned south into the valley of the young River Walkham. This would make a wonderful spot for a wild camp, but it was the wrong time of day, so I crossed the river and climbed the steep slopes of Greena Ball contouring around to leave Merrivale Range and reach the top of Great Mis Tor. The top of this hill is littered with rocks and tors creating a fabulous landscape and in the good weather the views to the west were superb especially across the Tamar Estuary with the sea in the distance. As I sat near the summit looking out at the view while having my lunch I tried to decide what to do next. My walks on this holiday had not been planned in advance so I was making them up as I went and since I wanted to do another wild camp the last thing I wanted to do was head back towards my car, so I turned south. After a diversion to visit Little Mis Tor I joined a sometimes wet footpath that follows a fence to the B357 road at Rundlestone.
After my hike across the wild moor during the morning this was quite a rude intrusion of civilisation, but worse was to come as I climbed the hill past the scattered rocks of Rundlestone Tor and up to the top of North Hessary Tor where there is a transmission station with a 196 metre high mast. A trig point sits at the top of the tor, but I was unable to visit it because it was occupied by a family of small children so I continued along the path down the hill towards the village of Princetown, though its famous prison was not in sight. The village was packed with bank holiday visitors so I carefully made my way around them until I could take a heavily constructed footpath that seems to have suffered erosion from heavy rain, so perhaps it hasn’t been very well maintained, or simply wasn’t designed to cope with the enormous amounts of rain that we have had in the last twelve months. The good track is known as Jobber’s Road and is part of the Abbott’s Way that links abbeys on either side of Dartmoor. It continues for a considerable distance and provided me with easy walking across the moor past South Hessary Tor. Sadly the path was the most interesting feature in the landscape as all was bleak grassy moor with nothing to see.
Dark clouds began to cover the sky to match the bleakness of the terrain as I continued heading south passing Siward’s (or Nun’s) Cross to climb around Eylesbarrow on a deteriorating surface. As I gradually started descending I passed the remains of Eylesbarrow Tin Mine and with the terrain and path improving so did the weather until I reached a car park at the end of a road near Sheepstor. I still wasn’t sure where I was going but the excellence of the path had prompted me to keep following it as far as it went and this car park was where it had brought me. Near the car park is Gutter Tor so I climbed the steep bracken-covered slopes past the outcrops of Gutter Tor to the trig point at the highest point on the hill. Returning to the rocks of Gutter Tor I looked at my map to decide where to go next, but since it was now four o’clock I really needed to decide where I was going to camp. There are not any paths much further south to warrant continuing, though there is a good track that goes from the car park into the valley of the young River Plym so I descended the hill and took this track into the valley.
Turning east I headed up the Plym valley until I found a delightful spot beside a stream that comes out of Drizzle Combe and there I stopped to make camp. This was an interesting walk with lots of varied walking from the open moor around the River Walkham to Great Mis Tor before following an easy footpath from Princetown to Sheepstor. The weather was fantastic, except early afternoon when it clouded over, but I’ve never had such good weather in Dartmoor so I really appreciated the chance to experience the delights of a part of Dartmoor that I’d never visited before and in fabulous weather.
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