Dartmoor
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- Black Tor Beare – Remote woodland of stunted oaks over 1,000 ft (300 m) above sea level in West Okement valley
- Bowerman's Nose – unusual rock formation
- Brentor Church – Remote church 1,100 ft (340 m) high on crag at western edge of moor
- Burrator Reservoir – late Victorian reservoir
- Castle Drogo – Edwardian faux castle built by Edwin Lutyens on crag above Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton
- Childe's Tomb – ancient burial site
- Church House, South Tawton – 15th century church ales house
- Cosdon or Cawsand Beacon – Prominent hill, northern extremity of moor, site of beacon fire for invasion warning
- Cranmere Pool – original letter box site and location of the legend of Cranmere Binjie
- Crazywell Pool – artificial lake
- Dartmeet – meeting point of East and West Dart
- Devonport Leat – man-made water channel
- Duck's Pool – location of a memorial to local writer William Crossing
- Fernworthy Dam & Reservoir – Granite-faced concrete dam and lake in Fernworthy Forest, nr. Chagford
- Great Links Tor – dominant tor on NW scarp of moor
- Grey Wethers – pair of ancient stone circles
- Grimspound – Bronze Age settlement
- Haytor Rock – Prominent tor and viewpoint between Bovey Tracey and Widecombe
- Haytor Granite Tramway – Remarkable early tramway with stone rails; ran from quarries at Haytor to Stover Canal
- High Willhays – highest point on Dartmoor
- Hound Tor – Rugged tor with remains of Iron Age village
- Jay's Grave – mysterious burial site
- Lydford Gorge – Dramatic, very deep and narrow gorge with waterfalls
- Meldon dam & viaduct – 140 ft (43 m) high concrete dam and dramatic Victorian iron bridge
- Powdermills, Cherrybrook – Remains of gunpowder grinding mill near Two Bridges
- Rattlebrook railway – Remains of horse-worked railway track to peat works near Great Links Tor
- Skaigh Valley – Narrow, wooded valley leading up on to moor at Belstone; on famous Sticklepath geological fault
- Scorhill stone circle – Well-preserved circle of standing stones near Teign-e-ver, Gidleigh
- Tavistock Canal – 19th century canal
- Tavy Cleave – dramatic river gorge on western moor near Marytavy
- Teign-e-ver – confluence of North Teign and Wallabrook; clapper bridges & tolmen stone
- Two Bridges – 18th century coaching inn
- Warren House Inn – highest inn in SW England
- Widgery Cross – Granite cross atop Brat Tor, memorial to Dartmoor artist F J Widgery
- Wistman's Wood – Remote copse of stunted oaks in valley of West Dart near two bridges
- Wheal Betsy – Engine house of mine on Blackdown, Marytavy
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Letterboxing
The definitive guide to hill walking on Dartmoor was written by the Victorian era walker William Crossing. He states that a Dartmoor guide placed a bottle for visitors' cards at Cranmere Pool on the northern moor in 1854. This would seem to be the origin of letterboxing. In 1938 a plaque and letterbox in Crossing's memory were placed at Duck's Pool on the southern moor.
This pursuit has become increasingly popular in recent decades. Watertight containers, or 'letterboxes', are hidden throughout Dartmoor, each containing a visitor's book and a rubber stamp. The original intention was for walkers to leave a letter or postcard, which would then be collected and posted by the next person to visit the site. Today visitors take an impression of the letterbox's rubber stamp as proof of finding the box and record their visit by stamping their own personal stamp in the letterbox's logbook.
Until the 1970s there were no more than a dozen such sites around the moor, usually in the most inaccessible locations. Today there are thousands of letterboxes, many within easy walking distance of the road. Today there is a club called the "100 Club", membership of which is open to anyone who has found at least 100 letterboxes on Dartmoor. Clues to the locations of letterboxes are published by the "100 Club" in a bi-annual catalogue. Some letterboxes however remain "word of mouth" and the clues to their location can only be obtained from the person who placed the box. Some clues may also be found in other letterboxes or on the Internet, this is however more commonly for letterboxes in places other than Dartmoor, where no "100 Club" or catalogue exist. Letterboxing has become a sport in itself, with thousands of walkers gathering for 'box-hunts' – an in some areas of the moor is particularly popular amongst children, some of the more difficult to find boxes and tougher terrain are however better suited to more experienced adults.
Such letterboxes have also been placed in various locations around the world, with a more recent variant known as geocaches. These caches are usually much harder to find, and often require GPS coordinates to locate.
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See also
- Geology of the United Kingdom
- Haytor Granite Tramway
- Dartmoor Discovery Ultramarathon Race
- Rock-cut basin The Tolmen stone
- Dartmoor Way long-distance footpath
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External links
- Dartmoor Society
- Dartmoor at the Open Directory Project
- Dartmoor Letterboxing
- Legendary Dartmoor
- Dartmoor National Park Authority
- Ten Tors Official Website
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Notes
- ^ Ian Mercer: Bogs and Mires of Dartmoor, in Hunt & Wills 1977, p.16.
- ^ Role of anthropogenic fire and in creating moors, and moor-burning in sustaining them, described in Pyne 1997, pp.348-369.
- ^ Dartmoor Commons. Dartmoor National Park Authority. Retrieved on 2008-03-19.
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References
- Hunt, P.J., Wills, G.L. (editors), Devon Wetlands, Exeter: Devon County Council, [1977]. ISBN 0-903849-19-4.
- Pyne, Stephen J. Vestal Fire: An Environmental History, Told through Fire, of Europe and Europe's Encounter with the World. University of Washington Press, Seattle and London, 1997. ISBN 0-295-97596-2.
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